Institutionalizing deliberative democracy

• In the mass democratic polities of today, the role of citizens remains confined largely to that of voting for members of elected legislatures. Beyond that, there is scant opportunity for ‘the public’ to participate in any meaningful sense in most of the tasks that make up the policy‐making process. Indeed, influencing that process is typically viewed as the sole prerogative of technocratic experts, organized interests, and elected officials. This presumption is buttressed (and rationalized) by a too‐ready acceptance of the platitude that citizens are generally uninformed, unskilled, and uninterested in the work of democratic self‐government.
  • We begin with a definition of ‘deliberative democracy’.
  • We then briefly consider its connection to the concept of democracy more generally and argue that the moral authority of the former follows from that of the latter.
  • From both the developing and the developed worlds, we draw several examples of institutionalized deliberative participation. In some, institutionalization has been sustained; in others, it has not been sustained.
  • Reflecting on these examples, we consider the ‘lessons learned’ from these and other cases. We identify costs, difficulties and limitations associated with institutionalizing participatory public deliberation as well as the benefits and advantages thereof.
  • Finally, we briefly outline a proposal for an Australian experiment that might serve as a learning model for subsequent efforts there and elsewhere to ‘institutionalize’ participatory citizen deliberation.
• Institutionalizing deliberative participation would not replace representative government, but rather would supplement it, enabling democratic governments to reflect and respond better to the values, priorities and aspirations of the people they ostensibly serve.
• We offer this practice‐orientated paper as a discussion paper intended to introduce readers to the idea of institutionalizing participatory public deliberation and to generate constructive debate concerning it. We do not presume to provide a rigorous analysis of the concept or of any of the many issues surrounding it.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Commentary on Widmalm: A rebuttal

Abstract

This paper examines the public involvement in a particularly sensitive and highly contentious field of EU policy making: the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) sector. It argues for the establishment of a larger public debate in the EU policy field and interactive discourses that involve public voices, rather than just technocrats or scientists, in the GMO sector. In terms of deliberative democracy, an assessment of the EU's GMO regime is mixed: on the one hand, new practices have been introduced, which indicate a shift towards more participatory policy making; on the other, enhanced societal participation does not necessarily support the emergence of a larger engaged public and deliberation in the general public sphere. Thus, after the design of the ‘participatory garden’, the wider European public debate on GMOs has not ‘grown’ due to a lack of horizontal co-ordination among EU initiatives; the preference for institutionalized forms of cooperation with civil society; and the lack of evaluation methods for public involvement in GMO approvals.     

The Multiple Meanings of ‘Resilience’: An Overview of the Literature

‘resilience is in danger of becoming a vacuous buzzword from overuse and ambiguity’ (Rose 2007: 384) ‘Resilience’ is widely used in public policy debate in Australia in contexts as diverse as drought policy, mental fitness in the Australian Defence Force, and in discussion around the Australian economy's performance during the global financial crisis. The following paper provides an overview of the use of the term ‘resilience’ in the academic literature in both the natural and social sciences. The key conclusion from this research is that the term is highly ambiguous, it is used for different purposes in different contexts and in some cases the understandings of the term are diametrically opposed. The malleability of the term suggests that it might be politically risky if employed in policy debate unless clearly defined in each instance.     

Children,COVID, and confusion: How frontline workers cope with the challenges of vaccine mandates

With the emergence of COVID-19, many governments around the world co-oped non-health actors into enforcing comprehensive mandatory vaccination policies. Implementing these policies can be challenging, creating irreconcilable goals and problems with knowledge and understanding of areas outside the implementers’ direct field of expertise or scope of work. We know very little about how such frontline workers cope with these challenges associated with implementing policies whose goals lie well outside their remit (which we describe as generating exogenous policy pressures), and what this means for the operation of the policies. This article uses policies in place prior to the pandemic to fill this gap. It examines attitudes and experiences of frontline childcare educators who implement Australia's No Jab, No Play childhood vaccine mandate policies within the states of New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. Through qualitative analysis of interview and focus group data, we find that these frontline workers cope with moral conflict, confusion, and a lack of knowledge by moving against clients: they rigidly follow the rules beyond legislative requirements, and sometimes break them, generating a new coping category we call ‘rigid rule breaking’. However, their need to employ coping strategies is informed by the extent to which government has designed the policy to coerce the behaviour of the providers, families, or both. The implementation of more coercive variants of No Jab, No Play policies deviates more from what legislators intended, while providers given scope to make their own decisions about enrolling unvaccinated children report satisfaction in their decision-making.

