More than three decades have passed since Warhurst described an emerging role in intergovernmental management for central agencies, in response to policy problems that increasingly crossed traditional functional silos. He compared what he called these ‘gossamer threads’ with the ‘rods of iron’ exercised by a closed technocracy in the line departments that applied its expertise to policy problems ‘in an atmosphere of consensus and common purpose’
but whose main focus was to defend and if possible increase spending on that function and which ultimately led to policy making that was ‘segmented and uncoordinated’ (1983, p.2).
Similarly, it is now almost 25 years since Galligan noted the relative neglect in federalism studies of intergovernmental relations, ‘despite their significance for Australian politics and public policy’ (Galligan 1995, p. 189); it is even longer since Galligan, Hughes and Walsh argued that the policy and administrative aspects of intergovernmental relations at the bureaucratic level are “less well known” than the formal institutions and processes of the federal system and the political relationships between Commonwealth and state leaders (1991, p. 4).
This is not to ignore the long tradition of federal scholasticism in Australia, by individuals such as Davis, Sawer and others; it is merely to acknowledge that such studies have often reflected the prevalent concerns of political science at the time with formal structures and processes of authority, governance and finance.
Thus, for example, Fenna’s overview of the academic study of federalism since the 1930s, including the contributions by Wheare, Sawer and Davis, notes that ‘A good part of the running on Australian federalism…has been done by those based in other disciplines, particularly constitutional law and economics’ and concludes that the treatment of Australian federalism in Australian political science has generally focused on normative critiques of federalism’s legitimacy (2009, p.146). Fawcett and Marsh conclude similarly that ‘the literature on Australian federalism has been concerned with either normative issues, such as the compatibility between federalism and responsible government, or more institutional and legal issues’ with, more recently, an ‘overwhelmingly statecentric’ literature that has focused on the
‘high politics’ of executive federalism, but less so on matters of governance or the operations of networks (2017, p. 64).
Only a handful of studies has explored the interface between public administration and federalism in Australia, since the concept of intergovernmental management began to be widely used, and despite the broadening and deepening of the relationships between governments that has taken place since the 1990s (Phillimore & Harwood 2015, p.42). These studies are summarised in Appendix 1.
This sporadic research history may reflect the ‘pragmatic’ nature of Australian federalism, adopting Hollander and Patapan’s seminal definition of pragmatic federalism as characterised by ‘a direct engagement or confrontation with pressing problems, an engagement unmediated by larger theoretical concerns’(2007, p.281).19 The history of significant reforms to the Australian federal system demonstrates their distinctly utilitarian nature, with key phases of federalism’s evolution occurring in pursuit of (micro)economic reform — the Closer Economic Partnership with the States (1990), National Competition Policy (1995) and the National Reform Agenda (2006) — leaving the key centralising dynamic of the federation intact.
There is, thus, a distinctly pragmatic flavour to the small number of studies of intergovernmental management conducted to date even though, as Inwood et al. point out in describing the framework summarised at Figure 1, ‘a deeper understanding and application of theory and analysis at the interface of these literatures is required to better understand and address the policy challenges of today and of the future’ (Inwood et al. 2011, p. 4).
Consequently, most of the Australian studies aim not just to understand the nature of intergovernmental management in Australia but to assess and enhance its effectiveness: to achieve ‘optimal workability’ (Leach, 1976, p.12); ‘improv(e) the organisational arrangement and processes for inter-governmental relations’ (Weller, 1996, p.95); assess whether there is sufficient ‘strategic capacity’ in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (Menzies 2012a, p.409); identify those conditions ‘that allow senior officials to exercise the greatest influence’ (Davis & Silver, 2015, p.468); improve cross-jurisdictional collaboration on mental health policy (Smullen, 2017); and identify barriers to reform (Bruerton & Kildea, 2017).
19 Earlier uses of the term ‘pragmatic federalism’ are also relevant, referring to ‘constantly adjusting intergovernmental relations, fashioned to current needs, with an emphasis on problem solving and a minimal adherence to rigid doctrine’ (Glendenning & Reeves, 1977, p.8). Lépine has an interesting take on why federalism generally is not an object of study in its own right, arguing this is because many political scientists view federalism as a series of ‘idiosyncratic attempts to solve a political — or societal — problem by pragmatic compromise’
(2015, p. 35).
Apart from this generally limited body of research, a review of the literature to date shows that, until very recently, research focused almost exclusively on officials in central agencies but not those in line departments (very much in line with Australia’s executive form of federalism), and in the Commonwealth but not state jurisdictions.20 Accordingly, my research methodology and the findings below pay particular attention to the relative roles played by central and line agencies, at both the Commonwealth and state levels, in processes of policy development and implementation.
Similarly, between Leach’s original foray on this issue and the 2015 Future of Australian Federalism Survey (Smith & Brown 2017, p. 20), there was little systematic research on practitioners’ attitudes towards federal arrangements generally, nor on the practice of intergovernmental management. For example, a particularly important normative component of federalism is the idea of subsidiarity, and consequently Deem et al. argue that
the different motivations with which each level of government approaches subsidiarity are likely to colour public servants’ attitudes towards the principle, leading to difficulties in translating the principle into reform(2015, p.422).
Even the latter studies say little about where these attitudes have come from: are there prevalent ideas that influence the way public servants go about their work? How do they change over time and how do they translate into day to day decisions and strategies in intergovernmental management practice, including the issues I am pursuing here on the question of agency? As Kay summarises, ‘the existing literature provides little on the relationship between intergovernmental processes and the socialisation of public servants from different jurisdictions towards a shared problem- solving perspective in Australia’ (2017, p. 39).
Finally, with the exception of Arklay et al. (2017), few of these studies do more than touch tangentially on the practice of intergovernmental management, the day to day ‘structural considerations’ and the ‘behavioral and intellectual challenges that any good manager must take into account’(Lynn 2012, p. 23) that characterise this area of public administration.
In summary, this is the primary research gap to which my data responds. I aim to contribute not only to the small body of knowledge on this issue, but also, at least in part, to remedy the tendency to focus on central agencies and the Commonwealth; the lack of differentiation
20 In relation to the latter, Painter’s analysis of the work of central agencies in state governments (1987) is focused on intra-state coordination; he treats the overlapping responsibilities and agreement making processes of the federal system as a contextual challenge for the coordinating departments in his study but does not explore them
between policy areas; and the need for a discussion of the agency officials exercise and its implications of for broader questions about the federal system’s capacities.