Beyond Westminster governance: bringing politics and public service into the networked era.
Roy, Jeffrey
The underlying premise of this article stems from the following
question: is our Westminster, parliamentary model of democratic
governance and administration adaptable for contemporary realities and
emerging challenges? By framing this question as "adaptable"
rather than "salvageable," the implication is that there
should be room for discussion and nuance, because creating something
anew is hardly a realistic proposition in the world of government,
dramatic crises notwithstanding. Nonetheless, whatever the value of
stability and tradition, the need for significantly re-thinking the
Westminster doctrine is becoming altogether more apparent (for reasons
explored below). The purpose here is thus twofold: first, to expose what
is wrong with the current model; and, secondly, to sketch what sort of
changes to our governing institutions must be envisioned in order to
safeguard political legitimacy and administrative competence in a world
that is increasingly networked. Both elements matter: too often those
arguing for something new merely gloss over the value of what has worked
in the past (and to some degree what may be still functioning).
Consider the contrast between two domestic streams of thought in
Canada in recent rimes. On the one hand, two books devoted to political
and managerial aspects of more networked and digitized forms of
government have called for wholesale changes to much of our democratic
and administrative architecture (Roy 2006a; Borins et al. 2007).
On the other hand, a recent article in this journal by Nicholas
d'Ombrain (2007) provides a thoughtful and thorough defence of
Westminster customs, arguing for a stricter application of tradition in
order to best respond to any perceived or real shortcomings. In my
estimation (and the motivation of this article), the value of this
latter contribution by d'Ombrain is far less in offering a way
forward, however, than in providing a solid understanding of where we
have been (and why). The case for a significant overhaul of Westminster
governance is now increasingly informed by the experiences of other
parliamentary jurisdictions, perhaps most notably in the U.K. itself.
And here, in Canada, the widening gulf between federal government
insularity and external perceptions (both professional and public) was
exposed all too clearly by a recent Public Policy Forum (2007) report
based on the findings of a recent national consultative exercise.
It is not hard to understand why the Public Policy Forum report has
received so little attention across media and policy circles (to say
nothing of the citizenry itself). Neither government nor Parliament
would seem to care very much about administrative or institutional
reform: relative to many other developed countries there is little in
the way of serious dialogue on such matters in Canada. There are some
exceptions: fixed election dates and proposed Senate reforms are notable
if rather narrow departures from the status quo, as is the Federal
Accountability Act (S.C. 2006, c. 9). Such initiatives, however--largely
reactions to past scandal--have done little to quell the emergence of
all too familiar accusations against the Harper government, beginning
with an over-centralizing Prime Minister's Office and systemic
aversion to information-sharing and openness.
With the Federal Accountability Act now in place legislatively, the
absence of any formal agenda politically (and assignation of duties
ministerially) devoted to democratic and public administration reform is
telling in this regard. The reflex of central agencies (operating within
tight prime ministerial confines) is thus greater assertiveness across
the system, placing Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office in the
impossibly dualistic role of control-minded guardians and catalysts for
change. Accordingly, the political priorities of the prime minister
matter and so too do specific initiatives of the PCO clerk focused on
elements of reform such as staff recruitment and retention. Yet lost is
a wider, more inclusive and more public dialogue on new approaches to
governing. Citizen apathy is all too apparent--as Lawrence Martin put
it, "rarely has federal politics been so stagnant" (2007), a
depiction not without consequence in terms of how the public service is
run.
Minority government is one explanation offered by some as a force
re-affirming caution and control (Good 2004). Is there reason to
believe, however, that a Conservative majority government would become
more experimental, or would it merely seek ways to more efficiently and
narrowly impose its agenda? Although actions of the current government
can and must be considered (particularly in responsive matters to prior
governments such as the Federal Accountability Act), as politicians are
undoubtedly a critical determinant of reform, partisanship is also a
poor analytical prism. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments
have continuously offered minor reformations to the current model that
have not prevented the current situation from arising.
What is the current situation? Simply put, more and more Canadians
are less and less inclined to trust, much less feel inspired by,
Parliament and the federal public service. This admittedly sweeping
characterization (and one not without exceptions) applies to voters at
election time, to prospective partisans in between elections, and to
both experienced and especially new professionals considering career
paths (Dunleavy et al. 2005; Howe, Johnston and Blais 2005; Roy 2006a;
Public Policy Forum 2007). Still, Canadian democracy remains resilient
(if rather stagnant), and the federal government is in no danger of
immediate implosion. A reasonably competent cadre of political and
administrative leaders are more than sufficient to safeguard the status
quo (many in the latter group well indoctrinated by and thus loyal to
Westminster custom).
Parliament and the federal government instead face a steady erosion
of political and human capital that cannot be reversed until the country
is convinced that 1) a new approach to governing is a realistic
proposition, and 2) citizens will play an important role in designing
this new approach. Elected officials certainly matter here: even if it
is asking much of those with power to sail into uncharted waters and
perhaps even re-negotiate the very notion of political power itself. But
it is being done elsewhere and, as importantly, politicians are now
themselves routinely pledging to do just that. Systemic change will only
come about through a new partnership between those inside and those
outside of the system. As this article argues, Westminster traditions
are increasingly under great strain and reversion to them is no
solution. A danger of their defence, such as that of d'Ombrain, is
that it fortifies those within the system (particularly elected and
appointed officials of the executive branch), breeding insularity. The
aim of this article is to counter this inertia with an equally sweeping
conceptual case for change one not without shortcomings but nonetheless
refutable of the notion that the core principles and structures of the
Westminster model remain sound.
Beyond this introduction, the next two sections dissect the
Westminster model in more detail, offering a critique of d'Ombrain
and others defending it. The fourth section then examines accountability
in a networked age, focusing on the public service. The fifth section
examines politics in an environment of interconnectedness and makes the
case for new styles of public engagement and the necessity of electronic
experimentation. By way of conclusion, the final section considers the
presently weak prospects for significant change in the Canadian context
and how such prospects might be strengthened through greater dialogue
and collaboration across jurisdictional boundaries.
Westminster traditions: upheld, under strain, and ultimately
outdated
The stability and functionality of the current model of
Westminster-based parliamentary government is dependent on three
central, relational compacts: first, representative democracy as the
compact between the public and elected officials (parliamentarians);
secondly, ministerial accountability as the compact between elected
officials and the government, on the one hand, and the appointed public
service, on the other hand; and, thirdly, hierarchy and loyalty as the
main organizing principles within the public service for assuring that
government plans and policies are executed and implemented.
