Through the late 20th century, global society experienced waves of unprecedented political and institutional change, but Australia came to be identified as "constitutionally speaking... the frozen continent", unable or unprepared to comprehensively modernise its own fundamental laws (Sawer 1967). This thesis opens up a subject basic to, but largely unexplored in debate about constitutional change: the territorial foundations of Australian constitutional thought. Our conventional conclusions about territory are first, that Australia's federal system has settled around a 'natural' and presumably final territorial structure; and second, that this is because any federal system such as possessed by Australia since 1901 is more decentralised and therefore more suitable than any 'unitary' one. With federalism coming back into vogue internationally, we have no reason to believe our present structure is not already the best. Reviewing the concepts of territory underpinning colonial and federal political thought from 1815 to the present day, this thesis presents a new territorial story revealing both these conclusions to be flawed. For most of its history, Australian political experience has been based around a richer, more complex and still evolving range of territorial ideas. Federalism is fundamental to our political values, but Australians have known more types of federalism, emerging differently in time and place, than we customarily admit. Unitary values have supplied important symbols of centralisation, but for most of our history have also sought to supply far less centralised models of political institutions than those of our current federal experience. Since the 1930s, in addition to underutilising both federal and unitary lines of imported constitutional theory, Australian politics has underestimated the extent to which our institutional treatment of territory has itself become unique. Despite its recent fall from constitutional discourse, territory is also again on the rise. While political debate has been poorly placed to see it, Australia has experienced a recent resurgence in ideas about territorial reform, offering the promise of a better understanding of the full complexity of our constitutional theory and a new 'unfreezing' of the assumption that territorially, Australia will never change. This thesis seeks to inform these vital new debates.

This study examines ways in which Australian governments, at national and state level, have developed policy responses to the issue of regional service delivery in the post new public management environment. It argues that new public management has changed many institutional arrangements in Australia and led to new public policy approaches based on those reforms. The study compares the approaches taken by federal and state governments in determining service levels for regional communities. The period under consideration is 1996-2001, coinciding first with the election of new NSW and federal governments and their subsequent re-election. Four cases studies are used to analyse a range of activities designed to provide services at local and regional levels, identifying key indicators of policy successes based on coordinated and integrated regional services combined with technology-based solutions that can be adapted to local community needs. The research draws on new governance theory and principles of effective coordination to propose a new model for determining appropriate service delivery. This model highlights the importance of local participation in decision-making, a regional planning focus, social and environmental sustainability, and the engagement of local communities as key determinants of regional policy success.

Public policies are, at once, the means for articulation of political philosophies and processes, the conduits for conversion of political and bureaucratic decisions into actions and the means by which the electorate can assess government performance. Public policy processes offer a means of achieving social and economic change and they are a primary justification for the existence of governmental systems. On these counts, identification of the elements of policy processes and the ways they interact with each other is essential to an understanding of the relationships between public policy decisions, systems of democratic government and their connections with wider society. This thesis goes behind the facade of public policy outcomes and analyses the processes involved in arriving at policy decisions. Linkages are traced between political theories, the processes of public policy decisions and final policy outcomes. This involves, first, an examination and critique of liberal-democratic theories. Second, there is detailed examination of pluralist democratic practice, which is the prevailing political paradigm of modern western liberal-democratic societies. The analysis finds substantial evidence of gross distortions in the process relative to normative theories. Plain causes are the institutionalisation of special interests to the exclusion of wider public interests and inadequate accountability of governments and bureaucracies for their actions. Policy processes in pluralist systems are examined and it is concluded that the social environment, institutional influences and factors which affect the behaviour of institutions are key elements explaining public policy decisions. The capacity for pluralism to significantly influence policy outcomes depends largely on the degree and nature of access to the public policy process at various points. In examining the role of government institutions in public policy processes, it is argued that a clear distinction between the elected legislature and the administrative bureaucracy is artificial and misleading. Further, there is evidence that public service bureaucrats can become captives of their particular client groups and, thus, less accessible to the full range of relevant interests. These problems are exacerbated by the two-party Westminster model of representative democracy which tends to concentrate power in cabinet government, resulting in a decline in the importance of parliament as a deliberative and scrutinising bodies. This dissertation develops the view that there are significant causal links between institutional philosophies and values and the dominant disciplines within institutions. It is also argued that growing professionalism in bureaucracies and a tendency for functional divisions of public policy to be in broad symmetry with the divisions of the professions, tends to intensify the influence of particular professional disciplines on related areas of public policy. The critique of liberal-democratic theories and the related discussion of factors affecting policy processes in a pluralist system are used to identify the essential elements of public policy processes. It is proposed that all policy processes contain the four elements of pluralism, access, accountability and planning which are interactively related. Differences in emphasis given to these elements in the policy process explains the nature of individual policy decisions. Thus, the normative policy process datum model provides both a static and dynamic framework for analysing policy decisions. In order to examine the theoretical arguments in an empirical context, the policy processes of the Australian Federal Government, in the area of industry assistance, are analysed. This policy arena contains all the 'raw material' of pluralist processes and is, therefore, a fertile area for analysis. Furthermore, operating within this policy arena is the Industries Assistance Commission [IAC], a bureaucratic institution which is quite unlike traditional administrative structures. The IAC has, prima-facie, all of the features of the policy process datum model; it operates in an open mode, it encourages a range of pluralistic inputs, it has a highly professional planning function and, because its policy advice is published, it encourages scrutiny and accountability of itself, other actors in the bureaucracy and the elected government. The IAC operates in a rational-comprehensive mode. The analysis concludes that the IAC was established in part to be a countervailing force to restore some balance in the industry policy arena. In this it has been partly successful - the distributive policy decisions of governments have come under much greater scrutiny than in the past and other areas of the bureaucracy have been forced to operate more frequently in a rational-comprehensive mode, rather than as advocates of sectional interests. The IAC has itself limited its range of objectives, however, and has tended to become a computational organisation, isolating its core economic [planning] technology from the interactive processes of the policy process model, i.e. pluralism, access and accountability. By protecting its essential philosophy in this way, the IAC runs the risk of becoming less influential in the overall policy process. Using the policy process model as a datum, and the empirical experience of the IAC and the policy arena in which it operates, several options for administrative reform are examined. A summary agenda for administrative change is proposed which revolves around ways of achieving balanced pluralistic inputs, a greater degree of access, better bureaucratic and government accountability and ways of exploiting but controlling technocratic planning expertise. Emphasis is placed on the need to achieve enriched interactive flows between each of these key elements. If these conditions can be met, it is proposed that a revised and improved administrative bureaucracy will emerge.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität der Bundeswehr, München, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-264).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-171). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-171). Also available on the Internet.

