THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT*

I was invited to give an address on the topic “The Changing Role of the Public Service”. With the agreement of the organizers I have changed my title to “The Role of the Public Service in a Changing Environment”. That is a small change—but it is a significant one. Our role has not really changed. It is easy in the public service, as elsewhere, to be preoccupied with contemporary challenges, and to imagine that these are new and different. But that says more about the way memory discounts the past than anything else—the latest problem or challenge is always the worst. When I joined the Treasury in 1952 the economy had just come through the Korean War boom and was in the process of adjusting to Fadden's so-called “horror” budget. The world financial system was in disarray owing to the “shortage” of US dollars. The Arbitration Court in the two or three previous years had made some awards of great concern as to their inflationary consequences. I found the Treasury was a hive of frantic activity. Looking back from the perspective of today I merely note, as the French put it, that the more things change the more things stay the same.     

The scientific foundation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models

DSGE-models provide a coherent framework of analysis. This coherence is brought about by restricting acceptable behavior of agents to dynamic utility maximization and rational expectations. The problem of the DSGE-models (and more generally of macroeconomic models based on rational expectations) is that they assume extraordinary cognitive capabilities of individual agents. In addition, these models need a lot of ad-hoc assumptions to make them fit the data. I argue that we need models that take into account the limited cognitive abilities of agents. One can introduce rationality in such models by assuming “trial and error“ learning. I propose such a model and I analyze its implications.     

INTERNATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM: THE NEED FOR COMPREHENSIVE MICRO-COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Microcomparison, or single‐component analysis, of health care systems offers a potentially better basis for reform than traditional macrocomparison analysis of aggregate elements. Using macroanalysis, available evidence shows that Germany provides cheaper but more effective hospital care than the United States. To find the causes for this outcome, we developed a microanalytic model of hospital administrators’ perceptions, financial ratios, medical outcomes, and pharmaceutical costs. However, only data on pharmaceutical costs were available and similar in both countries. Our significant outcome was development of a microcomparative model that gives world medical care providers new criteria for analyzing and improving cost to care rafios.     

AUTHORSHIP AND THE PUBLIC SPEECH

Abstract: At one level, this paper is a fairly straightforward analysis of speeches about industry training made by two business people on behalf of the state. As such, it can be situated within a constellation of relations described by the following formations: relations between and within business and government; the role of non-statutory public advisory bodies; and the nexus of economy and training. At a second level, the paper may be read as an attempt to address the techniques of speech writing within the public service and how these resonate with "famous names" to produce authored — and authorised — documents. And at a third level, what I am seeking is to advocate the use of discourse analysis in the study of Australian public policy, by positioning the speeches within a set of structuring forms of knowledge. I want particularly to argue for the dominance of neoclassical economics as a key logic determining the terms of truth within such speeches. This will be maintained both through a reading of these specific texts and a discussion of the context within which they were produced, circulated and consumed.     

Information,perceptions, and electoral behaviour of young voters: A randomised controlled experiment

The way people absorb and process politically relevant information is central to their subsequent political behaviour (in terms of turnout and vote choice). Nonetheless, little is known about how young voters – who might be more impressionable than more experienced voters – respond to the provision of such information. In this article, we design a between-subject randomised controlled trial that exposes a sample of university students to positive, neutral or negative information about central government performance before the 2017 Portuguese local elections. We find that young voters update their perceptions more when exposed to negative news. This negativity bias is stronger for first-time voters. We also find that negative information significantly affects turnout of initially undecided young voters. Our results imply that sensitivity to information is heterogeneous and that some young voters may be prone to manipulation through the provision of negative news.     

In Defence of Politics

In this, my inaugural lecture, I wanted to sing out in praise of politics! This seemed such a good idea twelve months ago, but now in the wake of even more stories about MPs not declaring foreign trips and former ministers demanding ‘cash for access’ the idea of trying to defend politicians and praise politics suddenly seems like a very bad idea. And yet it is exactly because politics is held in such low esteem that the lecture is so important. Democratic politics matters because it achieves far more than we generally give it credit for. I want to rediscover the essence and arguments of Bernard Crick's classic book In Defence of Politics because its arguments are more appropriate today than when they were first published in 1962.     