Points for practitioners

• Australian state mandatory vaccination policies generally require childcare providers to exclude unvaccinated children.
• Street level bureaucrats face pressures when implementing coercive policies exogenous to their remit.
• They may simplify policy implementation in ways that counter governments’ goals.
• Actors given more discretion about passing on coercion to policy targets demonstrate better understanding and ownership of policies.

     

Twenty years of Australia's engagement with Asia

Abstract

For the past two decades, ‘engagement with Asia’ has been a central theme in Australian public policy and public debate about Australia's place in the world. The commitment to Asian engagement has been shared by both sides of federal politics throughout this period; however, when in government the Labor Party (1983–96) and the Coalition (1996–2007) pursued radically different approaches to this common objective. This article contrasts and evaluates the differing approaches adopted by the Labor and Coalition governments, in the context of the domestic and regional debates and controversies that accompanied them. In particular, it seeks to explain why Australia is more engaged with Asia than ever before, in seeming defiance of the widespread criticism of the Coalition government's particular approach to Asian engagement.     

The public issue life cycle and corporate political actions in China's transitional environment: a case of real estate industry

• Based on the ‘structured content analysis’ of the longitudinal data from a journal of Chinese real estate industry during last 11 years, this paper studies the nature of public issue life cycle and corresponding corporate political actions (CPAs) in a transitional economy. This paper finds out that in a transitional economy like China: (1) a new stage called ‘policy trial’ and double steps of policy introduction were found in the public issue life cycle; (2) the possible outcomes of Chinese public issues are partially consistent with Tombari's arguments; (3) the evolution of CPAs takes a more complex and different path compared with that in the West. In general, this paper provides an available research perspective (the public issue life cycle model) for firms to manage and monitor their external political environment by effectively developing CPAs in a transitional economy.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Australia's Progress Undefined: A Critical Review of Measures of Australia's Progress (MAP)

Indicator systems to report on concepts such as sustainability and progress have become a key policy response by governments to concerns over environmental degradation and social and economic instability. When developed by a national bureau, public service imperatives suggest that concepts such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘progress’ should be addressed without offending the ideology of political actors. We offer a case study of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Measures of Australia's Progress (MAP) indicator system. The ABS has chosen to avoid offering a clear definition of what progress means, or a conceptual framework linked to a definition to explain the selection of indicators. ‘Progress’, however, is a socially defined, normative concept. Such concepts cannot be understood without reference to cultural and political processes. By seeking to avoid a perception of cultural or political bias the ABS has limited MAP's capacity to measure progress. We conclude with suggestions on how MAP might be improved.     

Gender targets and trickle-down effects: Avoiding the ‘decoupling dynamics’ that limit female representation in senior roles

Women constitute the majority of the Australian public sector workforce, but their representation in senior roles is not proportional. Australian public services have gender targets to improve the representation of women in senior roles. Based on previous research, targets are expected to first increase female representation at the target's focal level, such as executive level. Then they should initiate a trickle-down effect (TDE), increasing female representation at the level immediately below the target's focal level, such as the executive feeder level. However, the TDE observed in a state public service decelerated after a gender target was imposed. We identified whether individual departments had a consistent or inconsistent TDE and conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Too many service-wide targets with low prioritisation of a gender target, as well as missing and ineffective practices, generated decoupling dynamics. Only departments with gender champions who had visible backing from the Chief Executive were able to keep the gender target coupled with practice to achieve its intended outcomes.