Each of these three compacts helps to ensure accountability in
separate but complementary and interrelated manners. Parliament
represents the broader citizenry in operationalizing oversight of
government. Ministers, the linchpins between the legislative and
executive branches, are answerable to Parliament for the conduct of
departments and agencies within their domain. Public servants,
traditionally shielded from direct public purview, must nonetheless
report to their hierarchical superiors who, in turn, answer to ministers
that report to Parliament (and thus the public). Three essential points
provided by d'Ombrain capture the macro-essence of this model: In
this model, "ministerial responsibility and the capacity of first
ministers to direct the machinery of government are essential for the
maintenance of constitutional government in the Westminster system"
(2007: 195). "The essential point is that, without ministerial
responsibility and prime ministerial control of the machinery of
government, our Constitution will not work because the power of the
state will not be subject to democratic control" (197).
"Responsible government only works if the government commands a
majority in the House of Commons (however cobbled together), and this
requires that ministers work together supporting one another under the
cloak of collective responsibility" (202).
The nexus between the first and second points is the derivation of
democratic legitimacy from both parliamentary mandate and the dualistic
ministerial role of overseeing the executive branch while remaining a
part of and answerable to the legislative branch. The third point
underscores the collective responsibility that ministers have in
fulfilling these duties, with an equally important assertion that what
cooperation does occur takes place in a protected space. The term
"cloak" here is appropriate, given the inference to secrecy
that permeates the apparatus of Cabinet and central agencies (beginning
with the Privy Council Office, which oversees the machinery of
government). It is this underlying premise that information can be
contained and managed within such limited confines that presents
enormous difficulty for the sustainability of the Westminster model.
Why is this so? The defence of ministerial responsibility as
foundational to democratic governance stems from a twofold premise that
1) only ministers can be answerable for the policy and administrative
actions of entities and individuais within their portfolio, and 2) only
Parliament can scrutinize ministers and government as a whole in a
manner that ensures answerability, accountability and ultimately
democratic legitimacy. It is this latter point that leads to such worry
about the declining stature and capacity of Parliament since if it
cannot fulfil its core mission then serious questions arise.
The problem, however, is that in today's world, information is
everywhere, and answerability has been diffused in many directions
beyond Parliament. The very fact that defenders of the Westminster model
point to daily Question Period as ah effective mechanism of
accountability (d'Ombrain 2007) highlights the widening gap between
Westminster customs and reality: an important and highly visible media
outlet it may be, but Question Period is less and less a direct
instrument of accountability (except perhaps on one or two of the most
topical issues of the day). Other parliamentary mechanisms, such as
committees and parliamentary officers, play a role. Increasingly,
however, it is the work of special inquiries, the media, and the wider
network of informed observers and activists enjoined by the Internet
that create a basis for both constant and collective accountability for
governments (Fountain 2001; Perri 6 2004; Oates 2003).
A sufficiently empowered legislature can surely maintain an
important role in this new environment by leveraging this wider net of
information and knowledge into a frontline challenge function of
government (one that in turn is transferred into the wider environment
via digital infrastructure). But this can no longer suffice, for two
reasons: first, the public is less inclined to defer to Parliament for
inquisition and the related discursive functions of putting forth
remedial action and proposed new courses of action (indeed, it's
unclear as to whether the latter function is a prerogative of opposition
politicians in a parliamentary legislature, given their constitutional
mandate to oppose); and, secondly, the hugely expanded plethora of
government departments and agencies operating in today's world do
so outside of direct parliamentary purview (at least in the absence of
extraordinary circumstances--typically scandal or life-and-death
matters).
The first reason explains today's widening interest in citizen
engagement techniques of one sort or another designed to share power
between politicians and the public in new ways. Such an emphasis is
consistent with a less deferential view of trust as a process earned
through direct engagement and experience (Edelman Corporation 2005). The
need for a re-definition of this relational compact--departing from the
Westminster principle of representational democracy--has been recognized
in Scotland in recent times during the rare creation of a new
Parliament. Suggesting that the traditional Westminster model is poorly
suited to the three traditional strands of Scottish public
life--deliberation, co-governance, and initiation--the former presiding
officer of the Scottish Parliament notes,
A Parliamentary Concordat then would recognize that participatory
and representative governance are not in conflict, but can enrich and
strengthen each other.... It would acknowledge that, if trust in
politics is to be restored, that means more sustained and direct
engagement of the citizen(cited in Reid 2006: 13).
The Scottish experience has admittedly been mixed in this regard,
as G. Reid himself acknowledges that a "fourth principle" of
the Scottish experiment, namely power-sharing, remains
"elusive" and the cost has been declining voter turnout rates
and eroding trust in the political process (2006: 17). For Reid,
however, strengthened legitimacy and performance will require more and
not less direct democracy. Elsewhere in the U.K., and across much of the
developed world, the trend towards new models of direct public
involvement gathers pace (Peart and Diaz 2007). In Canada, too, many
provinces are moving in a similar direction (Roy 2006a; Borins et al.
2007).
The second reason for looking beyond Parliament (i.e., the widening
and increasingly complex spectrum of public-sector actors) for ensuring
accountability is the need for sounder and more adaptive governance
mechanisms at the organizational level in a world of information
abundance, technological change, and policy and service complexity. More
visible and direct forms of accountability are needed for both scrutiny
and oversight (the traditional challenge functions of governance and
accountability), but also for steering and guidance. Here the public
sector must make use of a wide array of "corporate governance"
options in a manner not unlike any large and complex for-profit or
not-for-profit enterprise (Roy 2007a).
Defenders of the traditional model such as d'Ombrain are
prepared to at least partially address the notion of public servant
visibility and accountability by acknowledging that such assignation of
duties does occur and can occur without threatening the broader rubric of ministerial responsibility. Doing so within the Westminster model
requires only making clear distinctions between the concepts of
"accountability," "responsibility" and
"answerability": only ministers can ultimately fulfil the
latter set of duties to Parliament, whereas accountability can be
parcelled out in various ways.
In the context of the discussion about the Gomery inquiry, for
example, d'Ombrain rightfully acknowledges that preservation of the
macro-principle of ministerial responsibility would not prevent making
deputy ministers accountable before parliamentary committees for
specific duties assigned to them. Peter Aucoin and Mark Jarvis (2005)
strike a similar chord by explaining that too often ministerial
responsibility and accountability are inadvertently fused into one and
thus interpreted, wrongly, to mean that only ministers must be directly
held to account for any and all operations and decisions within their
domain.
