The Economic Policy Agenda in Australia, 1962–2012

This paper surveys Australian economic policy over the last half century, identifying patterns and punctuations in the management of both macroeconomic and more structural challenges. It highlights the extent to which the economic policy agenda has been dictated by economic forces, while acknowledging the ideological preferences governments bring to their task. In retrospect, this half century in Australia has been dominated by macroeconomic turmoil and structural adjustment in the middle decades. Australian governments had to deal simultaneously with the macroeconomic problems of inflation and recession from the mid‐1970s to the early 1990s while also facing the need to dismantle the development framework that had been in place since Federation or even earlier.     

Setting the Post War Australian Policy Agenda – Causes and Content

What are the origins of policy agendas and what determines agenda setting? The one robust theory in the literature associates different agendas with different moments in the evolution of the broader party system namely mass, catch‐all and most recently cartel patterns. This article explores Australian evidence for this thesis. It also argues the cartel moment has recently mutated. Agenda setting is now circumscribed by a mismatch between the needs of policy making and the political incentive structure. The media have become primary tissue connecting political elites to their publics. But this traps the system in short term, primarily populist stances. Systemic capacities to mediate agenda setting have thus been corrupted.     

Neoconservatism,US–China conflict,and Australia's ‘great and powerful friends’ dilemma

Abstract

Following its time-honoured ‘great and powerful friends’ foreign policy tradition, Australia has been cultivating close ties simultaneously with the United States and China. Yet, as a rivalry between the two powers apparently looms large, Australia faces an acute dilemma. While the rise of China and the question of Taiwan are often cited as main causes of US–China discord, this article argues that the American neoconservative policy on China, underpinned by a belief in both military strength and moral clarity, is integral to this growing competition and is, by extension, partly responsible for the emergence of Australia's predicament. To avoid such a difficult choice, the article suggests that Australia should strive to curb the policy influence of neoconservatism both in the United States and at home by pursuing a more independent foreign policy, making clear its strategic postures on US–China relations, and helping establish a trilateral strategic forum between Australia, the United States, and China.     

Political Competition,Agenda Power,and Incentives to Innovate: An Empirical Examination of Vested‐Interest Theory

Technological innovations are by no means Pareto‐improving. I build on the argument that incumbent innovators can use political means to block rival innovations by emphasizing that the competitiveness of political system and some political institutions may diminish their ability to do so. I specify an institutional mechanism of agenda power, which provides newcomers with an improved ability to enter the game. The number of agenda power holders varies significantly among political systems, electoral systems, and administrative structures. With a sample of about 100 countries and across 20 years I show that politically competitive regimes, majoritarian electoral rules, and federal structures supply more holders of agenda power in comparison to their counterparts and, other things being equal, produce more innovations.     

Agenda Setting in Emergent R&D Policy Subsystems: Examining Discourse Effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act

The literature on government responsiveness to societal issues is extensive but provides a mixed assessment of effectiveness. We examine this issue in the case of policy addressing effective and safe management of research and development in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Specifically, we examine the agenda setting effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (the Act), a piece of legislation designed to be implemented by a network of actors in the nanotechnology research and development policy subsystem. We adopt a public values lens in our examination of discourse related to societal concerns. Policy documents from Congress, an agency, and federal funding recipients are examined. Findings suggest a narrowing of public values discourse around more specific societal concerns in the documents crafted after the Act was passed.     

Treasury and Economic Policy – Beyond the Dismal Science

‘Treasury advises and assists the Treasurer, and through him the Government, in the discharge of his and its responsibilities in relation to economic, fiscal and monetary matters. The Department's main responsibilities lie in the field of general economic management’, Treasury, Annual Report 1983. ‘The Treasury's mission is to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people by providing sound and timely advice to the Government, based on objective and thorough analysis of options, and by assisting Treasury ministers in the administration of their responsibilities and the implementation of government decisions’, Treasury, Annual Report 2010a . ‘You can't really evaluate the performance of Treasury in terms of “outputs and outcomes” in any formal or public way because most of the time we are dissuading Treasurers and governments from doing stupid things’, Senior Treasury Official 2000. ‘We once had a “Treasury line”, but now we are more pluralistic’, Senior Treasury Official 2010. ‘Treasury's executive board hunts as a pack, they trust each other and they’ve known each other for long times’, Senior Treasury Official 2010.     

