Bessie Head
Biographic Data
| ID | 179173 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bessie Head |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bessie |
| FAMILY NAME | Head |
| SIGNATURE | HEAD B |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9915-0628 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 101 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1480 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 101 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
What Do We Know About Wicked Problems After Nearly 52 Years? Tracing the DNA of Wicked Problems through A Bibliometric Study
This bibliometric study maps 52 years of scholarship on “wicked problems,” tracing the field’s evolution from Rittel and Webber’s foundational framing to contemporary debates on super-wicked problems, clumsy solutions, and adaptive governance. We identify four dominant thematic clusters: collaborative governance, sustainability, policy implementation, and crisis management. Co-citation and co-word analyses reveal two emerging fault lines—one emph…
Stakeholder knowledge in water governance: Insights from public submissions in the Murray-Darling Basin
Stakeholder knowledge plays a critical role in shaping engagement processes and influencing governance outcomes in natural resource management. However, systematic methods to assess such knowledge remain underdeveloped. This study introduces a two-dimensional framework that evaluates stakeholders’ knowledge systems in terms of thematic diversity, or the range of issues raised, and coherence, or the degree of conceptual linkage among those issues,…
Integrating spatially disaggregated stakeholders' knowledge and opinions to enhance water governance in the Murray–Darling Basin
Effective river basin governance requires integrating diverse stakeholder knowledge and opinions to achieve sustainable environmental, economic and cultural outcomes. However, a measurable method for integrating these perspectives remains undeveloped. This study aims to assess the knowledge and opinions of spatially diverse stakeholders regarding the policy initiatives in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) from 2009 to 2021, focusing on the catchment…
Mapping stakeholder dynamics: Understanding knowledge, values, and engagement in the Murray-Darling Basin
Knowledge brokering inside the policy making process: An analysis of evidence use inside a UK government department
Knowledge brokering can play a key role in improving evidence use inside government departments, though this may vary between jurisdictions because different administrations may vary the roles and functions of groups of civil servants. Understanding how different roles could contribute to a brokering approach to evidence use would help fill a gap in researchers' understanding about the evidence-to-policy process and help government departments fo…
Assessing stakeholder structure in water governance in the Murray-Darling Basin, a public submission perspective
Transformation from top-down government to collaborative governance for natural resources requires broadening the scope of stakeholders involved. However, the systemic identification and assessment of stakeholder engagement remains a challenge. This paper develops a network-based framework for assessing stakeholder engagement in natural resources governance. The framework proposed five system-level metrics: inclusivity, cohesion, centralization, …
Advancing collaborative social outcomes through place-based solutions—aligning policy and funding systems
More collaborative and human-centered approaches to tackle social problems of entrenched disadvantage have been introduced in many countries, including Australia, but with mixed results. Traditional programs that reinforce existing political and bureaucratic processes have been seen as blockers to collaborative modes of policymaking, governance, and delivery. Drawing on collaborative governance perspectives, this paper reports new research undert…
Expertise, policy advice, and policy advisory systems in an open, participatory, and populist era: New challenges to research and practice
This article examines the themes of policy advice, expertise, and policy advisory systems. It argues that persistent challenges and more emergent trends involving their intersection can be effectively understood through the lenses of instrumentality , authority , and adaptability . In the wake of renewed questions about the continued viability of longstanding public administration advisory arrangements, these themes help locate new pressures on t…
Policy expertise in times of crisis
Policy advisory systems, which provide evidence-informed policy advice to governments, are put under great pressure in times of crisis. Crisis situations may engender conflicting interpretations by stakeholders about how to respond. These conflicts are compounded by inevitable gaps in knowledge and uncertainties about how the crisis might develop. All governments face challenges beyond their control which can take many forms, ranging from financi…
Expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of policy advisory systems: The Covid-19 crisis and policy learning in Belgium and Australia
Expert advice played a pivotal role in shaping the COVID-19 policy responses of different countries. Such measures had wide ranging impacts beyond health, including education, economy, law, and other societal aspects. Thus, analysis of how expertise was utilised and adjusted to adapt to changes during the crisis can draw valuable insights into how to better prepare policy advisory systems to respond to future crises. Here we examine the dynamics …
A network approach to analyse Australia’s blue economy policy and legislative arrangements