Yet, with regards to formalizing new governance models,
traditionalists such as d'Ombrain become more concerned, no doubt
sensing limitations in the elasticity of the Westminster model to
adequately account for new governance arrangements across statutorily
independent bodies such as the Canada Revenue Agency, the Canada Health
Infoway, regulatory bodies, granting councils and other
"non-ministerial organizations." D'Ombrain, for instance,
while acknowledging the potential for "discretion" by
ministers in granting organizations of different purposes and form
varying degrees of freedom and autonomy, is far more critical of Crown
corporations and the usage of boards, which he views as an erroneous
parallel to private-sector governance.
Strong and effective corporate governance, however, is not about
making government into a private enterprise but rather it is about good
decision-making and a balanced set of mechanisms for both oversight and
guidance. The historically weak role of many Crown corporation boards
has been a topic of much discussion and attention in recent years
(Aucoin 2003), not unlike similar governance failures in the private
sector. What is perhaps most noteworthy to Westminster machinery of
government debates is a key lesson from many private-and public-sector
failures alike--namely a concentration of power in a fused
CEO-chairperson and/or a corresponding absence of sufficient
independence on the part of the board. The importance of checks and
balances and recent efforts to ensure greater independence in the
marketplace has thus been at the very least accompanied by reforms
predating and included in the Federal Accountability Act to make board
members more visible, less political and passive, and thus more
independent.
Whatever the complexities and legitimate debates surrounding how
best to ensure good corporate governance for Crown corporations and
autonomous operating agencies (and increasingly for departments
themselves), this path is much sounder than the one preferred by
traditionalists--namely, reverting to the power of one, the minister, to
effectively oversee and publicly answer for the political and
operational conduct of all organizations within a specific portfolio.
Here again, except in rare cases where political involvement must be
explicitly barred, traditionalists such as d'Ombrain implicitly
reject the notion that the public service can have independence from its
political masters in being part of any alternative corporate governance
schemes, since doing so would threaten the Westminster doctrine.
The question that must be asked, however, is whether the
Westminster model is capable of providing effective accountability both
after the fact by scrutinizing and more continuously through guidance
and steering (here the aforementioned notion of
"co-governance," characterizing citizen engagement as a form
of power-sharing, is equally apt in describing this balancing of process
and performance in corporative governance mechanisms). A new mixing of
independence and interdependence must characterize what are bound to be
new and more complex forms of relationships between politicians, public
servants and the public. Aucoin, for example, has called for an
independent appointment process of deputy ministers to augment the
professional capacity of the public service to steer itself
operationally while providing sound, objective advice to ministers
(Aucoin 2007). Such a move would bring Canada more closely in line with
Scandinavian countries, where the independence of senior officials is
beyond reproach and a basis for holding these individuals directly to
account for operational decisions. Within the Westminster family, New
Zealand's experience in defining performance contracts to
explicitly codify political agendas and expectations (minister) and
operational results (chief executives) is similar in this regard.
Ironically, it is this very sort of autonomy and independence that
may provide the key to enabling better collaboration and coordination in
today's networked era where initiatives such as integrated service
delivery and horizontal policy-making give rise to many new systemic
interdependencies across organizational and political boundaries. The
success of Service Brunswick in delivering services on behalf of most
provincial government departments is a case in point (Dutil, Langford,
and Roy 2005; Pardo and Dadayan 2006). A Crown corporation, Service New
Brunswick personifies a new governance philosophy of indirect but
overarching democratic accountability, on the one hand, and managerial
autonomy and performance accountability, on the other hand. This
differentiation of accountability (returned to more fully below) is one
that many traditionalists would prefer to avoid.
In Ottawa, by contrast, the limited capacities of Service Canada to
undertake new service delivery partnerships on behalf of departments,
other than its Human Resources parent, are owed to an unwillingness of
the government and central agencies (i.e., the centre) to allow either
more discretion (to use d'Ombrain's term) or to grant
statutory independence. As a result, nobody can say precisely what
Service Canada is, and, while there may be some comfort for
d'Ombrain and others that it remains, strictly speaking, a
ministerial sub-unit (formally within a department) with some
ministerial discretion granted to a deputy head (that remains
accountable to both a deputy minister and minister), the cost is a
sub-performing entity unable to fulfil its mission as a collaborative
catalyst for more integrated services and networked government (Roy
2006b).
Traditionalists are holding Service Canada back--much as I. Clark
and H. Swain (2005) ruthlessly chastise central agencies for a systemic
command-and-control approach towards performance management that
paradoxically and quite unfortunately discourages innovation and rewards
conformity. Moreover, examples of Service New Brunswick and Service
Canada also speak to a serious flaw in Westminster logic in light of the
widening imposition of a citizen-centric approach to governance that
explicitly makes public servants accountable directly to the public
(Kernaghan 2005). On this matter of widening significance,
d'Ombrain is silent.
In short, the traditional doctrine of ministerial responsibility is
simply no match for today's contemporary governance mosaic of fluid
organizational boundaries and the need to constantly re-balance
independence and interdependence in devising governance regimes capable
of navigating multiple forms of accountability. In its own sweeping
review of the Westminster model, Britain's Institute for Public
Policy Research (IPPR) came to a similar conclusion, pointing out that
it is no longer even possible for ministers to effectively hold public
servants to account through the traditional lens of ministerial
responsibility:
The doctrine of ministerial responsibility means that civil
servants are not subject to external or direct accountability for their
roles or functions they perform. (The exception is that Permanent
Secretaries are directly accountable to Parliament, through the Public
Accounts Committee, for financial probity.) Parliament--and the outside
world--have very limited powers to interrogate or scrutinize civil
servants. Ministerial responsibility rests on the understanding that
civil servants are accountable to ministers, who are directly and
exclusively accountable to Parliament. In fact, ministers cannot
effectively hold civil servants to account. To do so would violate the
conventions around recruitment and promotion on merit, and civil service
impartiality. Ministers have very limited powers to choose their civil
servants, promote them or dismiss them--or to seek redress when they
feel they are being poorly served(Lodge and Rogers 2006: 3).
This latter portrayal of unchecked civil servant power gave rise in
Great Britain to the infamous Yes Minister syndrome. It bears noting as
well that the U.K. has at least a partially more independent and
competitive process for appointing deputies (permanent secretaries) than
Australia and Canada. The Canadian approach of de facto prime
ministerial appointments might once again offer comfort to
traditionalists (while reinforcing the concentration of power problem)
but it only underscores the inability of ministers to hold officials to
account (and the immunity of officials themselves except in the most
extreme occurrences of mis-management or disloyalty).
