discussion board

638 Public Administration Review • July | August 2016

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 4, pp. 638–647. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12504.

Roderick A. W. Rhodes is profes-

sor of government at the University of

Southampton, United Kingdom. He is

life vice president of the Political Studies

Association of the United Kingdom; fellow

of the Academy of the Social Sciences in

Australia and the United Kingdom; and

recipient of the 2015 Lifetime Achievement

Award of the European Consortium

for Political Research. He is author or

editor of some 38 books, including, most

recently, The Routledge Handbook

of Interpretive Political Science (joint

editor, 2015) and Lessons in Governing:

A Profi le of Prime Ministers’ Chiefs of

Staff (coauthor, 2014).

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Public sector reform has rarely dropped off the political agenda of Western governments, yet the old craft skills of traditional public administration remain of paramount importance. Th e pendulum has swung too far toward the new and the fashionable reforms associated with New Public Management and the New Public Governance. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of govern- ing. Th is article discusses the skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Although these skills are of wide relevance, the article focuses on their relevance in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. It concludes that the next bout of reforms needs to recover the traditional craft skills. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the new skills of New Public Management or New Public Governance; it is a question of what works, of what skills fi t in a particular context.

Practitioner Points • We need to abandon the public service reform syndrome in which reform succeeds reform, with no time for

the intended changes to take place, no evaluation, and no clear evidence of either success or failure, and take stock of where we have come from before embarking on another round of reform.

• Th e traditional craft skills of public administration remain relevant today because of the primacy of politics in the work of top political-administrators.

• Th e craft skills include counseling, stewardship, prudence, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. • It is not a question of traditional skills versus the skills of the New Public Management or the skills needed

to manage networks but of the right mix of skills for a specifi c context.

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration

Roderick A. W. Rhodes University of Southampton, United Kingdom

For the past 40 years, many governments have had an obsessive concern with reforming the public service. We have seen a shift from the New Public Management (NPM) to the New Public Governance (NPG). Reform has succeeded reform, with no time for the intended changes to take eff ect, no evaluation, and no clear evidence of either success or failure. Rather, we are left with the dilemmas cre- ated by the overlapping residues of past reforms. So, we need to take stock of where we have come from. We need to look back to look forward. We need to ask, what is the role of the public servant in the era of NPM and NPG?

Westminster governments were enthusiastic reformers of their public services. Indeed, they are all categorized as “core NPM states” by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011, 124). An important result of the reforms was to push to one side the traditional craft skills of senior public servants. Th ese skills, however, continue to have much utility. We need to recognize that the old craft skills of traditional public administration remain important. Th e fi rst section of this article provides a baseline for

this discussion by describing the main characteristics of traditional public administration and the reforms associated with NPM and NPG. Th e next section defi nes the craft. Th e following section discusses the craft skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Finally, the article discusses ways of systemati- cally recovering craft skills and comments on the wider relevance of the notion of craft.

It is not a central aim of this article to criticize either NPM or NPG. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the skills of New Public Management or network governance. Rather, we need to strike a better balance between the old and the new. It is a ques- tion of what works, of which skills fi t in a particular context. Th e pendulum has swung too far for too long toward the new and the fashionable. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of governing.

Th is article focuses on public service reform in Westminster governments, although its relevance is

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration 639

not limited to them. However, it is not possible to cover all Western governments. Th is group of nations bear a strong family resem- blance (Rhodes, Wanna, and Weller 2009, 9), and they were at the heart of the reforms. Th ey are comparable. Th e phrase “civil or pub- lic servant” refers to public sector employees of national government departments. Th e phrase “Westminster” refers to Britain and the old dominion countries of the British Commonwealth such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Westminster is a family of ideas includ- ing responsible cabinet government, ministerial responsibility to parliament, a professional nonpartisan public service, and the unity of the executive and legislature. A professional, nonpartisan public service is a central notion in any defi nition of Westminster (see, e.g., Rhodes, Wanna, and Weller 2009, 10, and citations).

Because the terminology varies among countries, the label “politi- cians and public servants” has been standardized throughout the article. I focus on senior politicians and public servants. In Britain, the top offi cial is called the permanent secretary; in Australia, the departmental secretary; and in Canada, the deputy minister. For convenience and simplicity, the short form “secretary” is used throughout. Similarly, the term for the politi- cian at the head of the department or agency varies. Th e term “minister” is used through- out. However, both ministers and secretaries are interdependent with overlapping roles and responsibilities, each role one side of the same coin. So, following Heclo and Wildavsky (1974, 2, 36), they are also referred to as “political administrators” to stress their interdependence.

From Traditional Public Administration to the New Public Governance Table 1 summarizes the shift from traditional public administration to the New Public Management to the latest wave of reform, the New Public Governance.

Traditional Public Administration We turned our backs on traditional public administration; it was seen as the problem, not the solution. Of course, the bureaucra- cies of yesteryear had their faults, and the reformers had a case (see, e.g., Osborne and Gaebler 1992; Pollitt 1993). For example, in Britain, the Fulton Committee inaugurated the era of reform with its diagnoses that the civil service “is still fundamentally the product of the nineteenth-century” and that the “structure and practices of the Service have not kept up with the changing tasks” (1968, 9).

Most notoriously, it claimed that “the Service is still essentially based on the philosophy of the amateur (or ‘generalist’ or ‘all-rounder’) and that this “cult is obsolete at all levels and in all parts of the Service” (1968, 11). Margaret Th atcher subscribed to this view (Hennessy 1989, part IV). Yet the defi ning characteristics of tradi- tional public administration are not red tape, cost, and ineffi ciency. Rather, the phrase refers to classic bureaucrats working in a hierar- chy of authority and conserving the state tradition. In table 1, their task is to provide policy advice for their political masters and oversee the implementation of the politician’s decision. Politicians, political staff ers, and even some public servants continue to hold important misconceptions about the past of our public services. Th ey forget that bureaucracy persists because it provides “consistent, stable administration,” “equity in processes,” “expertise,” and “accountabil- ity” (Meier and Hill 2005, 67; see also Goodsell 2004).

