The Craft of Governing

The contribution of Patrick Weller to Australian political science

R.A.W. Rhodes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000247947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'Bargaining and puzzling; power and thought; dealing and agonising; compromise and commitment. These are two sides of political practitioners whether politician, public servant or campaigner. Understand the interplay and we can, just sometimes, make sense of the real world we seek to interpret.'Patrick Weller's observation comes from half a century of contemplating politics in action. The question of how government works lies at the heart of political science, and it has also been the career focus of this pioneer in the field. The Craft of Governing offers a tribute to the contribution of Patrick Weller to Australian political science, with chapters from leading political commentators including Michelle Grattan, Peter Shergold, Bob Jackson and James Walter. Contributors consider the role of the prime minister, approaches to studying executive government, the continuing significance of senior public servants and the nature of leadership in public bureaucracies. They also reflect on how insights from the study of domestic public policy can be applied to international organisations, challenges faced by Westminster democracies and approaches to political biography. The Craft of Governing is an invaluable resource for readers interested in approaches to studying politics and the development of political science as a discipline.

PART 1 INTRODUCTION

1 REMEMBERING AND WITNESSING

Glyn Davis and R.A.W. Rhodes

What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.

—Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Retirement and its accompanying festschrift provide an opportunity to reflect on a colleague’s contribution over the years, and we do so in the following chapters. More than reflection, a festschrift is also a chance to indulge in both nostalgia and friendship. Of course, it would be inappropriate for any Australian, especially when one of us is of English extraction, to become fulsome let alone emotional. So, we remember two meetings.

Rod Rhodes first met Pat Weller at the University of Essex in the 1980s, but it was a fleeting encounter. Pat came to see Professor Anthony King, an Essex grandee, and I was the substitute. We next met at the Public Administration Committee annual conference held at York on 3–5 September 1990. Or to be more precise we met at 2:00 pm in the Deramore Arms in Heslington after the conference. I have the diary. The result was an invitation for me and my family to go to Australia, which we did in July and August 1991. I reciprocated by inviting John Wanna and Jenny Craik to the University of York for a sabbatical term. With Pat, in April 1992, they attended a workshop I organised on the ‘Changing Role of the Executive in British Government’. We were to collaborate for the next twenty years.

We assembled a distinguished cast of characters, including Patrick Dunleavy, Peter Hennessy, and Philip Norton from the UK and Rudy Andeweg and Guy Peters from overseas as well as Pat and John. The Cabinet Office sent an observer. The aim was to identify key areas for future research and develop a research bid to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).¹ It was a good workshop. So often at these events, discussion can be stilted but there was much bonhomie and badinage as well as intellectual debate. After one exchange in which the participants were clearly talking past one another, David Marsh made a brief yet pungent observation: ‘we have just heard from the two people who have made the greatest contribution to British politics, Peter despite his complete lack of theory and Patrick despite his excess of it’. At the time, I had recently published my first paper on the British executive with Patrick Dunleavy (Dunleavy and Rhodes 1990). I did not realise that I would revisit executive studies throughout the rest of my career or, indeed, that many of these adventures would be with Pat Weller.

Glyn Davis met Pat Weller in late 1981 after driving from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. I was a fourth year honours student interested in undertaking a PhD. There was a meeting arranged with a distinguished Professor at the Research School of Social Science (RSSS) at ANU, but someone suggested I also call by the Faculty of Arts.

As it turned out, Political Science in RSSS was deadly quiet. Office doors were closed, notice boards empty, the professor faintly bored by speaking to yet another potential doctoral recruit. By contrast, the Faculty was noisy and even chaotic, as students crowded the corridors and staff gathered in small knots to gossip. It was an easy choice but the chance was nearly lost when I was invited to meet senior lecturer Patrick Weller. I dutifully outlined my plan for a doctoral study of how prime ministers govern in a Westminster environment. Dr Weller smiled and said ‘It’s a good proposal. Indeed it’s an excellent proposal, which is why I’ve just finished writing a book on the same topic. Got any other ideas?’