VICTORY IS NOT POSSIBLE: A REJOINDER TO THE STRATEGIC MYTHMAKERS

The current strategic planning for nuclear war is based on the assumptions that it is an effective way to deter the Soviet Union and that we can actually survive such a war. These are erroneous, for the Soviets are not likely to be any more deterred by our plans for nuclear war than they are by our current strategy. The illusion that "victory" is possible in a nuclear war overlooks the medical and other evidence about the extent of death, injury and disease that a nuclear war would bring. War should be conducted with a view of post-war benefit in mind, but a nuclear war would yield no benefits, regardless of the futile and even delirious efforts to make evacuation plans for major cities in the event of nuclear war.     

Camera as sign: on the ethics of unconcealment in documentary film and video

When we look at a documentary, what do we see? Probably not the apparatus that gives us images to view. If we did, then perhaps questions about the ethics of documentary cinema would be easily answered. The goal of this article is to broaden the moralistic purview of image ethics debates with a semiotic phenomenology of the visual mode of address of documentary. I describe how “doubling” and “redoubling” the visual mode of address undermines the authority of documentary and helps to overcome debates about two main ethical issues – participant consent and the audience's right to information. Unconcealing the viewpoint of documentary also broadens media ethics debates by bringing attention to the implied viewer, asking of it to reflect on the consequences of the communicative act of looking. Examples of widely available documentary film and video are discussed.     

Beyond reason: the philosophy and politics of immigration

In this paper, I critically address the role of arbitrary and contingent features in philosophical debates about migration. These features play a central role, and display the importance of ‘unreason’ in the debate and the limits of rational criticism. Certain elements of political thought have to be taken as given, as essential starting points or indispensable building blocks. As such, they cannot be exposed to rational criticism. Political arrangements such as national borders, nation-states and national identities constitute these building blocks, and justify coercive borders in order to sustain them. If we are to subject these arrangements to critical examination, then we move beyond the limits of liberal political philosophy. I examine theorists who take this kind of approach to the ethics of immigration: Michael Blake, Samuel Scheffler and David Miller. I argue that such approaches ask us to balance arbitrary and contingent features of the political world against the non-contingent moral equality of the migrant. If we are to recognize the migrant as an equal reason-giver in the moral contestation of borders, then we are compelled to theorize beyond these limits, and to theorize instead about a global community of equals, a post-national world made up of transnational belonging.     

THE TRIUMPH OF ECONOMIC RATIONALISM: THE TREASURY AND THE MARKET ECONOMY

The 1980s have seen the triumph of economic rationalism. Greater efficiency has become a sacred goal. Increased competition and the unlocking of market forces, we are told, are the key means to obtain it. Proponents of economic rationalism insist that the public sector is riddled with inefficiencies. The private sector, by contrast, is self-evidently superior. To the extent that the private sector often operates less than optimally, a major reason is the plethora of perverse governmental regulations which hamper its efficiency. Despite the problems, the public sector needs to model itself wherever possible on the private. And where public sector activities can be or are being done in the private sector, then the public sector should surrender such activities. The inevitable result will be an increase in net economic welfare: the economy will become more dynamic and scarce resources will be allocated more efficiently. Such is the rhetoric of the economic rationalists.     

Becoming Who We Are: Democracy and the Political Problem of Hope

Abstract

In this article I argue that hope is rightly numbered by Hesiod among the evils, as hope cannot be separated from an awareness of the inadequacy of one's current state. Political hope for democrats in particular is tied to the awareness that we have not yet realized ourselves, that, to paraphrase Pindar, we have not yet become who we are. I argue that, although Rorty comes close to articulating this in his book Achieving Our Country, his emphasis on pride ultimately obscures more than it reveals. I conclude that Thoreau's anguished reflection in Walden on the failures of his fellow citizens is a better place to look for instruction on the question of political hope.     

