Australian Antecedents of the Third Way

New Labour theorists have been prone to identify American New Progressivism as the proximate source of 'third way' ideas. In this article we argue that, if the focus is on the governing practice rather than on the naming of a governing orientation, a case can be made for seeing Australian Labor in government from 1983 to 1996 as a progenitor of third way thinking and as a specific source of New Labour policy development in a number of areas. Taking Stuart White's account of the main dimensions of third way programmatic realignment as our guide, we discuss the success of the Hawke/Keating Labor governments in reducing the direct provider role of state, developing new forms of collective provision, reforming the tax system, making social policy more employment-friendly and creating the institutions of an asset-based egalitarianism. We conclude by pointing out that, whilst there are many common themes in Australian Labor practice and New Labor rhetoric, and some evidence of specific policy transfer from one to the other, a plausible case can also be made for seeing many of the policy initiatives of the Hawke/Keating era as a reworking of an older Australian Labor tradition of regulatory state activism.     

UK Privatisation Revisited: Ideas and Policy Change, 1979–92

Privatisation in the UK was facilitated by the interplay of ideas, institutions, actors, and economic interests. The motivations of the programme were ideational and political, but the objectives were economic and administrative. Together these paved the way for the success of the policy. Although several rationales were at play in the unfolding of privatisation, the ideological predilection of the Thatcher governments underpinned this far-reaching policy reform. This explains why the Thatcher government did not reform nationalized industries within the public sector, but instead shifted them into the private sector. Privatisation succeeded because it was championed by new right policy entrepreneurs, was supported by interest groups prepared to support, or least not impede, such dramatic policy change, and when the public enterprise status quo was deemed in need of reform. Of course, ideas only act as a catalyst for policy change when an established policy agenda having withered, been worn-out or otherwise discredited, can then be successfully challenged.     

Political Institutions and Economic Performance: The Effects of Accountability and Obstacles to Policy Change

Numerous analyses have been conducted on how political institutions affect economic performance. In recent years the emphasis has been on a causal logic that emphasizes institutional obstacles to policy change, such as those presented by multiple veto points. This has especially been the case when it comes to the important question of how political institutions influence governments' responses to exogenous economic shocks. We make the case for a substantial broadening of focus and show that when it comes to a major type of exogenous shock, a forced exchange-rate devaluation, variations in the breadth of accountability of the chief executive are more robustly associated with the post-shock growth recovery than variations in obstacles to policy change. We first argue that the size of the winning coalition will be positively associated with growth recoveries following forced devaluations. We then use a newly developed measure of the size of the winning coalition to test our claim. Our statistical analysis is based on a study of the responses of 44 countries to forced exchange-rate devaluations in the late 1990s.     

The Political Consequences of External Economic Shocks: Evidence from Poland

How do external economic shocks influence domestic politics? We argue that those materially exposed to the shock will display systematic differences in policy preferences and voting behavior compared to the unexposed, and political parties can exploit these circumstances. Empirically, we take advantage of the 2015 surprise revaluation of the Swiss franc to identify the Polish citizens with direct economic exposure to this exogenous event. Using an original survey fielded prior to the 2015 elections and an embedded survey experiment, we show that exposed individuals were more likely to demand government support and more likely to desert the government and vote for the largest opposition party, which was able to use the shock to expand its electoral coalition without alienating its core voters. Our article clarifies the connection between international shocks, voters’ policy preferences, partisan policy responses, and, ultimately, voting decisions.     

Learning and Change in 20th-Century British Economic Policy

Despite considerable interest in the means by which policy learning occurs, and in how it is that the framework of policy may be subject to radical change, the "black box" of economic policy making remains surprisingly murky. This article utilizes Peter Hall's concept of "social learning" to develop a more sophisticated model of policy learning; one in which paradigm failure does not necessarily lead to wholesale paradigm replacement, and in which an administrative battle of ideas may be just as important a determinant of paradigm change as a political struggle. It then applies this model in a survey of U.K. economic policy making since the 1930s: examining the shift to "Keynesianism" during the 1930s and 1940s; the substantial revision of this framework in the 1960s; the collapse of the "Keynesian-plus" framework in the 1970s; and the major revisions to the new "neoliberal" policy framework in the 1980s and 1990s.     