According to a former head of the British Home Civil Service, Sir Edward Bridges, the generalist has four “skills or qualities.” First,

he or she must have “long experience of a particular fi eld.” Second, the individual must have the specialized skills or arts of the admin- istrator, for example, spotting “the strong and weak points in any situation.” Th ird, the civil servant should “study diffi cult subjects intensively and objectively, with the same dis- interested desire to fi nd the truth at all costs.” Finally, the civil servant must “combine the capacity for taking a somewhat coldly judicial attitude with the warmer qualities essential to

managing large numbers of staff ” (Bridges 1950, 50, 52, 55–57). Turning to more recent times, Simon James, a former civil servant, summarizes the required skills as “the capacity to absorb detail at speed, to analyze the unfamiliar problem at short notice, to clarify and summarize it, to present options and consequences lucidly, and to tender sound advice in precise and clear papers” (1992, 26; see also Wilson 2003). Traditional public administration continues to be characterized as an art and a craft as much as it is a science, and public servants are generalists—that is, a profession based on craft knowledge.

The New Public Management Th e past 40 years have seen three waves of NPM reforms (for a more detailed account, see Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011, chap. 1; Rhodes 2011, 23–33). As seen in table 1, the fi rst wave of NPM was mana- gerialism or hands-on professional management, explicit standards and measures of performance, managing by results, and value for

Table 1 Public Administration, New Public Management, and New Public Governance Compared

Paradigm/Key Elements Theoretical Roots State Tradition Unit of Analysis Key Focus

Resource Allocation Mechanism Core Beliefs

Public administration Political science and public policy

Unitary/federal Political-administrative system

Policy advice and implementation

Hierarchy Public sector ethos

New Public Management

Rational choice theory and management studies

Regulatory Organization Management of organizational resources and performance

Markets Effi ciency, competition, and the market

New Public Governance

New Institutionalism and network theory

Differentiated Network Negotiation of values, meanings, and relationships

Networks Trust and reciprocity

Sources: Compiled from Osborne (2010) and Rhodes (1998). For a similar table showing that this analysis is relevant to the United States, see Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg (2014).

Traditional public administra- tion continues to be character-

ized as an art and a craft as much as it is a science, and

public servants are generalists— that is, a profession based on

craft knowledge.

640 Public Administration Review • July | August 2016

money. Th at was only the beginning. In the second wave, govern- ments embraced marketization or neoliberal beliefs about competition and markets. It introduced ideas about restructuring the incentive structures of public service provision through contracting out and quasi markets. Th e third wave of NPM focused on service delivery and citizen choice. Nothing has gone away. We have geological strata of reforms. Th us, Hood and Lodge suggest that we have created a “civil service reform syndrome” in which “initiatives come and go, overlap and ignore each other, leaving behind residues of varying size and style” (2007, 59). As one secretary said, “the inoculation theory of reform does not work—you are not immune after one bout.” Although the extent of the reforms varies from country to country, and the Westminster countries were among the most enthusiastic, public service reform is ubiquitous. Pollitt and Bouckaert conclude that NPM “has become a key element in many … countries. It has internationalized. . . . In short, it has arrived” (2011, 9).

What are the implications for public servants of NPM reform? Th e search for better management remains at the forefront of civil service reform, and better management means the practices of the private sector. Two examples out of the embarrassing number avail- able will be enough. Th e U.K. coalition government’s Civil Service Reform Plan focused on skills and competencies. Th e focus was on management—for example, “the Civil Service needs staff with com- missioning and contracting skills; and project management capa- bilities need a serious upgrade” (Her Majesty’s Government 2012, 9). Australia had the Advisory Group on Reform of Australian Government Administration (2010) and the Leadership and Core Skills Strategy and Integrated Leadership System (APSC 2014). In both countries, leadership is often invoked and refers to managing government departments.

Th is obsession with NPM has had adverse eff ects on traditional skills. For example, Pollitt (2008, 173) gives his recipe for losing institutional memory: rotate staff rapidly, change the information technology often, restructure every two years, reward management over other skills, and adopt each new management fad. All three departments in Rhodes’s (2011, chap. 7) study of British govern- ment met most of these criteria. He found poor record keeping, the annual postings of the best staff , and high staff turnover. Add inter- nal reorganizations, managerial reform, and especially the successive waves of the delivery agenda, and it can be no surprise that ministers complained about the loss of memory. And ministers come and go, rarely lasting more than two years. From her observational fi eldwork in the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Aff airs, Wilkinson concludes that corporate memory is the preserve of the bureaucracy; without it, “policymakers lose the knowledge of their constitutional context, departmental history, and awareness of which policies have succeeded and failed in the past” (2009, 14).

Th e nearer reform gets to the political sphere, the vaguer the discussion. Th us, better policy making boils down to a call for greater “contestability” in policy advice—that is, for advice from competing sources. Under the label “what works,” the government seeks more evidence-based policy making (Her

Majesty’s Government 2012, chap. 2). It does not discuss the respec- tive roles of secretaries and ministers. When the Civil Service Plan report touches on the tasks of political-administrators, it can strike a politically naive tone. Th us, upon implementation, it suggests that ministers, who will be in offi ce for two years or less, will delay a policy announcement while it is thought through and civil serv- ants are retrained (2012, 18). Th e comment “implausible” springs to one’s lips unbidden. It is all too easy to hear the impatience in the minister’s voice. Indeed, NPM has not had much eff ect on the behavior of ministers. Pollitt and Bouckaert conclude that “there is an absence of convincing evidence” (2011, 180–81).

The New Public Governance (NPG) In table 1, managing networks is at the heart of NPG. For example, both the Dutch school (Kickert, Klijn, and Koppenjan 1997) and the Anglo-governance school (Rhodes 1997b) posit a shift from hands-on to hands-off steering by the state. Hands-off steering refers to working with and through networks or webs of organizations to achieve shared policy objectives. It involves continuously negotiating beliefs and exchanging of resources within agreed rules of the game (see also Koliba, Meek, and Zia 2011, 60; Torfi ng et al. 2012, 14).

Th e fi rst point to note is that whereas NPM inspired a vast array of management reforms, NPG inspired relatively few reforms in Westminster government. Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011, 198–99, 212) see joining up—integrated service provision through better horizontal and vertical coordination—as one of the main themes of reform. It has “grown in prominence internationally since the turn of the century” (see, e.g., Cabinet Offi ce 1999; Management Advisory Committee 2004).

