Te Rā Whakamana: Policy Advisory Ecosystems

05/08/2025

Moving Beyond the Lobbying Debate

Te Rā Whakamana is a series that examines what happens after policy is announced, tracing how delivery either holds or fractures, and where legitimacy is built or lost. This week pulls the threads of six posts into one argument: that Aotearoa’s current lobbying debate is the wrong fight. While attention is fixed on moral panic and corporate capture, the real issue is being ignored: specifically, how our policy advisory ecosystems actually work, and why delivery keeps failing when advice is trapped inside outdated mental models.

Over the past six weeks, I have been laying the groundwork for a single, cumulative argument. I began with Paul Cairney’s work to establish a foundational hypothesis: fragmentation is not an accident but a structural feature of the modern state, rendering most promises of integration and an outcomes focus hollow*.

From there, I used Brian Head’s research to show that policy expertise is no longer contained within state-run policy shops; it is distributed, contested, contextual and flows from communities, Iwi, Hapū, Whanui, industry representatives, sector interests, academics, as well as contractors, consultants and think-tanks.

This is not just theory. I pointed to the Māori Communities Covid Fund, drawing on Elizabeth Eppel’s work, as a potent example of implementation succeeding not as a technical question or mechanical execution, but as adaptive, real-time relational policy inquiry. A Dutch self-managed homeless shelter further proved that when policy authority is devolved, marginalised groups can run complex services with some success.

The hypothesis being sharpened is this: the mental models of public policymaking that many hold are outdated, for reasons I won’t speculate on, and those same people seem unwilling and incapable of handling the pluralism revealed in the cases above, let alone the demands of citizens.

The devastating failure of the leaky homes crisis, which I examined through Derek Gill’s 2016 work, brought their mistake into sharp relief. Here was a case where Aotearoa excelled at policy coherence on paper, yet failed catastrophically because delivery was treated as secondary. The lesson is brutal and clear: the design of policy is as important as the questions of who it impacts, how they respond, and who bears the consequences when rules inevitably fail.

These cases, from adaptive Covid responses to catastrophic housing failures, reveal a consistent pattern: policy outcomes depend not merely on design decisions, but on whether advisory processes acknowledge and incorporate the plural realities of implementation. The mental models that treat policy advice as a sterile, contained process consistently produce elegant failures when they encounter the messy, contested terrain of delivery.

This brings us to a debate currently consuming considerable partisan energy in Aotearoa: one that perfectly illustrates these outdated assumptions in action. The lobbying debate is ostensibly being framed as a debate about democratic integrity and corporate influence, and it is here that we can observe, in real time, the collision between fantasy and operational reality.

Let me be free and frank: Aotearoa is having the wrong argument about lobbying. The discourse is dominated by a self-appointed few who thrive on moral panic over corporate capture and the supposed corruption of a pure democratic process. Their narrative entirely misses the point because the conceptual premise is a fantasical.

Policy advisory systems are plural. Indeed, some systems employ outdated mental models, and certain policy tools have long since passed their use-by date. And, of course, not everyone is at the table. But the notion of a sterile, isolated bureaucracy is a convenient fiction. Iwi, Hapū, and Māori have been arguing this since 1852, but since the reforms of the 1980s, it has become an undeniable operational reality of our state.

Ministers and their agencies do not design policy in a vacuum. They sit within sprawling, messy, conflicted-ridden and complex webs of influence that include political staff, consultants, contractors, local government, industry advocates, Te Ao Māori institutions, think tanks, universities, NGOs, and yes, lobbyists. This is not a bug in our system. It is the system itself (Plowden, 1987; Stone et al., 1998; Fleischer, 2009; Dobuzinskis, Howlett & Laycock, 2007; Maley, 2000; Cross, 2007; Howlett, 2019).

Willing away reality is not the basis for public debate. The question before us is not whether plurality should exist. It does, and it will continue to exist. The only question that matters is how we orchestrate this chaotic and messy reality to serve delivery better. Frankly, targeting Federated^ Farmers is the same tactic used to target Iwi and Hapū in the Three Waters reforms: it does not take us forward. It’s short-term, and it conveniently ignores all the revolving doors**.

Understanding how to orchestrate these advisory ecosystems effectively requires us to move beyond moral panic and engage seriously with what the scholarship actually tells us about how policy systems function and evolve. To answer that, we must appreciate the intellectual journey of scholarship on policy systems.

Early work merely mapped power, offering portraits of influence (Goldhamer, 1978; Plowden, 1987; Barker & Peters, 1993). John Halligan (1995) advanced this by thinking in terms of systems, but the initial models were still too simplistic, assuming a neat transfer of evidence to power. This assumption rarely survives first contact with the ground.

The thinking sharpened when Halligan acknowledged the crucial role of political alignment. Halligan restored democracy to the bureaucracy. Prasser (2006) captured the cultural shift from “speaking truth to power” to a more collaborative “sharing truth.” Prince (2007) introduced the vital dimension of timing, distinguishing between “hot” crisis advice and “cold” anticipatory thinking.

Then came the work that named the phenomena reshaping governments everywhere: the relentless “externalisation” and “politicisation” of advice (Craft & Howlett, 2013; Eichbaum & Shaw, 2007, 2008, 2010+). More voices, more outside expertise, and more partisanship, but critically, more fragmented pathways to implementation.

