Australian Journal of Public Administration最新文献

{"title":"Comparing the success and failure of the Murray–Darling Basin Plan's water recovery programs","authors":"Sarah Ann Wheeler","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.12672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12672","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) Plan is held up by some as an exemplar for world-leading water policy, whilst others have called it a failure. Total proposed recovery was to return 3200 GL of consumptive (e.g. namely irrigation) water use to non-consumptive (e.g. environmental) use in the MDB, making it one of the largest planned reallocations of water resources in the world. As of June 2023, over AUD$13 billion was committed financially from the Australian government to Basin water reform, with AUD$7.7 billion spent to date on water recovery programs. The implementation of the Plan has been mired in controversy, and it missed its first water recovery targets that had been set for 2024, requiring substantial legislation amendments. This study provides a qualitative policy overview comparison of the success and failure of the two main water recovery programs implemented—buyback of water entitlements from willing sellers and subsidising irrigation infrastructure (on and off-farm) projects. It concludes that contrary to the popular view held by many, the buyback water recovery program has been a success—achieving the majority of the water recovered to date, at the least cost, with the least negative externalities—in comparison to infrastructure programs.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Assessing success and failure of MDB water recovery programs requires establishing effectiveness, efficiency and equity criteria. Greater work on the benefits of water reallocation downstream and cultural water is needed.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>A comparison of MDB buyback water recovery programs with irrigation infrastructure programs found higher net benefits for buyback programs.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Use first-best policy to address each water policy objective, not one policy aimed at addressing multi-objectives.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Overall, the Plan.s overall success is still to be determined, given the difficulty in judging environmental outcome success that is intrinsically linked with other external factors.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 2","pages":"245-261"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.12672","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148386561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Land rights and a national representative body: Institutionalisation as a criterion for Indigenous policy success and failure","authors":"Will Sanders","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.12679","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8500.12679","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In a half-century perspective on Australian Indigenous policy, land rights are compared with national Indigenous representative bodies. Adopting ‘institutionalisation’ as the criterion for assessing policy success and failure, land rights are seen as gradually progressed through the iterative actions of State and Commonwealth parliaments and their associated courts. By contrast, national Indigenous representative bodies, established solely by Commonwealth administrative or legislative processes, have proven vulnerable to later abolition by those same processes. Although land rights for Indigenous Australians have become legally embedded in Australian public policy over six decades, a national Indigenous representative body has not.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>In timeframes covering multiple parties of government, assessments of policy can be less polarised between success and failure.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Policies that become institutionalised can shift understandings and address problems acknowledged by all political parties, leading to elements of both success and failure.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Land rights and native title policies have become legally entrenched in Australia in the last half-century through the iterative actions of State and Commonwealth parliaments and associated courts. This has achieved significant restitution of land to Indigenous people but with substantial limitations.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>National Indigenous representative bodies have not achieved such institutionalisation, with four having come and gone over the half-century. However, even these discarded failures had achievements in their time, particularly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission 1990–2005.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Part of public service stewardship is to view policies in both longer and more nuanced terms than the adversary parties of government and opposition.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 2","pages":"277-294"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147906017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The values dimension of policy success and failure: Considering two Australian rural adjustment policies","authors":"Linda Courtenay Botterill","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.12678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12678","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In 1992, Australia introduced a National Drought Policy comprising a number of policies each focused on achieving a common goal of a self-reliant, productive farm sector capable of managing the challenges of climate variability. This paper considers two of these policies, one of which has been an acknowledged success and the other that is generally regarded as a failure. The paper assesses these schemes against the criteria proposed by Luetjens et al. and concludes that analysing policies in values terms is a more effective way of understanding, and potentially predicting, policy success and failure.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Policy is more likely to succeed if there is an alignment between the purpose underpinning a policy agency and the nature of the policy problem.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Policy can fail where the values of the agency and the target population for the policy differ.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Policy success is more likely where there is a single, clear goal embodying a single value priority rather than multiple values that are in conflict.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 2","pages":"262-276"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148386646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Policy success and failure in Australia","authors":"Keith Dowding,&nbsp;Patrick Leslie,&nbsp;Marija Taflaga","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.12690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12690","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper introduces the seven articles in the symposium on policy success and failure together with a short introduction to the large literature on policy success and failure. The issue brings together an analysis of success and failure within seven discrete policy domains, including Indigenous policy; immigration; foreign policy; water; government roll-outs; education; and foreign aid. Previous case studies have not looked as systematically at both success and failure within the same policy domain, and so the direct comparison in a most similar systems framework has not previously been adopted. Each paper sets its own criteria for what it considers success and failure, allowing for the forthcoming analyses to remain relevant to their specific context and parameters. However, despite their differences, the papers reflect on the importance of institutions, implementation processes—specifically their attentiveness to the on-ground conditions and target groups—political dimensions, time, expectations, and memory. This suggests that while it may be difficult to compare across policy domains, our within-policy domain comparison reveals that good governance, despite some failures, is not a lost art.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The criteria for success or failure of government policy is relative to time, perspective, ideology, and context.