The British think tank concludes that the traditional model of
Westminster governance is not only not sustainable but already harmful.
To rectify the situation they call for making a fundamental choice
between two options, one more American in orientation (where ministers
appoint public servants while being held directly and solely accountable
for every aspect of performance) and another that refurbishes the
Westminster system with a greater delineation of responsibilities
between ministers and public servants and new accountability mechanisms
to better underpin this demarcation (Lodge and Rogers 2006). G. Lodge
and B. Rogers endorse the latter approach, necessary if some form of
parliamentary-based model is to be preserved (since the American model
offers other forms of political checks and balances to guard against ah
over-concentration of power by the executive).
The IPPR study also suggests that the much debated Gomery proposals
in this country in terms of assigning deputy ministers the formal role
of "accounting officer" for their departments (as has been the
case in the U.K. for some time) are far less consequential and
threatening to Westminster customs than many traditionalists in this
country argued. D'Ombrain partially acknowledges this point by
arguing that even prior to the new Federal Accountability Act, deputies
rather than ministers could appear before the public accounts committee,
thus creating de facto accountability for administration (in the eyes of
some perhaps, as this line of reasoning is weak and muddling, consistent
with current guidelines for federal deputies that portray multiple forms
of accountability in theory but without real mechanisms to assign direct
responsibility for performance in a direct and public manner).
The bottom line, as Aucoin laments, is that any attempt to assign
to public servants stature, authority and responsibilities separate from
elected officials will be portrayed by traditionalists as
anti-democratic (Aucoin 2007). Breaking free from this cognitive
constraint is a precursor to a more reasoned and well-performing
accountability regime that does a better job of distinguishing between
political and managerial forms of accountability across an increasingly
large and complex organizational myriad.
Secrecy, complexity and accountability
If the abundance of information in today's environment
augments the need and potential for alternative governance mechanisms
(especially those more predicated on performance), it alone cannot
resolve the inherent and intensifying tension between openness and
secrecy at the nucleus of the Westminster model. Indeed, growing
expectations outside of government for more transparency--coupled with
an aversion to information-sharing within it--can only further diminish
trust and performance.
The importance of some level of openness as a foundation for
democratic governance is well articulated in a decision of the Supreme
Court of Canada in 1997:
The overarching purpose of access to information legislation ... is
to facilitate democracy. It does so in two related ways. It helps to
ensure, first, that citizens have the information required to
participate meaningfully in the democratic process and secondly, that
politicians and bureaucrats remain accountable to the citizenry (cited
in Reid 2004: 80).
Although there is no standardized definition of what it means for
the public sector to be transparent, a useful starting point is to
equate transparency with some degree of openness to those with either a
right or an expectation of being able to scrutinize and understand
government action. Transparency thus underpins accountability, and the
emergence of the Internet has heightened expectation for more government
transparency as an informationally empowered citizenry alters its views
on authority and power, shunning deference and attaching far less
importance to traditional representational roles and structures
(Courchene 2005; Gompel et al. 2007). The rise of movements such as
"transparency networks" suggests futility in attempting to
contain much less control information in such settings: "The
information flow is also evasive rendering information monopolies and
opaque environments ineffective and transparent. Corporations,
governments and industries have spent decades erecting barriers to
information flow into and out of their various organizations. "The
advent of the transparency network renders such control and management
techniques ineffective" (Dwyer 2004: 119).
Here lies a major foundational shift underway for democratic
governance away from Westminster customs. A world of information
scarcity is one that bolsters bureaucratic power and organizational
secrecy within the state (central elements of the Westminster model),
while necessitating representational democracy outside of it. A world of
digital communication networks and widening civic engagement is far less
conducive to secrecy (Roy 2006c, 2007a).
The Westminster model cannot easily adapt. Reliance on secrecy
begins at the apex of power, where Cabinet meets in the closed confines
of a forum designed to contain but also paradoxically share information
and insight. Secrecy was originally viewed as a means to facilitate open
deliberation among ministers in order to generate consensus on actions
and policies that, in turn, would be presented to Parliament for further
debate prior to legislative adoption--often in modified form (Barber
1991). As D. Savoie (1999) and others have aptly demonstrated, Cabinet
secrecy has since become less deliberative, more dictated by prime
ministerial direction (as policy debates initially taking place in
Cabinet now routinely take place in numerous venues both inside and
outside of government) and the need to package decisions for subsequent
communication--not to Parliament but rather directly to the electorate
as a whole.
With Parliament viewed as less relevant (and more adversarial) and
external points of scrutiny and influence multiplying, Cabinet secrecy
has become more pervasive, despite escalating challenges and costs,
fuelling a systemic culture engrained in the executive branch predicated
on the presumption that information must be contained and managed as
best one can (Roberts 2005). Ironically, on-line channels may well be
viewed primarily by governments in power as new tools to convey and spin
partisan messages. Such is the schizophrenia displayed in the U.K. where
the Blair government was credited with both introducing the
country's first comprehensive access-to-information law (in 2005),
while forging a sophisticated communications and media relations
apparatus viewed as aggressive and manipulative (Roberts 2005).
Similarly contrasting portrayals can be seen in Canada, between
Harper's pledges for openness while in opposition and the
centralizing culture of communications since taking power.
The impacts on the information culture of the public service
matter, as evidence suggests governments seeking to deploy new
technologies in precisely the opposite manner as envisioned by Internet
enthusiasts: creating surveillance, oversight, and filtering capacities
for information requests (Roberts 2005). Similar concerns have
heightened dramatically in Washington since 9/11 due to the extension of
homeland security initiatives and the corresponding effort to curtail
the release of government information (Roberts 2006; Gup 2007). In fact,
the expanded security imperative of the early 21st century represents at
least a partial re-framing of the Internet as inherently liberating to
one more suspicious: an on-line network of potentially threatening
movements and activities (Roy 2007b). This latter typology, in turn,
reinforces the mindset of information scarcity and control. The nexus of
Westminster custom and post-9/11 anti-terrorism efforts has thus greatly
reinforced aversion to openness throughout this decade.
If the expanded security realm is predicated on secrecy, the drive
towards citizen-centred service delivery presents a distinct but
complementary problem for accountability--namely, complexity and an
underlying ethos that the public need not concern itself with how
government is organized, so long as delivery outcomes are satisfactory.
