Rod Rhodes Research Articles

A long and winding road: 25 years as editor

AbstractThis article reflects on 25 years of editing Public Administration. It provides a brief account of Rod Rhodes's term of office before airing some of his pet bugbears on being an editor and on trends in journal publishing.

Dwellers on the threshold of practice: the interpretivism of Bevir and Rhodes

Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes' interpretive political science hardly needs an introduction to policy scholars. Their approach, philosophically sophisticated and grounded in a realistic appraisal of the nature of governing in modern liberal democratic societies, is of considerable significance to anyone in political science, public administration or planning with an interest in interpretive methods. Focusing on the concepts of meaning holism, anti-representationalism, tradition, dilemma and decenteredness, I briefly describe the philosophical foundations and substantive theory of interpretive political science. The main part of the essay consists of a critique of interpretive political science. My argument is that the key concept of practice is underdeveloped. The point of a philosophy of practice is to integrate belief and action to the point where they form one organic activity system for the purpose of moving about effectively in the world. Bevir and Rhodes' insistence on keeping belief and action separate and, in addition, on privileging belief as the major driver of change and adaptation to changing circumstances, inserts a deep inconsistency into their work; an inconsistency that, to my mind, becomes manifest in the relative paucity of their own empirical work. I conclude the essay with a brief exposition of what a practice-based, posthumanist approach to policy research entails (centering on the concepts of agency, the dialectic of resistance and accommodation, temporal emergence and cultural extension) and of what its practical implications are for policy analysis.

Pessimism of the modernist intellect versus optimism of the democratic will: The interpretive school of governance

There is a tension between pessimism and optimism running through Mark Bevir's thesis in Democratic Governance. The intellectual apprehension on display is directed, in the main, at the state of the modern democratic polity. Indeed, Bevir's Democratic Governance is characterised by, on the one hand, a pessimistic unease about the condition of today's increasingly fragmented and unaccountable polity. This article examines the chief sources of Bevir's pessimism. These concerns over the present state of democracy are informed by Bevir's theoretical approach to modern democratic processes and institutions. In this respect, Democratic Governance draws upon the Anglo-governance school, associated with political scientists such as Rod Rhodes, Martin Smith, as well as Bevir himself. At the same time, he goes beyond Anglo-governance, offering a more philosophical appreciation of governance. In what I term the Interpretive School of Governance, Bevir conducts an historical anthropology of the cultural imperialism of modernist thinking in the public sphere, of which the pursuit of joined-up governance is one such example. The dominance of modernism, with its faith in positivist empiricism and scientific models, has further augmented the fragmentation, cynicism and democratic alienation surrounding the modern polity. On the other hand, Bevir hankers for an optimistic vision of a democratic tomorrow that is better than today's democracy. The alternative is a form of participatory democracy, which is pluralistic both philosophically and in terms of policy practice. For reasons which are considered, this more optimist vision is sketched out rather than outlined in detail

Fractures in Meta‐Narratives of Development: An Interpretive Institutionalist Account of Land Use Development in the Boston City‐Region

AbstractThis article explores economy‐environment relations in urban areas through a focus upon the reorientation of development in the Boston city‐region in Massachusetts around a vision of smart growth. The article draws upon the evolving tradition of critical economy‐environment research from a broadly regulationist perspective. However, to date research has tended to mask the politics and mediations of the development agenda by actors locked in struggle to shape their social, economic and environmental landscapes. It is argued that reducing institutions to their stylized forms ignores the real politics associated with institutional formation and outcome. A more fruitful approach, we suggest, is to draw upon recent work on institutions and institutional change. In particular the article utilizes a decentered institutional analysis put forth by political scientists Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes and investigates empirical data from secondary sources and interviews in the Boston city‐region with reference to Bevir and Rhodes' three concepts of dilemmas, traditions and beliefs.RésuméCet article explore les relations entre économie et environnement dans les zones urbaines à travers le cas de la région métropolitaine de Boston (Massachusetts) dont le développement a été réorienté autour d’une perspective de croissance intelligente. L’article s’appuie sur la tradition évolutive des analyses critiques des rapports économie‐environnement selon un axe globalement régulationniste. Toutefois, les études à ce jour ont eu tendance à masquer la politique et les médiations du programme de développement par des acteurs prisonniers de luttes pour façonner leurs propres paysages social, économique et environnemental. Ramener les institutions à leur forme schématique néglige la politique réelle associée à la configuration institutionnelle et à ses conséquences. Une approche plus fructueuse devrait tirer parti des travaux récents sur les institutions et le changement institutionnel. En exploitant notamment l’analyse institutionnelle décentrée des politistes Mark Bevir et Rod Rhodes, l’article examine les données empiriques issues de sources secondaires ou d’entretiens dans la région métropolitaine de Boston, à la lumière des trois concepts élaborés par les deux scientifiques : dilemmes, traditions et croyances.