Policy Changes on Canada's Rivers: Different but not Isolated

I address two questions in this article. First, how do policy changes in Canada differ from those in the United States? Second, are such changes isolated from American influence? I argue that Canadian policy changes will be more driven by subnational bureaucrats, more dependent upon fortuitous alignments of interests and institutions, and less quickly emulated by other jurisdictions than policy changes in the United States. I will also argue that policy changes in Canada are not completely isolated from those in the United States, not given the ability of ideas to cross international borders to change the framing of issues. I examine these arguments in the context of changing river management policies in British Columbia and Ontario.     

Public Enterprises and Canadian Foreign Economic Policy

To what extent can public enterprises serve as instruments ofpolicy enabling the federal government to assert a measure ofcontrol over Canada's foreign economic relations? This articlepresents an overview of public enterprises in Canada and highlightsthe special features of the Canadian political economy whichdifferentiate it from other advanced industrial economies. Theactivities of the Canada Development Corporation and CanadianNational Railways are analyzed in terms of whether they reinforceor undermine the federal government's authority in foreign economicpolicymaking. It appears that the relative autonomy of publicenterprises from government controls, most pronounced in thecase of commercial enterprises operating in competitive markets,fragments decisionmaking. Given that governmental power in Canadais already fragmented due to competitive federalism, and giventhe expanded activities of provincial public enterprises inrecent years, a lack of direction over the "subgovernment" offederal public enterprises compounds the difficulties for Ottawato conduct a coherent, foreign economic policy.     

A Semantic Network Analysis of Changes in North Korea's Economic Policy

To shed light on the inner workings of policymaking in North Korea, this study examined the process behind economic policy change through an analysis of the official state economics journal. Semantic networks are used to trace the introduction and evolution of policies during four distinct economic periods in North Korean history between 1986 and 2009. Although reform is catalyzed by political and economic crises, the emergence of new policy topics occurs incrementally prior to change. Specifically, new policy discourse tends to emerge in gradual and cautious ways but policy change occurs swiftly in periods of crisis. During periods of stability, the state retreats to the centralized socialist economic system, often through coercion and force. This view of the policy process suggests that foundations of economic reforms in North Korea are yet weak and instable, and policy reform will continue to be vulnerable to the political influence of conservatives.     

Nations or Sectors in the Age of Globalization: China's Policy Toward Foreign Direct Investment in Telecommunications

Scholars debate whether states or markets drive economic policy in the context of internationalization. Unpacking the market–state dichotomy, liberal pluralists and institutionalists alike conduct sectoral analysis to examine economic policies and outcomes. They debate the relative importance of sectors versus factors and the impact of sectoral coalitions, structural characteristics, and institutional trajectories. Building on previous scholarship, this article argues that state imperatives, such as national security and technological advancement, are an important guide to understanding dominant patterns of economic policy, defined as state goals, government–business relations, and state methods. Beyond that, the organization of institutions and structural sectoral attributes influence the ways in which actual policy outcomes vary across sectors and time. Case studies of the liberalization and subsequent reregulation of foreign direct investment across subsectors of telecommunications in China substantiate this argument. Evidence from other industries further validates this explanatory model.     

Policy Research — Who Needs It?

