THE IRREPRESSIBLE ROD RHODES : CONTESTING TRADITIONS AND BLURRING GENRES

Rod Rhodes spent 25 years as the Editor of Public Administration before he retired from that role at the end of 2010. These essays in his honour are intended to celebrate the achievement of those 25 years and reflect on his contribution to the worlds of public administration and political science. Rod has now consolidated the standing of the journal as one of the most significant locations for …

WAS LOCAL GOVERNANCE SUCH A GOOD IDEA? A GLOBAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The idea of local governance has gained much prominence but can elected local government be sustained in a role as network coordinator alone? To investigate this question this article focuses attention on four societal roles that local government systems undertake. They can support political identity, underwrite economic development, facilitate social welfare provision or act as a lifestyle co-…

THE NEW ORTHODOXY : THE DIFFERENTIATED POLITY MODEL

Anthony King (1989, p. 97) argued some time ago that: ‘most of Britain's best political scientists (…) are for some reason journalists'. This is a claim which could only be made by someone who thinks that understanding, or explaining, politics merely revolves around knowing what happens at the centre of power. It neglects the point that facts do not speak for themselves; rather, they have to be…

NETWORKS : REIFIED METAPHOR OR GOVERNANCE PANACEA?

This article will discuss the contribution of Rod Rhodes to the research on networks. I will focus on networks as a typology of state/society relations and as a particular form of governance. It is not only here that Rhodes has left his deepest mark; most research on networks still falls in one of the two sub-fields. The typology of policy networks, which he developed with David Marsh more than…

CORE EXECUTIVE STUDIES TWO DECADES ON

The concept of the ‘core executive’ was introduced by Dunleavy and Rhodes in 1990. Two decades on, what is the state of core executive studies? This article argues that the language of the study of central government has been transformed. In addition, there is now a much broader consideration of the central government space, incorporating ministers, civil servants, and so on. Within core execut…

THE WHITEHALL PROGRAMME AND AFTER : RESEARCHING GOVERNMENT IN TIME OF GOVERNANCE

This article revisits the Whitehall Programme and Rod Rhodes' crucial role in setting it up. It examines the research commissioned for the Programme and how research in this field has changed since the mid 1990s. It confirms that research on Whitehall has become more diverse and specialist – reflecting its apparent hollowing-out – but that research employing a longer historical perspective does…

GOVERNMENT : A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT?

Government – its institutions, its working, its constitutional controls – is hugely important, not just as a subject of gossip or history in the making but as a discipline. Rod Rhodes' achievement in pioneering new ways of mapping and analysing developments inside government from the inside, and in coordinating so many different academic studies, was a remarkable model of the sort of research i…

RHODES' CONTRIBUTION TO GOVERNANCE THEORY : PRAISE, CRITICISM AND THE FUTURE …

This article discusses Rod Rhodes' contribution to governance theory. Rod Rhodes' work on governance has been much quoted. He has contributed to setting a new governance agenda and to an ongoing governance debate. This debate has also had an impact on political practice. However, as this paper argues, Rhodes' definition of governance is problematic in that it is narrowly identified with network…

NOT ODIOUS BUT ONEROUS : COMPARATIVE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This paper asks, first, how have comparative publications (academic ‘outputs’) developed during the past three decades; second, what theories have been in play, and, third, how can we best explain the picture of comparative PA that is thus revealed? The trajectories of themes and theories are set within a wider story of the development of networks and academic communities. Changes in practition…

IT'S PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, ROD, BUT MAYBE NOT AS WE KNOW IT : BRITISH PUBLIC…

This paper assesses what happened to academic public administration (PA) in Britain in the 2000s in the light of Rod Rhodes' gloomy prognostications about the future of the subject in the late 1990s. It argues that British PA had such a good decade in the 2000s, in funding, output, academic-practitioner interaction and institutional developments, that it could almost be said to have ‘never had …

THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES

The study of public administration in the United States is large in terms of the number of academic programmes, the range of journal publications, and the number of scholars. Its scholarship attracts attention from all over the globe. At the same time it is a public administration that is clearly embedded in a specific national culture, just as anywhere else. Three of the main challenges includ…

ELITE ETHNOGRAPHIES : POTENTIAL, PITFALLS AND PROSPECTS FOR GETTING ‘UP CLO…

This article celebrates Rod Rhodes' use of ethnography to study political elites ‘up close and personal’. Initially Rhodes' work is contextualized within the development of political ethnography more generally, before his ethnographies of ‘Everyday life in a Ministry’ are reviewed, illustrating the potential of ethnography to research policy-making elites. This review highlights epistemological…

INTERPRETING INTERPRETIVISM INTERPRETING INTERPRETATIONS : THE NEW HERMENEUTI…

This article seeks to gauge the nature, distinctiveness and significance of the ‘interpretivist turn’ in public administration and political science more broadly. It considers the various interpretations and, indeed, misinterpretations to which this new hermeneutics of public administration has given rise, its relationship to (genuinely and seemingly) cognate perspectives (notably constructivis…

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AS STORYTELLING

This paper elucidates the interpretive approach to public administration that Professor Rhodes and I have developed over the last ten years. It defends the importance of storytelling in governance. The early studies of governance often drew on modernist empiricism and policy network theory to argue that public sector reforms had created a differentiated polity. While this governance literature …

THINKING ON : A CAREER IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This article provides a brief intellectual history of my journey from traditional public administration through modernist-empiricism to an interpretive approach and its associated research themes; a story of how I got to where I am. I do so to provide the context for a statement of where I stand now and key themes in my research; a story of where I go from here. I have a vaulting ambition: to e…

Explaining Policy Bandwagons : Organized Interest Mobilization and Cascades o…

Are all issues subject to the same attention from organized interests? If not, why not? This article utilizes data on organized interest mobilization in Scottish public policy to examine the pattern of engagement by policy participants across a large number of policy issues. It finds a heavily skewed pattern of mobilization: Most issues attract little attention, while a few issues account for t…

The Durability of EU Civil Service Policy in Central and Eastern Europe after…

This article examines the post-accession durability of EU civil service policy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). Civil service professionalization was a condition for EU membership but the European Commission has no particular sanctions available if CEECs reverse pre-accession reforms after gaining membership. Comparing eight CEECs that joined the EU in 2004, the article finds that post-ac…

Civil Service Reforms in Italy : The Importance of External Endorsement and A…

The traditional portrait of civil servants in Italy, as well as in most other countries, has always been one of not particularly efficient employees yet have the benefit of a secure job and can look forward to a comfortable retirement package. In order to change this image, public management reforms have largely focused on civil servants since the 1990s. However, many academics and practitioner…

The Internationalization of Early Childhood Education and Care Issues : Frami…

Edition

Volume 24, Issue 2, April 2011, pages 285–309

ISBN/ISSN

09521895

Collation

-

Series Title

Governance

Call Number

-

The Power of the Purse : Supranational Entrepreneurship, Financial Incentives…

This article shows how the European Commission cultivates policy shifts toward a particular idea of a common European Higher Education Area by using its considerable financial leverage. By making European Union (EU) funding dependent on grant recipients meeting certain strategically selected conditions, the Commission creates new incentive structures for domestic actors, in this case higher edu…