Dennis C Grube
Biographic Data
| ID | 4373151 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dennis C Grube |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dennis C |
| FAMILY NAME | Grube |
| SIGNATURE | GRUBE D C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Griffith University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4000-2460 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 129 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Institutional Amnesia and Public Administration: Does History Repeat?
Existing research suggests that a lack of institutional memory causes history to repeat in problematic ways within public administration agencies. However, this claim has not been well supported by theory or data that illuminates the process and effects of history repeating. To remedy this, the nascent concept of institutional amnesia is presented here as a means of theorizing repetitions of public administrative history. A sequential explanatory…
How does government feel? Toward a theory of institutional pathos in public administration
In the study of policy and administration, emotions are largely conceived as an exogenous factor that impacts on institutions and processes. Still ignored are the emotions felt and performed not just individually by civil servants, but collectively within government organizations. This article turns to insights on emotions from organizational studies to offer a conceptual framework through which to understand the lifeworld of government, or “inst…
Why Governments Get It Wrong: And How They Can Get It Right
Comparing Cabinets: Dilemmas of Collective Government
Megaphone Bureaucracy: Speaking Truth to Power in the Age of the New Normal
A revealing look at how today’s bureaucrats are finding their public voice in the era of 24-hour mediaOnce relegated to the anonymous back rooms of democratic debate, our bureaucratic leaders are increasingly having to govern under the scrutiny of a 24-hour news cycle, hyperpartisan political oversight, and a restless populace that is increasingly distrustful of the people who govern them. Megaphone Bureaucracy reveals how today’s civil servants …
Political branding: A consumer perspective on Australian political parties
Why are voters in advanced democracies turning away from established mass parties to take their electoral chances elsewhere? This article draws on concepts from marketing scholarship, specifically branding and brand equity, to apply a ‘consumer’ lens that assesses the major parties in Australia as failing ‘brands’ being left behind by disillusioned voters. An initial sample of 200 voters were asked what words or phrases came to mind when they tho…
Singular memory or institutional memories? Toward a dynamic approach
The ability of the civil service to act as a reservoir of institutional memory is central to the pragmatic task of governing. But there is a growing body of scholarship that suggests the bureaucracy is failing at this core task. In this article, we distinguish between two different ways of thinking about institutional memory: one “static” and one “dynamic.” In the former, memory is singular and held in document form, especially by files and proce…
Rules, Prudence and Public Value: Public Servants and Social Media in Comparative Perspective
The reach of social media is prodigious. Its ubiquitous nature has reshaped the ways in which government agencies can communicate with citizens. But amidst the rush to embrace the opportunities of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, governments have had to lay down rules to govern how and when public service departments should use social media. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the formal rules and guidelines in place across fo…
Rhetorically defining a social institution: How Leaders Have Framed Same-Sex Marriage
Questions about the definition, meaning and limits of marriage have become a topic of fierce political debate in advanced Western democracies over the past decade as political leaders have sought to grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage. The rhetorical choices of leaders as they have made the case for or against moving away from traditional definitions of marriage have been central to shaping the national debate within different jurisdictio…
Delivering Public Services: Locality, Learning and Reciprocity in Place Based Practice
Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi‐faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is ‘place‐based’ solutions. Th…
Civil Servants, Political History, and the Interpretation of Traditions
A renewed interest in aspects of high politics among historians who subscribe to the ‘new political history’ has coincided with the embrace by some political scientists of interpretivism as a method for understanding how beliefs and traditions impact on British political life. In order to examine the potential synergies between these two developments, this article utilizes a form of ‘historical interpretivism’ to study the beliefs and actions of …
Back to the Future: Rediscovering the Lost Arts of the Victorian Mandarin
Under the conventions of the Westminster system, civil service mandarins of the twentieth century were expected to be discrete, impartial and anonymous as they unobtrusively carried on the business of government. Times have changed. The pressures of modern governance and a 24/7 media cycle are pulling contemporary public service leaders further into the public limelight, leading to concerns that they may become politicised. This article draws on …
Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair
Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster “traditions.” Core elements including security of tenure, merit‐based selection, non‐partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commen…
Promiscuously Partisan? Public Service Impartiality and Responsiveness in Westminster Systems
Public servants in Westminster countries are being drawn into the limelight by demands from their political masters that they publicly defend policies. Critics suggest these conditions undermine the capacity and willingness of senior public servants to manage the enduring Westminster tension between serving elected governments and remaining nonpartisan. Interviews with senior officials from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom challenge this…
Sticky words? Towards a theory of rhetorical path dependency
Speech matters. Political actors are defined by what they say as much as by what they do but, with each rhetorical choice, they also narrow the range of rhetorical options open to them for the future. This paper examines the idea of path dependency, a well-established concept in the field of policy studies, and applies it to the study of political rhetoric. It argues that words are sticky, leaving political leaders caught between the desire to ut…
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric: The ‘Credibility Gaps’ of Woodrow Wilson and Kevin Rudd in the League of Nations and Climate Change Debates
US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘insid…
Responsibility to Be Enthusiastic? Public Servants and the Public Face of “Promiscuous Partisanship
Contemporary public service leaders are no longer the anonymous mandarins of Westminster folklore. Whether giving public speeches to outside organizations or communicating directly with the media, senior public servants are emerging from anonymity to become public actors in their own right. This article undertakes a comparative study across four Westminster jurisdictions—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to examine the formal…
An Invidious Position? The Public Dance of the Promiscuous Partisan
Public service mandarins were once largely anonymous, diligently wielding their great power behind the scenes while their political masters performed on the front stage. Things have changed. Today, civil service leaders are appearing publicly more often, in more places and to a wider range of audiences than ever before. This article examines the extent to which this decline in anonymity impacts on traditions of civil service impartiality within t…
Administrative learning or political blaming? Public servants, parliamentary committees and the drama of public accountability
In theory, within Westminster systems the buck stops with the minister. Ministers are responsible for the actions of their departments and accountable for policy outcomes. In practice, it is often senior public servants rather than their ministerial masters who face the fierce questions of parliamentary committees when things go wrong. This article uses dramaturgy theory and blame theory to assess whether the nature of the parliamentary committee…
In Search of Society? The Limitations of Citizen‐Centred Governance
Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article argues that by disaggregating societal interests down to the smallest available individual unit – t…
Public voices from anonymous corridors: The public face of the public service in a W estminster system
Under the traditions of the W estminster system, prime ministers and ministers give countless public speeches each year, while their loyal public service quietly and anonymously carries out the daily business of public administration. Current practice suggests that this traditional picture no longer holds true. In the 21st century, bureaucratic leaders are prepared to give public speeches on their own authority – adopting a “public face” as contr…
Prime Ministers and political narratives for policy change: Towards a Heuristic
Political narratives play a central role in modern governance. They explain a government’s driving principles, and underpin their ability to implement policy change. Rhetoric is the tool that Prime Ministers use to articulate and frame political narratives to support their policy prescriptions. This article examines four case studies of how Prime Ministers in Westminster systems have used political rhetoric to create narratives capable of making …
What the Secretary Said Next: ‘Public Rhetorical Leadership’ in the Australian Public Service
Every year, senior departmental secretaries in Australia deliver keynote speeches to a range of audiences. What are these secretaries talking about, and to whom are they directing their comments? This article will examine keynote addresses by the secretaries of the two key central agencies in Australia – the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and The Treasury – over the calendar years 2009 and 2010. I argue that ‘public rhetorical leadershi…
A Very Public Search for Public Value: ‘Rhetorical Secretaries' in Westminster Jurisdictions
Senior bureaucrats in central agencies in Westminster jurisdictions frequently give keynote speeches as a part of their official function. What are these administrative leaders talking about, and to whom, and why does it matter? This paper will seek to answer those questions through the lens of public value theory by considering whether ‘public rhetorical leadership’ by senior bureaucrats is a legitimate contribution to the search for public valu…
How can ‘Britishness’ be Re‐made
Modern Britishness is widely seen to be based on shared values like ‘fair play’, ‘tolerance’, and respect for ‘diversity’. Can such a ‘values‐based Britishness’ be effective as a national binding agent in an era of devolution and globalisation? The idea that a uniquely ‘British’ character is based on shared values of some kind is not new. The contemporary debate is framed by decisions made over a century ago in the Victorian era—when the decisive…
Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair
Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster “traditions.” Core elements including security of tenure, merit‐based selection, non‐partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commen…
Promiscuously Partisan? Public Service Impartiality and Responsiveness in Westminster Systems
Public servants in Westminster countries are being drawn into the limelight by demands from their political masters that they publicly defend policies. Critics suggest these conditions undermine the capacity and willingness of senior public servants to manage the enduring Westminster tension between serving elected governments and remaining nonpartisan. Interviews with senior officials from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom challenge this…
Prime Ministers and political narratives for policy change: Towards a Heuristic
Political narratives play a central role in modern governance. They explain a government’s driving principles, and underpin their ability to implement policy change. Rhetoric is the tool that Prime Ministers use to articulate and frame political narratives to support their policy prescriptions. This article examines four case studies of how Prime Ministers in Westminster systems have used political rhetoric to create narratives capable of making …
Responsibility to Be Enthusiastic? Public Servants and the Public Face of “Promiscuous Partisanship
Contemporary public service leaders are no longer the anonymous mandarins of Westminster folklore. Whether giving public speeches to outside organizations or communicating directly with the media, senior public servants are emerging from anonymity to become public actors in their own right. This article undertakes a comparative study across four Westminster jurisdictions—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to examine the formal…
Singular memory or institutional memories? Toward a dynamic approach
The ability of the civil service to act as a reservoir of institutional memory is central to the pragmatic task of governing. But there is a growing body of scholarship that suggests the bureaucracy is failing at this core task. In this article, we distinguish between two different ways of thinking about institutional memory: one “static” and one “dynamic.” In the former, memory is singular and held in document form, especially by files and proce…
The Rhetorical Framing of Policy Intervention
When prime ministers speak, the nation usually listens. In the Australian federation, prime ministers have consistently used the power of their political pulpit to launch policy interventions into areas of traditional State responsibility. This article suggests that there is an emerging rhetorical pattern to the way these policy interventions are presented. Primeministers of bothmajor parties have used rhetoric to portray the Commonwealth as acti…
Rules, Prudence and Public Value: Public Servants and Social Media in Comparative Perspective
The reach of social media is prodigious. Its ubiquitous nature has reshaped the ways in which government agencies can communicate with citizens. But amidst the rush to embrace the opportunities of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, governments have had to lay down rules to govern how and when public service departments should use social media. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the formal rules and guidelines in place across fo…
Administrative learning or political blaming? Public servants, parliamentary committees and the drama of public accountability
In theory, within Westminster systems the buck stops with the minister. Ministers are responsible for the actions of their departments and accountable for policy outcomes. In practice, it is often senior public servants rather than their ministerial masters who face the fierce questions of parliamentary committees when things go wrong. This article uses dramaturgy theory and blame theory to assess whether the nature of the parliamentary committee…
Delivering Public Services: Locality, Learning and Reciprocity in Place Based Practice
Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi‐faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is ‘place‐based’ solutions. Th…
Speech Cycle? ‘Election-Defining Rhetoric’ in Westminster Democracies
Leaders of government within Westminster democracies undertake a key rhetorical task on the day an election is called. Following a visit to the monarch or the vice-regal representative, leaders emerge to give their opening speech of the election campaign. These are moments of definition; moments when leaders rhetorically frame the battle to come. This paper argues that in Westminster democratic systems, these statements conform to a set pattern o…
Sticky words? Towards a theory of rhetorical path dependency
Speech matters. Political actors are defined by what they say as much as by what they do but, with each rhetorical choice, they also narrow the range of rhetorical options open to them for the future. This paper examines the idea of path dependency, a well-established concept in the field of policy studies, and applies it to the study of political rhetoric. It argues that words are sticky, leaving political leaders caught between the desire to ut…
A Very Public Search for Public Value: ‘Rhetorical Secretaries' in Westminster Jurisdictions