Points for practitioners

• Gender targets in Australian public services may not be achieving intended outcomes due to decoupling—a response to policies in which the policies are ignored and/or ineffective practices are implemented.
• Too many competing targets and limited accountability for achieving a gender target create a potential for decoupling by allowing individuals and groups to ignore or weakly adopt the policy.
• Integrated bundles of top-down (e.g. requiring at least two women on shortlists) and bottom-up practices (e.g. mentoring) can help avoid decoupling by ensuring women are appointed to senior roles and supported to progress through an organisation.
• Chief Executives are key to ensuring a gender target remains coupled with its implementation; Chief Executives must provide visible support to internal champions to make gender targets effective.

     

The Authority–Identity Relation: Symbolic References and Interpretative Authority in Postwar Kosovo

In postwar Kosovo, international and Kosovar political actors claiming authority in the democratization and statebuilding process lacked a long-standing ‘authoritative relation’ with each other and the citizenry. To analyse the structural conditions for the emergence of political authority, the article suggests applying the analytical framework of ‘interpretative authority’, which captures the relational character and simultaneity of authority generation by international and Kosovar actors. Given that Kosovo had unsecured symbolic conditions for authority – no commonly shared symbols of unity for all communities and no commonly agreed interpreter of symbols of unity – political actors were competing intensely for the identity and symbolizations of the ‘new’ Kosovo in their attempts to gain authority in various institutional opportunity structures. The competition over authority and the attempts to denationalize public communications made by the international administration, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), led to the reimbursement of particularistic symbolic references of Kosovar actors, thereby keeping the unsecured symbolic conditions and the weakness of interpretative political authority in Kosovo stable.     

Governing disorder: the Australian Federal Police and Australia's new regional frontier

Abstract

The Australian Federal Police has in recent years become an important actor in both the implementation and design of Australian-led state building interventions in Australia's near region of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The article focuses on the recent expansion of the Australian Federal Police as a way of understanding the emergence of a new partly (and strategically) deterritorialized, ‘regional’ frontier of the Australian state. Within this new frontier, whose fluctuating outlines the Australian Federal Police not only polices but also to a considerable extent shapes and reshapes, as one of the primary expert agencies on identifying and managing transnational security risks, Australian security is portrayed as contingent on the quality of the domestic governance of neighbouring states, thereby creating linkages between the hitherto domestic governing apparatus of the Australian state and those of other countries. This allows for the rearticulation of the problems affecting intervened states and societies – indeed, their very social and political structures – in the depoliticized terms of the breakdown of ‘law and order’ and the absence of ‘good governance’, which not only rationalizes emergency interventions to stabilize volatile situations, but also delegitimizes and potentially criminalizes oppositional politics. The Australian Federal Police, however, does more than merely provide justification for intrusive state transformation projects. Its transnational policing activities open up a field of governance within the apparatus of intervened states that exists in separation from international and domestic law. The constitution of such interventions ‘within’ the state leaves intact the legal distinction between the domestic and international spheres and therefore circumvents the difficult issue of sovereignty. As a result, police and other executive-administrative actors obtain discretionary ordering powers, without dislodging the sovereign governments of intervened countries.     

Network Governance and Public Participation in Policy‐Making: Federal Community Cabinets in Australia

The Australian Labor Party's (ALP) 2007 Policy Platform asserted ‘Labor will pursue new and innovative measures designed to foster greater participation and engagement of the Australian population in the political process’ ( Manwaring 2010 ). As such they seemed to have a clear commitment to a more participatory form of democracy. This commitment appeared to be reflected in two initiatives they introduced in power: the 2020 Summit (on this see Fawcett, Manwaring and Marsh 2011 ) and federal community cabinets. More broadly it could be argued that Labor were following a trend identified internationally as a move from government to governance, more specifically to ‘network governance’ (Rhodes 1997) in which governments encouraged greater participation in policy‐making, recognising that governments could at best steer, not row. Indeed, as Marinetto contends ( 2003 : 593), this idea has taken on a ‘semblance of orthodoxy’ in discussions of public policy.     