What does NPG say about the role of the public service? What are the new skills? Torfi ng et al. suggest that the traditional role of the public servants is “supplemented” (not replaced) by that of a “meta-governor managing and facilitating interactive governance” (2012, 156–59, chap. 7). Th eir task is to “balance autonomy of networks with hands-on intervention.” Th ey have various specifi c ways of carrying out this balancing act. Th ey can “campaign for a policy, deploy policy narratives, act as boundary spanners, and form alliance with politicians.” Th ey become “meta-governors” manag- ing the mix of bureaucracy, markets, and networks (see also Koliba, Meek, and Zia 2011, xxxii, chap. 8). Th e meta-governing public servant has to master some specifi c skills for managing networks. Th ey include integrating agendas; representing both the agency and the network; setting broad rules of the game that leave local action to network members; developing clear roles, expectations, and

responsibilities for all players; agreeing on the criteria of success; and sharing the administra- tive burden (see also Agranoff 2007; Denhardt and Denhardt 2000; Goldsmith and Eggers 2004; Goldsmith and Kettl 2009; Klijn and Koppenjan 2016; Rhodes 2006).

Th e neutral, competent servants of the politi- cal executive must now master the skills for managing the complex, nonroutine issues, policies, and relationships in networks—that is, meta-governing, boundary spanning, and collaborative leadership. Th e task is to

Th e neutral, competent serv- ants of the political executive must now master the skills for managing the complex, non- routine issues, policies, and

relationships in networks—that is, meta-governing, boundary spanning, and collaborative

leadership.

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration 641

manage the mix of bureaucracy, markets, and networks (Rhodes 1997a). Th e public service needs these new skills, but it is a step too far to talk of these new skills requiring “a full blown cultural transformation” (Goldsmith and Eggers 2004, 178). Indeed, part of the problem is this call for transformative cultural change. As Sir Arthur Tange, former secretary of the Australian Department of Defense, commented, the reformers “demolished or at least fractured the symmetry of the Westminster model” (1982, 2). However, they did not replace it with “a coherent structure of ideas to be a guiding light for loyalties and behavioral proprieties in the Federal Public Service.”

Recovering the Craft Recovering the craft skills is important because reform has been only partially successful. Pollitt and Bouckaert describe the results of reform as a “half empty wineglass” (2011, 155) because we do not have the data about effi ciency or outcomes. Reforms have been only partially successful because they have ignored the central role of the minister in running the department. Critics who blame the public service for the slow pace of change should look instead to ministers. Th ey are the main wellspring of change in government, and they are not interested in public service reform. In the eyes of both ministers and secretaries, the job of ministers was not transformed by either NPM or NPG. Th ey continue to live in a world of blurred accountability. As one secretary commented, “the current arrangements are fraught with ambiguities—and remember this suits both sides.” Ministers and top public servants are political-administrators dependent on one another if they are to succeed. Public servants recognize both the dependence and the critical role of ministers. One secretary sug- gested that “clarifying the role of ministers and offi cials is the major unresolved constitutional question” (cited in Lodge and Rogers 2006, ix, 63).

Ministers undermine civil service reform in two main ways. First, they lack the political will to drive reform. Politicians make bold statements but often are unsure about what changes they want. When they do propose change, they move on to other policy con- cerns all too quickly. Also, as Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011, 169–70) point out, politicians are reluctant to stick with the roles allocated to them by the reforms. It defeats the object of the exercise if, after decentralizing authority to bureaucrats, the minister intervenes when something goes wrong. Yet ministers can resist neither the temptation nor sometimes the political imperative to interfere. Public service reform is also a symbolic policy. Everybody loves bashing the bureaucracy. It appears to be decisive action. But eff ec- tive organizational change is a long slog, and the next election is always looming.

Second, management is not a core ministerial skill. If you imagine yourself in a minister’s or a secretary’s shoes, performance manage- ment does not matter much—useful, but not where the real action is. As Sir Frank Cooper, former permanent secretary in the British Ministry of Defense, observed with characteristic vigor, the minis- ter-as-manager is “nonsense” because “it’s not what they went into politics for” (cited in Hennessy 1989, 609; see also Rhodes 2011, 88–90, 292–93).

Indeed, ministers can actively handicap reform. As one secretary complained, “I have been trying to build up management [but it] was just sort of knocked out of the way by the politician.” In a diplomatic vein, Pollitt and Bouckaert conclude, any reform that “assigns a new role to politicians is at risk of being embarrassed by their lack of cooperation” (2011, 174).

Th e third and most fundamental factor is that the reforms do not “fi t” the political environment at the top of a government depart- ment. Th e minister lives in a cocoon of willed ordinariness that exists to protect the minister. Private offi ces, staff ers, and top public servants exist to tame trouble, defuse problems, and take the emo- tion out of a crisis. It was ever thus (see, e.g., Crossman 1975, 618). Protocols are the key to managing this pressurized existence. All are involved in an exercise in willed ordinariness. Th e slow pace of NPM reform is not because public servants are ill trained, stupid, or venal, or because of a lack of political will, or because ministers

cannot resist intervening. It is because such private sector management techniques often do not fi t this political context. Reforms are neutered by both bureaucratic and party political games. Such games are compounded by the demands of political accountability and the media spotlight, which pick up relatively trivial problems of implementation

and threaten the minister’s career. Th e old craft skills focus more on managing the minister’s political environment than on service delivery—hence their continued relevance.

Th e confusions and ambiguities at the heart of public service reform are all too obvious in a recent public disagreement between the government and the public service in Britain. Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Offi ce responsible for the civil service, publicly criticized an internal civil service document setting out the job description for a secretary. Th e document stated that secretaries need to balance “the needs and demands of Ministers and high- level stakeholders within Whitehall and externally with stewardship of their Department and its customers.” Maude claimed that this statement was “without constitutional propriety” and that the civil service should focus on “the priorities of the government of the day.” According to the BBC, the document “enraged cabinet ministers” because it contained the statement that the secretary “tolerates high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty and rapid change—and at times irrational political demands.” Lord Butler of Brockwell, former head of the Home Civil Service, considered the document accurate and observed that “Th ere is nothing there that I wouldn’t have put down in black and white.”1 What is clear is that agreement on either the stewardship role of the civil service or on the proper relationship between ministers and public servants remains elusive. Revisiting the old arts would seem timely.

The Craft Skills Th e old craft skills remain essential because they focus on minis- ters—on meeting and managing their political needs. It was a hard lesson for one secretary who was not a career civil servant. It was the fi rst time he had worked with a national politician, and it involved “a steep learning curve.” His position was “uncomfortable,” and his “credibility was knocked with the department” because he spent the fi rst year “getting up to speed on the political-management side of

Critics who blame the public service for the slow pace of

change should look instead to ministers.