Not available / text

In this study, I undertake a discourse analysis of struggles over representation as they were manifested in the Charlottetown referendum campaign. I utilize transcripts taken during the campaign derived from the CBC news programs The National, The Journal, and Sunday Report as well as from The CTV News. The issue of (im-)partiality provides the analytical focus for this study. Who can legitimately speak on behalf of whom, or, to what extent do individuals have a particular voice which places limitations on whom they can represent? On the one hand, underlying what I call the ‘universalistic’ discourse is the premise that human beings can act in an impartial manner so that all individuals have the capacity to speak or act in the interests of all other individuals regardless of the group(s) to which they belong. On the other hand, a competing discourse based on group-difference’ maintains that all representatives express partial voices depending on their group-based characteristics. I argue that the universalistic discourse was hegemonic in the transcripts but, at the same time, the group-difference discourse was successful at articulating powerful counter-hegemonic resistance. Ironically, the universalistic discourse was hegemonic despite widespread assumptions of partiality on the basis of province, region, language, and Aboriginality. This was possible because the universalistic discourse subsumed territorial notions of partiality within itself. In contrast, I argue that assumptions of Aboriginal partiality will likely diffuse themselves to other categories, beginning with gender, in the future. I also describe the strategies used by the competing discourses to undermine one another. The universalistic discourse successfully portrayed the group-difference discourse as an inversion to a dangerous apartheid-style society where individuals were forced to exist within group-based categories. The group-difference discourse used the strategy of anomaly to demonstrate that individuals were inevitably categorized in the universalistic discourse; impartiality was a facade for a highly-partial ruling class. In examining these strategies, I demonstrate that the group-difference discourse justified its own position by making assumptions about the operation of power and dominance in society. Thus, impartiality was impossible not for the post-modern reason that inherent differences make representation highly problematic, but because power relations hinder the ability of representatives to act in a truly impartial manner.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the politics of separatism in multinational federations. Switzerland, Canada, and India are investigated in detail. Switzerland is a multinational federation that has not experienced a separatist movement for more than one hundred and fifty years. In Canada, there is a significant separatist movement in the province of Quebec. India has experienced a number of violent secessionist crises in a number of states over the past two decades. The cases thus exhibit a range in the dependent variable (presence or absence of secessionist movements). This study adopts a legal-institutional approach to the problem of secession in multinational federations. This approach marries the classical understanding of federalism as a system of government with divided sovereignty to the more recent state-society and new institutional approaches in political science. Federalism is operationalized around three core institutions: constitutions, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and party systems. These three institutions are situated as the independent variables in the study. The dissertation argues that the institutional structure of federalism is a critical determinant of stability or instability (the presence or absence of secessionism) in multinational federations.

What happens to subnational states when the parent federation undergoes a regime change process? This is a crucial question in understanding political processes in federal countries. The visible political differentiation amongst subnational states belonging to the same federation underscores the fact that some processes are at work that are being ignored by the literature's current focus on national developments. To fill this lacuna, I develop an analytical model that seeks to explain regional differentiation during federal regime change by focusing directly on subnational politics and institutions in comparative fashion, while accounting for the inescapable influence of broader federal actors and processes. In constructing this model, I draw extensively from the theories of federalism, regime change and political parties. I argue that the decision to initiate a transition in an authoritarian setting belongs to the federation. However, regional political actors mediate federal processes in their territory and give them a profoundly subnational logic. Regionally specific institutions, interests and histories thus become intangible frontiers between subnational politics and external processes. The constant repetition of this mechanism throughout the transition creates distinct subnational polities. To test my hypothesis, I study three cases in central-northern Mexico: Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas.