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One of the key themes in the literature on the Australian political party system has been whether party differences are substancial and whether one party has been a leader in "innovation" or "initiative". Henry Mayer's famous article of 1956 poured cold water on this debate, and few writers have attempted to tackle the issues systematically in subsequent decades. Perception of the parties as basically "similar" or as basically "divergent" depends largely on the political stance of the analyst. However, there is a growing literature in political economy and political sociology which has made obsolete the terms in which the earlier discussions were cast. Attention is given to notions of the "political business cycle", political "overload", "corporatism", the debate on the future of "welfarism", and recent theories of state and capital. These approaches throw new light on the old dichotomies between agency and structure, voluntarism and determinism, as they are played out in the context of the 1980's. (Internat. Polit. Sciene Assoc.)

Abstract: Fluoridation of public water supplies has been a political issue which generates a high level of public controversy. Opposition has been relatively effective, especially at the local level where the initiative for fluoridation usually originates. Authorities responsible for the decision have often been unwilling to adopt a firm policy in the belief that public opinion is seriously divided on the issue. The reasons for the success of the opposition, and for the indecision of the authorities, are examined in relation to the history of the fluoridation issue in Victoria, where the State government eventually decided in favour of compulsory fluoridation after considering the question for twenty years. The paper concludes by drawing some implications from this case for students of policy formation in areas of controversy.

AbstractThe massive global growth in the production, use, and disposal of plastic materials has generated a pollution crisis in many countries. In Australia, debates about how to address this multi‐faceted challenge have lacked the political urgency necessary for adopting strong reform measures. Consistent with the early stages of other sustainability debates, the industrial producers and distributors of plastic materials have been successful in prioritising voluntary measures, such as recycling materials and local authority collection schemes, to mitigate the problem, instead of agreeing to implement enforceable reduction targets. This paper examines Australian measures to manage plastic waste with a focus on how particular policy instruments were favoured and endured and how a greater focus on the full range of policy instruments—market based, regulatory, and voluntary—could generate more effective solutions.Points for practitioners
Choice of effective policy instruments is crucial for tackling sustainability problems.
Policy instruments employed by Australian governments to manage plastic waste have been ineffective.
Moreover, policy settings do not support effective co‐ordination between key stakeholders for the reduction of plastic pollution.
Policy advisors should recognise the limits of voluntary approaches and market‐based mechanisms, and consider introducing clear and mandatory pathways to achieve policy targets.

Behavioural and experimental projects have become increasingly popular with policymakers. Behavioural insights teams have used several policy design and implementation tools drawn from behavioural sciences, especially randomised controlled trials, to test the design of 'nudge' interventions. This approach has attained discursive legitimacy in government agencies seeking to use the best available evidence for behaviourally informed, evidence-based policy innovation. We examine the practices of governmental behavioural insights teams in Australia, drawing on two research projects that included interviews with key personnel. We find that teams make strong commitments to using and promoting randomised controlled trials in government policy innovation. Nevertheless, some members of these teams are beginning to appreciate the constraints of relying solely on randomised controlled trials in the development of behavioural public policy. We conclude that while an initial focus on rigorous trials helped behavioural insights teams establish themselves in policymaking, strict adherence may represent a risk to their long-term growth and relevance.

AbstractComplex or intractable policy problems, often called 'wicked' problems, have been a feature of public policy research since the early 1970s. Observers have generally assumed that these wicked problems constitute a distinct category of policy problems, based on the notion that some problems – those characterised as substantially technical or scientific in nature – lend themselves to traditional linear problem-solving methods, whereas other problems that are social in nature tend to be wicked. By examining three cases where scientific knowledge is central to the debate – climate change, genetically modified foods and hydraulic fracturing – we argue that all policy problems can exhibit wicked tendencies, regardless of the amount of scientific information available to decision-makers. Therefore, the reliance on increased information in resolving wicked problems is unlikely to be sufficient or effective.