642 Public Administration Review • July | August 2016

the job.” In sum, “what I hadn’t understood at that point and which I understand much better now is (a) the [minister] and (b) the political perspective.” He had to learn the craft skills and give the minister what he wanted.

But phrases such as “craft knowledge,” “generalist public servant,” and “profession” skate over the surface of their skills. What is their craft knowledge? If the focus is on the craft, then we need to explore what public administrators do in their specifi c context—on how things work around here. So, we need to systematize their experi- ence and practice.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a craft is a skill, an occupation, or a profession requiring special skill or knowledge. Th at is only the beginning when seeking to understand the term. To call something a craft rather than a science is to accept the importance of experiential knowledge as well as formal knowledge. Th e craft is learned on the job. A craft involves passing on practical beliefs and practices from generation to generation. In contrast to a science, a craft has no one best way. In contrast to an art, it has utility. Th e craft is learned from a “master,” and the novitiate moves from apprentice to journeyman to master. Commonly, a profession—or, historically, a guild—controls membership and regulates knowledge and practices. Much of that knowledge is tacit. It has not been systematized. It is complex. Often, it is secret. In this way, the practitioners of the craft can control the supply and demand for their skills.

In seeking to identify the “traditional” skills, the researcher cannot consult a defi ning text or defi nitive survey of these skills, which depend on both individual talents and the context in which they are exercised. Indeed, existing lists of skills are about which skills the public servant ought to have in the era of NPM, not descrip- tions of the skills that public servants deploy in their everyday lives. So, the analysis is based on the skills most commonly discussed in the existing literature, especially on the refl ections of practitioners and research monographs reporting interviews with practition- ers.2 Whenever possible, the analysis is also illustrated with the words of the political-administrators at the head of departments of state. As with the example at the beginning of this section, most of these quotes in this article are drawn from a database of some 140 interviews with ministers, public servants, and political staff - ers conducted with my colleague Anne Tiernan since 2002 (and continuing).

Counseling Traditional public servants have been described as “mandarins.” Th eir skill lies not “in administering policy but in making it” because of their professional experience, judgment, and independence (du Gay 2009, 360). Th eir allegiance is to the state rather than exclusively to the governing party, and they provide a check on the parti- san actions of ministers. Th eir characteristics include “party political neutrality,” “frank and fearless advice,” “integrity and propriety in the conduct of offi cial business,” and accepting “the obligations of confi dentiality, security and anonymity” (du Gay 2009, 365).

Political-administrators act as a counterweight to partisan inter- ests and arguments. Here lies a dilemma: when making a minister

aware of the problems with a policy, counselors court the danger of appearing to usurp power. Th ey could be seen as putting their conception of the state before that of the minister; they take it on themselves to determine the public interest. For some commenta- tors, that is the role of the public servant. Fesler argues that the public interest is “for administrators what objectivity is for scholars” (1990, 91). So, the political-administrator is guardian of the public interest.

Th e claim poses some intractable questions. Why should they be the arbiters of what is in the public interest? What is the basis of their claim to act authoritatively? Is it legitimate? Are they accountable? Th e call for political responsiveness by politicians in Australia sprang from a determination to end the reign of an imperial public service that took too much on itself. In the United Kingdom, it brought the categorical assertion that the interests of the government of the day were the public interest (Armstrong 1985). In both of these countries, and elsewhere, the public interest is seen as the preserve of democratically elected and accountable politicians, not unelected administrators, with public servants in a hierarchical relationship to their political masters.

Scholars have proposed normative models to resolve this dilemma (see, e.g., Denhardt and Denhardt 2000; Wamsley et al. 1990), but such eff orts court the danger of missing the point. Th e point is the dilemma—that is, speaking truth to power, with all its atten- dant tensions. Th e public servant’s task is not to defi ne the public interest. Th e task is to challenge. Th e skill is forensic interrogation or “snag spotting.” Th e grounds for interrogation are continuity of experience and institutional memory. Ministers will bridle at such challenges, but that does not mean they are illegitimate, only unwelcome. Th e tension is the point. After all, 9 times out of 10, the minister will win.

Stewardship Historically, bureaucrats in Westminster government were servants of power, not transformative leaders (Burns 1978). Rather, the task of secretaries is to apply top-down authority; they are cogs in the machine. But with NPM came the idea of entrepreneurial leader- ship—of public servants who sought out ways to improve their organization’s performance and sold those ideas to their various stakeholders. Th us, Doig and Hargrove (1987) seek to reclaim the bureaucrat as leader by identifying 12 individuals in high-level executive positions in American government who were entrepre- neurial or transformative leaders—that is, they had innovative ideas and put them into practice.

Terry (1995) sees the heroic or transformative model of leadership with the “great man” radi- cally changing the organization and disdaining its existing traditions as a threat to “institu- tional integrity.” An institution has integrity

when “it is faithful to the functions, values, and distinctive set of unifying principles that defi ne its special competence and character” (Terry 1995, 44). Th e task of administrative leaders is to preserve this institutional integrity—that is, to conserve the institution’s mis- sion. Th ey must balance the autonomy necessary to uphold integrity with responsibility to elected politicians. Administrative leaders practice “administrative conservatorship” or stewardship (Watt

Political-administrators act as a counterweight to partisan inter-

ests and arguments.

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration 643

2012, 9). Th e practices of stewardship are “a form of statesmanship,” which “requires professional expertise, political skill, and a sophis- ticated understanding of what it means to be an active participant in governance.” Or, to employ an everyday simile, public leadership is like “gardening,” needing time, patience, experience, and politi- cal awareness. Th ey are “quiet leaders” who are in the job “for the long haul.” Th ey are about continuity, learning from the past, and preserving institutional memory (Frederickson and Matkin 2007, 36–38). Indeed, much government is about coping, the appearance of rule, and keeping everything going (Rhodes 2011); it is about stewardship.