Governance systems are complex adaptive systems where multiple components interact extensively. This is the case for governance of the blue economy, focused on sustainable development of marine resources. Here, the relevant policy and legislative arrangements are fragmented, and marine uses, activities and resources are generally managed on a sectoral basis by independent entities from multiple jurisdictions. In Australia, for example, complex ar…
Reconsidering expertise for public policymaking: The challenges of contestability
It is commonly claimed there is a crisis of expertise in liberal democracies and that experts who provide evidence‐based policy ideas have become widely distrusted. This paper reconsiders the nature of this perceived crisis in policy advisory systems. The literature has identified four reasons for this trend—politicisation, diversification, diminished policy capacity, and populism. Building on these claims, this paper suggests that the contestabi…
The limits of voluntary measures: Packaging the plastic pollution problem in Australia
The 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 prioriti…
Stakeholder engagement in natural resources for energy transitions governance
Energy transition is one of the demands for resource management towards sustainability. It is increasingly recognized that this transition would not justly happen without effective stakeholder engagement (SE). Assessing the impact of SE and its relationship with SE configuration is imperative for understanding dynamics that may promote or hinder stakeholders' contribution to the transition. This paper systemically and quantitatively investigates …
Wicked Problems in Public Policy: Understanding and Responding to Complex Challenges
This open access book offers the first overview of the ‘wicked problems’ literature and contextualises the debate using relevant policy examples
In search of policy innovation: Behavioural Insights Teams in Australia and New Zealand
Governments around the world have increasingly used experimental findings from behavioural trials to fine‐tune their service delivery policy models and their communication with citizens. In some areas of policy review, government teams have drawn on ‘behavioural’ methods, developed through Behavioural Insights (BI) and Behavioural Economics (BE) approaches, with a view to enhancing cost‐efficiencies and regulatory compliance. We compare the pract…
Using a process-based model to understand dynamics of Chinese agricultural and water technology development from 8000 bc to 1911 ad
Behavioural insights teams in practice: Nudge Missions and Methods on Trial
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…
Uber in Queensland: From policy fortress to policy change
Emerging 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…
Policy capacity in disruptive times
In considering the widely held view that we have experienced an era of qualitative decline in policy provision, this paper briefly reviews four questions that appear to underlie such a view. Have there been identifiable transitions in deliberative processes, political practices and policy capacity in recent decades (and if so, what were the catalysts)? Has the relationship between policy practitioners and expert providers of policy advice changed…
Policy expertise and use of evidence in a populist era
Populism and media-enhanced polarisation are reinforcing the declining trust in public institutions. These forces also undermine the perceived legitimacy of using expertise and evidence in highly contested policy areas. Expertise has been decried as elitist, or serving vested interests, or ineffective in tackling real-life problems. We argue that applying relevant expertise to public policy problems remains essential. However, this use of experti…
Testing the Limits of Public Integrity: The Impact of Vested Interests and Countervailing Forces on Indonesia’s KPK
The establishment of Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is as a crucial instrument for fighting systemic corruption and improving public integrity. However, corrupt forces in post‐Soeharto Indonesia found opportunities to develop powerful coalitions built on the legacy of pre‐reform power relationships. This article examines the extent to which the KPK’s initiatives have been impeded by these vested interests. By examining two major cases in…
Addressing Corruption in Post-Soeharto Indonesia: The Role of the Corruption Eradication Commission
Anti-corruption became one of the top priorities in post-Soeharto Indonesia, with democratisation, market liberalisation and institutional anti-corruption frameworks pursued as means to enhance transparency and accountability in public governance. A core component of these efforts was the establishment of a powerful anti-corruption agency, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). This article assesses the effectiveness of the KPK, using evide…
Why information and transparency about electricity matter: Fragmentation of governance and accountability under New Public Management
From 1995, Australian governments pursued efficiency benefits arising from significant structural reforms in the Electricity Supply Industry, including corporatisation and regulation of network monopolies, and introduction of competition for generators and for retailers. The restructure was motivated by the ideology of New Public Management and influenced by the field of neoliberal economics. More than two decades later, prices paid for electrici…
Institutional amnesia and public policy
Institutional amnesia continues to be ignored by policy scholars despite the fact that it can undermine the effectiveness of public policy in various ways. In calling on policy scholars to start taking amnesia seriously as a research concern, this article provides data and analytical tools to help develop that agenda. The data are drawn from an international comparison of policy learning and amnesia in four Westminster systems (Australia, Canada,…
Wicked Problems: Implications for Public Policy and Management
