Measuring governance has become an increasingly important feature of modern societies, with organisations and institutions expected to prove their worth by quantifying their activities and results. This unique Handbook maps historical developments, theoretical conceptions and key approaches, and summarises what is known about measuring governance from a variety of fields of practice. Peter Triantafillou and Jenny M. Lewis bring together an array of leading international academics to examine how governance is measured across different policy sectors and levels of government. Chapters explore the sociological theory of measurement, the quality of collaborative governance processes, governance in public health care, and global development cooperation. The editors and contributors have combined theoretical thinking with empirical findings to support this comprehensive overview of measuring governance, providing a significant contribution to the ongoing discourse in this field. This thought-provoking Handbook will appeal to public administration and public policy professionals, as well as business and government practitioners at a national and international level. It will also prove highly beneficial to students, academics and researchers in governance, social policy, business and management and political science.

The articles on which Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are based are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Design approaches to policy-making have gained increasing popularity among policy makers in recent years. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this book presents original critical reflections on the value of design approaches and how they relate to the classical idea of public administration as a design science. Contributors consider the potential, challenges and applications of design approaches and distinguish between three methods currently characterising the discipline: design as optimisation, design as exploration and design as co-creation. Developing the dialogue around public administration as a design science, this collection explores how a more ‘designerly’ way of thinking can improve public administration and public policy.

This book examines the different normative approaches politicians, bureaucrats and community actors use to frame the innovation puzzle, arguing that these create specific cultures of innovation. The authors explore the role of formal institutions and informal networks in promoting and impeding governmental innovation.

Innovation has become an important focus for governments around the world over the last decade, with greater pressure on governments to do more with less, and expanding community expectations. Some are now calling this 'social innovation' - innovation that is related to creating new services that have value for stakeholders (such as citizens) in terms of the social and political outcomes they produce. Innovation in City Governments: Structures, Networks, and Leadership establishes an analytical framework of innovation capacity based on three dimensions: Structure - national governance and traditions, the local socioeconomic context, and the municipal structure Networks - interpersonal connections inside and outside the organization Leadership - the qualities and capabilities of senior individuals within the organization. Each of these are analysed using data from a comparative EU research project in Copenhagen, Barcelona and Rotterdam. The book provides major new insights on how structures, networks and leadership in city governments shape the social innovation capacity of cities. It provides ground-breaking analyses of how governance structures and local socio-economic challenges, are related to the innovations introduced by these cities. The volume maps and analyses the social networks of the three cities and examines boundary spanning within and outside of the cities. It also examines what leadership qualities are important for innovation. Innovation in City Governments: Structures, Networks, and Leadership combines an original analytical approach with comparative empirical work, to generate a novel perspective on the social innovation capacity of cities and is critical reading for academics, students and policy makers alike in the fields of Public Management, Public Administration, Local Government, Policy, Innovation and Leadership.

Innovation has become an important focus for governments around the world over the last decade, with greater pressure on governments to do more with less, and expanding community expectations. Some are now calling this 'social innovation' - innovation that is related to creating new services that have value for stakeholders (such as citizens) in terms of the social and political outcomes they produce. Innovation in City Governments: Structures, Networks, and Leadership establishes an analytical framework of innovation capacity based on three dimensions: Structure - national governance and traditions, the local socioeconomic context, and the municipal structure Networks - interpersonal connections inside and outside the organization Leadership - the qualities and capabilities of senior individuals within the organization. Each of these are analysed using data from a comparative EU research project in Copenhagen, Barcelona and Rotterdam. The book provides major new insights on how structures, networks and leadership in city governments shape the social innovation capacity of cities. It provides ground-breaking analyses of how governance structures and local socio-economic challenges, are related to the innovations introduced by these cities. The volume maps and analyses the social networks of the three cities and examines boundary spanning within and outside of the cities. It also examines what leadership qualities are important for innovation. Innovation in City Governments: Structures, Networks, and Leadership combines an original analytical approach with comparative empirical work, to generate a novel perspective on the social innovation capacity of cities and is critical reading for academics, students and policy makers alike in the fields of Public Management, Public Administration, Local Government, Policy, Innovation and Leadership.

Getting Welfare to Work traces the radical reform of the Australian, UK, and Dutch public employment services systems. Starting with major changes from 1998, this book examines how each national system has moved from traditional public services towards more privately provided and market-based methods. Each of these three countries developed innovative forms of contracting-out and complex incentive regimes to motivate welfare clients and to control the agencies charged with helping them. The Australian system pioneered the use of large, national contracts for services to all unemployed jobseekers. By the end of our study period this system was entirely outsourced to private agencies. Meanwhile the UK elected a form of contestability under Blair and Cameron, culminating in a new public-private financing model known as the 'Work Programme'. The Dutch had evolved their far more complex system from a traditional public service approach to one using a variety of specific contracts for private agencies. These innovations have changed welfare delivery and created both opportunities and new constraints for policy makers. Getting Welfare to Work tells the story of these bold policy reforms from the perspective of street-level bureaucrats. Interviews and surveys in each country over a fifteen year period are used to critically appraise this central pillar of the welfare state. The original data analysed in Getting Welfare to Work provides a unique comparative perspective on three intriguing systems. It points to new ways of thinking about modes of governance, system design, regulation of public services, and so-called activation of welfare clients. It also sheds light on the predicament of third sector organisations that contract to governments through competitive tenders with precise performance monitoring, raising questions of 'mission drift'.

This book examines the different normative approaches politicians, bureaucrats and community actors use to frame the innovation puzzle, arguing that these create specific cultures of innovation. The authors explore the role of formal institutions and informal networks in promoting and impeding governmental innovation.

The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics is a comprehensive collection that considers Australia's distinctive politics- both ancient and modern- at all levels and across many themes. It examines the factors that make Australian politics unique and interesting, while firmly placing these in the context of the nation's Indigenous and imported heritage and global engagement. The book presents an account of Australian politics that recognizes and celebrates its inherent diversity by taking a thematic approach in six parts. The first theme addresses Australia's unique inheritances, examining the development of its political culture in relation to the arrival of British colonists and their conflicts with First Nations peoples, as well as the resulting geopolitics. The second theme, improvization, focuses on Australia's political institutions and how they have evolved. Place-making is then considered to assess how geography, distance, Indigenous presence, and migration shape Australian politics. Recurrent dilemmas centres on a range of complex, political problems and their influence on contemporary political practice. Politics, policy, and public administration covers how Australia has been a world leader in some respects, and a laggard in others, when dealing with important policy challenges. The final theme, studying Australian politics, introduces some key areas in the study of Australian politics and identifies the strengths and shortcomings of the discipline. The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics is an opportunity for others to consider the nation's unique politics from the perspective of leading and emerging scholars, and to gain a strong sense of its imperfections, its enduring challenges, and its strengths.