The most recent scholarship treats these arrangements as what they are: ecosystems (Craft & Wilder, 2017). This framework’s most powerful contribution is its recognition of delivery knowledge as a critical advisory input, not a downstream clean-up job. When frontline capability and local conditions are treated as core evidence, advice improves. When they are ignored, you get elegant policies that shatter on impact.

So, what does this mean for Aotearoa? It means the current lobbying debate is a distraction. Our policy advisory ecosystem is already diverse; the challenge is not to pretend otherwise, but to govern it effectively and ensure it continues to learn and adapt, with those who possess the knowledge to enable delivery at the table. For externalisation without shared frameworks and delivery knowledge is noise, and politicisation without institutional stewardship and transparency erodes trust.

Our shared task is not to exclude voices, but to intentionally include the right ones at the right time: specifically, those who hold the knowledge that implementation demands (Craft & Howlett, 2013; Halligan, 1995). Programmes fail, time and again, not from a lack of good intentions, but because the advisory conversations that shaped them privileged certain voices and forms of knowledge while dismissing those essential for delivery.

If you change the conversation, who gets to speak, whose knowledge counts, and when, you change what can be delivered. This is not about banning lobbyists, or anyone else for that matter.

We need to learn the discipline of orchestrating an advisory ecosystem that serves delivery, not just design, and certainly not just performative politics.

It is about finally treating advice and implementation as what they have always been: two halves of the same whole (Howlett, 2019). It is about putting aside the fantasy of the purchaser-provider split and reassembling the policy and delivery systems.

Next week, I’ll introduce you to the Land and Water Forum and suggest that it aligns most closely with the type of ecosystem I am discussing. We’ll use the peer-reviewed literature and ask why it failed, or more precisely, who was responsible for its failure. The week after, we will examine closely Craft and Halligan’s (2020) work on policy advisory systems in Australia, Britain, Canada, and Aotearoa. It’s a richly researched book that provides us with a wealth of information about our own system.

Footnotes

*The exceptions being integration programmes like Provider Development, Whānau Ora, and a limited number of commissioning projects in the social services sector.

**I’ve written before about revolving doors. Kua whakamātau au ki te toro atu ki te hunga e ārahi ana i te kōrero whakahe i te lōpi, kia whakaarohia tētahi anō āhua. Kāore he paku ngākau hiahia i puta mai.

+I cannot recommend Chris and Richard’s work enough. They join a long and distinguished line of local academics skilled in the inquiry examining the conflict and tension between democracy and bureaucracy: Hood, Mulgan, Matheson and others.

^Error fixed: Federated for Federation (the joy of writing and editing).

References

Barker, A., & Peters, B. G. (1993). The politics of expert advice: Creating, using and manipulating scientific knowledge for public policy. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Craft, J., & Howlett, M. (2013). The dual dynamics of policy advisory systems: The impact of externalization and politicization on policy advice. Policy and Society, 32(3), 187–197.

Craft, J., & Wilder, M. (2017). Catching a second wave: Context and compatibility in advisory system dynamics. Policy Studies Journal, 45(1), 215–239.

Craft, J., & Halligan, J. (2020). Advising governments in the Westminster tradition: Policy advisory systems in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Cambridge University Press.

Cross, W. (2007). Policy study and development in Canada’s political parties. In L. Dobuzinskis, M. Howlett, & D. Laycock (Eds.), Policy analysis in Canada: The state of the art (pp. 233–242). University of Toronto Press.

Dobuzinskis, L., Howlett, M., & Laycock, D. (2007). Policy analysis in Canada: The state of the art. University of Toronto Press.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (2007). Ministerial advisers and the politics of policy-making: Bureaucratic permanence and popular control. The Australian Journal of Public Administration, 66(4), 453–467.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (2008). Revisiting politicization: Political advisers and public servants in Westminster systems. Governance, 21(3), 337–363.

Eichbaum, C., & Shaw, R. (Eds.). (2010). Partisan appointees and public servants: An international analysis of the role of the political adviser. Edward Elgar.

Fleischer, J. (2009). Power resources of parliamentary executives: Policy advice in the UK and Germany. West European Politics, 32(1), 196–214.

Goldhamer, H. (1978). The adviser. Elsevier. (pdf copy)

Halligan, J. (1995). Policy advice and the public sector. In B. G. Peters & D. J. Savoie (Eds.), Governance in a changing environment (pp. 138–172). McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Halligan, J. (1998). Policy advice. International Encyclopaedia of Public Policy and Administration, 3(1), 686–688.Halligan J. (1998).

Howlett, M. (2019). Comparing policy advisory systems beyond the OECD: Models, dynamics and the second-generation research agenda. Policy Studies, 40(3-4), 241–259.

Maley, M. (2000). Conceptualising advisers’ policy work: The distinctive policy roles of ministerial advisers in the Keating government, 1991–96. Australian Journal of Political Science, 35(3), 449–470.

Ng, Y.-F. (2018). The Rise of Political Advisors in the Westminster System (1st ed.). Routledge.

Plowden, W. (Ed.). (1987). Advising the rulers. Basil Blackwell. (pdf copy)

Prasser, S. (2006). Royal commissions and public inquiries in Australia. LexisNexis.

Prince, M. J. (2007). Soft craft, hard choices, altered context: Reflections on 25 years of policy advice in Canada. In L. Dobuzinskis, M. Howlett, & D. Laycock (Eds.), Policy analysis in Canada: The state of the art (pp. 95–106). University of Toronto Press.

Stone, D., Denham, A., & Garnett, M. (Eds.). (1998). Think tanks across nations: A comparative approach. Manchester University Press.