Seeking ontological security through the rise of China: New Zealand as a small trading nation

Maintaining global peace as China rises is a key strategic goal of Western liberal democracies. Compared to other western liberal democracies, New Zealand's response to the ‘rise of China’ is notable for its absence of security and political frictions and for the achievement of a series of diplomatic ‘firsts’. Can this be explained only by material concern over the national economic interest as China's role in the global economy increases or do ideational factors also underlay how New Zealand engages China? This paper employs the ontological security framework to demonstrate how New Zealand identity as a ‘small trading nation’ and ‘good international citizen’ has shaped its turn to Asia and response to the ‘rise of China'. It first analyses the origins of New Zealand's outward facing identity and resultant foreign policy positions long before China became an important aspect of New Zealand trade policy. It then shows how New Zealand seeks ontological security as a ‘small trading nation’ and ‘good international citizen’ in its relations with China and how China has responded to this type of engagement. The paper illustrates the importance of ideational factors in Western liberal democracies’ responses to the ‘rise of China’.     

Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

Innovation is critical to organisational success and is a process steered, and potentially thwarted, by individuals. However, despite the importance of public sector innovation given the complexity of policy issues faced and the sector's specific contextual features, our understanding of innovation processes in government requires expansion. This study, using in‐depth case analyses of three Australian Public Service agencies, focuses on understanding the ‘human component’ of the innovation process by drawing on both innovation champion and promotor theories to explore, through the lens of organisational power, how multiple human agents progress public sector innovations. The results highlight the key, and often tandem, roles of individuals at multiple organisational levels who work to inspire and motivate others to progress an innovation (champions) and those with specific power bases who help overcome organisational barriers to innovation (promotors).     

A New Era for Think Tanks in Public Policy? International Trends,Australian Realities

Although the powerful have always sought advice from the knowledgeable, it took the appeal of the policy sciences movement of the late 1940s and onward to build and consolidate a veritable industry of policy analysis and advice. ¹ One of the hallmarks of this development was the advent of institutes that were exclusively devoted to produce research‐based policy arguments and to inject these into the policy‐making process. These organisations were referred to as ‘think tanks’. Half a century later, the project of the policy sciences movement has been amply criticised, and has mutated into various philosophies of policy analysis, each harbouring distinct and often conflicting perspectives on the nature and role of (scientific) knowledge in the battle of arguments that is public policy‐making. The first wave of the policy sciences movement's privileging of science‐based policy has not disappeared. In fact it is currently experiencing a revival under the banner of ‘evidence‐based policy’. But it has to compete with other views of public policy‐making which deconstruct the authority claim of scientific knowledge, emphasising instead its contestability. Yet there are now more organisations that refer to themselves, or can be labelled, as ‘think tanks’ than ever before. Why? And what does it mean to be a ‘think tank’ in the post‐positivist era and in the increasingly boundary‐less, highly networked societies of today? This article first surveys recent developments in the world of think tanks as reported by the international literature on the subject, and then examines the implications for understanding the nature and role of Australian think tanks.     

The four Ps of corporate political activity: a framework for environmental analysis and corporate action

• In this paper, I propose a new integrated framework which may be used to conduct a thorough analysis of a firm's political environment. The four steps of the methodology include the problem (how a political problem emerges and can be shaped by actors), the procedure (the public decision‐making procedure), the policies (relevant public policies currently implemented) and the players (including policy‐makers as well as participants in the political debate). Together, they form what I call the ‘Four Ps of corporate political activity’.
• This framework can serve not only for environmental analysis and monitoring, but also to improve the effectiveness of a firm's attempts in the field of political influence, through actions such as arena selection, issue framing, the use of procedural opportunities, proactive negotiation of a compromise or gate‐keeping the political arena.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In search of the ‘Other’ in Asia: Russia–China relations revisited

This paper argues that Russia and China are partners of consequence and that the neglect of the normative dimension of the Sino-Russian relationship has led its impact on global governance to be undervalued and misunderstood. Following a constructivist approach, the paper examines the shared norms underlying an ever closer Sino-Russian partnership, despite divergent interests in a number of areas. A first section examines how shared norms lead Russia and China to define their identity similarly, facilitate joint actions, and constrain their individual policy choices. For Russia, elaborating its own unique identity is crucial to its claim to global status, though complicated by interactions with multiple ‘Others.’ Russia's effort to engage Asian partners is often viewed as hedging against China, but as second section argues that Russian engagement in Asia is better understood in terms of Russia's effort to define an Asian identity. A third section highlights the securitization/desecuritization dynamic in Sino-Russian economic relations. Xi Jinping's efforts to redefine China's global role reinforces its tendency to desecuritize the vulnerabilities that lead China to seek economic cooperation with Russia. Russia, fearing becoming a ‘resource appendage’ of China, then securitizes economic relations with China.     

