THE IMAGE OF THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATOR IN AUSTRALIA*

After the recent Federal elections, I am more confident in saying that I do not always believe the polls. In this instance, I have the feeling that the image of public administrators in Australia is probably worse than the surveys indicated. The latest bumper bar sticker in Canberra reads: “Fight inflation, run over a public servant today”. The Australian is running a series of articles critical of the size, efficiency and effectiveness of public services. The cup-of-tea image is a popular one and kick-a-public-servant-today has every possibility of developing into a national sport; the “fat cat” image has caught on.     

Beyond Engagement and Participation: User and Community Coproduction of Public Services

In recent years, there has been a radical reinterpretation of the role of policy making and service delivery in the public domain. Policy making is no longer seen as a purely top-down process but rather as a negotiation among many interacting policy systems. Similarly, services are no longer simply delivered by professional and managerial staff in public agencies but are coproduced by users and their communities. This article presents a conceptual framework for understanding the emerging role of user and community coproduction and presents several case studies that illustrate how different forms of coproduction have played out in practice. Traditional conceptions of service planning and management are now outdated and need to be revised to account for coproduction as an integrating mechanism and an incentive for resource mobilization—a potential that is still greatly underestimated. However, coproduction in the context of multipurpose, multistakeholder networks raises important public governance issues that have implications for public services reform.     

Anything goes: Lefort,ideology and the “adventure of democracy’

This article initially introduces and outlines the main aspects of Claude Lefort's theorising of democracy as a radically antagonistic and contingent political formation. This is followed by a critique of those theories, primarily through the application of Slavoj Zizek ‘s work on the politics of community as it applies to the emergence, in Australian politics, of Pauline Hanson and her ^‘One Nation’ party and policies.     

International Sanitation Management and Performance Measurement: Taking Out the Trash

Internationally, sanitation management has been a critical area of contention, especially in recent years with tightening budgets and resource reductions to public services. Our article reviews the management strategies, actions, and developments that have led to sanitation incidents of piling trash and public health concerns. These incidents will be reviewed from a public management perspective underscoring the role of performance measurement and management. The key influences associated with the varying cases are discussed. Both the negative and positive factors of international cases of sanitation management are reviewed.     

Strategic Commissioning in the UK: Service Improvement Cycle or Just Going Round in Circles?

This article explores the drivers of the development of strategic commissioning over the last two decades, its limitations, and the implications of its rapid spread. It suggests that the differences between government departments have allowed scope for local variations, which have been exploited by local government, leaving room for more innovation than would have been possible under an entirely ‘joined-up’ government agenda. The forms taken by this new approach to strategic commissioning were consistent with continual pressure from central government to find ways of promoting externalisation of public services. Although this underlying drive was often resisted, particularly at local level, but always re-emerged. The article ends by exploring the implications of this analysis for public services in the era of fiscal austerity under the new UK Coalition government.     

Striving for a good life: The good lives model applied to released child molesters

Abstract

The good lives model (GLM) is a strengths-based approach to offender rehabilitation in which treatment aims to equip offenders with the skills and resources necessary to satisfy primary goods, or basic human values, in personally meaningful and socially acceptable ways. The aim of the present research was to explore the practical utility of the GLM with a sample of released child molesters, and investigate the relationship between primary goods attainment and overall re-entry conditions (in terms of accommodation, social support and employment). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 child molesters at one, three and six months following their release from prison. As expected, participants endorsed the majority of GLM primary goods with high importance, and positive re-entry experiences were associated with increased goods attainment. Implications for clinicians, policy makers and society as a whole are discussed.     

Emergent authority and expert knowledge: Psychiatry and criminal responsibility in the UK

In the UK context, the rise of the discipline and practice of forensic psychiatry is intimately connected with the concurrent development of principles and practices relating to criminal responsibility. In this article, we seek to chart the relationship between psychiatry and the principles and practices of criminal responsibility in the UK over the early modern, modern and late modern periods. With a focus on claims about authority and expert knowledge around criminal responsibility, we suggest that these claims have been in a state of perpetual negotiation and that, as a result, claims to authority over and knowledge about criminal non-responsibility on the part of psychiatrists and psychiatry are most accurately understood as emergent and contingent. The apparent formalism of legal discourse has tended to conceal the extent to which legal policy has been preoccupied with maintaining the primacy of lay judgments in criminal processes of evaluation and adjudication. While this policy has been somewhat successful in the context of the trial – particularly the murder trial – it has been undermined by administrative procedures surrounding the trial, including those that substitute treatment for punishment without, or in spite of, a formal determination of criminal responsibility.