THE WHITEHALL PROGRAMME AND AFTER: RESEARCHING GOVERNMENT IN TIME OF GOVERNANCE

This article revisits the Whitehall Programme and Rod Rhodes' crucial role in setting it up. It examines the research commissioned for the Programme and how research in this field has changed since the mid 1990s. It confirms that research on Whitehall has become more diverse and specialist – reflecting its apparent hollowing‐out – but that research employing a longer historical perspective does not support an interpretation that government in the UK was ever strongly filled‐in. It also suggests that the study of Whitehall now demonstrates more theoretical ambition than hitherto, and, in the light of the dominance of qualitative research in this field, calls for a more sophisticated methodological debate about qualitative approaches to the study of government and especially their potential contribution to theory‐building.

THE NEW ORTHODOXY: THE DIFFERENTIATED POLITY MODEL

Anthony King (1989, p. 97) argued some time ago that: ‘most of Britain's best political scientists (…) are for some reason journalists'. This is a claim which could only be made by someone who thinks that understanding, or explaining, politics merely revolves around knowing what happens at the centre of power. It neglects the point that facts do not speak for themselves; rather, they have to be interpreted within a conceptual or theoretical framework. Such theoretical frameworks are, for the most part, conspicuous by their absence in work on British politics. This point is amply illustrated by the most recent survey of work on British politics, Flinders et al. (2009), The Oxford Handbook of British Politics, which almost totally neglects broader ways of conceptualizing British politics that would allow us to situate some of the individual chapters against a wider background. There are nine references to the, once ubiquitous, Westminster model, but these are all in two chapters, Dennis Kavanagh's chapter ‘Antecedents’ and Oliver James' chapter ‘Central State’. Only James discusses recent alternatives to the Westminster model and, although he deals with interpretivist critiques, there is no reference to the ‘differentiated polity model’ in the book's index, let alone to the asymmetric power model, two of the positions considered here. Rod Rhodes' work provides a very important exception to that omission, which has stimulated a great deal of interest and encouraged younger scholars to move away from description and fairly mindless empiricism.

GOVERNMENT: A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT?

Government – its institutions, its working, its constitutional controls – is hugely important, not just as a subject of gossip or history in the making but as a discipline. Rod Rhodes' achievement in pioneering new ways of mapping and analysing developments inside government from the inside, and in coordinating so many different academic studies, was a remarkable model of the sort of research into government that can be, and needs to be, done by universities, not least as a basis for training future practitioners. The Whitehall Programme showed what can be done.

RHODES' CONTRIBUTION TO GOVERNANCE THEORY: PRAISE, CRITICISM AND THE FUTURE GOVERNANCE DEBATE

This article discusses Rod Rhodes' contribution to governance theory. Rod Rhodes' work on governance has been much quoted. He has contributed to setting a new governance agenda and to an ongoing governance debate. This debate has also had an impact on political practice. However, as this paper argues, Rhodes' definition of governance is problematic in that it is narrowly identified with networks, and it is not consistently applied. Rhodes' concept of governance remains too narrow for it to be able to include a comparative analysis of a variation of governance forms. In addition, the governance concept needs to be equipped with tools from political economy in order be able to incorporate important aspects of interests, power and conflict. The way forward for governance theory would seem to involve the inclusion of political economy analysis of context as it affects beliefs and dilemmas.