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The criteria for success or failure of government policy might vary across policy domains; what is appropriate for some domains might not be for others.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>We can consider policy success and failure in terms of programme, outcome, or political agenda.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Programmes can succeed in some aims and fail in others.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Case studies are the appropriate means for examining success and failure, and capturing the narrative is important in how a policy is viewed.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 2","pages":"215-225"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.12690","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148386915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What can we learn from disability policy to advance our understanding of how to operationalise intersectionality in Australian policy frameworks?","authors":"Shona Bates,&nbsp;Rosemary Kayess,&nbsp;Ilan Katz","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.12648","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8500.12648","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Intersectional theory recognises inequity is rarely the result of one social identity; social identities, and their interaction with context and power relations, offer some protective factors, while marginalises others. Taking an intersectional approach to social policy has the potential to provide deeper insights in terms of identifying and responding to needs, and understanding the impact of policies and specific interventions for diverse people. While Australian social policies, such as national strategies, are beginning to recognise inequity is likely to be higher for some social identities than others, a recent review of Australian policy and how it responds to people with disability suggests policies do not yet appear to take an intersectional approach. Drawing on this review, we discuss the challenges in operationalising intersectionality, explore how they may be overcome, and identify considerations for scholars and future research opportunities to advance our understanding of how to operationalise intersectionality in social policy in Australia. We suggest intersectionality requires a broader cultural shift across society and professions to recognise people have multiple identities, statuses, and life circumstances, and the way they interact with the context and power relations affects how they experience life.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Intersectionality recognises the interaction between social identities, context, and power relations.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The research note aims to advance our understanding of how to operationalise intersectionality in Australian social policy.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>This note builds on a review of Australian policy frameworks and whether they take an intersectional approach to addressing disability.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The research note identifies considerations for researchers and research opportunities.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>A broader cultural shift across society is required to recognise how different factors affect how people experience life.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 2","pages":"377-391"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.12648","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141649911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Public sector policy capacity and parliamentary oppositions in Australia","authors":"Darren Anthony Disney","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.70018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.70018","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In the Westminster model, policy formulation by parliamentarians and oppositions takes place in policy advisory systems similar to government, absent direct advice from departments. Parliaments and governments have sporadically introduced services to supply policy capacity, including parliamentary libraries, parliamentary budget offices, and election policy costing processes. This study identifies and compares the policy capacity that is provided by these components across major Australian national and sub-national jurisdictions and, based on the experience of the participants, identifies gaps that could be addressed in future measures. The study finds supply gaps in the provision of policy capacity for design and implementation, and a lack of connection between problems, interventions, and outcomes. There are also opportunities to develop the connection mechanisms between agencies and the stages of the policy cycle, in order to enhance information sharing and policy logic.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>This new research identifies a gap in the supply of public sector policy capacity to parliamentarians and oppositions in the provision of policy design and implementation expertise, leading to a disconnect between policy problems, interventions, and outcomes.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The findings present opportunities for reform including a more systemic approach, across the policy cycle, to the supply of policy capacity to parliamentarians and oppositions.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Policy actors identified opportunities, including publishing more information on policy logic and evaluation, enhancing the interface between agencies, and augmenting the role of current parliamentary agencies to include design and implementation expertise and advice.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 1","pages":"188-205"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.70018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147566415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why do politicians employ public–private partnerships? Results from a mixed-method study","authors":"Sebastian Zwalf","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.70005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.70005","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have become increasingly common in government infrastructure programs around the world. This study collates and categorises the types of rationales that scholars have identified as the reasons for governments to use PPPs. It tests these scholarly-identified rationales through interviews and surveys with former ministers and political advisers in Australian governments. The study finds politicians and their advisers generally believe that PPPs have a range of financial, risk management, and project management advantages relative to traditional infrastructure procurement models. Benefits are myriad and often overlapping and include factors concerning the presentation of public sector balance sheets, bringing forward infrastructure delivery, perceived value for money, efficiency, and greater innovation. Assertions that political benefits are a driver for the use of PPPs are not quantitatively supported, although qualitative evidence of governance and symbolic benefits exists.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>This study collates 45 drivers that public policy and public administration scholars have argued are rationales for the use of PPPs. This study identifies 14 of those rationales which politicians and their advisors agree are drivers to use the PPP delivery model.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Politicians and their advisers are generally supportive of the PPP model and believe it to be technically superior to traditional procurement options for financial, risk management, project management, and policy/public administration benefits.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Politicians and their advisers generally reject that there are direct political benefits to the PPP delivery model and that this is a driver for their use of it. Notwithstanding this, evidence exists of governance, risk management, and symbolic benefits that offer indirect political advantages to governments.