Te Rā Whakamana: “Decentred Analysis” as a Practical Tool

23/09/2025

If, as I have been arguing on this platform, policy implementation is a messy, untidy, human process, how on earth can leaders and analysts possibly understand what is really going on? This week’s Te Rā turns to the practical method offered in Muhammad Hali Aprimadya’s (2025) work, and in particular the idea of “decentred analysis.” This post unpacks Aprimadya’s method as a three-step toolkit for listening to the stories, identifying the dilemmas, and mapping the expressive acts of those on the front line.

I argue that this is not just a theoretical exercise, but a practical method for rebuilding the interpretive capability that has been lost in the modern public service, using my own evaluation of the Māori Communities COVID-19 Fund as a real-world example of how it works. But before we go on, an apology. It has been a while since I last wrote. The final stretch of my PhD has demanded my full attention, and frankly, the public discourse has felt overwhelmingly noisy of late; dominated by immediate reactions and partisan positioning rather than the kind of sustained analytical thinking that complex policy challenges require. My commitment with this space has always been to add signal, not noise. I did not want to post anything until I felt I had something clear, considered, and useful to offer, that readers had the space to engage in. I hope this post, and the ones that follow, meets that standard.

Today, we turn from the “what” to the “how”. It is one thing to argue that implementation is an interpretive process. It is quite another thing entirely to have a method for understanding it. Aprimadya (2025) provides a compelling answer in his use of decentred analysis, a disciplined way of shifting your focus to see what is really going on, a technique to move beyond the view from Wellington and understand the view from the ground.

Decentred analysis, as Aprimadya describes it, drawing on the work of R.A.W. Rhodes (2018), is a conscious choice to stop looking at the world from the “centre”: specifically, from the perspective of the policy advisor, the programme manager, the co-designer, or the minister. It rejects the idea that institutions, rules, and structures are the primary drivers of action. Instead, it places the individual, their whānau and family in the context of their community at the centre of the inquiry. The core principle is that governance and policy outcomes are the “result” or “outcome” of what people believe and do, not the other way around.

As Aprimadya (2025) puts it, decentring “shifts the attention from structural and material elements to the realm of beliefs or meanings” (p. 8). This is not a soft, feel-good move. It is a rigorous analytical re-orientation. It means that when you are trying to understand why a policy is stalling, your first question is not, “Why aren’t they complying with the rule?” Your first question is, “What is this person’s world? What are the contingent beliefs and traditions that shape their actions?” It is a move from a logic of control to a logic of inquiry.

So how do you do it? Aprimadya’s (2025) method, which he synthesises from scholars like Bevir, Rhodes, and Yanow, involves three careful steps.

First, you must recover the stories. The initial task is to uncover the narratives that people tell to explain their own actions. Aprimadya (2025), citing Boswell et al. (2019), argues these stories are not just anecdotes; they are explanations that “explain actions by specifying the beliefs and desires that caused the actions and practices” (p. 24).

Second, with these stories in hand, you identify the dilemmas. The next step is to listen specifically for the points of friction. Where does a new rule, or a new KPI, or a new reporting requirement, clash with an established tradition or a core belief (Bevir & Rhodes, 2003)? Pinpointing those dilemmas allows you to see why improvisation or innovation is happening. It is not random; it is a direct response to a specific, deeply felt conflict.

Third, you map the “expressive acts.” Finally, you analyse the actions that result, the improvisations, the innovations, the pivots, the creation of unofficial communities, not as deviations, but as what Yanow (1987) calls “expressive acts.” For example, you ask what values are being expressed when an action does not fit the plan?

This three step approach is not just theoretical. It is precisely the method we used in the independent evaluation of the Māori Communities COVID-19 Fund (MCCF). A conventional evaluation would have focused on vaccination rates and financial acquittal. A decentred approach demanded more. By using Q-method to listen to the stories of the kaitono (providers) and kaimahi (officials), and using multifactor analysis we uncovered the dominant narrative that explained the fund’s success. The most powerful story, which we called E hara taku toa i te toa takitahi, he toa takitini (My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective), was not about hitting targets. It was about enabling kaitono to support whānau in rural and remote locations and to manaaki those in isolation (Te Kawa & MacDonald, 2023, p. 57). The “expressive act” of the MCCF was not just lifting vaccination rates; it was the practice of manaakitanga, which got providers a “foot-in-the-door of some whare” and rebuilt trust where the mainstream system had failed (Te Kawa & MacDonald, 2023, p. 60). A standard evaluation would have missed this entirely. It would have seen the numbers, but missed the meaning.

This is precisely the kind of interpretive work that has been stripped out of the modern public service. It is the work operational policy advisors used to do before the new public management reforms tore policy away from delivery. They were the people who knew the dilemmas of the front line because they were connected to it. Without that interpretive hinge, the centre is left flying blind, resorting to ever more prescriptive controls that only create more friction. Decentred analysis, then, is a way to rebuild that missing capability. It is a method for those at the centre to understand the logic of the front line.

But it is not easy. As Aprimadya (2025) is careful to note, this approach is demanding. It requires empathy, flexibility, and a willingness to have your own assumptions shattered (p. 6). This is not a simple checklist you can apply from a distance. It requires genuine engagement. For leaders who are brave enough to adopt it, however, it offers a way out of the frustrating cycle of issuing directives and then being mystified by the results.

In our final post, we will step back and take a critical look at the framework itself. As Aprimadya himself acknowledges, this approach has limits. We will explore its challenges and its future promise. Then between the final post and the end of December we will introduce emerging work on the policy advisory system.

References

Aprimadya, M. H. (2025). Rethinking situated agency: an interpretive framework to policy implementation. Policy Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2025.2547859

Bevir, M., & Rhodes, R. A. W. (2003). Interpreting British governance. Routledge.

Boswell, J., Corbett, J., & Rhodes, R. A. W. (2019). The art and craft of comparison. Cambridge University Press.

Rhodes, R. A. W. (2018). What is decentred analysis? In R. A. W. Rhodes (Ed.), Narrative policy analysis: Cases in decentered policy, (pp. 1–21). Palgrave Macmillan.

Te Kawa, D., & MacDonald, L. (2023). Independent evaluation: Māori Communities COVID-19 Fund. DTK and Associates.

Yanow, D. (1987). Toward a policy culture approach to implementation. Policy Studies Review, 7 (1), 103–115. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-1338.1987.tb00031.x