Bureaucracy, Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand

• Date: 01 March 2003
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Author: Jenny M. Lewis,Mark Considine
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6210.00274

Bureaucracy, Network, or Enterprise? 131

Mark Considine

Jenny M. Lewis

University of Melbourne

Bureaucracy, Network, or Enterprise? Comparing

Models of Governance in Australia, Britain, the

Netherlands, and New Zealand

Theories of democratic government traditionally have relied on a model of organization in which

officials act impartially, accept clear lines of accountability and supervision, and define their day-

to-day activities through rules, procedures, and confined discretion. In the past 10 years, however,

a serious challenge to this ideal has been mounted by critics and reformers who favor market,

network, or “mixed-economy” models. We assess the extent to which these new models have

influenced the work orientations of frontline staff using three alternative service types—corporate,

market, and network—to that proposed by the traditional, procedural model of public bureau-

cracy. Using surveys of frontline officials in four countries where the revolution in ideas has been

accompanied by a revolution in methods for organizing government services, we measure the

degree to which the new models are operating as service-delivery norms. A new corporate–

market hybrid (called “enterprise governance”) and a new network type have become significant

models for the organization of frontline work in public programs.

We are all now familiar with the mantra of the business

consultant and the reforming politician who wish to an-

nounce the end of bureaucracy. They recite from a well-

thumbed litany of complaints—public-service agencies are

too big, too costly, too rigid, too standardized, and too in-

sensitive to individual identities. In whichever OECD

(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-

ment) country one travels, the recitation of these alleged

deficiencies has an increasingly common ring to it. But

we also know that reform rhetoric always tends to merge

the actual or empirical with the imagined and the invented

(Edelman 1977; Kingdon 1984). The broad sweep of the

new reform rhetoric is one important sign that the changes

we now are witnessing are more than simply the evolution

of better forms of organization. They are also part of a

larger cultural contest over the way terms such as “public

interest” and “public service” are to be understood in this

new century.

In this study and in the paper that preceded it (Considine

and Lewis 1999), we start by recognizing that the old bu-

reaucratic order is now creaking under the strain of a mighty

assault being waged against it. As Fournier and Grey put

it, the new vision “seeks to stigmatise and marginalise bu-

reaucracy, in general, and public bureaucracy in particu-

lar, as being outmoded and as functionally and morally

bankrupt” (1999, 108). For their part, the peripatetic

Osborne and Gaebler simply dismiss traditional bureau-

cracy as “bloated, wasteful, ineffective” (1992, 12).

While critics seem to be united in their rejection of the

proceduralism and supervisory sclerosis of the old bureau-

cratic order, no single, coherent alternative has been pro-

Mark Considine is a professor of political science at the University of

Melbourne, Australia. His most recent book is

Enterprising States: The Public

Management of Welfare-to-Work

(Cambridge University Press, 2001). His

research is concerned with the reform of service-delivery agencies and the

use of private contractors. As well as teaching and research in policy and

administration, he is a consultant to a number of government and nonprofit

agencies. Email: mark1@unimelb.edu.au.

Jenny Lewis is a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Health

and Society, University of Melbourne, and has an adjunct appointment in the

Department of Political Science. Her research interests include policy para-

digms, professions, and networks. Her main project, which is funded by a

Fellowship from VicHealth and the Department of Human Services (Victorian

State Government), focuses on policy networks and strategic partnerships in

health. Email: jmlewis@unimelb.edu.au.