Much work in Canada has been done in recent times to go further and
demonstrate that good service contributes to public trust (Heintzman and
Marson 2005), presumably therefore negating, at least partially, the
widening disenchantment with politics generally and the federal
government administration specifically.
Accountability and citizenship are about more than service
gratification however. Not only is information the lifeblood of
accountability but the notion of accountability carries an important
learning component in terms of generating capacities for social learning
and collective judgment that underpin a government's ability to
itself deal with increasingly complex and multifaceted policy problems
(Paquet 2000; Dutil et al. 2007). A government's ability to address
complexity thus depends on the public's capacity to appreciate
it--whereas a misleading or overly simplistic presentation of how
government is actually exercising its duties is detrimental to both
public confidence and collective learning. Therefore, within the current
Westminster architecture, there is a counter-intuitive possibility that
the development of a more digital and complex organizational
architecture to address service and security agendas is actually
reducing the degree of openness in public-sector operations.
While governments provide more information describing objectives
and priorities, little insight is conveyed into 1) the sorts of
horizontal initiatives required in pursuing them, 2) the level of
difficulty and change embedded in them, and 3) if and how ongoing
performance capacities exist to guide such efforts (Fountain 2001).
Secrecy stymies good governance and the formation of new accountability
mechanisms better suited for complex and interdependent processes and
challenges. At minimum, a legitimate if incomplete response is that
ministers themselves must begin to operate in more networked and
collaborative manners (Roy 2006a). Countries like Australia and the U.K.
have deployed such sub-Cabinet mechanisms as committees and task forces
to oversee cross-jurisdictional initiatives for service improvement and
crisis-response development (Bakvis and Juillet 2004; Lindquist 2005).
One criticism of new governance models that create more direct
forms of public-service independence and accountability that can be made
by Westminster traditionalists--and not without some
legitimacy--directly pertains to secrecy. If politicians are not fully
answerable, they may well become less well informed and the resulting
danger is weakened or circumvented accountability to the public
(presuming for the moment that Parliament is able to fulfil its
oversight role of ministerial responsibility).
The recent scandals involving the Ontario Lottery Corporation (OLC)
could be construed as an argument in favour of stricter ministerial
responsibility, since the problems of fraud and mismanagement remained
undetected for a considerable amount of time until repeated media
exposure finally forced corrective action by the minister (who responded
in the legislature but who resisted calls to resign). From one
perspective, the system worked as designed--ministerial discretion,
perhaps excessive, led to political embarrassment and corrective action.
But the full costs of this classic revelatory approach to
accountability are steep and the mechanisms poorly suited for avoidance
of such problems in the future. Ina financially lucrative domain such as
gambling (as in many other contentious areas of public policy and public
service), the solution is not to grant politicians greater control and
authority in operational affairs but rather to give them less--while
strengthening managerial accountability to ensure ongoing oversight and
review. Even as political oversight thus remains essential, its form and
purpose change: the most fundamental and serious problem with the OLC
was the weak governance regime of the agency itself (including a
politically appointed board and insufficiently robust reporting
requirements by OLC management, beginning with the president, to the
public both directly and indirectly via the board and legislature) that
shielded scrutiny and created a breeding ground for allegedly fraudulent
activity. Applying such lessons across a federal budgetary envelope of
some $200 billion annually, it is difficult to envision how a strict
application of the Westminster doctrine of ministerial responsibility
can best foster a basis for sound governance with both proactive and
reactive dimensions.
In short, a departure from the Westminster doctrine of ministerial
responsibility should not mean abandoning political oversight but rather
strengthening it with corporate governance mechanisms that 1) hold
managers to account through appropriate checks and balances, 2) foster
greater public awareness and learning through transparency (all too
absent at present), and 3) complement these first two elements with an
approach to accountability that is less reactionary and more
evolutionary in order to both avoid scandal before it happens and
strengthen continuous performance. It is this latter element to which we
now turn.
Public-service accountability in the networked age
As Savoie acknowledges, whatever the past strengths of the
traditional model of ministerial accountability, one cannot merely reach
back and call on tradition to resolve emerging challenges (Savoie 1999,
2003). Some would seek to salvage and update the Westminster model as
much as possible. Savoie, for instance, argues for a bolstered set of
adversarial mechanisms within the parliamentary model (including the
strengthening of political parties to provide better oversight), coupled
with stronger controls over public servants (2003). Savoie is also
prepared to deviate from strict tradition in other ways, notably by
making the case for a distinctive constitutional personality of the
public service, an important enabler of Gomery-minded reforms that
sought to import the British accounting officer concept into Canada.
As the above discussion generally and the U.K. experience
specifically both underscore, a greater demarcation of responsibilities
for a more empowered public service is needed (a public service that, in
turn, must assume management responsibilities for more than conformance
to legislative spending rules). To underscore this point, one must also
consider how best to nurture public-sector innovation in a more
networked world and the sorts of individuals who are likely to become
senior public servants. It is unhelpful to envision future recruits--in
so far as they are to be among the best and brightest of today's
younger generations--as conforming to an ideal 1960s prototype of a
public servant (Lindquist 2006).
Rather than conformance to rules and managing down hierarchically,
much evidence points to collaborative skills and outward navigation as
the pillars of the public servant of the future (Entwistle and Martin
2005; United Kingdom, Economist Intelligence Unit 2006). In the
aftermath of the HRDC, gun registry and sponsorship scandals, there is a
strong case to be made that much of the present difficulties plaguing
federal operations stem more from Canada's reluctance to embrace
bolder reforms than from any present deviations from
tradition--particularly with respect to the role of public servants and
the manner by which they are held accountable (Hubbard and Paquet 2005).
It bears noting that over the past decade the three aforementioned
scandals were rooted primarily in traditional departmental (in the case
of sponsorship central agency) structures, whereas the more autonomous
Canada Revenue Agency, with its usage of a board of management, has
become both more technologically sophisticated and more service-oriented
(owed in large measures to greater degrees of freedom in its human
resource system), remaining by and large free of operational scandal or
mismanagement and becoming a leader in its performance reporting
practices (Public Policy Forum 2003).
