Rethinking Collaboration in Government – Magic concept, enduring idea or passing trend?
Key highlights from the 2024 Irene Longman Oration
IPAA Queensland’s Irene Longman Oration honours the legacy of a Queensland pioneer in public administration. A progressive thinking, big acting and thought-challenging operator, Irene was a true leader in public purpose work (find out more here).
The 2024 Oration was delivered by Professor Helen Sullivan, Dean of the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific and IPAA National Fellow, who through her oration, embodied this legacy by inviting us to rethink collaboration in government.
Professor Sullivan has had a long interest in collaboration, its drivers, its impact and perhaps most intriguingly – its meaning. Her book – ‘Collaboration and Public Policy – Agency in the Pursuit of Public Purpose’ was shortlisted for the Mackenzie Prize (for the best book in political science) as awarded by the Political Studies Association, UK.
Her oration built upon key ideas from the book and further thinking (as published here in the Australian Journal of Public Administration).
Driving ideas
Collaboration is an idea and an activity that has been espoused by and within public administration for some time. But for Professor Sullivan, after transitioning from early career experience in public service to academia, there continued to be something inherently unresolved for her about collaboration in government work.
“Despite this and despite the voluminous literature that now exists examining collaboration, two things bothered me. The first was that insufficient attention was paid to the role of actors – individuals – in the work of collaboration. My research would inevitably result in someone saying, ‘of course it’s all about the people’, but I couldn’t see that being interrogated in the literature. The second thing that bothered me was the disconnect that existed between discussions about collaboration, its features and how it did or didn’t work, and how collaboration interacted with key features of public policy systems.”
Interestingly, collaboration is not the only concept in public administration that has suffered from what we could call a silver bullet effect. Pollitt and Hupe[i] talked about the “magic” quality of ideas like ‘governance’, ‘accountability’ and ‘networks’ in both the practice of public service and amongst academics. They argued that such concepts are seductive, over-relied upon in terms of their impact and reach, and their ability to solve complex public problems.
In many ways, Professor Sullivan puts forward the case for the same critical lens to be applied to collaboration.
By not assuming that collaboration is inherently good, nor bad, and instead proposing that the pervasive drivers for collaboration in public administration need to shift because the world in which collaboration happens, and ultimately why collaboration should happen, has shifted.
In a world where collaboration is often positioned as the preferred mode of working and governing, this gives us much to consider.
“The public policy environment of the late 20th century represented the ‘high watermark’ for the popularity of collaboration. The promotion of ‘open borders’ for trade, ideas, and people movement, coupled with innovation in political participation in support of responsive government offered an optimistic vision of what the future might look like, at least through Western eyes. Collaboration became de rigeur in public policy as a means of responding to the interdependence, diversity, and hybridity associated with this openness.”
Professor Sullivan argues that the assumed primacy of collaboration was born out of a previous era – the market focus and economism of the 1980s, the ‘war on terror’ after 9/11 and the popular notion of responsive government across the 1990s and 2000s. She suggests that collaboration in these contexts in driven by fundamentally different values to today’s world.
The world has changed. Have our ideas about collaboration and it’s underpinning values caught up?
What’s changed?
So what is the current environment? What is so different that requires us to rethink the motivations and underpinning values of collaboration?
According to Professor Sullivan – a lot.
“First, geopolitical tensions, unstable economic conditions, and global crises have unsettled optimistic visions of the future (and indeed the present). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Israel – Palestine conflict and the deterioration in US – China tensions are acute examples of what appears to be a significant rupture in global politics.
COVID-19 and the long tail impact of the Global Financial Crisis have played havoc with the terms of trade and domestic economic management as increasing interest rates and inflation illustrate – even here in Australia. Cost of living has returned as a dominant feature of public and political concern. Talk of tariffs and trade wars and ‘sovereign capability’ not to mention restricting immigration highlight changes in the ideas that shape public policy – specifically a rebalancing of economism and securitization towards the latter with a narrowing of focus on national security.
This necessitates a reshaping of the rules of collaboration including the creation of more bounded spheres of activity with specific countries, regions and companies that will reshape economic partnerships and impact domestic economies.”
