Search

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2009.00647.x Byline: Ian Marsh (*), Lindy Edwards ([dagger]) Keywords: National Innovation Summit; interest engagement; policy capabilities; policy strategy Abstract: Policy innovation is a significant challenge for the public sector. This article illustrates its magnitude through a case study of the National Innovation Summit. The article concludes that the Summit represented an elaborate process of search and engagement that sanctioned an outcome that was, in most respects, largely pre-determined. Its outreach and deliberations served the political purpose of mobilising industry and media attention and communicating the government's commitment. But there is no evidence that it exercised any substantive influence on policy development. The obstacles confounding any other outcome are considerable. Strategic thinking is inhibited by various organisational factors including lock-in to a present successful strategy, the constraints on policy choices associated with multiple veto points and the need to maintain medium term fiscal and policy discipline across a wide range of agencies and claimants. The article explores ways these inhibitions might be overcome. Author Affiliation: (*)Australian Innovation Research Centre, University of Tasmania ([dagger])The Australian National University

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2009.00637.x Byline: Ian Marsh (*), Ben Spies-Butcher ([dagger]) Keywords: innovation; public policy; human services Abstract: Principal-agent theory alerts principals to their problematic relationship with agents. The former are encouraged to take deliberate action to counter asymmetries in knowledge, moral hazard etc. To avoid this, principals should determine outcomes and contracts and incentives should be designed to achieve them. This approach has influenced the form of purchaser-provider arrangements, including the Job Network. This article reviews impacts, which include incentives for gaming and increased transaction costs. Another survey highlighted the extent to which innovation in the disability employment sector had depended on collaboration, which competition would end. The article then sketches an alternative pragmatic or experimental approach, which assumes that the centre can never establish outcomes that are other than provisional and corrigible. Program design needs to be built around this fundamental fact. Learning not 'carrots and sticks' is the appropriate form of relationship. The article explores the feasibility of this approach in a Job Network context. Author Affiliation: (*)Australian Innovation Research Centre, University of Tasmania ([dagger])Macquarie University

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2008.00584_1.x Byline: Ian Marsh (*) Author Affiliation: (*)University of Sydney

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00550_3.x Byline: Ian Marsh (1) Author Affiliation: (1)University of Sydney

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00544.x Byline: Ian Marsh (1) Keywords: public opinion; political institutions; elite opinion; voting preferences Abstract: This article explores structural causes for the decline in the quality of Australia's political and policy conversations. Three are nominated. The first concerns the changing role of the major party organisations. These no longer contribute to agenda setting; they are no longer forums for activist and interest mobilisation; they no longer mobilise and cue a mass base. The second structural change concerns the rise in the role of the media. This is now the primary bridge between the formal political system and the surrounding society, a role for which it is singularly ill-equipped. The third change concerns the misalignment between the formal political system and Australian society. The formal system was formed in the early twentieth century when Australian society was broadly divided by class allegiance. Those days are long gone. Class has decomposed. A variety of new concerns differentiate and pluralise social attitudes. Possible remedies are then discussed. Author Affiliation: (1)Australia and New Zealand School of Government and The University of Sydney

`Among the laws that rule human societies there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all the others... The art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.' (A de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1956:ii, 118)

This paper explores two issues: first, the strategic and coalition-building tasks that may be routinely associated with New Public Management (NPM); and second, the implications of acknowledging these tasks for the conception of public management. NPM focuses on performance. It invites managers to accept responsibility for whole programs or systems (Kettle, 1997; Dunleavy, 1994; Ridley, 1996; Hood, 1995). This directs attention to basic program frameworks (that is, program strategy), as well as to operations. It involves the purposes of programs. It involves routine attention to such factors as the effectiveness of outcomes, the identification of alternative program configurations, the implications of emerging issues and needs, and the mobilisation of authority for change. In practice, this authority derives both from program stakeholders, as well as from ministers and the broader political system.

Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi-faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, 'wicked' problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is 'place-based' solutions. This paper surveys conceptual aspects of this approach. It describes practices in comparable jurisdictions - the United Kingdom, the EU, and the United States. And it explores efforts over the past decade to 'localise' Indigenous services. It sketches the governance challenge in migrating from top-down or principal-agent arrangements towards place-based practice. The paper concludes that many of the building blocks for this shift already exist but that these need to be re-oriented around 'learning'. Funding and other administrative protocols may also ultimately need to be redefined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]