Secretaries in Australia have heeded this particular call. Th e Advisory Group on Reform of Australian Government Administration in its report Ahead of the Game identifi ed stewardship as an important role for departmental secretaries. Th ey saw it as necessary “to ensure that the APS [Australian Public Service] has the capacity to serve successive governments.” (2010, 5). Also, it preserved “less tangible factors” such as “the trust placed in the APS and building a culture of innovation and integrity in policy advice.”3

Practical Wisdom Goodsell unpacks the notion of “practical wisdom” (1992, 247). He considers public administration “the execution of an applied or practical art.” It is concerned with helping practitioners fi nd the right “tool.” Public servants must become masters of their craft; that is, they become experts. Th ey acquire this mastery through practi- cal learning, which recognizes “traditional craft knowledge is not systematically codifi ed and written down. It is known informally, passed on verbally to apprentices and jour- neymen over time.” Th rough this mastery and practical learning, public servants build a sense of identity; an esprit de corps—the French phrase encapsulates more than the prosaic English equivalents of “loyalty” and “morale.” Finally, this identity breeds pride in one’s work and a willingness to accept respon- sibility for it (adapted from Goodsell 1992, 247–48; see also Waldo 1968).

Mandarins do not just provide specifi c policy advice, although, of course, they do provide such advice. Th ey provide what a former head of the Home Civil Service, Lord Bridges, called “a kind of rare- fi ed common sense” based on the “slow accretion and accumulation of experience” (1950, 50–51). Th is collective or institutional mem- ory refers to the organized, selective retelling of the past to make sense of the present. Secretaries explain past practice and events to justify recommendations for the future (see also Wass 1984, 49–50). Th ey draw on this memory to spot hidden or unexpected prob- lems—snags. Th ey may irritate ministers, who see it as a delaying tactic. But it is integral to the forensic examination of policy propos- als. And politicians recognize its importance, even if, at times, belatedly. For example, the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, when refl ecting on his torrid experience in offi ce, also thought that he should have paid more attention to “institutional wisdom.”

Of course, there are limits to learning from experience and to rely- ing on institutional memory. As March concludes, “learning from experience is an imperfect instrument for fi nding truth” (2010,

114). It is ambiguous, constructed and contested. Yet practical wisdom, and the memory and experience on which it is based, lies at the core of the craft of the political-administrator.

Probity When Kane and Patapan (2006, 713, 719) talk of the Aristotelean moral virtues that are relevant for public administration, they item- ize courage, temperance, generosity, magnanimity, mildness, humor, truthfulness, moderation, and wisdom. Harold Nicolson (1950, 126), a former British diplomat, took for granted the virtues of intelligence, knowledge, discernment, hospitality, charm, industry, courage, and tact. Th e U.K. Civil Service’s code highlights the four values of integrity, honesty, objectivity, and impartiality.4 All have in common the idea that public servants should have the quality of possessing strong moral principles, that is, probity. Th e lists vary in length and emphasis but honesty, decency, and loyalty are always there. When a colleague revealed secret information, one secretary thought it was “unbelievable” that a man in a “tremendous position of trust” working with the minister had “betrayed” the minister and his civil service colleagues.

Judgment Th e ability to make considered decisions is close to practical wis- dom, but under this heading, I want to explore a distinctive notion: “appreciation.” Introduced by Sir Geoff rey Vickers in 1965, the idea was a pioneering contribution to the role of sense making in organizations (see also Weick 1995). For Vickers, appreciation is the web or net of reality concepts and value concepts that we use to make sense of the observed world and how we communicate in that

world. Appreciation is about the mental maps we use to make our way in the world.

Departments have shared mental maps. Th ey are a storehouse of knowledge and experi- ence of what worked and what aroused public criticism. Th is departmental philosophy can be understood as an appreciative system; it is the net of beliefs about reality through which

public servants understand their world. Th e inherited traditions of the organization and the storytelling that hands down that tradition to new arrivals form this departmental philosophy. It is a form of folk psychology. It provides the everyday theory and shared language for storytelling. It is the collective memory of the department: a retelling of yesterday to make sense of today (see Rhodes 2011, chap. 9).

A craft involves judgment based on practical wisdom because sci- ence cannot provide the answers, and the art of judgment lies in weighing the merits of competing stories and spotting the snags. Indeed, these skills can be seen as the public servants’ distinctive contribution to the analysis of policy.

Diplomacy Nicholson defi nes diplomacy as “the management of international aff airs by negotiation” (1950, 15, 116–20). He also identifi es seven diplomatic virtues: truthfulness, precision, calm, good temper, patience, modesty, and loyalty (to the government one serves). For all its slightly quaint air, Nicholson identifi es an important skill. Diplomacy may be an old-fashioned word, but the arts of

Th e inherited traditions of the organization and the storytell- ing that hands down that tradi- tion to new arrivals form this

departmental philosophy.

644 Public Administration Review • July | August 2016

negotiation and persuasion remain current. We have several every- day expressions to cover this skill. We talk about sitting in the other person’s chair, standing in the other person’s shoes, and looking at the world through other peoples’ eyes. As Sir Douglas Wass (a for- mer head of the British Civil Service) said, “fi nesse and diplomacy are an essential ingredient in public service” (cited in Hennessy 1989, 150). Diplomacy, with its focus on spanning boundaries and facilitating interaction, is an old art in a new context; the skills of diplomacy lie at the heart of NPG. When NPG talks of boundary spanning and collaborative leadership, it is talking about diplomacy in twenty-fi rst-century guise.

Political Nous Political nous refers to astuteness in understanding and negotiat- ing the political lay of the land. “Public administrators need to be ‘crafty,’ to fulfi l their responsibilities”; they need guile and cunning (Berkley and Rouse 2009, 18). Th ey practice “politics” with a small “p.” Th e dark arts of politics are not the sole preserve of the elected politician (see Meltsner 1990). Th e secretaries may be neutral between political parties, but they are not neutral either in the service of their department or their minister. Both are territorial. As one secretary reported, “Th e Minister stands over my desk and says, ‘I want you ring up [your civil servant counterpart],’ and say, ‘I want you to pass a message to [your Minister] which is ‘get your tanks off my lawn.’”

Top public servants talk about their “political antennae” (Rhodes 2011, 121). Th ey express frustration when they have ministers less skillful than themselves: “you develop a feel for the political” and “you get frustrated” when you see “how … people who’ve had a life- time of this profession … make such a mess of the politics.”

Th ey have a wide view of politics. Th ey do not mean party politics and the party caucus. Th ey may be unable to resist gossiping about such matters, but they do not take part. Rather, “politics” refers to the politics of public administration, the core executive, parliament, and the media. All political-administrators must defend their minister and their depart- ment in parliament. Th ey must ask, “What will this look like on the front page of Th e Daily Telegraph?” Th e art is coping. Th e aim is survival: still being here.

