This thesis addresses a significant gap in Australian social policy literature about the relationship between the impact of economic rationalism on social policy and interest representation during policy implementation. Michael Pusey, for instance, argues that economic rationalism displaces social values in social policy. However, other theorists, such as Robert Alford and Rod Rhodes, caution that policy often changes when it is implemented. With a foundation in Weberian social theory about participant values, the analytical framework incorporates three institutional policy implementation concepts to capture the dynamic characteristics of the policy process. These are: policy stages to describe policy change over time; structural interests of policy organisations; and policy networks within which participants act. The thesis tests this framework to explain the impact of values of economic rationality in the Australian coordinated care policy. The policy attempted to coordinate the care of people with chronic care needs, using a funds pool, case managers and care plans. The research methods are interviews with policy participants; analysis of public documents; and participant observation as an evaluator in one trial. Data about the policy process from 1994 to 2001 are analysed with a critical interpretive approach. The study reveals that central agency officials acted primarily on values of economic rationality. In contrast, health agency officials acted primarily on organisational values. The transfer of responsibility for the policy process from a central agency to the health agency after the policy statements reinforced health provider organisational interests, rather than either the rationalist interests of central agencies or the social interests of consumer groups. The policy consequently changed away from economic rationality. The policy process in the planning, implementation and revision stages was in no sense an instrumental application of the values of economic rationality apparent in the policy statements stage. Neither, however, did social values predominate in any policy stage. The study argues that insights from policy implementation research can refine the literature on economic rationalism. This research further advances policy network theory. It recognises that understanding which organisation is responsible for the policy, at various policy stages, advances our understanding of whose values shape social policy.

This thesis addresses a significant gap in Australian social policy literature about the relationship between the impact of economic rationalism on social policy and interest representation during policy implementation. Michael Pusey, for instance, argues that economic rationalism displaces social values in social policy. However, other theorists, such as Robert Alford and Rod Rhodes, caution that policy often changes when it is implemented. With a foundation in Weberian social theory about participant values, the analytical framework incorporates three institutional policy implementation concepts to capture the dynamic characteristics of the policy process. These are: policy stages to describe policy change over time; structural interests of policy organisations; and policy networks within which participants act. The thesis tests this framework to explain the impact of values of economic rationality in the Australian coordinated care policy. The policy attempted to coordinate the care of people with chronic care needs, using a funds pool, case managers and care plans. The research methods are interviews with policy participants; analysis of public documents; and participant observation as an evaluator in one trial. Data about the policy process from 1994 to 2001 are analysed with a critical interpretive approach. The study reveals that central agency officials acted primarily on values of economic rationality. In contrast, health agency officials acted primarily on organisational values. The transfer of responsibility for the policy process from a central agency to the health agency after the policy statements reinforced health provider organisational interests, rather than either the rationalist interests of central agencies or the social interests of consumer groups. The policy consequently changed away from economic rationality. The policy process in the planning, implementation and revision stages was in no sense an instrumental application of the values of economic rationality apparent in the policy statements stage. Neither, however, did social values predominate in any policy stage. The study argues that insights from policy implementation research can refine the literature on economic rationalism. This research further advances policy network theory. It recognises that understanding which organisation is responsible for the policy, at various policy stages, advances our understanding of whose values shape social policy.

The South Australian Rann Labor government elected in 2002 became the first in the nation to address ‘social exclusion’ through the implementation of a Social Inclusion Initiative. The increasingly popular term ‘social exclusion’ was first used overseas in the early 1970s to describe serious symptoms of socio-economic disadvantage linked with global economic restructuring. Taking the South Australian policy initiative as a point of departure, this thesis provides a multi-layered analysis of social exclusion discourses and policy approaches, exploring their significance in the context of Australia’s shifting welfare state terrain. In so doing, the thesis seeks to break new ground both at general theory and specific case study levels by utilising a regulation approach (RA) to test the research hypothesis that ‘social inclusion’ policies are reflective of a transitional neoliberal (or, in some instances, Third Way) mode of social regulation which is inadequate to arrest rising socio-economic inequality linked to the collapse of the post-war ‘Fordist-Keynesian’ consensus. The cross-disciplinary regulation approach is a method of inquiry used to analyse spatially and temporally specific shifts in phases of capitalist accumulation and the different policy and institutional arrangements that support accumulation in each phase. The complex and interrelated institutional shifts at the Australian national level are critical to understanding the origins and impact of ‘social inclusion’ policies. Hence the adoption of this type of policy approach at the South Australian state level is considered in a broader national political economic context where the phenomenon of social exclusion is located within national welfare to work reforms. By applying a regulationist lens to examine the global concept of social exclusion in a local and broader national setting, the thesis offers empirical evidence to one of the ‘missing links’ in the ‘post-Fordist’ literature. That is, it contributes to the debate about whether nascent neoliberal or Third Way modes of social regulation have potential to stabilise capitalism’s inherent crisis tendencies, or whether they merely extend a period of institutional searching. The thesis concludes that the South Australian Social Inclusion Initiative in various ways appears to be not only partial and inadequate in its own terms, but fundamentally in conflict with the South Australian government’s broader policy objectives. In short, it shows that the Initiative has inadequate capacity to address the impact of global structural changes that have caused the polarisation of wealth and increasing poverty. Furthermore, it is argued that this approach attempts to suppress class dissent by silencing potential critics, and fails to intersect with or compensate for national level policies which have served to depress wages and simultaneously reduce the welfare safety net. It is concluded from these findings that these policies do not have the capacity to contribute to an equitable or sustainable new mode of social regulation. The thesis argues that a more comprehensive approach to ‘social inclusion’ is required in the post-Keynesian era and proposes further research to this end. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1348509 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2008