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…
Three Lenses of Evidence‐Based Policy
This article discusses recent trends to incorporate the results of systematic research (or ‘evidence’) into policy development, program evaluation and program improvement. This process is consistent with the New Public Management (NPM) emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness. Analysis of evidence helps to answer the questions ‘what works? and ‘what happens if we change these settings?’ Secondly, some of the well known challenges and limitations …
Toward More “Evidence‐Informed” Policy Making
The quality of public decision making depends significantly on the quality of analysis and advice provided through public organizations. Champions of “evidence‐informed” policy making claim that rigorous evaluation practices can significantly improve attainment of cost‐effective outcomes. After decades of experience, performance information is more sophisticated, but evaluation practices and capabilities vary enormously. Public agencies gather an…
Reconsidering evidence-based policy: Key issues and challenges
The evidence-based policy (EBP) movement has sought to promote rigorous analysis of service programs and policy options in order to improve the quality of decision-making. Rigorous research findings are seen as useful and necessary inputs for policy-makers in their ongoing consideration of policy development and program review. This article provides a critical overview of the research literature on evidence-based policy in the context of governme…
Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization
Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with…
Community Engagement: Participation on Whose Terms
Forty years of wicked problems literature: Forging closer links to policy studies
Rittel and Webber boldly challenged the conventional assumption that ‘scientific’ approaches to social policy and planning provide the most reliable guidance for practitioners and researchers who are addressing complex, and contested, social problems. This provocative claim, that scientific-technical approaches would not ‘work’ for complex social issues, has engaged policy analysts, academic researchers and planning practitioners since the 1970s.…
Wicked and less wicked problems: A typology and a contingency framework
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…
Native life in South Africa
Australian politicians' beliefs about climate change: Political Partisanship and Political Ideology
Despite the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and its implications, there is considerably less certainty or strength of belief among the general public in some industrialised countries. One explanation for the lack of consensus is the partisan nature of political debate about climate change. A survey of Australian politicians demonstrates that political party affiliation and ideology have a powerful influence on climate change …
Why not ask them? Mapping and promoting youth participation
Are policy-makers interested in social research? Exploring the sources and uses of valued information among public servants in Australia
This article explores the use of research and expertise within a selection of government agencies at state and federal levels in Australia. A recent survey of public officials provides new data on the reported use of evidence and expertise sourced from within the public service and from external sources. The survey instrument targeted the policy, program and evaluation staff in human service agencies and central policy coordination agencies. The …
The enduring challenge of ‘wicked problems’: Revisiting Rittel and Webber
Use of academic social research by public officials: Exploring preferences and constraints that impact on research use
While academics can do more to communicate the key messages of their research, the organisational cultures and information infrastructure of policy-related work units also play a large part in influencing the extent of research uptake in government agencies. Data from a large Australian survey (N 2084) of policy-related officials in government agencies is examined to provide insights into how certain preferences, constraints and organisational fa…
Determinants of young Australians’ environmental actions: The role of responsibility attributions, locus of control, knowledge and attitudes
The current study investigates determinants of young Australians’ pro-environmental intentions and actions. Two samples of young people took part in the research: 12 - 17-year-olds (N = 1529) currently in secondary schooling and 18 - 24-year-olds (N = 2192) in post-secondary schooling or workforce. All participants completed an online ‘Youth and the Environment Survey’ that assessed perceived responsibility of community and government to protect …
Evidence‐Based Policymaking – Speaking Truth to Power
Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice
Parsell C, Jones A, Head B. Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice. Many welfare states throughout the industrialised world have recently implemented policies to achieve targeted reductions in homelessness. These policy and welfare initiatives differ across national contexts. They are similar, however, in moving away from social programmes that have essentially ‘managed homelessness’ towards…
Behavioural insights teams in practice: Nudge Missions and Methods on Trial
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…
Institutional amnesia and public policy
Institutional amnesia continues to be ignored by policy scholars despite the fact that it can undermine the effectiveness of public policy in various ways. In calling on policy scholars to start taking amnesia seriously as a research concern, this article provides data and analytical tools to help develop that agenda. The data are drawn from an international comparison of policy learning and amnesia in four Westminster systems (Australia, Canada,…