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Politicians believe that PPPs offer overlapping and integrated advantages in design, operation, innovation, efficiency, maintenance, and life cycle costing, relative to other delivery models.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 1","pages":"116-145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.70005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147568494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Public service supply chain management: A study of Australian employment services","authors":"Phuc Nguyen,&nbsp;Michael McGann,&nbsp;Mark Considine","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.70016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.70016","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>To continuously improve public service provision has been a stated goal of governments worldwide. Despite the increasing popularity of systems approaches to analysing public service delivery, research into the topic from a supply chain management (SCM) perspective, while acknowledged for its potential contribution to improving public service delivery, remains underdeveloped. This study, utilising a service SCM model as an analytic framework, explores how the performance of public services can be traced back to the effectiveness of service providers’ management of their supply chains. As evidenced by data collected via interviews and observations of best-performing agencies under Australia's fourth iteration of its welfare-to-work reform, <i>jobactive</i>, SCM practices such as effective management of customers’ demands, flexible service capacity/workforce, and strong internal collaboration proved to have positive impacts on services delivered to jobseekers as end-users. Inefficiencies in the management of relationships with suppliers and flows of finance and information, on the other hand, were found to impede the creation of value for jobseekers. Contributions to the field of public management aside, our study provides an illustration of how to deploy the SCM approach for the purpose of optimising public service delivery when multiple suppliers are engaged.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Underpinning any welfare provision, there exists a supply chain, whether it is consciously managed or not. Insights into public service provision in a quasi-market from an SCM perspective remain underdeveloped.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>A public service supply chain is characterised by added complexity due to customer multiplicity and co-production from end-users, the management of which impacts service delivery.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>An analysis of a public service supply chain from the contracted private providers’ perspective sheds light on whether and how they successfully adapt SCM practices to manage the service delivery network to ensure effectiveness. This lays the foundation for further improvements, both in policymaking and implementation.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 1","pages":"167-187"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.70016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147562302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Policy shifts and drifts: From intention to implementation of Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme","authors":"Eloise Hummell,&nbsp;Michele Foster,&nbsp;Kylie Burns,&nbsp;Sue Harris Rimmer","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.12689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12689","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>It is not uncommon that original aspirations of social policy go astray during implementation. Issues that are the focus of social policy are often tied to various competing social, political, and value positions, making them unfailingly ‘wicked’ and rendering the design and implementation of solutions inherently challenging. Such is the case with Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which has been plagued by implementation problems and criticised for straying from its original objectives and principles. In this article, interview data from 31 stakeholders identify perceptions of congruence of the NDIS with its original objectives and values during the decade since inception, particularly focused on decision-making of reasonable and necessary supports. The perceived shift from disability rights to fights for entitlements and changing narrative of cost containment is indicative not only of implementation challenges but the inevitability of ongoing value disputes that often plague complex social issues. At a time of major NDIS reform amid ongoing tensions and debates, goal clarity and better decision guidance remain critical for future policy design and implementation.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Perspectives from diverse stakeholders across Australia explore where and why the NDIS may have drifted away from its original values, especially pertaining to reasonable and necessary supports.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>While stakeholders identified cost, sustainability, and consistency as increasingly significant issues in NDIS implementation, initial rights-based and person-centred objectives envisioned during policy design were seen as retreating.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The inherent value tensions and contestations within the reasonable and necessary criteria have been under-recognised and inevitably persist in NDIS implementation.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Critical insights for future policy reform can be gained from thinking about implementation issues and understanding when and why good intentions wander off course.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 1","pages":"71-90"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.12689","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Papua New Guinea's Public Services Commission since independence: Sidelined or strengthened?","authors":"Nematullah Bizhan,&nbsp;Stephen Howes","doi":"10.1111/1467-8500.70010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper investigates reforms to the Public Services Commission (PSC) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) since independence in 1975. It looks at the original role of the PSC and then the various reforms it has been subject to: in 1986, 2003, and 2013, by constitutional and legislative change, and in 2019, by court ruling. We argue that since independence, PNG's PSC has been at different times made both less and more powerful. We explain these conflicting trajectories by reference to conflicting reform objectives: at times to make the civil service more flexible and responsive and at times to protect the civil service from corruption and political interference. Beyond PNG, the paper speaks to the different reform trajectories of PSCs in developing countries compared to developed ones; to possible limitations of the punctuated equilibrium approach to policy change; and to the civil service reform failure literature.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <h3> Points for practitioners</h3>\u0000 \u0000 <div>\u0000 <ul>\u0000 \u0000 <li>The reforms to Papua New Guinea's (PNG) civil service over the years reflect a tension between making the civil service more flexible and responsive and protecting it from corruption and political interference. This case study shows the importance of being aware of the trade-off between the two goals.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>Efforts to improve civil service should also focus on changing political behaviour rather than exclusively on structural reform.</li>\u0000 \u0000 <li>In many countries, such as Australia, central bodies such as the Public Services Commission (PSC) have lost nearly all their power: indeed, this has been a central component of the New Public Management (NPM) reforms that were popular in the 1990s. The PNG case, however, is one of a number that shows that this trend is far from universal when developing countries are considered.</li>\u0000 </ul>\u0000 </div>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47373,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Public Administration","volume":"85 1","pages":"146-166"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8500.70010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147570139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}