Preface

The research that led to this book was inspired by my interest in public management theory and practice during a long career serving the Parliament of Australia and the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory. As a senior administrator, I faced constant choices between the individual and collective interests of members of parliament, the institutional interests of parliamentary officials and the public interest. Was I a guardian of parliamentary traditions and practices or an agent of change in the pursuit of efficiency and public value? If the answer was both, how would I navigate a path between these different goals? And was this dilemma different for an Australian Parliamentary Service official than for any public administrator? Why is parliament considered unique and why do parliaments appear to resist or even defy attempts to manage them more effectively? Business as usual, an emphasis on efficiency and routine, and a low appetite for risk often seemed like the least controversial choices.

My attempt at answering these questions followed the award of a Senior Executive Fellowship by the Australian Public Service Commission in 1999 to study the impact of public management reforms on parliaments in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Singapore. In the research for this book, completed more than 20 years later, I have explored new questions and analysed evidence from an array of sources in an attempt to provide a greater understanding of what it means to manage a parliament effectively, and how the beliefs and actions of a parliament’s many actors can work against each other to diminish its reputation and lessen the public’s trust. By viewing this evidence in the light of public management approaches, rather than through traditional lenses of parliamentary reform, I have sought to present new perspectives on parliamentary management to academic researchers and parliamentary practitioners in the interests of advancing this essential institution.

My later study took place between 2015 and 2019 and was confined to two national parliaments: those in the United Kingdom and Australia. Most of the events I have recorded occurred within this time frame. The topic of parliamentary administration has, however, become increasingly dynamic. Events post 2019 included the re-election of the Johnson government with a large majority in the United Kingdom and its withdrawal from the European Union; the global Covid-19 outbreak, which disrupted the operation of all parliaments; and, in Australia, the damaging exposure of a crisis in parliamentary culture. These unfolding events, I suggest, have not changed the key arguments in this book. If anything, they have magnified them.

For centuries, scholars and practitioners have studied parliament and its reform from an institutional perspective, but few have addressed the internal relationships among parliamentary actors, their competing beliefs or their influence on parliament’s effectiveness. The research leading to this book was precipitated by evidence of a dissensus in management priorities among officials and members, a purported decline in public confidence in democracy and a lack of public engagement with parliament. I used a qualitative, interpretative and exploratory methodology to compare the two parliaments. This involved spending a lot of time in both institutions holding informal discussions with colleagues, analysing a range of literature in parliamentary and university libraries and conducting more than 90 formal interviews with parliamentary officials, members of parliament and other parliamentary actors, exploring dilemmas relating to governance, management and procedural and cultural change.

Initially, I wanted to test my perception that ‘management’ as a concept was considered less important than ‘procedure’, especially by members themselves. I wondered whether structural differences in the organisation of management and procedural functions in the two parliaments had contributed to the level of understanding and appreciation of the importance of the management role. The ‘simple’ answers appeared to be ‘yes’ and ‘not necessarily’. The real answers were far more complex and contestable. My extensive analysis of hours of interview transcripts, historical and recent management reports and parliamentary literature revealed much about the beliefs and actions of parliamentary actors and commentators and uncovered simmering tensions between the upholders and would-be reformers of parliamentary traditions. In conjunction, I studied the trajectory of public management reforms in both the United Kingdom and Australia to better understand their relevance to parliamentary management, including how they have been applied in the past and whether more contemporary approaches might be applied in the future.

The research drew four main conclusions, which have implications for the future management of parliaments. First, parliament is overwhelmingly an agonistic institution and competition between parliamentary actors for status, resources, influence and control has pervaded its administration and impeded reform. Second, in the context of parliament’s role as a deliberative forum and broker of ideas, managing public expectations remains a principal challenge for its administrators. Third, parliament’s claims to be unique and a consequent emphasis on differences rather than similarities with other public organisations have reduced the potential for learning from others. Fourth, a lack of constructive engagement with administrative issues from members of parliament has contributed to a vacuum of leadership in an institution in which no one has overall authority.

This book may have raised more questions than it has answered. Readers may have different interpretations of the events described within it. I hope those questions and differences will contribute to ongoing discussion about the vital role of parliament in our democratic system and how it might be more effectively managed into the future.