Benchmarking in Federal Systems

Recent years have seen a rapidly growing interest in the use of benchmarking arrangements to improve policy performance in federal systems. This is a new development and one that is in its very early stages, but there is no doubting its significance. At issue here is the intersection of two things: a particular form of government and a particular form of management. Each is a complex matter in itself. How compatible is benchmarking with principles of federalism; and to what extent benchmarking can ‘add value’ to existing federal arrangements either by offering a superior mode of intergovernmental relations and/or by generating better substantive results for citizens? This paper looks at various benchmarking experiences in OECD-type federations and the European Union and draws tentative conclusions as to how complementary federalism and benchmarking might be

Age Bias in the Australian Welfare State

This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends across the period 1984 to 2010 in one key aspect of the Australian welfare state — whether welfare policies have favoured the elderly at the expense of the young. Our three main findings are: that there has been a substantial shift over this period in favour of the elderly; that this trend has accelerated rapidly in recent years; and that as a result of this accelerated trend, elderly households today are on average well off by comparison with younger households. We see little influence of party politics or ideology on the processes we are describing

Australian Federalism and the Global Economic Crisis of 2008-09

The incoming Rudd government brought to an end what looked like an increasingly rapid spiralling of Commonwealth unilateralism and centralisation in the latter years of the Howard government. At the same time, the framework for a much more generally cooperative federalism introduced in 2007 provided a ready vehicle for countercyclical policy activism in response to escalating symptoms of overseas financial crisis in 2008. The crisis reinforced centralising elements of the government’s program, but in a muted way. More damaging for the States was the way that the crisis demonstrated their inherently weak fiscal position in the federation. Thanks to a combination of very active countercyclical policy and continuing high demand for its resource exports, Australia experienced no official recession and thus Commonwealth-State relations were not subject to the degree of strain they might have been in more extreme circumstances. At the same time, the High Court’s surprisingly high degree of sensitivity to federalism in the Pape decision further limited the centralising impact of the crisis. Whether this decision will come to have a decisive impact on federalism will depend on future cases that may come before the Court

The Revival of Australian Federalism? Trends and developments in Commonwealth–State relations

This chapter reviews developments in Australian federalism since the start of the new millennium, situating them in the context of longer-term trends and tendencies. After rehearsing the chief characteristics of the Australian federal system, it considers the way different issues have shaped the continuing evolution of that system in recent years. Two of those issues—climate change politics and the COVID-19 pandemic—stand out for the way they seem to have given Australian federalism a new lease on life when centralising forces have otherwise prevailed. The chapter examines the way those challenges have brought the states to the fore and ventures some evaluation of their significance

Perspectives on local government’s place in federal systems and central–local relations

To expand on the themes identified by Tomas Hachard’s paper 'Capacity, voice and opportunity: advancing municipal engagement in Canadian federal relations', the Journal commissioned six personal ‘perspectives’ from a diverse group of other Commonwealth countries – Australia, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa and the United Kingdom. This replicated the model adopted in Issue 26 for Zack Taylor’s paper on 'Regionalism from above: intergovernmental relations in Canadian metropolitan governance'. Similarly, the purpose was to establish a broader picture of issues and trends across the Commonwealth, rather than ‘review’ Hachard’s work

Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Theorizing Dynamic De/Centralization in Federations

This paper develops a conceptual, methodological and theoretical framework for analyzing dynamic de/centralization in federations. It starts by briefly reviewing the literature and outlining the research design and methods adopted. It then conceptualizes static de/centralization and describes the seven-point coding scheme we have employed to measure it across twenty-two policy areas and five fiscal categories at ten-year intervals since the establishment of a federation. The subsequent section conceptualizes dynamic de/centralization as a process marked by changes in the distribution of power between the two orders of government in at least one policy or fiscal category and discusses its five main properties: direction, magnitude, form, tempo, and instruments. Drawing from several strands of the literature, in the last substantive section, the paper builds a theoretical framework that identifies seven categories of causal determinants of dynamic de/centralization, from which we derive a set of hypotheses for assessment

Dynamic De/Centralization in Federations: Comparative Conclusions

This article develops a conceptual, methodological and theoretical framework for analyzing dynamic de/centralization in federations. It first reviews the literature and outlines the research design and methods adopted. It then conceptualizes static de/centralization and describes the seven-point coding scheme we employed to measure it across twenty-two policy areas and five fiscal categories at ten-year intervals since the establishment of a federation. The subsequent section conceptualizes dynamic de/centralization and discusses its five main properties: direction, magnitude, form, tempo, and instruments. Drawing from several strands of the literature, the article lastly identifies seven categories of causal determinants of dynamic de/centralization, from which we derive hypotheses for assessment