Learning from experience is at the heart of practical wisdom, and it is how public servants pick up their political nous. Th e point is appreciated in theory by a former Australian prime minister who saw public service experience as the “ideal” training and preparation for the job of his chief of staff (Howard 2001). Yet in Australia, fewer and fewer public servants have experience in the Prime Minister’s Offi ce. Departments no longer have staff with experience of working in the networks at the heart of government. Conversely, these core networks lack knowledge about departments. Historically, rotations in ministerial and prime ministerial offi ces were an essential developmental pathway for offi cials and a source of practical wisdom for politicians (Barberis 1996). All core execu- tives have opportunities for aspirants for the top jobs to learn from experience and to be socialized into the rules of the political game. Increasingly, they do not take the opportunity (Rhodes and Tiernan

2014). Nonetheless, political nous remains a core part of a political- administrator’s craft.

Conclusions: It’s the Mix of Old and New That Matters NPM and NPG have introduced valuable reforms. It would be foolish to favor the waste of public money. Better management that seeks to improve economy, effi ciency, and eff ectiveness is like mom or apple pie: everyone agrees it is good, so it is it is hard to criticize. Network governance needs new skills in managing the mix of bureaucracy, markets, and networks. Such meta-governing involves policy narratives, boundary spanning, and collaborative leadership. But in adopting these new skills, we must not forget that traditional skills remain essential and need protecting, for example, institutional memory. Traditional, NPM, and NPG skills all remain relevant. It is not a question of traditional skills versus NPM and NPG. It is a question of what works, of what skills fi t in a particular context. Th is conclusion recaps the main argument, discusses ways of systematically recovering craft skills, and comments on the wider relevance of the notion of craft.

Why do we need a preservation order on the public service? Why are the traditional skills important? To court the danger of over- simplifi cation, management and markets are the priority for NPM, while delivering services to citizens is the priority for NPG. For the traditional craft, the priority is politics. As noted earlier, in Westminster governments, ministers are not managers. Th at is not why they went into politics. Only a minority take an interest. Th is simple brute fact undermines reform. At best, it is not a priority. At worst, it is not even on the radar as both confront a world of high risk and 24/7 media coverage that dominates their everyday lives.

Th ey live in a closed world of overlapping roles and responsibilities. Th e distinctions between policy and management, politician and public servant are meaningless when confronted by the imperative to cope and sur- vive. Political-administrators are dependent on one another to carry out their respective roles, each role one side of the same coin. For

example, Andrew Podger (2009, 10), former secretary for health and aged care in Australia, spent 40 percent of his time supporting the minister. Every rude surprise shows their dependence. Genufl ecting to the opening narration of the television series, political-adminis- trators live in Th e Twilight Zone: “the middle ground between light and shadow … and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.” When they have a cooperative working partnership, it is also “the dimension of imagination”: the wellspring of policy innovation in the department. But whether their relation- ship is good or bad, reform of the public service demands clarity not only about the role of the secretary but also of the minister.

Th e craft persists. In the 1950s, Sir Edward Bridges wrote that it was “the duty of the civil servant to give his Minister the fullest benefi t of the storehouse of departmental experience and to let the waves of the practical philosophy wash against ideas put forward by his ministerial masters.” In the 2000s, the head of the Australian public service insisted that “we have something unique to off er” and itemized the capacity to stand apart from vested interests and focus on the national interest and experience about what works (Watt 2012, 5). Th e quotes span 60 years, yet both public servants

Learning from experience is at the heart of practical wisdom, and it is how public servants pick up their political nous.

Recovering the Craft of Public Administration 645

share a distinct and distinctive craft. Despite the many challenges posed by the various waves of “reform,” their profession continues to off er counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judg- ment, diplomacy, and political nous. Such remarks can be dismissed either as apologia for yesteryear or as special pleading by the public service. No matter, they are still describing the craft of public serv- ants. What we need now is a more systematic account of those craft skills drawing on current experiences, not, as here, the fragmentary historical record.

How do we fi nd out what we do not know about the craft of the public administrator? Ethnographic fi eldwork is well suited to this task (Rhodes 2015). It asks the simple questions “how do things work around here?” and “how do you do your job?” Participant observation is the best method for answering these questions, but a combination of ethnographic interviews and focus groups would tease out the tacit knowledge characteristics of all crafts. Th us, the focus groups could comprise recently retired secretaries, and the group interaction would produce the data (see Agar and MacDonald 1995; Rhodes and Tiernan 2014). Th e skills identifi ed in this article could provide the background and the starting point. Of particular value would be public servants’ commentary on one another’s insights, experiences, and opinions about their craft. If former ministers could also be persuaded to participate in their own focus group, the contrast between the two would be instructive.

Although the main task is to map the traditional skills, it is not the only task. Th e mix of skills is also important. Th is raises sev- eral issues. First, reducing the craft of the public servant to seven skills oversimplifi es. Th is article separates the skills for ease of exposi- tion. In practice, they are warp and weft. Where does diplomacy end and judgment begin? How do you counsel a minister without calling on your political nous? Th e task is not just to document the skills but also to explore how they are woven together in specifi c contexts.

Also, we need to explore the relationship between the craft skills and NPM and NPG. Can the craft skills help in “managing the mix” of traditional, managerial, and networking skills? As noted earlier, the reforms have both intended and unintended consequences. NPG provides a new context for diplomatic skills, whereas NPM erodes institutional memory. Moreover, all may not be as it seems on fi rst inspection. It may not be the role of secretaries to manage any network. Rather, as the heads of central agencies, they manage a group of networks—a “multi-network portfolio” (Ysa and Esteve 2013). As the repository of institutional memory and its stewards, the public service can coordinate the portfolio. No minister will have a map of the department’s networks or stay long enough to master such detail.

Th e most important skill of all is the ability to choose between and manage the mix of skills, whether traditional, NPM, or NPG. At the heart of public servants’ craft is the ability to learn from experi- ence and alter the mix of skills to fi t both the specifi c context in which they work and the person for whom they work. Th e tradi- tional skills of bureaucrats need to be part of public servants’ train- ing, and of the repertoire of governing (Goodsell 2004).

