The Politics of Partnership: The Role of Non-Government Organisations in Australian Drug Policy

Abstract

The concepts of ‘partnership working’ and ‘intersectoral collaboration’ have become increasingly central to contemporary policy discourse on drugs and crime in Western liberal states, and the non-government sector now plays an integral role in the drug policy systems of many countries. Governments have actively sought to partner with non-government organisations in addressing drug problems and formulating effective drug policy. There has, however, been little empirical investigation of non-government policy work and their relationships with the bureaucratic state in the drugs field. This thesis responds to this gap by providing an account of the development of the idea of government/non-government ‘partnerships’ in the Australian drugs field, and presents new data on the broader role of non-government organisations in drug policy. Informed by governmentality and critical policy studies literature, this thesis adopts a qualitative approach that engages with three major sources of data: 1) Primary governmental documents including national and state and territory drug policy documents; 2) semi-structured interviews with 19 representatives from Australian non-government organisations; and 3) documents produced by non-government organisations.