Senior bureaucrats in central agencies in Westminster jurisdictions frequently give keynote speeches as a part of their official function. What are these administrative leaders talking about, and to whom, and why does it matter? This paper will seek to answer those questions through the lens of public value theory by considering whether ‘public rhetorical leadership’ by senior bureaucrats is a legitimate contribution to the search for public valu…
An Invidious Position? The Public Dance of the Promiscuous Partisan
Public service mandarins were once largely anonymous, diligently wielding their great power behind the scenes while their political masters performed on the front stage. Things have changed. Today, civil service leaders are appearing publicly more often, in more places and to a wider range of audiences than ever before. This article examines the extent to which this decline in anonymity impacts on traditions of civil service impartiality within t…
Political branding: A consumer perspective on Australian political parties
Why are voters in advanced democracies turning away from established mass parties to take their electoral chances elsewhere? This article draws on concepts from marketing scholarship, specifically branding and brand equity, to apply a ‘consumer’ lens that assesses the major parties in Australia as failing ‘brands’ being left behind by disillusioned voters. An initial sample of 200 voters were asked what words or phrases came to mind when they tho…
Rhetorically defining a social institution: How Leaders Have Framed Same-Sex Marriage
Questions about the definition, meaning and limits of marriage have become a topic of fierce political debate in advanced Western democracies over the past decade as political leaders have sought to grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage. The rhetorical choices of leaders as they have made the case for or against moving away from traditional definitions of marriage have been central to shaping the national debate within different jurisdictio…
In Search of Society? The Limitations of Citizen‐Centred Governance
Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article argues that by disaggregating societal interests down to the smallest available individual unit – t…
Public voices from anonymous corridors: The public face of the public service in a W estminster system
Under the traditions of the W estminster system, prime ministers and ministers give countless public speeches each year, while their loyal public service quietly and anonymously carries out the daily business of public administration. Current practice suggests that this traditional picture no longer holds true. In the 21st century, bureaucratic leaders are prepared to give public speeches on their own authority – adopting a “public face” as contr…
What the Secretary Said Next: ‘Public Rhetorical Leadership’ in the Australian Public Service
Every year, senior departmental secretaries in Australia deliver keynote speeches to a range of audiences. What are these secretaries talking about, and to whom are they directing their comments? This article will examine keynote addresses by the secretaries of the two key central agencies in Australia – the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and The Treasury – over the calendar years 2009 and 2010. I argue that ‘public rhetorical leadershi…
Religion, Power and Parliament: Rothschild and Bradlaugh Revisited
The British parliament in the nineteenth century reflected the increasingly democratic stability of the British state in a century that saw numerous convulsions on the European continent. It embodied the majesty of British law, the idea that all adult males who dwelt in Britain shared the universal rights of a true‐born Englishman, including the right to speak on the affairs of the nation. The repeated attempts of the Jewish Baron Lionel de Roths…
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric: The ‘Credibility Gaps’ of Woodrow Wilson and Kevin Rudd in the League of Nations and Climate Change Debates
US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘insid…
How can ‘Britishness’ be Re‐made
Modern Britishness is widely seen to be based on shared values like ‘fair play’, ‘tolerance’, and respect for ‘diversity’. Can such a ‘values‐based Britishness’ be effective as a national binding agent in an era of devolution and globalisation? The idea that a uniquely ‘British’ character is based on shared values of some kind is not new. The contemporary debate is framed by decisions made over a century ago in the Victorian era—when the decisive…
Religion, Power and Parliament: Rothschild and Bradlaugh Revisited
The British parliament in the nineteenth century reflected the increasingly democratic stability of the British state in a century that saw numerous convulsions on the European continent. It embodied the majesty of British law, the idea that all adult males who dwelt in Britain shared the universal rights of a true‐born Englishman, including the right to speak on the affairs of the nation. The repeated attempts of the Jewish Baron Lionel de Roths…
The Rhetorical Framing of Policy Intervention
When prime ministers speak, the nation usually listens. In the Australian federation, prime ministers have consistently used the power of their political pulpit to launch policy interventions into areas of traditional State responsibility. This article suggests that there is an emerging rhetorical pattern to the way these policy interventions are presented. Primeministers of bothmajor parties have used rhetoric to portray the Commonwealth as acti…
What the Secretary Said Next: ‘Public Rhetorical Leadership’ in the Australian Public Service