In his analysis of the HRDC grants and contributions scandal and
the implications for accountability, D. Good points to ongoing tensions
among three forms of accountability relationships inherent throughout
the reforms of recent decades: accountability for control,
accountability for assurance, and accountability for learning (2003). He
underscores that despite widening interest in the latter type, Canadian
public administration and its reform in recent times most often reflects
competing forces between the first and second types. Accountability for
control emphasizes traditional top-down authority and often implies risk
aversion, whereas accountability for learning emphasizes continual
improvement and adjustment for bettering both the individual and
organizational capacities of the public service to meet increasingly
complex challenges (Agranoff 2003; Paquet 2004; Allen et al. 2005;
Eggers 2005; Lenihan 2007).
While acknowledging its growing recognition in public-sector
circles today, Good underlines that its potential is often stymied by
the adversarial nature and structures of the political environment that
seek to reinforce blame and clarity over adjustment and complexity.
Good's findings reinforce those of the aforementioned IPPR study
and its conclusion that Westminster customs are already harmful.
Creating a new governance culture and a new balance between control and
flexibility, and process and performance, requires more autonomy for
public servants themselves and experimentation with corporate governance
models that can better instil learning-based accountability mechanisms
(while still preserving the additional contours of political oversight
provided by a re-fashioned approach to ministerial responsibility).
Including the public as a stakeholder is also essential, since
citizen-centred governance is not about serving but also about including
the citizenry in decision-making and power-sharing in order to foster
better conditions for learning (Langford and Roy 2008a). As G. Paquet
states, "It is not sufficient to develop a new more encompassing
cosmology.... One must also design new organizational forms capable of
taking advantage of the new ICTs and the new network thinking, and also
likely to provide more effective social learning" (2004: 199). A
similar approach emphasizing collaborative engagement and learning is
the presentation of "public value management" as a "new
narrative for networked governance" (Stoker 2005). Explicitly
contrasted with hierarchical and control-minded public-sector
traditions, as well as the competitive and customer-focused business
mentality of new public management,
[t]he key point in understanding public value management... starts
with the understanding that preferences are not formed in a vacuum and
should not be taken as given. Part of the challenge of public managers
is to engage in a dialogue with the public about their preferences but
in a way that allows for deliberation about choices and
alternatives....Discovering preferences involves a complex dialogue so
that efficiency and accountability are trading partners, not the objects
of a trade-off (Stoker 2005: 51).
G. Stoker argues, rightly in my estimation, that public value
management is the only sort of governance paradigm that can adequately
address the complexity and interdependencies of today's governance
and managerial systems, which demand a renewed reconciliation of the
often conflicting demands of efficiency, accountability and equity
(Turner 2004; Treadwel12007). This view is notably consistent with
recent and thoughtful considerations of the impacts of on-line
connectivity and digital technology and democracy--and the importance of
re-configuring government-public engagement, enhancing the communicative
power of citizens, and refurbishing legislative bodies and processes
accordingly (Borins et al. 2007; Dutton and Peitu 2007). Accordingly, we
turn now to political processes.
Politics in a digital age
In line with public administration governance philosophies driven
more by learning and performance than by hierarchy and control, a more
participative form of politics is essential. With the advent of the
Internet as an enabler of a more informed and engaged society, a more
participative polity requires a virtual dimension. Such a dimension need
not and should not replace traditional dialogue in face-to-face forums;
instead, an on-line public space must be forged in order to broaden
deliberations to the widest possible spectrum of citizens and
stakeholders and to embed these deliberations into a renewed and
strengthened democratic architecture (McNutt 2006; Tapscott and Williams
2007).
As a starting point, Parliament itself must be refurbished with an
expanded digital presence and infrastructure in order to retain its
relevance in a media-centric and interconnected world. Such relevance,
however, will be less rooted in the past and more shared with a variety
of new actors and mechanisms--many of which ideally should be spun from
within parliamentary contours, provided it has the legitimacy and
resources to do so. Here, in one sense is where a page must be drawn
from the traditionalist's playbook--as only a re-balancing of the
executive and legislative branches can ensure democratic accountability
and legitimacy.
Nonetheless, how a renewed and more digitally enhanced legislature
functions must be far different from how it has done so in previous
eras. S. Coleman (2004) draws on the Schumpeterian trilogy of
"invention-innovation-diffusion" suggesting that organizations
first automate existing processes, then identify opportunities for
innovation, especially in terms of efficiency, before finally
transforming themselves anew. Coleman views the U.K.'s Westminster
Parliament as evolving between the first and second stages and the
necessity of wider technological and institutional reform in order to
make the leap to the third phase in a positive manner:
If the third stage is conceived in technocratic terms, it is
unlikely to be seen as desirable, but if it is integrated into a broader
programme of cultural parliamentary modernisation, one could envision a
radical role for ICT in the re-engineering of parliamentary
communication. Central to this transformational potential is the
capacity of online consultations to transcend barriers of distance; to
promote asynchronistic discussion which can be stored, retrieved and
archived; and to build linkages between public experience and expertise
and legislative deliberation and scrutiny (2004: 15).
It is the linkages between the public experience and expertise of
which Coleman speaks that provide the crucial linchpin between the more
collective and collaborative governance mindsets of Stoker's public
value management and Paquet's social learning, on the one hand, and
contemporary determinations of trust built less upon deference to
authority and office than direct engagement and dialogue (Edelman
Corporation 2005), on the other. Research in the Flemish region of
Belgium demonstrates widening consensus by citizens and politicians
alike around the need for more participative democratic processes that
can find a new middle ground between representational and direct
democracy (Kettl 2005; Gompel et al. 2007). A key challenge at present,
however, remains the absence of a robust framework for assessing and
integrating the Internet's role in traditional parliamentary models
due largely to a narrow exploration of technological usage by elected
officials without an overriding institutional perspective on new
patterns of information-gathering, disseminating and managing
(Leston-Bandeira 2007).
Canada is not without experimentation entirely--particularly at the
provincial level where on-line engagement tools and techniques are
increasingly deployed in genuine efforts to widen participation and
learning (Borins et al. 2007). Yet it bears noting that these efforts
are most often led by public servants (from within the executive
branch), consistent with notions of citizen-centred governance and
further evidence that the Westminster model is already undergoing
significant revision. The vexing challenge within parliamentary
jurisdictions is thus how to create more collaborative and participative
patterns of decision-making across the citizenry, on the one hand, and
the executive and legislative branches, on the other hand. In other
words, how does one guard against a further marginalization of the
legislature if the executive becomes the vanguard of new forms of direct
and often electronic forms of democracy?
