Public Sector Bargains
15/01/2024
Over the next few weeks, I will offer a few frameworks for those of you wanting to better understand the work of the executive.
This is the first one.
These are high-level introductions only. But I will link you to the primary scholarship.
Public Sector Bargains are the explicit and implicit agreements between public servants and ministers.
They look a bit like this:
The bargains have two basic features: what ministers and officials agree not to do and what they get in return from one another for not doing those things.
They are a widely used concept in public administration and public management.
Christopher Hood (who is a Kiwi) and Martin Lodge built on the idea of the Schafferian bargain to give us some clarity about the nature of the relationship between ministers and officials.
While we have seen the idea of public service bargains ebb and flow, it has been used across a range of jurisdictions and is pretty much canon.
Why do I think this one matters right now?
Well, if you are an official leaking against a current government or releasing personal and private information about ministers, then you are probably undermining the public service bargain and probably don’t understand your constitutional role: i.e., an unelected official who ought to be indifferent and unconcerned about the politics, and instead be facilitating the voice of communities and implementing the policies of the government of the day.
Similarly, if you are a minister who wants the right to hire, fire, and directly set the remuneration of officials, then you are also probably undermining the public service bargain. If you don’t want a constitutionally independent public service, then you ought to change the relevant legislation. If you want a more accountable public service, then confirm your theory of the state, clarify your strategy and set your outcome measures.
Next week I will cover off the purple zone and the concept of the authorising environment.
Remember, these are normative frameworks. I am making no judgement about what is currently happening or what has happened. These frameworks enable us to have a shared lens or window into the executive.
References:
Te Rā Whakamana: Operational Capac …
Schick, then Ryan and Gill (2011), and Tenbensel et al (2026) This week, the series reads three pieces of local implementation scholarship alongside one another, written across the better part of three decades and from quite different vantage points. There is Allen Schick’s 1996 review of the reforms, and the warnings it carried. There is Bill Ryan and Derek Gill’s later account, written i...
Read moreAdministrative Burden: The Woman …
When the State Designs for a Person Who Does Not Exist This is the fourth post in a series about what it actually costs to navigate the state. Last month, I examined how burdens fall hardest on the least resourced. I also introduced the research on “deservingness”. Today, I turn to gender. The hypothesis that the unpaid labour of navigating the state falls disproportionately on women, and ...
Read moreLoose Threads: The Other Allison
E te whānau. A longer Loose Thread this week, prompted by a moment in Beijing that has sent half the commentariat scrambling for their Thucydides. Graham Allison is having his moment in the foreign policy sun. But the Allison I want to talk about is the one almost nobody remembers. This post starts with his trap, notes who was already using it, and then turns to an argument about gover...
Read more