Other transformative changes discussed by the Professor include the digital revolution – Artificial Intelligence (AI), social media, and the endemic risk of mis and dis information. Further, the enduring challenges of climate change and the lives of First Nations people.
The case for change
Importantly, Professor Sullivan argues that we are stand at a tipping point. A key moment in which the existing paradigms can (and indeed, should, change). The importance of economism, securitization and government responsiveness, may be replaced by other guiding and central values as we draw on collaboration in the pursuit of public solutions. Collaboration is a continuing necessity for governments and public sectors. But therein, she proposed three ideas to shape collaboration that is fit for the challenges of the post-9/11 and post-COVID world.
These are sustainability, sovereignty, and justice
“Sustainability is possibly the most obvious and least contentious idea to consider. Without a healthy planet human beings will neither thrive nor ultimately survive. We are all interdependent. Collaboration across space and time is essential for sustainability and addressing climate change is the central challenge.”
“Sovereignty. This idea is present in several ways in public debate, each connected to ideas about economics and security as well as governance and each implicating collaboration. I have already mentioned the increasing attention paid by nation states to ‘sovereign capability’ and its challenge to global economic interdependence… However, where I want to focus my attention is on the relationship between First Nations peoples and ideas of sovereignty. In Australia, the movements to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations and the contributions their knowledges, traditions, and practices have made and continue to make to our communities engage directly but not always comfortably with ideas of sovereignty.”
“Justice. This idea speaks to the point I raised earlier reflecting on the failure of public administration to deal fairly with specific communities and/or to include them effectively in policy design and service delivery. Economism and securitisation are represented in public policies that denote humans as ‘capital’ of more or less economic value and communities that present more or less of a risk to society. These representations cast a shadow over attempts at ‘responsive government’ with underserved or excluded communities. A frustration with existing ideas and rules that have failed whole communities and indeed nations has generated radical solutions that demand an overhaul of public (and private) institutions.”
Collaboration in the new world
Assuming the ongoing need to forge collaborative effort, Professor Sullivan also suggests that given the risks and cumulative efforts involved in collaboration – it may well be best considered a last resort. Something to explore when other policy options and solutions are exhausted or are deemed ineffective.
“With that in mind here are four key questions that need to be considered:
- What is collaboration for?
- What will collaboration do?
- What does collaboration mean?
- What shape will collaboration take?”
“Reshaping collaboration so that it meets the challenges of the future is principally a question of agency. Who has it and how they use it are key artefacts of power in public policy. This places particular responsibility on leaders to engage carefully yet bravely as they pursue public purpose collaboration, building coalitions of support including with those who may have good reason to be skeptical of engagement with the bureaucracy and developing collaborative capacity within their own organisations.”
“Far too little attention is paid to ensuring that those involved in collaborating have the necessary mind and skill set to do so. Collaborations fail for all sorts of reasons but the absence of individual capacity is one we can address. Crucial here is attention to expertise, ethics and emotions. As I hope I have indicated in this Oration expertise comes in many forms but is infrequently acknowledged. Building capability that acknowledges a variety of kinds of knowledge (and expertise) is curious about what it can offer and is skilled at working out how it can be drawn upon will provide more robust foundations for collaboration, though it may generate very robust discussions along the way.”
Conclusion
Professor Sullivan’s thought-provoking oration points out that the conditions of the world in which public service operates, the underlying values which shape our practices, the ideas and assumptions which permeate and shape what we do, all have intrinsic impacts on actors in public administration, including public servants.
Even the most seasoned public sector steward does not live in a global, economic, cultural nor social vacuum. Integrity, apoliticism, independence are key parts of the public sector ethos. But the practice relies upon other skills – self-awareness, political astuteness, adaptive leadership, to name a few.
The 2024 Irene Longman Oration challenged us to consider deeper questions about the actions taken for and on behalf of government – the motivations for it, who will benefit from it, what does it set out to achieve, what will it look like?
These are key questions, not just for collaboration, but for many other large and complicated endeavors in public service.
Article compiled with commentary by Andrew Wills, Director IPAA Queensland
IPAA Queensland thanks our partner Holding Redlich for their support.
[i] Pollitt, C. & Hupe, P. (2011). Talking about government: The role of magic concepts. Public Management Review, 13(5), 641-658. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2010.532963