Security,Not Defence,Strategic, Not Habit: Restructuring the Political Arrangements for Policy Making on Britain's Role in the World

The Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government has committed itself to a Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDR) in 2010. The government and the country face very hard choices to bring United Kingdom defence and security policy back from the brink of bankruptcy—both financial and strategic (Gow). To succeed, it must overcome the failings of the past (Chisnall, Dorman, Rees) and take a truly open and radical look at all aspects of policy and process—including the Trident independent nuclear deterrent (Allen), relations with Europe (Witney) and the importance of cyber‐issues in the future security context (Fisher). It must get strategic concepts right to provide flexibility with credibility (Stone). It must deliver ‘what the military wants’: true strategic prioritisation, radical defence acquisition reform, and credible balancing of resources and commitments (Kiszley). The scale of the challenge facing the United Kingdom in—and beyond—the 2010 SDR is why The Political Quarterly convened a workshop early in 2010 involving MPs, practitioners, retired military personnel, journalists, commentators, business people and academics, and publishes these associated papers. Most of all, to overcome the failings of the past, there must be a radical move beyond the welcome first steps of the Cameron–Clegg government to introduce a National Security Council and a National Security Advisor, to reconfigure relationships within government, across departments and with Parliament to have a government figure of accountability and responsibility—a Secretary of State for Security Policy, primus inter pares with other Secretaries of State—to make sense of the questions needing to be asked and answered (Gearson and Gow).     

Policy Stalemate and Policy Change in Israel's Water Sector 1970–2010: Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Narratives

This paper seeks to explain policy stalemates that persist despite recognition of their risks and damages, as well as the factors and processes that enable a breakthrough and lead to policy change. The paper seeks to fill a gap in the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) theory by supplementing it with Narrative Analysis (NA). We claim that NA provides a link missing in the ACF that is required for the transformation of “necessary” conditions—like external and internal shocks to the system—into “sufficient” conditions for policy persistence or change. We use the ACF to delineate coalition members and their belief systems and policy positions, as well as external, internal, and structural shocks to the system. We rely on NA to analyze the narratives employed in the public arena, which turn conditions necessary both for hurting stalemates and for policy change into sufficient conditions. We illustrate the benefits of combining the two approaches through a study of Israel's water policy during four decades (1970s–2000s) based on government records and on information from interviews with key players.     

The UK and EU Foreign and Security Policy: An Optional Extra

Foreign and security policy were not areas in which Prime Minister Cameron was seeking to renegotiate the relationship between the UK and the European Union (EU), but security may be a key issue in the EU referendum. The untangling of Britain's foreign and security policy from the EU following a Brexit vote would be relatively uncomplicated. The EU's arrangements for collective foreign and security policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), are conducted on an intergovernmental basis which allows the UK to preserve independence in its diplomacy while allowing for the coordination of policy where interests are held in common with other member states. The UK retains substantial diplomatic and military capabilities which would allow it to continue to pursue a separate national foreign, security and defence policy in the case of either a ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ outcome.     

Short‐Term Emergency or Recurring Climatic Extreme: A Rural Town Perspective on Drought Policy and Programs

Drought is most often encountered as a long‐running and recurring climatic extreme; one that can have devastating environmental, social and economic impacts. While drought is a routine feature of the Australian climate, the politics of drought are often highly reactive, and drought support programs are notoriously ad hoc and ineffective. In the context of emergent global recognition of climate change, drought has received renewed political attention that presents significant opportunities for change. In this paper, we review the context of drought policy in Australia. Yet we seek to provide a unique contribution to current debates by considering the perspectives of those people at the forefront of drought; in particular, those people living and working in small rural towns in drought‐affected areas. The aim of the paper is to use a case study to present an account of drought policies and programs from those who are the targets of such interventions.     