Th is article focused on Westminster governments because the world was too broad a remit. But the traditional craft is not confi ned to

Westminster governments. Th e label “generalist” is not specifi c to them. Th us, Heclo (1977, 2–3) talks about the “craft knowledge” of the high-ranking Washington bureaucrats: about “understand- ing acquired by learning on the job,” not through specialist train- ing. Goodsell (1992, 247) describes American public servants as “artisans,” or masters of “an applied or practical art.” So, the idea of the craft has the potential to travel well. Th e fi nal research question is how well and how far it travels.

Th e bureaucracies of yesteryear were not a golden era, but they had some virtues. Th ey were home to statesmen, albeit statesmen in disguise. Given that we so love dichotomies such as steering not rowing, it is now time for new one. NPM and NPG are about the low politics of implementation, and the craft is about the high politics of serving the minister. We have had an era of thinking small. It is time to think big again and return to the craft—to statecraft.

Acknowledgments Earlier versions of this article were presented as keynote addresses at the International Political Science Association World Congress, Montreal, July 19–24, 2014, and the Institute of Public Administration Australia International Conference, Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, October 30, 2014. I would like to thank James Perry (Indiana University) and the journal’s anony- mous referees, Gerry Stoker (University of Southampton), Anne Tiernan (Griffi th University), and Pat Weller (Griffi th University), for comments on the various drafts.

Notes 1. See “Indicators of Potential for Permanent Secretaries.” Th e document was

produced by YSC, business psychology consultants, for the U.K. Cabinet Offi ce, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_07_14_perma- nentsecretary.pdf (accessed November 10, 2015). Th e comments by Maude and Butler can be found in “Francis Maude Attacks Civil Service over Job Document,” BBC News, July 7, 2014, available at http://www.bbc.com/ news/uk-politics-28202293 (accessed November 10, 2015). Th ese debates are common to most Westminster systems. For a comparative review, see Rhodes, Wanna, and Weller (2009).

2. See, for example, Barberis (1996); Bridges (1950); Butler (1992); Campbell and Halligan (1992); Campbell and Wilson (1995); Lodge and Rogers (2006); Podger (2009); Rhodes (2011); Savoie (2003); Shergold (2004); Wanna, Vincent, and Podger (2012); Wass (1984); Watt (2012); and Wilson (2003).

3. On Australia, see the Public Service Act 1999. On the United Kingdom, see the Civil Service Code, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ civil-service-code (accessed November 10, 2015).

4. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-code (accessed November 10, 2015). On the values of the APS see: http://www.apsc. gov.au/publications-and-media/current-publications/aps-values-and-code-of- conduct-in-practice (accessed November 10, 2015).

References Advisory Group on Reform of Australian Government Administration. 2010. Ahead

of the Game: Blueprint for Reform of Australian Government Administration. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.

Agar, Michael, and James MacDonald. 1995. Focus Groups and Ethnography. Human Organization 54(1): 78–86.

Agranoff , Robert. 2007. Managing within Networks: Adding Value to Public Organizations. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

646 Public Administration Review • July | August 2016

Armstrong, Sir Robert. 1985. Th e Duties and Responsibilities of Civil Servants in Relation to Ministers. http://www.civilservant.org.uk/library/1996_Armstrong_ Memorandum.pdf [accessed November 14, 2015].

Australian Public Service Commission (APSC). 2014. APS Leadership and Core Skills Strategy: 2014–15. http://www.apsc.gov.au/learn-and-develop/ aps- leadership-and-core-skills-strategy-2014-15-refresh. [accessed November 14, 2015].

Barberis, Peter. 1996. Th e Elite of the Elite: Permanent Secretaries in the British Higher Civil Service. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth.

Berkley, George E., and John Rouse. 2009. Th e Craft of Public Administration. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Bridges, Sir Edward. 1950. Portrait of a Profession. In Style in Administration, edited by Richard A. Chapman and Andrew Dunsire, 44–60. London: Allen and Unwin, 1971.

Bryson, John M., Barbara C. Crosby, and Laura Bloomberg. 2014. Public Value Governance: Moving Beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management. Public Administration Review 74(4): 445–56.

Burns, James MacGregor. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Butler, Sir Robin. 1992. Managing the New Public Services: Towards a New

Framework? Public Policy and Administration 7(3): 1–14. Cabinet Offi ce (United Kingdom). 1999. Modernising Government. London: Her

Majesty’s Stationary Offi ce. Cm 4310. Campbell, Colin, and John Halligan. 1992. Political Leadership in an Age of

Constraint: Bureaucratic Politics under Hawke and Keating. St Leonard’s, Australia: Allen and Unwin.

Campbell, Colin, and Graeme Wilson. 1995. Th e End of Whitehall: Death of a Paradigm. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Crossman, Richard. 1975. Th e Diaries of a Cabinet Minister. Vol. 1, Minister of Housing. London: Jonathan Cape.

Denhardt, Janet V., and Robert B. Denhardt. 2000. Th e New Public Service: Serving Rather than Steering. Public Administration Review 60(6): 549–59.

———. 2015. Th e New Public Service Revisited. Public Administration Review 75(5): 664–72.

Doig, Jameson W., and Erwin C. Hargrove, eds. 1987. Leadership and Innovation: A Biographical Perspective on Entrepreneurs in Government. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

du Gay, Paul. 2009. In Defense of Mandarins: Recovering the “Core Business” of Public Management. Management and Organizational History 4(4): 359–84.

Fesler, James. 1990. Th e State and Its Study: Th e Whole and the Parts. In Public Administration: Th e State of the Discipline, edited by Naomi B. Lynn and Aaron Wildavsky, 84–97. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.

Frederickson, H. George, and David Matkin. 2007. Public Leadership as Gardening. In Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century, edited by Ricardo S. Morse, Terry F. Buss, and C. Morgan Kinghorn, 34–45. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Fulton Committee (Committee on the Home Civil Service). 1968. Report of the Committee on the Home Civil Service 1966–1968. London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Offi ce. Cmnd 3638.

Goldsmith, Stephen, and William D. Eggers. 2004. Governing by Network: Th e New Shape of the Public Sector. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Goldsmith, Stephen, and Donald F. Kettl. 2009. Unlocking the Power of Networks: Keys to High-Performance Government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Goodsell, Charles. T. 1992. Th e Public Administrator as Artisan. Public Administration Review 52(3): 246–53.

———. 2004. Th e Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic. 4th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Heclo, Hugh. 1977. A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution

Heclo, Hugh, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1974. Th e Private Government of Public Money: Community and Policy inside British Politics. London: Macmillan.

