Implementing Joined‐Up Government: Lessons from the Australian Social Inclusion Agenda

Abstract

‘Joined‐up government’ (JUG) approaches have emerged in many industrialized countries as a means to tackle persistent ‘wicked’ public and social policy problems (Pollit ). Despite this, limited evidence exists concerning their implementation or effectiveness. ‘JUG’ was popularized by the Blair Government (UK) with its focus on addressing social exclusion. Following in these footsteps, in 2007 the Australian Government launched the Social Inclusion Agenda: a joined‐up approach to improving the wellbeing of all Australians and addressing disadvantage. This paper focuses on findings from a study that examined the SIA as a natural experiment in JUG. Drawing on the implementation experiences of federal policy makers, our findings lend weight to emerging research into JUG that suggests that compatibility and consistency between goals, instruments, and processes is critical to success. We argue that closer attention needs to be given to developing ‘supportive architecture’ around joined‐up initiatives to facilitate implementation.

Images of Coordination: How Implementing Organizations Perceive Coordination Arrangements

“…As governments increasingly focus on the coordination of policies across sectoral and organizational boundaries, the academic literature expands accordingly, using different labels, such as policy coordination (Bouckaert, Peters, and Verhoest ; Cejudo and Michel ; Egeberg and Trondal ; Lægreid et al ; Peters ); policy integration, referring to the design and implementation of cross‐sectoral policy strategy (Candel and Biesbroek ; Cejudo and Michel ; Metcalfe ; Tosun and Lang ); and cross‐agency or intragovernmental collaboration (O'Flynn ; Wilkins, Phillimore, and Gilchrist ). The academic literature also refers to more practitioner‐based concepts such as joined‐up government (Bogdanor ; Carey, Mcloughlin, and Crammond ; Karré, van der Steen, and van Twist ) and whole‐of‐government (Carayannopoulos ; Christensen and Lægreid ; Trein, Meyer, and Maggetti 2019). Just like whole‐of‐government strategies, joined‐up government initiatives aim to align activities across organizational boundaries toward particular goals of public policy without removing the boundaries themselves (Carey, Crammond, and Riley ; Pollitt ).…”

“…Developed by Christensen and Lægreid in a much‐cited 2007 article (1,020 Google scholar citations and 334 Web of Science citations as of October 2019) and subsequently expanded (Christensen et al ; Christensen, Lægreid, and Rykkja ), the fourth framework integrates the core ideas of the aforementioned three frameworks, but it explicitly acknowledges that coordination can happen through instrumental as well as institutional interventions (Bouckaert, Peters, and Verhoest ; Candel and Biesbroek ; Carey, Mcloughlin, and Crammond ; Klijn and Koppenjan ; Tosun and Lang ; Trein, Meyer, and Maggetti ). In doing so, it defines four theoretical perspectives on coordination that are anchored in institutional theories (Christensen et al ; Scott ).…”

“…Moreover, the framework is specifically geared toward whole‐of‐government coordination. It has been applied extensively in recent (comparative) studies on coordination arrangements (e.g., Cappo and Verity ; Carayannopoulos ; Carey and Crammond ; Carey, Mcloughlin, and Crammond ; Castelnovo and Sorrentino ; Indset and Stokke ; Karré, van der Steen, and van Twist ; Nordbeck and Steurer ).…”

“…The instrumental perspective builds on Simon's bounded rationality and follows the logic of consequence, arguing that political and administrative leaders use structural and procedural instruments to channel attention and decision‐making behavior (Carey, Mcloughlin, and Crammond ; Christensen et al ; Indset and Stokke ; Klijn and Koppenjan ; Lægreid and Rykkja ). This instrumental perspective is divided into a hierarchical‐instrumental and a negotiation‐instrumental type (Christensen et al ; March and Olsen ).…”

What is policy and where do we look for it when we want to research it?

“…This requires a more in-depth qualitative examination at the ‘end point’ of policy delivery as suggested by Pawson 18. There are examples of this work to be found in public policy on social inclusion and welfare delivery 73 86 87…”