This paper addresses shortcomings in the scholarship about 'wicked problems', and suggests ways of tackling them. Firstly, accounts of these problems tend to 'totalise', regarding them as intractable masses of complexity, so conflict-prone and/or intractable that they defy definition and solution. By contrast, we put forward a more nuanced analysis, arguing that complex problems vary in the extent of their wickedness, via such dimensions as their cognitive complexity or the diversity and irreconcilability of the actors or institutions involved. We propose a typology of different forms of wicked problems. A second shortcoming, linked to intractability, is that the favoured means of tackling wicked problems has tended towards 'one best way' approaches, most commonly collaboration with key stakeholders. Moreover, particular forms of collaboration tend to be routinely applied in 'one-size-fits-all' fashion to a variety of situations – notably with a plethora of actors, and a focus on governance rather than implementation management. We put forward a contingency framework, based on our typology, proposing which types of collaboration are suitable for which types of problem. Finally, we argue for a more realistic standard of success in dealing with wicked problems, especially the most difficult ones. To call for the 'solving' of these problems is to set up a standard which is not only impossible but also perhaps unnecessary. We argue that we do not so much 'solve' wicked problems as make progress towards improvement or towards better managing them. We spell out a more realistic version of 'progress'.

Discussions of failure in public policy have been hampered by a lack of consensus on a definition of the term 'failure'. It can be shown that arguments relating to policy failure tend to conflate forms of failure that are actually discrete, such as failure to meet objectives, claims of negative distributional outcomes and negative electoral outcomes attributed to specific policy decisions. This article attempts to unify and clarify the discourse on policy failure by presenting a multi-dimensional approach that can identify separate aspects of failure within a single policy or program. This multi-dimensional approach to policy failure is then be applied to climate change policy in Australia, in order to demonstrate how some aspects of a policy can be interpreted as failed while others can simultaneously be interpreted as successful, even by the same observer. As this example illustrates, global pronouncements of a public policy as a 'success' or 'failure' should be avoided in favour of more precise evaluations of what kind of failure occurred, and who was affected and in what ways.

The concept of "wicked problems" has attracted increasing focus in policy research, but the implications for public organizations have received less attention. This article examines the main organizational and cognitive dimensions emerging from the research literature on wicked problems. We identify several recent approaches to addressing problem complexity and stakeholder divergence based on the literatures on systems thinking, collaboration and coordination, and the adaptive leadership roles of public leaders and managers. We raise some challenges for public management in some key functional areas of government—strategy making, organizational design, people management, and performance measurement. We argue that provisional solutions can be developed, despite the difficulties of reforming governance processes to address wicked problems more effectively.

AbstractEmerging technologies are challenging the regulatory systems and industry policy settings that were settled during the microeconomic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1994, in the absence of credible competition in the taxi industry, Queensland legislation constructed a protective 'policy fortress' that benefited taxi licence holders in return for specific service standards. This entrenched a policy–industry nexus upheld by all political parties for two decades. But in 2014–2016, using disruptive digital platforms, Uber and similar organisations directly challenged the policy regime by rapidly expanding their unlicensed operations for personalised passenger bookings. Queensland policy‐makers were eventually shocked into establishing a major review, leading to the termination of the protective regime. Drawing on interviews and policy documents, we identify the contextual and ideational factors that facilitated the unlocking of policy change. As consumers became more 'tech‐savvy', the policy ideas championed by powerful new agents of change came to highlight consumer convenience, flexibility, and the 'sharing economy'. Such narratives reframed the economic disruptions flowing from new technologies as opportunities to lower service costs.

New forms of public leadership are needed to design and implement co‐production of public value. We draw on narrative analysis to explore the barriers to developing the capacity for co‐production of public value in disadvantaged and vulnerable Indigenous communities and find that existing norms not only crowd out efforts at reform, but can work against them. In particular, we find that upward accountability and a focus on expert knowledge are the most problematic for co‐production of public value. We focus on how more traditional practices of public administration mediated the achievements of public leaders in their co‐production efforts when Australian governments introduced strategies for partnership with Indigenous communities for services design and delivery. The analysis suggests that creating a broader enabling environment of supportive logics would allow public leaders to engage more productively with inherent tensions between old and new ways of working.