Hennessy, Peter. 1989. Whitehall. London: Secker & Warburg. Her Majesty’s Government. 2012. Th e Civil Service Reform Plan. http://www.

civilservice.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Civil-Service-Reform-Plan-acc- fi nal.pdf [accessed November 14, 2015].

Hood, Christopher, and Martin Lodge. 2007. Civil Service Reform Syndrome—Are We Heading for a Cure? Transformation, Spring, 58–59. http://www.christo- pherhood.net/pdfs/15576-T5%20PROOF2%201.pdf [accessed November 14, 2015].

Howard, John. 2001. Oration: Centenary of the APS. Speech at the Centenary Conference of the Institute of Public Administration Australia, Canberra, June 19. http://australianpolitics.com/2001/06/19/aps-speech-john-howard.html [accessed November 14, 2015].

James, Simon. 1992. British Cabinet Government. London: Routledge. Kane, John, and Haig Patapan. 2006. In Search of Prudence: Th e Hidden Problem of

Managerial Reform. Public Administration Review 66(5): 711–24. Kickert, Walter J. M., Erik-Hans Klijn, and Joop F. M. Koppenjan, eds. 1997.

Managing Complex Networks: Strategies for the Public Sector. London: Sage Publications.

Klijn, Erik-Hans, and Joop Koppenjan. 2016. Governance Networks in the Public Sector. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Koliba, Christopher, Jack W. Meek, and Asim Zia. 2011. Governance Networks in Public Administration and Public Policy. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Lodge, Guy, and Ben Rogers. 2006. Whitehall’s Black Box: Accountability and Performance in the Senior Civil Service. London: Institute for Public Policy Research.

Management Advisory Committee. 2004. Connecting Government: Whole of Government Response to Australia’s Priority Challenges. Canberra: Australian Public Service Commission.

March, James G. 2010. Th e Ambiguities of Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Meier, Kenneth J., and Gregory C. Hill. 2005. Bureaucracy in the Twenty-First Century. In Th e Oxford Handbook of Public Management, edited by Ewan Ferlie, Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., and Christopher Pollitt, 51–71. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Meltsner, Arnold J. 1990. Rules for Rulers: Th e Politics of Advice. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Nicholson, Harold. 1950. Diplomacy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Osborne, David, and Ted Gaebler. 1992. Reinventing Government: How the

Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Osborne, Stephen P. 2010. Th e New Public Governance: A Suitable Case for Treatment. In Th e New Public Governance: Emerging Perspectives on the Th eory and Practice of Public Governance, edited by Stephen P. Osborne, 1–16. London: Routledge.

Podger, Andrew. 2009. Th e Role of Departmental Secretaries: Personal Refl ections on the Breadth of Responsibilities Today. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

Pollitt, Christopher. 1993. Managerialism and the Public Services: Cuts or Cultural Change in the 1990s? 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

———. 2008. Time, Policy, Management: Governing with the Past. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Pollitt, Christopher, and Geert Bouckaert. 2011. Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis: New Public Management, Governance and Th e Neo- Weberian State. 3rd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Rhodes, R. A. W. 1997a. From Marketisation to Diplomacy: “It’s the Mix Th at Matters.” Australian Journal of Public Administration 56(2): 40–53.

———. 1997b. Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Refl exivity, and Accountability. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Back to the Future? 647

———. 1998. Diff erent Roads to Unfamiliar Places: U.K. Experience in Comparative Perspective. Australian Journal of Public Administration 57(4): 19–31.

———. 2006. Th e Sour Laws of Network Governance. In Fighting Crime Together: Th e Challenges of Policing and Security Networks, edited by Jenny Fleming and Jennifer Wood, 15–34. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press.

———. 2011. Everyday Life in British Government. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

———. 2015. Ethnography. In Th e Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science, edited by Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes, 171–85. Abingdon: Oxon: Routledge.

Rhodes, R. A. W., and Anne Tiernan. 2014. Lessons in Governing: A Profi le of Prime Ministers’ Chiefs of Staff . Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press.

Rhodes, R. A. W., John Wanna, and Patrick Weller. 2009. Comparing Westminster. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Savoie, Donald A. 2003. Breaking the Bargain: Public Servants, Ministers and Parliament. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Shergold, Peter. 2004. Once Was Camelot in Canberra? Refl ections on Public Service Leadership. Sir Roland Wilson Lecture, Australian National University, Canberra, June 23. http://srwfoundation.anu.edu.au/public-lecture- series/2004-2/ [accessed November 14, 2015].

Tange, Sir Arthur. 1982. Th e Focus of Reform in Commonwealth Government Administration. Australian Journal of Public Administration 41(1): 1–14.

Terry, Larry D. 1995. Leadership of Public Bureaucracies: Th e Administrator as Conservator. Th ousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Torfi ng, Jacob, B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, and Eva Sørensen. 2012. Interactive Governance: Advancing the Paradigm. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Vickers, Sir Geoff rey. 1965. Th e Art of Judgement. Centenary ed. London: Sage Publications, 1995.

Waldo, Dwight. 1968. Scope and Th eory of Public Administration. In Th eory and Practice of Public Administration: Scope, Objectives, and Methods, edited by James Clyde Charlesworth, 1–26. Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Wamsley, Gary, Robert N. Bacher, Charles T. Goodsell, Philip S. Kronenberg, John A. Rohr, Camilla M. Stivers, Orion F. White, and James Wolf. 1990. Refounding Public Administration. London: Sage Publications.

Wanna, John, Sam Vincent, and Andrew Podger, eds. 2012. With the Benefi t of Hindsight: Valedictory Refl ections from Departmental Secretaries, 2004–2011. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

Wass, Sir Douglas. 1984. Th e Government and the Governed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Watt, Ian. 2012. Refl ections on My First Year as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Th oughts on the Future. Address to the Institute of Public Administration Australia, ACT Division, Great Hall, Parliament House, October 5.

Weick, Karl E. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. London: Sage Publications. Wilkinson, Katy. 2009. Heroes and Villains in the Bureaucracy: Interpreting Policy

Making in DEFRA. Paper presented at the 59th Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Manchester, April 7–9.

Wilson, Sir Richard. 2003. Portrait of a Profession Revisited. Public Administration 81(2): 365–78.

Ysa, Tamyko, and Marc Esteve. 2013. Networks Never Walk Alone: Th e Governance of Network Portfolios. Paper presented to the Global Governance Club, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Science, Wassenaar, Th e Netherlands, May 29–June 1.