Relationships between Policy Academics and Public Servants: Learning at a Distance
The cultures and practices of the public service and academic researchers are very different. However, there are areas of common interest in policy and governance, and some potential for building closer relationships. Public servants make direct use of academic research only in exceptional circumstances. Nevertheless, there are other ways in which academic expertise can be useful and influential. This article surveys the international literature …
Caveat Emptor: What Do We Know about Public Administration Evidence and How Do We Know It
This article provides an overview of a new feature in Public Administration Review called Evidence in Public Administration. This feature was created to provide a space in which scholars and practitioners of public administration can meet to engage in a dialogue about evidence in public decision making. In this feature, we will shine a light on the evidence needed to make effective decisions and examinations of the evidence that currently exists …
Stakeholder engagement in natural resources for energy transitions governance
Energy transition is one of the demands for resource management towards sustainability. It is increasingly recognized that this transition would not justly happen without effective stakeholder engagement (SE). Assessing the impact of SE and its relationship with SE configuration is imperative for understanding dynamics that may promote or hinder stakeholders' contribution to the transition. This paper systemically and quantitatively investigates …
Perspectives of academic social scientists on knowledge transfer and research collaborations: A cross-sectional survey of Australian academics
This paper reports results from a survey of academic social scientists in Australian universities on their research engagement experience with industry and government partners and end-users of research. The results highlight that while academics report a range of benefits arising from research collaborations, there are also significant impediments to research translation and uptake, including organisational processes within universities. Using th…
Navigating tensions in co‐production: A missing link in leadership for public value
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…
Beyond the two communities: A reply to Mead’s “why government often ignores research”
A Question of Power
Economic crisis and political legitimacy: The 1931 federal election
(1978). Economic crisis and political legitimacy: The 1931 federal election. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 14-29
The Fluoridation Controversy in Victoria: Public Policy and Group Politics
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 oppositio…
The Coming of the Christ-Child
Some economic bases of inter‐state and federal‐state conflicts∗
The Origins of "La Science Sociale" in France, 1770-1800
Recent theories of the state
This paper attempts a selective and critical survey of recent writings on the liberal‐democratic state in capitalist societies. It focuses mainly on works which attempt to unite theoretical and empirical analyses, thus excluding essentially philosophical works on the one hand, and purely descriptive accounts of particular societies on the other hand. The survey proceeds by addressing four substantive questions, to which particular writings are re…
Women in African Literature
Social Science and Public Policy
Ideology and Social Science: Destutt de Tracy and French Liberalism
The Australian party system: Adversary politics and the convergence thesis
Australian liberalism and corporatism
George Brandis, Tom Harley and Don Markwell (eds), Liberals face the Future: Essays on Australian Liberalism, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 386, $14.99 (paper) and Katharine West, The Revolution in Australian Politics, Melbourne, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 116, $4.95 (paper). John Rickard, H.B. Higgins: the rebel as judge. Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.350. $29.95 (cloth). Stuart Macintyre, Militant: the life and times of Paddy Tr…
A Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga
The Queensland Difference
Allan Patience (ed.), The Bjelke‐Petersen Premiership 1968–1983: Issues in Public Policy, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1985, pp. 286, $18.95 (paper)
Affirmative action for Australian studies
The Labor Government and 'Economic Rationalism'
Between the Lines: Interviews with Bessie Head, Sheila Roberts, Ellen Kuzwayo, Miriam Tlali
A Gesture of Belonging: Letters from Bessie Head, 1965-1979
was born on the 6 July 1937 in the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital in South Africa. reason for my peculiar birthplace was that my mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man. She was judged insane, and committed to the mental hospital while pregnant. Bessie Head, one of Africa's greatest writers, corresponded with Randolph Vigne, a political and literary friend from her Cape Town days, then editor of The New African in London, and…
Tales of Tenderness and Power
A Woman Alone
Tales of Tenderness and Power
This is an anthology of stories, personal observations and historic legends. It reflects the author's fascination with Africa's people and their history as well as her identification with individuals and their conflicting emotions
The Cardinals, with Meditations and Short Stories
Trials in Power: Cain, Kirner and Victoria, 1982-1992
Deregulation or Better Regulation? Issues for the Public Sector
Native life in South Africa
Political science (81 works) · Law (45 works) · Economics (44 works) · Sociology (43 works) · Public Administration (41 works) · Public relations (38 works) · Public Administration (37 works) · Law (35 works) · Politics (32 works) · Business (30 works)