Change Management—Strategy and Values in Six Agencies from the Australian Public Service

Change is a ubiquitous theme in management literature, but empirical studies that seek to draw lessons from the experience of managing change are rare. By investigating patterns of change management in six Australian federal agencies, we elicit a number of factors contributing to success—though "success" is itself not a clear-cut concept in this area. We found support for a number of broad themes already apparent in the literature and suggest that change processes that have the support of the workforce require good leadership, an appropriate model of change, some room for negotiation and compromise, and well-planned communication.     

A Strategic Theory of Bureaucratic Redundancy

Do redundant bureaucratic arrangements represent wasteful duplication or a hedge against political uncertainty? Previous attempts at addressing this question have treated agency actions as exogenous, thus avoiding strategic issues such as collective action problems or competition. I develop a game‐theoretic model of bureaucratic policy making in which a political principal chooses the number of agents to handle a given task. Importantly, agents have policy preferences that may be opposed to the principal's, and furthermore may choose their policy or effort levels. Among the results are that redundancy can help a principal achieve her policy goals when her preferences are not aligned with the agents'. But redundancy is less helpful if even a single agent has preferences relatively close to the principal's. In this environment collective action problems may cause multiple agents to be less effective than a single agent. Redundancy can also be unnecessary to the principal if the agent's jurisdiction can be terminated.     

European Governance and Civic Participation: Beyond Elitist Citizenship?

Since the end of the 1990s, 'new modes of governance' have been presented by academics and political actors as an answer to the EU's 'democratic deficit'. Analysing the intellectual roots of this idea, and the concrete proposals made by those who, like the European Commission, support it, this paper argues that it is very unlikely to reach this ambitious purpose. Far from breaking with the Community method, these participatory mechanisms constitute extensions of existing practices, and are underpinned by the same élitist and functionalist philosophy. They remain limited to 'stakeholders' and will not improve the 'enlighted understanding' of ordinary citizens and the general level of participation. The paper examines the obstacles to the politicisation of the EU inherent in its institutional model, and discusses other options which might help bypass the limits of 'governance'.     

In the Wake of 'A Certain Maritime Incident': Ministerial Advisers, Departments and Accountability

This article considers the accountability of ministerial advisers and their relationship with departments in the light of 'the children overboard' incident. It argues that if ministers are not going to accept responsibility for the actions of their advisers then on those occasions the advisers should be separately accountable to the parliament. The article further suggests that the department heads have a particular responsibility for ensuring the integrity of ministerial advice, and proposes steps to reinforce their capacity to fulfil that responsibility.     

Leadership and Institutional Reform: Engineering Macroeconomic Policy Change in Australia

This article seeks to enhance the actor perspective on major policy reforms. It builds upon the literature on "policy entrepreneurs" and addresses its explanatory vagueness by specifying five hypotheses outlining the actions that proponents of major policy change need to take in order to be effective in forging departures from existing, path-dependent policies and to overcome entrenched opposition to reforms. These hypotheses on "reformist political leadership" (after Blondel) are applied to the four attempts to reform key aspects of macroeconomic policy in Australia under the first two Labor governments led by Robert J. Hawke.     

Public Members on Medical Licensing Boards and the Choice of Entry Barriers

This paper investigates the impact of medical and consumerinterests on the choice of physician licensing requirements inthe United States. Using data on licensing requirements in thefifty states between 1986 and 1993, we find that, in general,public members on licensing boards are associated withlicensing requirements that have educational justification. Incontrast, medical interests, measured in terms of licensingboard independence and campaign contributions by medicalassociations, are associated with licensing requirements thatare more difficult to justify with educational criteria.