The ‘Ideational Layer’ of Intergovernmental Management

Some researchers have drawn attention to the interaction between the ide­ational and institutional elements of federal systems as a source of change (for example, Beland and Lecours 2011; Broschek 2011).

Such motivations are primarily derived from the theoretical distinction between the political and bureaucratic dimensions of federalism that I have alluded to. This distinction is a daily operational parameter for those work­ing on intergovernmental management. They describe two slightly different aspects of the federal bureaucracy’s distinctiveness. One is normative, empha­sizing the elevation of the bureaucratic process out of the political mire, and placing this work in the context of a broader Westminster set of public service values. The second is descriptive, rather than normative, seeing the bureau­cratic domain as a primarily processual, or instrumental, separation of the process:

[T]his is one thing officials can do really well... You can have a private conversation or an informal conversation where you talk about what really are the issues around this matter, what would a good solution look like, what are we trying to achieve and then what are the policy or the financial or the other impediments and where would you find a way of dealing with them. You can have that sort of conversation without com­mitting your government or without letting your government down in a negotiation. (Interviewee: commonwealth line department)

A large part of the craft of intergovernmental management is about managing (and exploiting) the tension between the political and bureaucratic domains of federalism alluded to above.

Not surprisingly, then, government and ministerial policy directions were frequently cited as a constraint on policy development and negotiation. What is surprising, however, is the extent to which, within the Westminster conven­tion of serving the minister, officials were prepared to exercise their agency in using that bureaucratic space to pursue public-value outcomes they perceived as distinct from the goals of their political executives. This might occur, for example, through the negotiating process:

I could hear thejunior staff behind me flicking vigorously through the negotiating mandate and I heard, ‘He does know we've got red lines, doesn't he?'. I was sufficiently confident that this was in the national interest if we got that outcome. Did it fit within the negotiating brief? Well, probably not. (Interviewee: state central department)

Or through drafting processes:

I'm a good public lawyer and I knew what I was doing and I inserted provisions in that bill that I'm not sure were understood above me, and I didn't necessarily bring them to the attention of those above me because I knew that they would be negotiated away. (Interviewee: com­monwealth line department)

Or through ongoing, de-politicized communications among officials:

We’d have outcomes from the intergovernmental meeting, but we didn’t report the outcomes to the Treasurer.

One official I interviewed found a particularly useful (and very Australian!) way of characterizing the boundaries on such agency as ‘swimming between the flags’, the metaphor implying that as long as officials negotiated or oper­ated within boundaries set by the political executive or senior departmental officials they had a degree of discretion as to means and ends. Many interview­ees used this metaphor to explore how such agency worked:

Part of the reason why I’ve been able to make such a big impact in this role is because the flags are way left of centre, whereas in previous jobs I’ve had to do approach every issue or job within a much narrower boundary. It’s understanding the parameters of what you’re working in as defined by the relationships as opposed to defined by the constraints put on you by legislation or a funding envelope or an existing engagement structure. (Interviewee: commonwealth line department)

‘Swimming between the flags’, in terms of adopting a negotiating strategy or advising on one, is not a passive exercise; determining where the ‘flags’ should be set was a frequent exercise in personal agency, built up over time, to develop a good understanding of why other jurisdictions are likely to adopt a particu­lar position (much of this information is, as I have noted, shared informally beforehand).

Many officials commented on the importance of trust as the sine qua non for carrying out their intergovernmental functions. Although inter- and intra- jurisdictional cooperation is affected by many other political and institutional factors beyond the control of the individuals concerned, developing the means and harnessing the opportunities to share information while bracketing polit­ical and organizational interests was something they saw as central to the success of their work.

High rates of turnover among one's colleagues were identified by many offi­cials as a barrier to the development of such trust. Turnover in personnel not only disrupts the establishment of personal relationships generally, but also makes it more difficult for the bureaucracy to provide the ‘corporate memory' in support of the ministerial councils, introducing the risk that established interpretation of earlier decisions taken in those forums might be abruptly revised by ‘newcomers'. Trust requires a shared expertise based on longstand­ing experience in a particular policy field.

The interviews explored one of Schmidt's main contentions about discur­sive institutionalism: how discourse as content and process operates at three levels of generality and influence, which she categorizes as ‘policies, programs, and philosophies' (Schmidt 2008, p. 306). As potential areas for the exercise of agency, policy ideas are more labile, or at least open to change, than pro­grammatic ideas, and both policy and program ideas change more rapidly than the more fundamental philosophies from which they emerge (Schmidt 2011). Differentiating between these discursive forms and levels allows for different rates of change to be recognized, and suggests at least the possibility of a sys­temic capability for incremental improvement and individual creativity, even if overall change in the federal system is glacial and highly exposed to political interests and dynamics.

One of the more surprising findings was the clarity with which a set of distinct ‘discursive styles' emerged from my analysis. These discursive styles reflect particular values individual officials identify with, which help them to position themselves in the federal system, in terms of how they describe their personal goals and strategies; the issues which they identify as being most important to them in their work; how they understand the salient problems in intergovernmental management they are dealing with; and how they select and operationalize the solutions available to them.

