Purple Zone

01/02/2024

I’m doing a series at the moment called the kāwana series. The kāwana series is for those who want to better understand the work of the executive.

It focuses on the tension between democracy and bureaucracy, including how and where the lines between politics and public management are drawn. This is an enduring debate—it’s not new. However, it has produced several frameworks that enable outsiders to see inside. Last week, I called attention to the “public sector bargain.” This week, I offer the “purple zone.”

As with the public sector bargain, the purple zone was developed by a Kiwi. Chris Hood gave us the public sector bargain, and Alex Matheson gave us the purple zone.

As a side note, I think one of the reasons public administration scholars from Aotearoa-New Zealand lead the thinking on the ministerial and official interface is that the neoliberal reforms in the 1980s, including the deregulation of most markets and devolution, decentring, and privatisation of public services, left our Westminster model with a major strategic coherence problem.

Said differently, our neoliberal reforms have made it difficult for political values and objectives to show up in our medium and longer-term policies and strategies. Our politicians have to work really hard to get the public service to deliver – because they are so far from the frontlines and because the tools are few and far between and quite fragile in their use. That is why scholars from Aotearoa-New Zealand are pretty skilled as well as interested in the domain.

The purple zone – as proposed by Alex Matheson – hypothesised that there is a blurred, dynamic and shifting zone where the “blue” of political activity overlaps with the “red” of public administration. He hinted that it was a space where shared decision-making had to take place, even though ministers made the final decisions.

His conception looked a bit like this:

Matheson went on to propose that the purple zone has a mix of tools that are used to focus the shared decision-making spaces between ministers and officials. His rendition is offered here:

Matheson’s rendition was done in the late 1990s. Matheson supported the nine Strategic Results Areas (SRAs) and the related Key Results Areas (KRAs) in the purple zone while at the same time detailing for ministers and officials the related tools they needed to use if ministers were to bring their political values and objectives to life in the delivery of public services.

For fun, I updated Matheson’s conception in 2010. You will note the different tools and, in my view, a much better understanding between ministers and officials on working the purple zone in pursuit of strategy coherence for the entire public management system.

Next week, I will cover the idea of the authorising environment.

Remember, these are normative frameworks. I am not judging what is currently happening or what has happened. These frameworks give us a shared lens or window into the executive.

References:

Primary Research :

Matheson, A. (1998), Governing strategically: the New Zealand experience. Public Admin. Dev., 18: 349-363. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-162X(1998100)18:4<349::AID-PAD22>3.0.CO;2-5

Review of primary research :

Elliot, R. (1998). Professional Developments Exploring the purple zone. Public Administration & Development, 18(1), 81–84. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-162X(199802)18:1<81::AID-PAD972>3.0.CO;2-3.

Alford, J., Hartley, J., Yates, S., & Hughes, O. (2017). Into the Purple Zone: Deconstructing the Politics/Administration Distinction. American Review of Public Administration, 47(7), 752–763. https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074016638481

Application to our context :

Boston, J. (1992). ‘The problems of policy coordination: the New Zealand experience,’Governance. An International Journal of Policy and Administration,5(1):88–103.

Boston, J.,Martin, J.,Pallot, J.andWalsh P. (1996).Public Management: The New Zealand Model,Oxford University Press,Auckland.

Schick, A.(1996).The Spirit of Reform: Managing the New Zealand State Sector in a Time of Change,State Services Commission New Zealand,Wellington.

Matheson, A., Scanlan, G., & Tanner, G. (1997). Strategic management in government: Extending the reform model in New Zealand. Paris, France: OECD.