There is no simplistic response: instead, this question will frame
the work of both activists and academics for years to come. For my part,
I would put forth the notion that one starting point is to question
whether political parties as we presently know them are helpful or
rather a hindrance to democratic renewal. Ina further departure from
Westminster traditions, my view is the latter--not much of a stretch in
light of present trends. The steady decline of parties continues
unabated: perhaps only two to three per cent of Canadians belong to any
of the federal parties now in Parliament. Other studies estimate that
the average age of partisans has surpassed fifty years of age (Howe et
al. 2005). Blogs, chat-rooms and other on-line venues may be eclectic
and in some cases bizarre, frightening or silly, but there is also a
good deal of political activity taking place through them--with more and
more legislators at least making the attempt to leverage such
mobilization in some manner (Wyld 2007).
Political parties in their present configuration are simply far too
constraining and narrowly competitive in a world where growing segments
of the population routinely fashion multiple identities on-line while
learning from ideas and conversations with individuais from around the
world, especially so in the case of young people (MacIntosh et al. 2003;
Sloam 2007). Ina thoughtful analysis of "the future of political
parties as democratic organizations," B. Rogers concludes that
"the era of the mass parties is almost certainly over" (2007:
609). Although Rogers himself is far less bleak, he points to a recent
Norwegian study of power and democracy that concludes that
representative democracy faces nothing less than the prospect of
extinction, given the absence of an alternative to traditional parties
to emerge: the resulting and widening void between the public and their
representatives is the threat.
While party operatives may be excused for objecting to their
presumed demise, jurisdictions elsewhere are beginning to recognize the
need for new conduits between the public and stakeholders and the
legislature. Scotland, for example, established the "Futures Forum,
in the Parliament but not of the Parliament" in order to generate
fresh thinking on long-term societal challenges in dialogues involving
elected officials, external experts, advocates and less affiliated
citizens (Reid 2006). The Danish parliament supported the usage of a
citizen's jury to forge policy guidelines for the contentious issue
of genetically modified foods and the most recent United Nations Global
E-Government Review (available at http://unpan1.un.org/
intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan028607.pdf), released early in
2008, catalogues a widening assortment of on-line experiments from
around the world directing engaging citizens in policy formulation and
debate.
Indeed, as Rogers argues, extinction may be less desirable than
reinvention. In line with the view that 1) people are increasingly
political but less partisan and 2) parties in their present form are
being reduced to fundraising and spin-driven marketing operations, new
and more varied forms of political movements are required, quite
possibly in formation only after the election of legislators with a more
genuinely grassroots, representational role than is presently the case.
A renewed purpose of parties could then be to facilitate the formation
of temporary coalitions in the legislature, in order to both determine
priorities and foster policy agendas, while mobilizing public
involvement in shared mechanisms of co-governance of the sort that
Stoker and others speak.
Such directions are predicated on a view that it is no longer
sufficient for a government to claim legitimacy for an electoral term
based solely or even primarily on majority support in a representational
chamber such as the House of Commons: a more participatory ethos
requires institutional redesigns moving further away from Westminster
tradition. This new ethos calls for a new interface between the public,
parties, politicians and political institutions. The danger of the
status quo is a further diminishment in the scope and stature of
partisan activity, a problem attributable to the familiar concentration
of power within present parliamentary confines. As Aucoin puts it, [A]s
long as we practise a form of responsible government wherein the
governing party with a majority can govern with ... virtually no
incentive to build a broader consensus for its initiatives, public
confidence in our institutions of responsible government is unlikely to
be restored" (1999: 1000).
Here it bears acknowledging the limited utility of minority
government that augmenting the relevance of the legislature by forcing
more debate and comprise does little to encourage collaboration and
learning and wider public engagement. Ina related manner, C.
Leston-Bandeira (2007) provides evidence in Portugal that although
on-line channels have fostered closer ties between elected officials and
the public in some instances, a paradoxical trend is a rise in political
apathy. A key reason is a parliament elected purely on a proportional
basis, strengthening partisan control and limiting citizen involvement
due to a top-down imposition of representational structures on an
increasingly informed and empowered (and thus disillusioned) citizenry.
Her wider conclusion is that without significant institutional
innovation these trends are likely to remain peripheral to the overall
functioning and performance of the state both in Portugal and elsewhere
(such as the more digitally ubiquitous country of Sweden where,
according to Leston-Bandeira, legislators expressed deep levels of
frustration in not being able to move faster in integrating information
technologies and on-line channels into their legislative processes, one
reason for which, it might be reasonably presumed, is the entrenched
power of traditional political parties nonetheless suffering from a
similar erosion of support and engagement as found elsewhere).
In line with a more informed and potentially engaged citizenry, a
central contribution of a refurbished legislature should be to gather
and share information more widely both with members and via new and more
direct mechanisms of citizen review, oversight, and engagement. Although
select committees would no doubt be required to veil specific
information flows where secrecy is truly warranted, a presumption of
openness would be the starting point. In the realm of national security,
for instance, properly trained citizen-legislators could serve on
oversight bodies, a direction consistent with recommendations from
recent reviews such as the Arar inquiry and the RCMP governance study
(both of which were formed in the aftermath of scandals stemming largely
from secrecy and a resulting dearth of accountability). For
traditionalists prepared to quash any such notions as unworkable, it
bears noting that the present model has proven inept since 9/11 in
providing meaningful political oversight over security policy in this
country: as a case in point, the sensible idea to create a new
multi-partisan parliamentary committee for security continues to
languish due to partisanship and the current adversarial constraints of
Parliament (Roy 2007b).
In short, the impacts of today's more open and networked
societies cannot be expected to bypass the polity. It will become
increasingly necessary to devise legislative processes driven far less
by traditional partisan bodies and more by citizen-legislators prepared
to operate in a world of shared and collective accountability by 1)
facilitating the participation of citizens in policymaking processes, 2)
providing oversight to public-sector departments and agencies (holding
to account senior officials empowered to run such bodies), and 3)
collectively debating and fashioning policy and service ideas as a basis
for executive branch agendas much more openly crafted than is the case
at present. In addition, a legislature predicated on openness brings
tremendous potential for e-democracy to raise the overall level of
political literacy across the public at large (MacIntosh 2003). The
impacts in creating better-informed voters, monitors and judges of
government actions and choices matter greatly to strengthening
democratic governance:
Indeed, every democrat must hold that in the medium to long run,
only the robustness of the judgement capabilities of citizens can
guarantee that those of policy makers will be similarly stout (Perri 6
2002: 21).