Fortunately, another project on the political independence of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation caught Pat’s eye, and I was soon working in the office opposite. So, we developed a supervisor–student relationship that became a warm friendship over the decades that followed.

THE EVENTS

To talk to Pat about his impending retirement is to walk a tightrope over a deep canyon while he works the wind machine. Lacking a firm date, we had had no choice but to follow our best ‘guesstimate’ and we opted for his 70th birthday. We arranged a workshop entitled the ‘The Craft of Governing’ to which we invited his co-authors and other experts in his several fields of expertise. It was held at the Sir Samuel Griffith Centre, Nathan Campus, Griffith University, on 9 August 2013. We covered his major areas of research; prime ministers and cabinet, the public service, history and biography, international organisations, and comparative government. The book that follows is organised by these categories. The book will be presented to him on 13 September 2014, the day Pat reaches his eighth decade.

Work is important but we did not travel to Brisbane just to discuss Pat’s writing. There was also the dinner. We held it in the Webb Centre on Southbank with the Brisbane River and the CBD providing a striking backdrop. There were many highlights and we can only note a few. Thérèse Rein, wife of then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and a successful international business leader in her own right, gave a charming speech about Pat Weller as a teacher and inspiration to students. Dr Kay Kane not only drew the line drawing that graces the frontispiece of this book but also painted Pat’s portrait. It was presented at the dinner. Then, with much laughter, John Kane continued a tradition begun on Pat’s 60th birthday party with Beatlesque tributes, leading a group named for the occasion Patrick Weller’s Only Part-Time Band. On this occasion, he accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and sang a witty ditty that played much on the political biography of Kevin Rudd Pat has been writing for some years:

We all know that in this life all good things must end
Comes a time to put away the strife, accept what fate may send
Well I know a feller, name of Pat Weller who’s planning to retire
Give up his labour, pack up his sabre and leave the field of fire

(Chorus)
Oh I’ll believe it, I will believe it
Because I know life must go on
But I’ll believe it, I will believe it
I will believe it when he’s gone

No more to haunt the corridors of N72
No more to trouble Michael Powell, as he was liable to

Griffith shall free him and I can just see him strumming on a lyre
Or doing the gardening, his arteries hardening, just waiting to expire

(Chorus)
(Bridge)
Oh well you know it’s not gonna happen, too much left to do
ARC grants to be winning, that walk to Katmandu

But he’ll have time to take another look at prime ministerial trends
And time to finish that book, you know the tale that never ends
Of Kevin 07 and Kevin 11 and Kevin once again
The rise and fall, and fall and rise, and fall of a PM

(Chorus)

The former guitarist of New World surpassed his own greatest hit, ‘Tom-Tom Turnaround’ (1971)², but we do not anticipate a new recording contract any time soon. The laughter at the dinner was as characteristic of the event as the appreciation expressed of Pat’s research at the workshop.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS

Glyn Davis and Rod Rhodes open the volume with a biography of Pat Weller as political scientist and contemporary political historian. Their chapter traces Weller’s unfolding academic career, focusing on his key publications and projects. The chapter closes with a discussion of the intellectual themes running through his work, notably historical imagination, Realpolitik as his emploted explanatory framework, and the importance of comparative and international studies.

Part 2 of the book focuses on the role and study of the executive in Westminster systems of government. Michelle Grattan’s chapter pays homage to Weller’s work on prime ministers, noting its pioneering nature and continuing relevance. Then, she explores the recent tumult surrounding the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, suggesting each had skills the other needed. While Rudd and Gillard were not the only Australian prime ministers forced from the position by their own party, their particular experiences offer useful lessons into the workings of executive government. She concludes Rudd and Gillard were both victims of each other and of themselves.

Rod Rhodes discusses the several approaches to studying executive government. He observes that Pat Weller has made a major contribution to Australian prime ministerial and cabinet studies, filling key gaps. He then builds on Weller’s contribution by exploring ways to extend the study of executive government. He argues there has been a convergence around the idea of ‘court politics’, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this focus.

