School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemChoosing one’s history wisely: network governance and the question of institutional performance( 2004)How do governments get from one place to another? This is the question that lies at the centre of all discussions of institutional performance. In this paper I review some recent work on new forms of partnership and collaborative governance which suggest that a number of countries have recently begun to break from their previous structures and to make significant shifts in the way actors are engaged in public institutions. The paper will ask whether this can be understood in terms of standard notions of institutional theory (path dependence, systems theory, cultural theory and so on) and if not, why not.
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ItemThe reform that never ends: quasi-markets and employment services in Australia(Kluwer Law International, 2005)
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ItemExplaining the Normative Underpinnings of Local Governance(University of New South Wales Press, 2005)
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ItemThe baby and the Bath water: The impact of American-Style Sctiovation Policies on Families(Melbourne University Press, 2005)
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ItemSteering, efficiency and partnership: the Australian quasi-market for public employment services(DJOF Publishers, 2005)
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ItemTHEORIZING THE UNIVERSITY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM: DISTINCTIONS, IDENTITIES, EMERGENCIES(WILEY, 2006-08)Abstract Universities currently face new environmental demands and significant internal complexities that appear to challenge their traditional modes of work and organization — and thus their very identities. In this essay, Mark Considine argues that the prospect of such changes requires us to reflect carefully upon the theoretical and normative underpinnings of universities and to delineate the structures and processes through which they might seek to negotiate their identities. Considine re‐theorizes the university as a higher education system composed by distinctions and networks acting through an important class of boundary objects. He moves beyond an environmental analysis, asserting that systems are best theorized as cultural practices based upon actors making and protecting important kinds of distinctions. Thus, the university system must be investigated as a knowledge‐based binary for dividing knowledge from other things. This approach, in turn, produces an identity‐centering (cultural) model of the system that assumes universities must perform two different acts of distinction to exist: first, they must distinguish themselves from other systems (such as the economy, organized religion, and the labor market), and, second, they must operate successfully in a chosen resource environment. Ultimately, Considine argues that while environmental problems (such as cuts in government grants) may generate periodic crises, threats within identities produce emergencies generating a radical kind of problematic for actor networks.
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ItemInnovation and innovators inside government: From institutions to networks(WILEY, 2007-10)Innovation and innovators inhabit an institutional space, which is partially defined by formal positions and partially by informal networks. This article investigates the role of politicians and bureaucrats in fostering innovation inside government and provides an empirical explanation of who the innovators are, whether this is mostly an attribute of position or role, or mostly an effect of certain forms of networking. The study uses original data collected from 11 municipal governments in Australia in order to define and describe the normative underpinnings of innovation inside government and to show the importance of advice and strategic information networks among politicians and senior bureaucrats (n = 947). Social network analysis is combined with conventional statistical analysis in order to demonstrate the comparative importance of networks in explaining who innovates.
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ItemMaking Public Policy: Institutions, Actors, Strategies(Polity Press, 2005)