The relationship between government policymaking and policy research changes over time and between governments. It seldom follows the orderly sequence of logical events which researchers may like to imagine. In attempting to understand the relationship between the creation of knowledge and its use by policymakers, it is essential to understand the needs and behavior of politicians, the pressures upon their time and the wide range of channels of information, informal as well as formal, open to them and to their immediate advisers. Social policy research, partly because of its frequent ambiguity and partiality, is particularly likely to be ignored by its official consumers in government. Some social and economic questions are probably not capable of effective testing by research other than by governments putting policies into effect on a national scale. Evaluation of such experiments is difficult. More attention needs to be paid to the marketing of ideas by pressure groups and think tanks. Governments can shop around for acceptable advice from a wide range of sources outside academic life. Except in highly consensual political cultures, the only decisions which are made primarily on the basis of research findings are politically unimportant ones. In considering the role of policy research it is essential to keep the primacy of politics firmly in mind.     

Explaining Australian Economic Success: Good Policy or Good Luck?

Australia and some European countries experienced economic “miracles” in the 1990s that reversed prior poor export, employment, and fiscal performance. The miracles might provide transferable lessons about economic governance if it were true that economic governance institutions are malleable, and that actors deliberately changed those institutions in ways that contributed to the miracles. This paper analyzes Australian policy responses to see whether remediation should be attributed to pluck (intentional, strategic remediation of dysfunctional institutions to make them conform with the external environment), luck (environmental change that makes formerly dysfunctional institutions suddenly functional), or just being stuck (endogenous or path‐dependent change that brings institutions into conformity with the environment). These distinctions help establish whether actors can consciously engineer institutional change that is “off‐path.” While pluck appears to explain more than either stuck or luck in the Australian case, the analysis suggests that both off‐path behavior and policy transfer are probably rare.     

Bureaucrats in the Social Policy Process: Administrative Policy Entrepreneurs and the Case of Working Nation

Much of the contemporary literature on Australian social policy tends to focus on broad environmental and institutional variables and to downplay the importance of the social policy decision-making process and its participants. Yet the study of specific cases in social policy-making reveals that senior administrators often have a significant impact on the direction of social policy reform. The income support reforms adopted as part of the fomer Federal Labor government's Working Nation package illustrate the potential for bureaucrats to influence the direction of change. Senior administrative officers within the former Commonwealth Department of Social Security played a crucial role in promoting reforms which increased the generosity of the means test on unemployment payments. These bureaucrats behaved as policy entrepreneurs and worked in a strategic manner to garner support for and reduce opposition to their proposals within the decision-making process.     

Coalition Government,Legislative Institutions,and Public Policy in Parliamentary Democracies

Most democracies are governed by coalitions, comprising multiple political parties with conflicting policy positions. The prevalence of these governments poses a significant question: Which parties' electoral commitments are ultimately reflected in government policy? Recent theories have challenged our understanding of multiparty government, arguing that the relative influence of coalition parties depends crucially on institutional context. Specifically, where institutions allow credible enforcement of bargains, policy should reflect a compromise among all governing parties; where such institutions are absent, the preferences of parties controlling the relevant ministries should prevail. Critically, empirical work has thus far failed to provide direct evidence for this conditional relationship. Analyzing changes in social protection policies in 15 parliamentary democracies, we provide the first systematic evidence that the strength of legislative institutions significantly shapes the relative policy influence of coalition parties. Our findings have implications for our understanding of coalition government, policymaking, and electoral responsiveness.     

Fragmented Welfare States: Federal Institutions and the Development of Social Policy

Despite political scientists' growing appreciation of the ways in which institutions influence political processes, the “new institutionalism” has so far had a limited impact on the comparative study of welfare state development. This article discusses some broad issues concerning institutions and public policy by exploring the implications of one set of institutions — those associated with federalism — for the politics of social policy. Federal institutions encourage three distinctive dynamics: they influence the policy preferences, strategies, and influence of social actors; they create important new institutional actors (the constituent units of the federation); and they generate predictable policymaking dilemmas associated with shared decision-making. Comparisons between social policy development in Canada and the United States are used to demonstrate that while federalism clearly matters, how it matters will depend on the characteristics of a particular federal system and the ways in which federal institutions interact with other important variables.     