Branding and Franchising a Public Policy: The Case of the Gateway Review Process 2001–2010

One of the more interesting features of contemporary policy‐making is the way in which certain policies and administrative processes have been branded. While this is not yet a common feature, it does appear to be one that is increasing in importance. This article looks at the phenomenon through a consideration of one particularly interesting case; the Gateway Review Process (subsequently Gateway), a policy with a related set of administrative processes which is both branded and franchised. Gateway also seems a successful example of a much more common feature of contemporary policy making: policy transfer. It has been transferred from the UK to five Australian jurisdictions, New Zealand and Holland. This article examines the extent to which the branding, and indeed the franchising, of Gateway is responsible for the putative success of that transfer. We begin with a very brief consideration of the literature on branding and franchising to situate our discussion, before outlining the ways in which branding and politics intersect. In the main part of the article we focus on the branding of public policy and on the Gateway case.     

How preferences,information and institutions interactively drive agenda‐setting: Questions in the Belgian parliament, 1993–2000

In this article an integrated framework of agenda‐setting is proposed that incorporates the two main accounts of agenda‐setting: the information‐processing approach by Comparative Agenda Project scholars and the preference‐centred account advanced by Comparative Manifestoes Project scholars. The study claims that attention allocation is determined at the same time by preferences, information and institutions, and that attention allocation is affected by the interactions between these three factors. An empirical test is conducted that draws upon a dataset of parliamentary questions/interpellations in Belgium in the period 1993–2000. It is found that attention in parliament is indeed driven by preceding party manifestos (preferences), by available information (media coverage) and by institutional position (government or opposition party). The evidence establishes that agenda‐setting is also affected by the interactions between preferences, information and institutions. Actors, given their preferences, treat information in a biased fashion, and institutions moderate information's role.     

Not just ‘friends and neighbours’: Canvassing,geographic proximity and voter choice

The impact of local campaigning on voter choice has been studied within the theme of mobilisation. Grassroots effort can attract votes efficiently, but campaign contact is (potentially) endogenous, so results showing positive effects could be flawed. Experimental solutions to this problem are possible, but could also have low external validity. Drawing on the electoral geography literature, this article suggests that endogeneity concerns can be addressed through so‐called ‘friends and neighbours voting’. One source of endogeneity is that that candidates may tend to canvass those living close to their own homes, and those canvassed would be expected in any case to be prone to support local candidates. The problem of endogeneity is reframed and treated as an omitted variable bias. Using unique Irish data on the geographic location of the homes of candidates, as well as data on the location of the voters, the analysis confirms that canvassing has a positive impact on candidate choice independent of the effect of geographic distance. More importantly, these two variables interact. The results point to the relevance of the geographic dimension of electoral politics in driving the endogeneity bias in local campaigning studies.     

Strategic Thinking,Shared Meaning‐Making and the Interpretive Turn in Policy ‐ A Case Study

Governments' demands for results in a complex and rapidly changing policy environment call for more strategic and nuanced ways of approaching policy. Drawing on the work of the British interpretive ‘turn’, evidenced in the network governance literature and the differentiated polity critique of Westminster narratives, and of Liedkta on strategy as design, this paper suggests that shared strategic narratives, more consciously applied to policy development and implementation, could deliver better results; that consensus from shared meaning‐making may have depth, and that it could emphasise the transformative over the conservative forces of individuals' traditions and beliefs. Data for the paper came from a micro‐study on the implementation of SmartGate automated border processing system in New Zealand.     

Working with Complexity: Community Engagement and the Murdi Paaki COAG Trial 2002–2007

Achieving improvements in indigenous health and education and reducing the incidence of crime and domestic violence in indigenous communities has proved heartbreakingly difficult. The Murdi Paaki COAG trial in western NSW aimed to break this pattern of failure by tailoring flexible Commonwealth and State government support to indigenous communities, working within a framework of shared responsibility. In this article we assess the trial as a policy strategy by comparing outcomes and patterns of outcomes across the sixteen communities. We found that the strategy worked best where ‘good enough’ governance was aligned with flexibility, rather than with control. This way of working is difficult for governments as it can be a slow process, and requires stability in the policy and engagement framework to deliver results. More broadly, our findings confirm the usefulness of complexity theory to illuminate and to explain the evolution of process in administrative contexts involving networked governance.