MANAGING WITH LESS

Managers everywhere are faced always with problems of scarcity, with setting priorities, making trade-offs and allocating short resources. One part of the administrative task is necessarily about getting the most done for the least cost. But is Australian government administration now entering a particularly severe period of restraint, which will place even sharper challenges upon managers in the public service? I think the answer to this question is yes, and that there is general agreement about this within the public service itself. Problems of managing with less are therefore contemporary and pressing; and this paper is a summary of ways in which those problems are being approached. One way issues in calls for improved efficiency in government. This is not, however, a straightforward matter at all. Improvements or so called improvements to efficiency will always meet some resistance for a mixture of reasons. Some managers think that the need for change is not as great as critics maintain, so giving them no cause to do more than continue their normal practices of good management. Others see a renewed emphasis on efficiency as cutting into the resources properly available to the public service, so harming the community which the administration is supposed to serve. Managing with less is not then merely a technical issue. It involves questions about the meaning of efficiency and the role of management, and also judgments about the nature of the period in which we live and about who gains and who loses when we do indeed have to manage with less: that is, political and even moral considerations are mixed up with considerations of good management and efficiency. These matters of value, choice and conflict cannot be avoided.     

Intelligently Designing Deliberative Health Care Forums: Dewey's Metaphysics,Cognitive Science and a Brazilian Example

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1974—PUBLIC SERVICES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

My Chairman, Mr H. H. Dickinson, was honoured to be offered the role of keynote speaker for the 1974 Annual Conference of the Royal Institute of Public Administration. He had proceeded a considerable distance along the road of preparing his address when he was unexpectedly called on to visit Canada on government business. On his behalf I wish to apologize to the organizers for his absence today. He regrets it very much. The address I am about to give is in some sense therefore a joint effort, encapsulating the theme judged by Mr Dickinson to be most appropriate for this occasion, within a framework which enables me to develop and expound that theme.     

Public opinion about social assistance in Sweden

Abstract. When studying public opinion about income-tested programmes, it is important to distinguish between expenditures and parameters regulating supply of social assistance. We suggest that the latter might be the most interesting. Using data from a survey study over a Swedish sample, we investigate public opinion about income thresholds in Swedish welfare programmes. The results show the public as being in favour of rather higher income thresholds, as compared to that decided by the politicians. We found that public opinion is more homogeneous concerning the income needs of adults than those of children. Although data on several background characteristics were available, we had difficulties in relating the answers to systematic factors of the individuals in the sample. Thus, we conclude that the Swedish population is rather homogeneous in their opinions about income thresholds in welfare programmes.     

Clearer Cues,More Consistent Voters: A Benefit of Elite Polarization

Scholars typically argue that elite polarization has only negative consequences for American politics. I challenge this view by demonstrating that elite polarization, by clarifying where the parties stand on the issues of the day, causes ordinary voters to adopt more consistent attitudes. Scholars have made such claims in the past, but because only observational data has been available, demonstrating a cause-and-effect relationship has proven to be difficult. I use original experiments to verify that there is a small but significant causal link between elite polarization and voter consistency. These findings have important normative implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization, the role of political parties in a modern democracy, and the standards scholars use to assess citizen competence and participation.     

THE DEPARTMENT OF THE PRIME MINISTER AND CABINET IN PERSPECTIVE

As much as any department, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet comes in for its share of public comment, both as to functions and purpose, on its alleged struggle for supremacy in the economic or welfare or foreign policy field or somewhere else. Inside the Department we tend to give this sort of allegation a tired smile; and because it is wide of the mark, a first reaction is to be critical of the commentators. The second reaction, probably the proper one, is realization that there needs to be greater understanding of the role of the Department and its objectives, which can only be achieved by wider discussion and public debate. The proper reticence of senior officers about entering public debate on policy issues tends sometimes to flow over to a reticence on questions of public service administration. That is a pity, because public administration is our business: better administration is our objective. It is not something to be achieved within the confines of the public service; or more precisely it is to be achieved in fuller measure by debate and analysis inside and outside the Service.     

Proportionality and Self-Interest

This paper offers a justification of the principle of military proportionality that is based in considerations of self-interest. By offering such a justification, I hope to vindicate the principle on the basis of the least controversial argument available. The war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 is used as a case study. Part 1 surveys recent work on military proportionality and suggests that the importance of this principle has increased in the age of asymmetrical warfare. Part 2 considers and rejects the traditional realist concerns about proportionality. Part 3 offers a realist rationale for adhering to the principle.