Such discursive alignment by individual officials contributes to the overall stability and transmission of the system, reflecting the notion of discourse as order-sustaining:

Cultural systems of knowledge, values, and practices, just like systems of relations between differently located social groups, are recurrently repro­duced far more often than they are transformed; they must be considered as a form of social structure, a pattern of social life that tends to remain stable over time.

Hays 1994, p. 69

Consequently, officials exercise agency to shore up or support the system, as well as to change it; as I will discuss further below, they become change agents by adopting and applying a different discourse from the dominant one in the particular organization, network, policy field, and so on in which they are working.

I should emphasize that, although most interviewees displayed a dominant discursive style, no interviewee adopted any one value set exclusively; with some exceptions, their discussion tended to move between the dominant and at least one other style, and I would characterize the differences between the styles as a matter of shading rather than hard borders. Nevertheless, in terms of the frequency and coherence of the key words and ideas they expressed, six discursive styles were apparent.

3.2.1 Partisans

The key focus for this discourse is on the way the federal system is an arena for playing out different interests in the federal system, particularly where there are clashes and disagreements between jurisdictions and/or organizations. Intergovernmental management is very much a zero-sum game in terms of resources and interests; ‘holding the line’ is frequently mentioned in terms of how tied and untied funding is allocated or performance reporting agreed.

The factors that are important to us are getting as much money out of the commonwealth as possible; policy autonomy, which is us as a state decid­ing what’s the best way to achieve the investment outcome; concepts around state sovereignty as well which play out in how much reporting we’re going to do.

This discursive style reflects the concerns of rational choice theory, with its emphasis on how individual strategic choices are constrained by an exog­enous set of preferences and interests. Not surprisingly, then, the officials coded against this style nominated noticeably fewer instances of personal agency and impact than those coded against the other styles. The venues and processes of negotiation and bargaining are at the forefront of how the federal system is perceived through this discursive lens and form the core concerns in the practice of intergovernmental management by this group of officials:

I’ll call a meeting of my colleagues in other states and territories and we’ll have a discussion, so what do we need to do to get across the line to get a shared view, because the commonwealth, they’ve got tried and true tricks, like trying to divide and conquer and do other things. (Interviewee: state line department)

As an example of how change occurs through the adoption of a counter-style, one senior state official noted the shift when a commonwealth official intro­duced the policy-driver perspective into a context where the partisan style had been prevailing:

He had the benefit of not being burdened with much commonwealth­state experience and he said to me, “Look, I don't even have any attitudes on many of these things.”. In fact, that was sort of disarming but quite helpful because it meant that we could have a collective conversation which wasn't just rehearsing old positions, fights and battles. It was, ‘Let's go on a collective journey together of understanding what could be mutually beneficial. Let's help ourselves out.' (Interviewee: state central department)

3.2.2 Networkers

This is, in a way, the counter-style to the partisan's clash of interests. Here the practice of intergovernmental management is seen largely as a process of building and maintaining formal and informal interpersonal networks and relationships:

structures are a tool. They're necessary but not sufficient. Even if your structures aren't great, if you have the right players around the room and the right relationships and the right windows of political opportunity to do various things, if you have those ingredients—that actually is more important than whether you have the right structures in place. Structures only get you so far. (Interviewee: state central department)

Unlike the partisan's emphasis on negotiation and bargaining, this value set is focused on interpersonal affect, relationships and trust. The networker dislikes the conflicts and hierarchies that other types welcome, or at least are prepared to adopt for their purposes. Agency, rather, is exercised with a particular focus on peer to peer, ‘just pick up the phone' horizontal inter-jurisdictional relation­ships. The introduction of a network-building discourse to an organization or policy area where it is not widely supported often has to overcome consider­able organizational opposition, and consequently can require significant per­sonal resilience and effort.

I had to argue quite strongly for about eighteen months to two years to my manager that this network was still worthwhile, and that it was bring­ing the organisation and the unit that I’m in benefit. He could see that it was bringing the organisation benefit, but he didn’t share the same view that we should be running it anymore. And he also wanted to know where the authority for it was coming now that that standing committee had disbanded. (Interviewee: state line department)

3.2.3 Agreement Makers

This discursive style focuses on the agreements for effecting conditional and unconditional intergovernmental transfers between the commonwealth and state governments. Not surprisingly, in view of their specialized role in admin­istering the fiscal framework, Treasury officials at the commonwealth and state levels most commonly expressed this set of values.

The intergovernmental management practices characterized by this style emphasize ‘guardianship’ and the provision of guidance to other organizations in the federal system. A key difference between this style and the partisan style lies in its downplaying of the importance of ‘sides’: what is important is ensur­ing that the principles and aspirations embodied in formal agreements are upheld.

