Public Leadership Perspectives and Practices Public Leadership Perspectives and Practices Edited by Paul ‘t Hart and John Uhr Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/public_leadership _citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Public leadership pespectives and practices [electronic resource] / editors, Paul ‘t Hart, John Uhr. ISBN: 9781921536304 (pbk.) 9781921536311 (pdf) Series: ANZSOG series Subjects: Leadership Political leadership Civic leaders. Community leadership Other Authors/Contributors: Hart, Paul ‘t. Uhr, John, 1951- Dewey Number: 303.34 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by John Butcher Images comprising the cover graphic used by permission of: Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development Australian Associated Press Australian Broadcasting Corporation Scoop Media Group (www.scoop.co.nz) Cover graphic based on M. C. Escher’s Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935 (Lithograph). Printed by University Printing Services, ANU Funding for this monograph series has been provided by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government Research Program. This edition © 2008 ANU E Press John Wanna, Series Editor Professor John Wanna is the Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration at the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. He is the director of research for the Australian and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). He is also a joint appointment with the Department of Politics and Public Policy at Griffith University and a principal researcher with two research centres: the Governance and Public Policy Research Centre and the nationally- funded Key Centre in Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance at Griffith University. Professor Wanna has produced around 17 books including two national text books on policy and public management. He has produced a number of research-based studies on budgeting and financial management including: Budgetary Management and Control (1990); Managing Public Expenditure (2000), From Accounting to Accountability (2001) and, most recently, Controlling Public Expenditure (2003). He has just completed a study of state level leadership covering all the state and territory leaders — entitled Yes Premier: Labor leadership in Australia’s states and territories — and has edited a book on Westminster Legacies in Asia and the Pacific —Westminster Legacies: Democracy and responsible government in Asia and the Pacific. He was a chief investigator in a major Australian Research Council funded study of the Future of Governance in Australia (1999-2001) involving Griffith and the ANU. His research interests include Australian and comparative politics, public expenditure and budgeting, and government-business relations. He also writes on Australian politics in newspapers such as The Australian, Courier-Mail and The Canberra Times and has been a regular state political commentator on ABC radio and TV. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ix Contributors xi 1. Understanding Public Leadership: An Introduction 1 Paul ‘t Hart and John Uhr Part I: Democracy and Public Leadership 2. The Neglected Problem of Democratic Leadership 25 John Kane and Haig Patapan 3. Distributed Authority in a Democracy: The Lattice of Leadership 37 Revisited John Uhr 4. Towards Leader Democracy? 45 Jan Pakulski and John Higley Part II: Understanding Public Leadership: Emergent Approaches 5. Identity Confers Power: The New View of Leadership in Social 57 Psychology John C. Turner and Katherine J. Reynolds and Emina Subasic 6. Leadership as Response not Reaction: Wisdom and Mindfulness 73 in Public Sector Leadership Paul Atkins 7. Bodies and Persona in Constructing Leadership Capital 83 Amanda Sinclair 8. Perceptions of Leadership 93 Keith Dowding 9. History, Biography and Leadership: Grasping Public Lives 103 Barry Gustafson Part III: Spheres of Public Leadership Practices 10. The Institutionalisation of Leadership in the Australian Public 117 Service Catherine Althaus and John Wanna 11. Informal Public Leadership: The Case of Social Movements 133 David West vii Public Leadership—Perspectives and Practices 12. Outsiders or Insiders? Strategic Choices for Australian 145 Indigenous Leadership Will Sanders 13. From Bean-Counter to War Leader: National Security and 155 Australian Public Leadership Hugh White 14. Police Leadership in Australia: Managing Networks 165 Jenny Fleming and Rob Hall 15. Political and Media Leadership in the Age of YouTube 177 Stuart Cunningham Part IV: Australian Political Leadership 16. Is There a Command Culture in Politics? The Canberra Case 189 James Walter 17. Leadership Practices: Reflections on Australian Political 203 Leadership David Kemp 18. Styles of Conservative Leadership in Australian Politics 217 Wayne Errington 19. Reinventing Australian Conservatism in the States: 227 New Leadership and the Liberal Revival under Bolte and Askin Norman Abjorensen 20. The Retiring Premiers: A New Style of Leadership Transition 239 Paul Strangio Part V: Political Leadership: New Zealand 21. Taming Leadership? Adapting to Institutional Change in New 255 Zealand Politics Raymond Miller 22. Comparing Pathways to Power: Women and Political Leadership 265 in New Zealand Jennifer Curtin 23. Are Women Leaders Different? Margaret Thatcher and Helen Clark 275 Marian Simms viii Acknowledgements This has been an ambitious project, and we are grateful to all our workshop participants and chapter authors for responding so enthusiastically to our call for ©joining up© scholars and practitioners from across Australia and New Zealand who shared an interest in understanding and improving public leadership. We would like to acknowledge financial support from ANZSOG, the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU and the Parliamentary Studies Centre at the Crawford school of Economics and Government at ANU for making the workshop possible. We are also grateful to Aaron Martin, Kathryn Kelly and Karen Tindall for their useful notes on the workshop discussions. Karen Tindall moreover played an invaluable role in organising the workshop. We intend to stage thematically focused workshops on public leadership annually, and we can only hope that future ones will be as engaging and productive as the first. Paul ©t Hart and John Uhr Canberra, September 2008 ix Contributors Editors John Uhr is head of the Policy and Governance Program, Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University, where he teaches on leadership in the Masters of Public Policy degree. His research interests include ethics in the public sector, public policy and administration, public leadership, and democratic theory and practice. He is the author of Terms of Trust: Arguments over Ethics in Australian Government (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005). Paul `t Hart is professor of political science at the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, as well as professor of public administration, Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University. His major research interests include public leadership, political group dynamics, crisis management, policy evaluation and public accountability. Recent works include: The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure (CUP 2005, with A. Boin et al.; winner of Herbert Simon Award, American Political Science Association), Observing Government Elites (Palgrave 2007, with R. Rhodes, M. Noordegraaf), Governing After Crisis (CUP 2008, with A. Boin, A. McConnell) and The New Eurocrats (Amsterdam University Press 2008, with K. Geuijen et al.). Authors Dr Norman Abjorensen teaches politics in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, at the ANU, and is a prominent political commentator on radio, television and in print. His latest book, Leadership and the Liberal Revival, was published in 2007, and he is the author of studies of former Liberal leader John Hewson, former NSW premier Tom Lewis and the role of George Reid in federation. His new book, John Howard and the Conservative Tradition, will be published late 2008, as will two co-authored books, Australia: The State of Democracy, and a book dealing with the culture wars. Dr Catherine Althaus is currently assistant professor in the School of Public Administration, University of Victoria, Canada and associate research fellow with the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University. Previously she was ANZSOG Research Fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU. Her research interests concern public policy processes, public sector leadership, political risk calculation, and the interaction between religion and politics. Catherine recently published Calculating Political Risk (University of New South Wales Press 2008) and co-authored the fourth edition of The Australian Policy Handbook with Glyn Davis and Peter Bridgman (Allen & Unwin 2007). xi Public Leadership—Perspectives and Practices Paul W. B. Atkins is associate professor in leadership and organisational behaviour in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the ANU. His research interests include leadership, perspective taking capacity, adult development, systems thinking, mindfulness and stress reduction.