Machinery of Government

This research theme focuses on two main areas of investigation: a) studying the machinery of government at the centre of the political domain; and b) evaluating government projects. The first theme involves investigating the changing institutional architecture of the state in response to both internal processes of modernisation and external processes engendered by processes of globalisation. The second theme seeks to make sense of state projects in Westminster-style democracies or what we term ‘competition states’.

Roger Wettenhall continues his remarkable study of non departmental public bodies which has led to a plethora of edited collections, book chapters and international journal articles most recently a special issue of the International Journal of Public Policy on ‘Ownership in the Public Sphere’ with Ian Thynne (see also Integrity and Public Administration).

The Institute is also host to the highly acclaimed and long-running series of critical surveys on Australian government including Howard’s Second and Third Governments (UNSW, 2005) and Howards’s Fourth Government (UNSW, 2008) both edited by Chris Aulich and Roger Wettenhall. The research group is currently working on a further addition to the series on Rudd’s First Government with key public administration and public policy scholars at UC and the ANU to be published by ANU Press in 2010.

Mark Evans has just completed a comparative work entitled Understanding Competition States (Routledge, 2010) with Neil Lunt which investigates different state responses to what state actors perceive to be the imperatives of globalisation. The Institute is also collaborating with the Centre for British Politics at Hull University to produce a series of critical surveys on British government. This has led to the publication of three volumes - Ten Years of New Labour (Palgrave, 2008), The Brown Government (Routledge, 2009) and Cameron’s Conservatives (Palgrave, 2009). The research group is currently working on a further book entitled Democracy in Britain to be published by Routledge in 2010.