ELITE ETHNOGRAPHIES: POTENTIAL, PITFALLS AND PROSPECTS FOR GETTING ‘UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL’

This article celebrates Rod Rhodes' use of ethnography to study political elites ‘up close and personal’. Initially Rhodes' work is contextualized within the development of political ethnography more generally, before his ethnographies of ‘Everyday life in a Ministry’ are reviewed, illustrating the potential of ethnography to research policy‐making elites. This review highlights epistemological and ontological questions which link to criticism of Rhodes' work as taking an anti‐foundational stance. In looking at future prospects for ethnography in governance settings, this article argues that researchers building on Rhodes' scholarship can choose whether to use ethnography as a ‘method’ or an ‘interpretive methodology’. In concluding, the case is made for a ‘constructivist modern empiricism’ which utilizes the ethnographic method alongside other research methods as being most useful for public policy and administration scholarship aiming to be practically useful for understanding either the processes of public policy‐making or its impact.

IT'S PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, ROD, BUT MAYBE NOT AS WE KNOW IT: BRITISH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE 2000s

This paper assesses what happened to academic public administration (PA) in Britain in the 2000s in the light of Rod Rhodes' gloomy prognostications about the future of the subject in the late 1990s. It argues that British PA had such a good decade in the 2000s, in funding, output, academic‐practitioner interaction and institutional developments, that it could almost be said to have ‘never had it so good’, even if ‘British PA’ was probably less internationally distinctive in the 2000s than a century before. But even if the subject flourished against the odds in the 2000s, Rhodes' sombre assessment of its future cannot be dismissed. British public administration faces several potential threats in the 2010s and beyond: in funding, research, and teaching capacity. But extinction still seems an unlikely fate for British PA even when a sombre view is taken of the funding outlook and the changing balance of supply and demand.

R. A. W. RHODES: A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Public AdministrationVolume 89, Issue 1 p. 213-219 R. A. W. RHODES: A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY First published: 16 March 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011.01909.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Rod Rhodes' main publications are authored and edited books. Many of the individual articles and chapters were conceived of as dress rehearsals for later inclusion in the books. To avoid duplication and overlap, items included in books have not been listed as separate articles and chapters unless they attracted significant attention in their own right. The list comprises a ‘Top 100’ and focuses on the ‘uncollected’ articles and chapters, and the top material as suggested by ISI and Google citations, rejoinders, journal ranking, reprints in readers, and other ‘objective’ indicators. It also omits most juvenilia; everyone has to learn their craft. A complete bibliography of some 600 items that includes all articles and chapters, translations, book reviews, conference papers, discussion or occasional papers, newspaper articles, interviews, and other journalism is available on Rhodes' personal web page (http://www.raw-rhodes.com.au/). Volume89, Issue1March 2011Pages 213-219 RelatedInformation

New Philanthropy, New Networks and New Governance in Education

This article draws upon and contributes to a body of theory and research within political science which is concerned with changes in the policy process and new methods of governing society; that is, with a shift from centralised and bureaucratic government to governance in and by networks. This is sometimes called the ‘Anglo-governance model’ and the most prominent and influential figure in the field is Rod Rhodes. The article focuses on one aspect of these kinds of change within the field of education policy and argues that a new form of ‘experimental’ and ‘strategic’ governance is being fostered, based upon network relations among new policy communities. These new policy communities bring new kinds of actors into the policy process, validate new policy discourses and enable new forms of policy influence and enactment, and in some respects disable or disenfranchise established actors and agencies. The argument is illustrated with examples of networks identified and mapped by the author. Some of the relationships among participants who make up these new networks are traced and discussed, drawing upon research into the privatisation of education funded by the ESRC. These relationships interlink business, philanthropy, quangos and non-governmental agencies.

The Differentiated Polity as Narrative

THE DIFFERENTIATED POLITY AS NARRATIVE Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes Contact details Mark Bevir Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley Berkeley CA 94720-1950 USA Tel: (510) 642 4693 mbevir@berkeley.edu R. A. W. Rhodes Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel: 61 (0)2 6125 2117 Roderick.Rhodes@anu.edu.au Biographical Notes Mark Bevir is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Rod Rhodes is Director of the Research School of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Australian National University, Canberra.