Participatory storylines and their influence on deliberative forums

For all the recent discussion on the virtues and vices of public deliberation, surprisingly little attention has been given to how deliberative procedures actually operate in different policy contexts. This article takes up this task with a specific focus on how deliberative designs such as citizens' juries and consensus conferences interface with their participatory context. The concept of the participatory storyline is developed to describe the competing narratives associated with a policy issue on who constitutes the public” and how “they” should be represented and involved in the policy process. An analysis of two Australian cases reveals how existing participatory storylines can productively or destructively influence deliberative forums. The empirical research suggests that a more productive deliberative procedure is one that supports or “speaks to” existing narratives on what constitutes public participation. Under these conditions key policy actors are more likely to engage in the deliberative process and endorse its outcomes. Some suggestions are provided for how practitioners can better anticipate the way a deliberative forum might interface with its participatory context.     

‘If This Was a Normal Situation’: Challenges and Potentials for Deliberative Democratic Peacebuilding in Kosovo's Emerging Governance Networks

The link between public administration and conflict resolution is traditionally understood through the ‘democratic peace’ thesis, which holds that war is less likely in democracies than in non‐democracies. Limited success with post‐conflict democratisation missions has opened space for renewed research on three strands of ‘deeper democracy’: decentralisation, participation and deliberation. This article reports on the study of deliberative democratic practices in emerging governance networks in Prishtina. Through an investigation of three contentious issues in Prishtina's public spaces, research combines documentary sources with field interviews with governance actors to identify factors that enable and constrain the scope for deliberative decision‐making in governance networks. Case studies point to six main influences: ‘securitisation’, trust building, ‘mandate parallelism’, structural patterns of inclusion and exclusion, network structures and the properties of governed public spaces. In addition, two frames are found to be particularly resistant to deliberative engagement: Kosovo's status and ethnic identities. We formulate a tentative conclusion to be further investigated: in contexts where distrust is high, deliberative governance requires a rigid adherence to an overarching reference framework that can create discursive space within which relative deliberation can take place. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Defining Asia Capabilities for Australia's Public Service

Twenty‐three years ago, questions posed in this journal asked whether and how the Australian public service was prepared to engage effectively in Asia. More recent meta‐analyses of public policy scholarship suggest that Western policy scholars and administrators continue to pay limited attention to Asian policymaking, despite the rise of Asia in the 21st century. This article contributes a research‐derived Asia capabilities framework for Australia's public service, distilled from a qualitative study with public administration leaders at Commonwealth, state, and local government levels. It taps scholarly literature in ‘cultural intelligence’, global leadership competencies, and training to provide a robust conceptual underpinning for the framework. The framework defines the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and experiences vital for Australia's public service to engage effectively with the region in a rapidly changing policy environment.     

Deinstitutionalisation and Managerialism in Queensland's Public Psychiatric Institutions: Challenging ‘Rhetoric’ with Empirical Results

This article places the experience of public psychiatric institutions for the long term mentally ill in the context of New Public Management (NPM). This managerialist school of thought has been in widespread ascendancy since the 1970s. Some key characteristics of deinstitutionalisation and NPM are outlined. We then present some historical data about the temporal process of deinstitutionalisation in Queensland's public psychiatric institutions. The time series analysis provided is of a single state since Australia's public health care system is state‐based. Although NPM is not a coherent set of principles or doctrines, it is argued that ideology and the reality may be contradicting. Some of NPM's particular emphases are empirically analysed, in particular the view that administration/management expenditures are to be reduced, while emphasising workers ‘at the coal face’. The empirical results provide no evidence of a ‘parsimonious’ approach to management: parsimony occurs only for nursing staff. Relative expenditures on managerial functions have increased.