Leading from Below: How Sub-National Governments Influence Policy Agendas

This article takes a state's eye view of trends towards a more centralised system of governance in Australia. It argues that while globalisation strengthens the roles of national governments it also provides less noticed public policy and management opportunities for sub-national governments. The article shows how state governments in Australia can use high-level policy proposals to reinforce their continuing relevance as key members of a federal system of government. It proposes that skilful deployment of policy ideas and analyses can enable the states to sustain alternative national agendas despite hostility or lack of interest by the federal government. In conclusion, the article examines the implications for federal-state relations under the Rudd government. It suggests that the elements for productive reform agendas are present but that bringing them together will require considerable effort.     

Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Government Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark

The ability of a political system to respond to the preferences of its citizens is central to democratic theory and practice; yet most empirical research on government responsiveness has concentrated on the United States. As a result, we know very little about the nature of government policy responsiveness in Europe and we have a poor understanding of the conditions that affect cross-national variations. This comparative study examines the relationship between public opinion and policy preferences in the United Kingdom and Denmark during the past three decades. We address two key questions: First, are the government's policy intentions driven by public opinion or vice versa? Second, do political institutions influence the level of government responsiveness? We suggest that public opinion tends to drive the government's policy intentions due to the threat of electoral sanction, and that this is more pronounced in proportional systems than in majoritarian democracies.     

Climate Adaptation in Canada: Governing a Complex Policy Regime

Climate adaptation is a complex policy area, in which knowledge, authority, and resources are fragmented among numerous public agencies, multiple levels of government, and a wide range of nongovernmental actors. Mobilizing and coordinating disparate public and private efforts is a key challenge in this policy domain, and this has focused research attention on the governance of adaptation, including the dynamics of interaction among interests and the institutions that facilitate collective action. This paper contributes to the study of adaptation governance by adopting the policy regimes perspective, an analytical framework designed to make sense of the loose governing arrangements surrounding complex, fragmented problems. The perspective's constructs are applied to a longitudinal case study of adaptation governance in Canada, which identifies, analyzes, and evaluates the policy ideas, institutions, and interests that comprise Canada's adaptation policy regime.     

The Rising Tide Economy: Lessons from the Squeezed Middle for Progressive Economic Policy

For all its rhetorical potency, the policy implications of the ‘squeezed middle’ are yet to be fully explored. This article looks at what the phenomenon means for the design and prosecution of progressive economic policy. It argues that any progressive government today needs to adopt a new first order goal of economic policy: ensuring that the material wellbeing of ordinary working people rises when the economy grows, a project referred to as ‘building a rising tide economy’. This objective would sit in addition to the traditional goals of sustained GDP growth, high employment, low inflation and poverty reduction. It would have real implications across a range of important policy areas.     

Economic Freedom,Government Policy and the Trade-Off Between Equity and Economic Growth

This study investigates the role that economicfreedom plays in economic growth and in the distribution in marketincome, the role of government policy in advancingeconomic progress and in promoting income equality, and the effectthat the rate of economic progress has on thedistribution of market income. Structural and reduced formmodels are estimated that reveal that economic freedompromotes both economic growth and equity, and that there is apositive but relatively small trade-off between growth andincome inequality.     

Changing Agendas in Australian Indigenous Policy: Federalism,Competing Principles and Generational Dynamics

This paper identifies two periods of punctuated change in the content and style of Australian Indigenous policy in the last fifty years. It also identifies a third period in which attention to Indigenous policy was heightened through the nationalisation of land issues already well‐established on the agendas of sub‐national jurisdictions. The paper relates all three periods to the changing federal institutions of Australian Indigenous policy, with the Commonwealth slowly exploring its post‐1967 role as a national government in Indigenous affairs. In later sections, the paper identifies some more conceptual bases of changing policy agendas, through ideas of the competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship and the generational moral dynamics of Indigenous affairs.