Part 3 of the book turns to the study of the public service. Peter Shergold draws on his experience as a former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet for the Australian Government between 2003 and 2008. He presents a lively analysis of senior public servants— the ‘mandarins’ of popular parlance. He explores the role mandarins play in the craft of democratic governance. Throughout the chapter, he argues that the potency of Weller’s work comes from its interdisciplinary character, where insights from political science, administrative studies and history are mobilised, and his extensive interviewing of the key players. While Shergold agrees with Weller’s observation that, while the power of senior public servants is in decline in Australia, nonetheless they remain crucial to effective government.

Evert Lindquist provides a detailed treatment of how prime ministers have managed the machinery of government in Australia and across different Westminster jurisdictions. The chapter reviews key research in the field, situates Weller’s work and identifies areas for further study. He argues that a characteristic of Pat’s work is the dialectic between ‘practitioner logic, which he has always taken seriously and always tried to ascertain and convey to others; and academic logic, which sought to chronicle, measure, and explain decisions at varying levels of analysis.’ As a result Lindquist suggests, Pat should be understood as a ‘pracademic’.

Part 4 of the book focuses on Pat’s historical and biographical writing. Jim Walter’s chapter highlights the importance of several types of biography in Weller’s research; prosopography, institutional biography as well as more conventional political biographies. All share a characteristic. They do not simply tell a chronological life story but seek to answer questions about how government works; these works pay ‘exemplary attention to what political actors actually do’.

John Wanna’s chapter discusses Pat’s work on Australian administrative history. He reviews the state of the art in administrative history in Australia before locating Pat’s work in this broader field. Weller’s administrative histories focus on two core political institutions; the Common wealth’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Queensland Pr emier’s Department. Although the subject matter is organisational structures and institutional resources, Weller never forgets that politics cannot be removed from the interplay of people, institutions and events. His administrative histories are always part of this broader struggle in which people make history.

Part 5 of the book focuses on Pat’s work on international organisations. Jason Sharman reviews the books on the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and other international institutions, arguing Pat’s main contribution is to transplant insights from the study of domestic public policy to international organisations. Sharman places this work in the broader International Relations literature. He discusses the prospects for ‘International Public Policy’ or ‘Global Public Policy’ as a subfield that applies the theory and methods of domestic studies of public bureaucracies to the institutions and processes of global governance.

Xu Yi-chong, Weller’s co-author in the study of international organisations, points out that the existing literature on international organisations substantially ignores the work and influence of international civil servants. We do not know what they do, how they do it and with what consequences. Her work with Pat addresses these gaps in our knowledge. Xu examines different approaches to understanding the work and place of international civil servants. She identifies and discusses some of the specific influences on their behaviour: organisational structure, mission and culture, career structures, skills, and legitimacy.

Part 6 of the volume discusses Pat’s work in the subfield of comparative government. John Kane and Haig Patapan, two long-time colleagues of Pat in the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, discuss the intersecting themes of leadership and administration. They examine the nature of leadership in, and by, public bureaucracies. They ask what challenges bureaucratic leadership presents to democratic elected leadership. After presenting a brief history of the topic, Kane and Patapan focus on the way democratic leaders have taken up the challenge of righting the balance of authority and control between democratic and bureaucratic leaders. They explore the unintended consequences of managerialist reforms. They conclude that the tension between bureaucratic and democratic authority is perennial. It may be more or less well managed but can never be definitively resolved.

Bob Jackson analyses the ‘Westminster futures’ of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, taking Pat’s work on Comparing Westminster as his launching pad. Jackson discusses the internal and external challenges to governments in Australia, Canada, New Zeal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• A Foreword from Abroad
• Part I: Introduction
• Part 2: The Executive
• Part 3: The Public Service
• Part 4: History and Biography
• Part 5: International Organisations
• Part 6: Comparative Government
• Pat Weller's Bibliography
• Index