Every year, senior departmental secretaries in Australia deliver keynote speeches to a range of audiences. What are these secretaries talking about, and to whom are they directing their comments? This article will examine keynote addresses by the secretaries of the two key central agencies in Australia – the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and The Treasury – over the calendar years 2009 and 2010. I argue that ‘public rhetorical leadershi…
A Very Public Search for Public Value: ‘Rhetorical Secretaries' in Westminster Jurisdictions
Senior bureaucrats in central agencies in Westminster jurisdictions frequently give keynote speeches as a part of their official function. What are these administrative leaders talking about, and to whom, and why does it matter? This paper will seek to answer those questions through the lens of public value theory by considering whether ‘public rhetorical leadership’ by senior bureaucrats is a legitimate contribution to the search for public valu…
How can ‘Britishness’ be Re‐made
Modern Britishness is widely seen to be based on shared values like ‘fair play’, ‘tolerance’, and respect for ‘diversity’. Can such a ‘values‐based Britishness’ be effective as a national binding agent in an era of devolution and globalisation? The idea that a uniquely ‘British’ character is based on shared values of some kind is not new. The contemporary debate is framed by decisions made over a century ago in the Victorian era—when the decisive…
Speech Cycle? ‘Election-Defining Rhetoric’ in Westminster Democracies
Leaders of government within Westminster democracies undertake a key rhetorical task on the day an election is called. Following a visit to the monarch or the vice-regal representative, leaders emerge to give their opening speech of the election campaign. These are moments of definition; moments when leaders rhetorically frame the battle to come. This paper argues that in Westminster democratic systems, these statements conform to a set pattern o…
Prime Ministers and political narratives for policy change: Towards a Heuristic
Political narratives play a central role in modern governance. They explain a government’s driving principles, and underpin their ability to implement policy change. Rhetoric is the tool that Prime Ministers use to articulate and frame political narratives to support their policy prescriptions. This article examines four case studies of how Prime Ministers in Westminster systems have used political rhetoric to create narratives capable of making …
In Search of Society? The Limitations of Citizen‐Centred Governance
Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article argues that by disaggregating societal interests down to the smallest available individual unit – t…
Public voices from anonymous corridors: The public face of the public service in a W estminster system
Under the traditions of the W estminster system, prime ministers and ministers give countless public speeches each year, while their loyal public service quietly and anonymously carries out the daily business of public administration. Current practice suggests that this traditional picture no longer holds true. In the 21st century, bureaucratic leaders are prepared to give public speeches on their own authority – adopting a “public face” as contr…
An Invidious Position? The Public Dance of the Promiscuous Partisan
Public service mandarins were once largely anonymous, diligently wielding their great power behind the scenes while their political masters performed on the front stage. Things have changed. Today, civil service leaders are appearing publicly more often, in more places and to a wider range of audiences than ever before. This article examines the extent to which this decline in anonymity impacts on traditions of civil service impartiality within t…
Administrative learning or political blaming? Public servants, parliamentary committees and the drama of public accountability
In theory, within Westminster systems the buck stops with the minister. Ministers are responsible for the actions of their departments and accountable for policy outcomes. In practice, it is often senior public servants rather than their ministerial masters who face the fierce questions of parliamentary committees when things go wrong. This article uses dramaturgy theory and blame theory to assess whether the nature of the parliamentary committee…
Presidents, Prime Ministers and Policy Rhetoric: The ‘Credibility Gaps’ of Woodrow Wilson and Kevin Rudd in the League of Nations and Climate Change Debates
US President Woodrow Wilson and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd were separated by institutional contexts, relative power positions and decades in time. However, each confronted a similar dilemma — of reconciling rhetorical idealism with policy practicalities. Building on insights from studies of the US rhetorical presidency, we offer a framework highlighting the tensions between ‘outside’ moral appeals which raise expectations and the ‘insid…
Responsibility to Be Enthusiastic? Public Servants and the Public Face of “Promiscuous Partisanship
Contemporary public service leaders are no longer the anonymous mandarins of Westminster folklore. Whether giving public speeches to outside organizations or communicating directly with the media, senior public servants are emerging from anonymity to become public actors in their own right. This article undertakes a comparative study across four Westminster jurisdictions—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to examine the formal…
Delivering Public Services: Locality, Learning and Reciprocity in Place Based Practice