Structure, Agency and Power in Political Analysis: Beyond Contextualised Self-Interpretations

This article evaluates Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes’ interpretive approach to political analysis by examining their account of social change. Their work is significant because they have endeavoured to construct a distinctive approach which strikes a productive balance between philosophical reflection and analytical attention to the empirical domain. Moreover, in elaborating their approach, Bevir and Rhodes wage a war along a number of fronts: positivism, institutionalism and post-structuralism, and so an analysis of their work enables us to take stock of a range of contemporary methods and approaches. In considering their underlying presuppositions and commitments, we pay particular attention to their account of human agency and its relationship to social structures and political power.While we agree with much of their critique of positivism, naturalism, realism and institutionalism, we argue that Bevir and Rhodes risk overplaying the role of interpreting the individual beliefs and desires of relevant actors to the detriment of a wider net of social practices and logics. Moreover, in challenging their understanding of the post-structuralist approach to political analysis we develop its resources to enrich the possibilities of a critical interpretivism, moving beyond concepts like tradition, dilemma and situated agency. Put more precisely, we argue that the radical contingency of social structures and human agency – their structural incompleteness – discloses new ways of understanding both their character and their mutual intertwining. For example, we develop the categories of lack, dislocation and political identification to think human agency and its relation to wider social structures. More broadly, we argue that an approach developed around different sorts of logics – social, political and fantasmatic – goes some way to steering a different course between a pure thick descriptivism that focuses principally on individual beliefs and desires on the one hand, and a concern with causal laws and mechanisms on the other.

Authors’ Response: Politics as Cultural Practice

POLITICS AS CULTURAL PRACTICE Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes Contact details Mark Bevir Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley Berkeley CA 94720-1950 USA Tel: (510) 642 4693 mbevir@berkeley.edu R. A. W. Rhodes Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel: 61 (0)2 6125 2117 Roderick.Rhodes@anu.edu.au Biographical Notes Mark Bevir is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Rod Rhodes is Director of the Research School of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Australian National University, Canberra.

Local Governance in Mexico: The Cases of Two Historic-centre Partnerships

This paper contends that the British understanding of governance as networks has travelled and discusses the extent to which it can be applied in the Mexican context. The paper comes at a time when Rod Rhodes, one of the first inventors of the concept, reflects on how governance is now understood after a decade of research, including its potential to be transferred beyond the British context. The paper begins by underlining the relevance of Mexico's political economy, with particular regard to the neo-liberal and democratic processes experienced over the past 25 years. The next section discusses the three main premises of governance (fragmentation, networks and self-government) and the way they have been questioned by two criticisms significant to this paper: the role of government as having a strong interventionist character and the threat posed by the classical concept of governance to democratic accountability. These criticisms are relevant for understanding the Mexican reality and the implementation of governance through public—private partnerships. The third section develops the research fieldwork, arguing that the premises on fragmentation and networks are relevant to the Mexican case when considered within the context of the historic-centre regeneration partnerships of Querétaro and San Luis Potosí. In presenting the findings, the paper argues that the applicability of the concept reinforces the aforementioned criticisms, underlining their general relevance when used for comparative analysis.

Mapping Trends in the Study of Political Institutions

The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. Edited by Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder, Bert Rockman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 816 pp., $150.00 (ISBN: 0-19-927569-4). Ever since James March and Johan Olsen (1984) heralded the return of institutionalism, institutional schools and institutional studies of varying stripes and colors have blanketed the social sciences. The “New” Institutionalism gave rise to the “next revolution in political science” (Goodin and Klingemann 1996:25)—a movement that many political scientists have joined. The attraction of institutionalism is anything but self-evident. Discourses on institutions and institutional theories tend to be maddeningly vague, and, as Mick Moran (p. 146) observes in The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions , they often bog down in what amount to theological debates about the meaning of institutions. They also tend to leave readers with a feeling that something profoundly important is happening and an urgent wish to understand what that something is. Anybody who has read even a few scholarly books or articles on institutions, institutionalization, or institutionalism should thus be interested in a handbook on the study of political institutions. In this context, The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions , edited by Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder, and Bert Rockman, promises to bring some much needed clarity. Rhodes, Binder, and Rockman have assembled a star-studded cast of contributors who generally deliver crisply written and reasonably accessible essays that outline the dominant schools of institutional thinking. The chapters discuss a wide array of political institutions—ranging from local government to international security organizations, from constitutions to bicameralism. The handbook ends with a small set of delightful essays written by stalwarts Samuel Beer, Jean Blondel, and Hugh Heclo. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions provides an authoritative sweep of the field, charting the state of affairs and the field's historical roots. It identifies dominant research questions and presents key findings. All this, of course, is exactly what one would expect of a book published as part of Robert Goodin's handbook …