Within this broadest architectural plane for collective judgment
and social learning, there is also an important link to be made between
more participatory democratic mechanisms (that formally share power) and
the workability of new corporate governance models in government. One
point of convergence, for example, is the formation and usage of boards
to oversee agencies: as more democratic forms of corporate governance
are espoused in the marketplace, the same logic can apply in the state
where the Internet and more participative political bodies can provide
access to greater pools of prospective appointees (while at the same
time strengthening the accountability of such appointees through
information-sharing and discursive networks across the polity more
broadly).
A more participatory political system involving new power-sharing
arrangements between politicians and citizens (potentially blurring at
times the boundary between these two groups) is one in which ministerial
discretion alone cannot suffice in providing both steering and oversight
capacities for a widening array of departmental and agency units
themselves embedded in more collaborative arrangements. Public servants
must themselves be directly accountable--to the public at large through
more transparent processes and reporting channels as well as more
operationally through a layering of corporate governance and legislative
mechanisms (that can in turn better support public servants in
navigating organizational and societal complexity). How such layering
should occur is ultimately a political dialogue that requires a more
discursive and inclusive institutional framework than can possibly be
provided by the current Westminster model.
It is not hard to imagine the objections of traditionalists (and
many partisan operatives) and their grimacing at the complexity of such
diffused patterns of authority and governance, both politically and
administratively. Nevertheless, in light of 1) mounting evidence and
concern over the poor performance in recent times of the federal
government, 2) a rare opportunity emerging for demographic renewal
within the public service (where an openness to change will directly
determine the sorts of individuals recruited and retained as public
servants), and 3) a widening gap between how the traditional doctrine of
Westminster government functions on paper and how more networked forms
of government and governance are unfolding in reality, it is difficult
to look to the past in order to meet contemporary and future challenges.
Conclusion
Within the parameters of a seemingly untouchable Constitution,
adversarial and acrimonious parliamentary chambers, and a largely
risk-averse and control-minded public service, finding a catalyst for
change presents a conundrum. The structures of federalism are themselves
a major cause for concern here (Gibbons 2004; Ambrose, Lenihan, and
Milloy 2006), as there is much about networked governance and prisms
such as public value management that lends itself to devolved forms of
governance where digital connectivity can be coupled with territorial
proximity (Woodward 2003; Paquet and Roy 2004; Paquet 2005; Roy 2006a).
Here there is a North American handicap to contend with, since both the
Canada and the United States suffer from excessive centralization of
politics and administration relative to many member countries in the
European Union. By contrast, public-sector renewal is typically a
bottom-up process led by sub-national experimentation (Goldsmith and
Eggers 2004; Peart and Diaz 2007), much as most democratic reforms
adopted by the Harper government reflect provincial innovations.
Yet, whether provinces can by expected to galvanize a
post-Westminster governance order or instead merely re-tool the model in
good currency is an open question. In jurisdictions most noted for high
levels of transparency, trust and technological prowess--namely,
Scandinavia--it bears noting that local governments are the primary
recipients of income taxes and arguably the most successful in
delineating between political and administrative responsibilities (Roy
2006a). Within the federalist realities of Canada, the municipal
potential in this regard remains unexplored (Barnett 1997; Andrew 2002;
Wong 2002). As the late Jane Jacobs described in her most recent book,
in an exchange with former Prime Minister Paul Martin over potentially
transferring income tax points from federal and provincial governments
to their local counterparts, sharing or sacrificing power does not come
easy to those in national office who have worked so hard to reach this
plane:
Our vantage points, and therefore our views, were different. A
reform that meant to me correction of a grave social and economic
disconnection that is unraveling the country's complex modern
functional networks meant to him, I saw as his ears and face closed up,
a nasty power struggle with the premiers of ten provinces who are
determined to keep their power instead of sharing it with their more
knowledgeable, anachronistic wards (Jacobs 2006).
Such conflicting perspectives underscore the need for wider debate
in this country on governance renewal. Certainly, devolving power
locally is not in itself a panacea but a federal government more open to
learning from local and provincial experimentation--perhaps even
encouraging and partnering in such experimentation can nonetheless help.
Recent consultative initiatives by the Harper government on political
and institutional renewal are all too indicative of unhelpful top-down
inertia: polls are commissioned from friendly think tanks--studies and
consultation carefully orchestrated by the executive. Involving other
government levels is not a serious prospect. The rise of electronic
government underlines the limits of such logic: despite the rhetoric of
federated architectures permeating the digital world, Canada
increasingly lags both other federations and unitary states in fostering
a genuinely intergovernmental approach to information-sharing, service
delivery, and public participation (Public Sector Service Delivery
Council 2006; Langford and Roy 2008b).
As Aucoin (2007) puts it, rules and structures cannot replace the
need for leadership. What is required in Ottawa (and in provincial
capitals) is a new ethos of democratic leadership predicated less on
control than on collaboration, less on representation than on direct
engagement, and less on public-service anonymity and loyalty than on an
outward-looking cadre of professional managers empowered to achieve
outcomes within the contours of policy and service agendas formulated by
new partnerships between politicians and the public. There are trepid
signs of hope on which to potentially build, both within and across
jurisdictions. The Canada Health Infoway has established a promising
inter-jurisdictional governance model to pursue electronic health
records in a manner that respects provincial jurisdiction and encourages
local experimentation. Deputy ministers in charge of service
transformation agendas (some of which heading agencies legislatively
empowered to lead such change) have begun meeting regularly to explore
more systemic collaboration and shared mechanisms for issues such as
identity management. Moreover, many provinces are exploring legislative
changes to empower their largest cities with greater fiscal autonomy and
administrative capacities (capacities that should be used to expand
democratic as well as administrative innovation).
What is required to stitch these and other innovations together is
a genuinely national dialogue on the renewal of democratic
governance--including if not beginning with the core Westminster
doctrine of ministerial responsibility. Canadian laggardness is a mixed
blessing in this regard, as there are numerous reform exercises and
blueprints around the world from which to draw (both inside and outside
of the Westminster family). Perhaps the 21st century equivalent to a
royal commission is called for--a non-partisan, more participative and
genuinely empowered forum designed to both spark and sustain a national
dialogue on the future of politics and public administration for a
networked era.
The author is associate professor, School of Public Administration,
Dalhousie University. He gratefully acknowledges the constructive input
provided by Peter Aucoin and the anonymous reviewers, as well as the
editing and research assistance of Elisa Obermann. Funding provided by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is also
acknowledged and appreciated.
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