Policymakers across myriad jurisdictions are grappling with the challenge of complex policy problems. Multi‐faceted, complex, and seemingly intractable, ‘wicked’ problems have exhausted the repertoire of the standard policy approaches. In response, governments are increasingly looking for new options, and one approach that has gained significant scholarly interest, along with increasing attention from practitioners, is ‘place‐based’ solutions. Th…
Civil Servants, Political History, and the Interpretation of Traditions
A renewed interest in aspects of high politics among historians who subscribe to the ‘new political history’ has coincided with the embrace by some political scientists of interpretivism as a method for understanding how beliefs and traditions impact on British political life. In order to examine the potential synergies between these two developments, this article utilizes a form of ‘historical interpretivism’ to study the beliefs and actions of …
Back to the Future: Rediscovering the Lost Arts of the Victorian Mandarin
Under the conventions of the Westminster system, civil service mandarins of the twentieth century were expected to be discrete, impartial and anonymous as they unobtrusively carried on the business of government. Times have changed. The pressures of modern governance and a 24/7 media cycle are pulling contemporary public service leaders further into the public limelight, leading to concerns that they may become politicised. This article draws on …
Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair
Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster “traditions.” Core elements including security of tenure, merit‐based selection, non‐partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commen…
Promiscuously Partisan? Public Service Impartiality and Responsiveness in Westminster Systems
Public servants in Westminster countries are being drawn into the limelight by demands from their political masters that they publicly defend policies. Critics suggest these conditions undermine the capacity and willingness of senior public servants to manage the enduring Westminster tension between serving elected governments and remaining nonpartisan. Interviews with senior officials from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom challenge this…
Sticky words? Towards a theory of rhetorical path dependency
Speech matters. Political actors are defined by what they say as much as by what they do but, with each rhetorical choice, they also narrow the range of rhetorical options open to them for the future. This paper examines the idea of path dependency, a well-established concept in the field of policy studies, and applies it to the study of political rhetoric. It argues that words are sticky, leaving political leaders caught between the desire to ut…
Rules, Prudence and Public Value: Public Servants and Social Media in Comparative Perspective
The reach of social media is prodigious. Its ubiquitous nature has reshaped the ways in which government agencies can communicate with citizens. But amidst the rush to embrace the opportunities of Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, governments have had to lay down rules to govern how and when public service departments should use social media. This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the formal rules and guidelines in place across fo…
Rhetorically defining a social institution: How Leaders Have Framed Same-Sex Marriage
Questions about the definition, meaning and limits of marriage have become a topic of fierce political debate in advanced Western democracies over the past decade as political leaders have sought to grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage. The rhetorical choices of leaders as they have made the case for or against moving away from traditional definitions of marriage have been central to shaping the national debate within different jurisdictio…
Singular memory or institutional memories? Toward a dynamic approach
The ability of the civil service to act as a reservoir of institutional memory is central to the pragmatic task of governing. But there is a growing body of scholarship that suggests the bureaucracy is failing at this core task. In this article, we distinguish between two different ways of thinking about institutional memory: one “static” and one “dynamic.” In the former, memory is singular and held in document form, especially by files and proce…
Megaphone Bureaucracy: Speaking Truth to Power in the Age of the New Normal
A revealing look at how today’s bureaucrats are finding their public voice in the era of 24-hour mediaOnce relegated to the anonymous back rooms of democratic debate, our bureaucratic leaders are increasingly having to govern under the scrutiny of a 24-hour news cycle, hyperpartisan political oversight, and a restless populace that is increasingly distrustful of the people who govern them. Megaphone Bureaucracy reveals how today’s civil servants …
Political branding: A consumer perspective on Australian political parties
Why are voters in advanced democracies turning away from established mass parties to take their electoral chances elsewhere? This article draws on concepts from marketing scholarship, specifically branding and brand equity, to apply a ‘consumer’ lens that assesses the major parties in Australia as failing ‘brands’ being left behind by disillusioned voters. An initial sample of 200 voters were asked what words or phrases came to mind when they tho…
Comparing Cabinets: Dilemmas of Collective Government
Political science (26 works) · Law (25 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Politics (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Public Administration (17 works) · Public Administration (15 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (14 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (14 works) · Government (linguistics (11 works)