ANALYSING POLICY NETWORKS

This article argues that an ideational variant of David Marsh and Martin Smith's (2000) ‘dialectical’ model of policy networks adds significant value to their analysis by taking certain kinds of ideas, which Berman (1998) labels ‘programmatic beliefs’, seriously as independent, causal factors. It further contends that Marsh and Smith's approach moves beyond Marsh and Rod Rhodes's (1992) earlier structural model of interest group intermediation by focusing attention on both structure and agency and defends it against the rational choice critique advanced by Keith Dowding (2001). It observes, however, that Marsh and Smith's approach does not pay sufficient attention to the role of ideas in explaining policy-making, which should not be treated as mere rhetorical devices (Marsh & Smith, 2000), nor situated only at the macro, ideological level of paradigm shifts (Hay, 2004a). It argues instead for an approach to analysing policy-making that treats programmatic beliefs as independent variables, policy networks as intermediate variables, and policy outcomes as dependent variables. The article demonstrates the potential utility of such an approach by briefly examining David Toke and Marsh's (2003) analysis of policy change on the issue of GM crops in the UK, and suggests that in order to answer the question of why as well as how a policy was developed, it is often necessary to examine the programmatic beliefs motivating members of a policy network.

The Life, Death and Resurrection of British Governance

THE LIFE, DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF BRITISH GOVERNANCE Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes CONTACT DETAILS Mark Bevir Department of Political Science University of California Berkeley CA 94720-1950 USA Tel: (510) 642 4693 mbevir@socrates.berkeley.edu R. A. W. Rhodes Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Tel: 61 (0)2 6125 2117 Rhodes@coombs.anu.edu.au BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Mark Bevir is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Rod Rhodes is Professor of Political Science and Head of Program in the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra.

Governance and Collaboration: Review Article

Rod Rhodes (1997) Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability, Open University Press 1997.Gerry Stoker (1998) ‘Governance as theory: five propositions’, International Journal of Social Sciences 50, 1, 17–28.Helen Sullivan and Chris Skelcher (2002) Working across Boundaries: Collaboration in Public Services, Palgrave.Janet Newman, Marion Barnes, Helen Sullivan, and A. Knops (2004) ‘Public participation and collaborative governance’, Journal of Social Policy 33, 203–223.From a term used largely within political science in the mid-1990s, ‘governance’ has become a key conceptual and analytical convention adopted by social policy, largely because of its usefulness in examining questions that are key to the discipline: citizenship; welfare rights and responsibilities; accountability; legitimacy and partnership working. Clarence and Painter (1998) have constructed a useful characterisation of public policy, identifying a shift in emphasis from hierarchies, to markets and now to collaboration. Networks, ‘joined up’ governance and partnership working are now central in both policy practice and analysis. These processes are not new, but New Labour have clearly expanded and accelerated them. For New Labour, collaborative working is now perceived as central in their response to key policy challenges: improving public services, tackling social exclusion and revitalising local democracy. These processes are now evident at all levels of policy making from supranational organisations such as the European Union down to neighbourhood-based initiatives. It appears that we are moving from the closed, unitary system of government of the Westminster model to a more open, decentralised system of governance. Our conceptions of citizenship have accordingly shifted, from one based on representation to one based on active participation, particularly within local communities. Governance is an issue which concerns all levels of government and citizen participation, from international-level World Bank concerns about commitment to efficiency and accountable government, to highly devolved localised urban regeneration partnerships.