An earlier coag meeting had agreed and the Prime Minister had agreed that there would be a national partnership^[50] on [a specific policy] by a certain date. So I was determined to try and make that happen. The Prime Minister had said this and made this commitment, and I felt that it was important that that commitment be honoured. (Interviewee: common­wealth line department).

Accordingly, agency was often described in instrumental terms, as applying a mixture of art and science in the design of agreements, or ‘problem solving in a way that suits everybody’.

Of the six styles, this was the one most clearly linked to a particular group of tasks in intergovernmental management and arising from the discourses at work in that community; in this case, the central agencies responsible for agreement negotiations and maintenance.

When I first started doing intergov there was this whole concept of col­laborative federalism being developed and let's have a national reform agenda. We set up the intergovernmental agreement on federal finan­cial relations. We were going to do big reform in important areas, and then the commonwealth was going to invest in reform through national partnerships as well as provide stable funding. We were going to agree to report on things through coag Reform Council. Like, it was going to be great (Interviewee: state line department)

3.2.4 Processors

Unlike the ‘policy drivers' discussed below, this discursive style focuses on means, rather than ends. The assumption here is that good processes allow the outcomes, which are vague and unpredictable, to look after themselves.

You need to manage processes as well. You need to be quite skilled. It's kind of like parliamentary process. There's people who are very skilled in thinking, ‘If we take this process step to navigate it through the coag- type system, we're more likely to get this outcome or that outcome.' (Interviewee: state central department)

Good processes are more important than the good relationships valued by net­workers. The structures in which process-focused change agents operate tend to be the departments and agencies. Change agents personally intervene to fix problems, to test positions beforehand, to ensure there are no surprises for the political leaders. Highlighting process tends to downplay the role of personal agency, which is exercised in the context of the efficiency and integrity of pro­cesses, rather than the attainment of outcomes:

actual ministerial meetings themselves are rituals. Everyone knows what's going to happen and everyone knows what their position has been. That's all been negotiated beforehand. I've done a good job if I have taken steps to ensure that there are no surprises for either, say, my secre­tary or my minister, and I've taken steps to either negotiate to get part of a consensus ourselves or to move our positioning to be part of consensus or have gathered the intel. (Interviewee: state line department)

3.2.5 Policy Drivers

The management practices and the personal agency this style brings to the fore are about breaking through the constraints imposed by resources, frameworks and organizational boundaries. These change agents are not just boundary spanners, they’re boundary smashers; what the processors see as important struc­tural devices, they see as obstacles which they deliberately set out to remove or demolish. There is an impatience here with the processes and formalities that processors consider vital to a successful outcome.

Last year [the officials’ committee] was going through the various ele­ments of federation and we were getting to, ‘What’s next? Shall we have a session on health? We’ll get someone to draft a paper on health.’ I said, ‘No, let’s not do that. I wish you wouldn’t do that. Why don’t we get just someone to give us a presentation on the issues of health and we can discuss it?’ In previous commonwealth-state negotiations then there would probably have been a huge discussion about, ‘Well, who should give the presentation? If it’s from a state will that skew it and whatever.’ (Interviewee: state central department)

There was a clear tendency for department heads to display this style more often than those below them in the hierarchy, giving rise to the proposition that change agents at the head of organizations are more likely to derive their motivation from specific policy goals, whereas those lower down the organiza­tion are more likely to base their change agency on systemic and perhaps more widely and structurally embedded frameworks.

The structures in which policy drivers operate tend to be the working groups that carry out the work to support the higher-level formal councils. As a result, this group displayed the most distinct personal agency.

I’ll be seeing the Deputy Secretary [of the commonwealth department] because I could go to the secretary but I won’t get the outcome I want. I want change. The person who actually I know who owns the issue is the Deputy Secretary. And it won’t be on record; we’re going to have a conver­sation about whether we can do this differently. (Interviewee: state line department)

3.2.6 Knowledge Workers

This final discursive style is perhaps less of a stand-alone style in its own right than an instrumental set of norms and values drawn on in support of all the other styles.^[51] However, given that role, and because its content was sufficiently coherent and distinct from the other styles, I consider it warrants separate discussion.

This style prioritizes data and information as the currency of intergovern­mental collaboration, with policy evidence as the outcome. Here, the discourse is about the value of knowledge, as an outcome of data and information pro­cesses and flows; for example, many officials commented on the importance of data and information in helping to frame or structure problems and issues, provide opportunities for policy learning and transfer between jurisdictions, or to support the work of federal councils and working groups.

[Senior official in another state] is sending her crew down to look at what we're doing around family violence. And I'm sending my crew up to her state to look at what they're doing on supporting kids in care quite differ­ently. So we have an agreement that we're going to share our knowledge and see what our states can pick up from each other's reforms. That hap­pens very frequently. (Interviewee: state central department)

The structures in which knowledge workers operate tend to be epistemic com­munities, meetings of experts, and so on. Agency in this style is frequently exer­cised through the establishment or conduct of informal cross-jurisdictional working groups to facilitate policy projects and information gathering.

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