Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Grube, Dennis C.; Howard, Cosmo
• 署名单位: University of Tasmania; Griffith University
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/gove.12230
• 发表日期: 2016
• 关键词: political governance; australian politics; public-service; LABOR; presidentialisation; INSTITUTIONALISM; performance; REFLECTIONS

摘要

Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster traditions. Core elements including security of tenure, merit-based selection, non-partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commentators have proposed concepts such as new political governance,changing public sector bargains, court government/politics, and presidentialization to document and interpret these allegedly paradigmatic shifts in public administration. This article places these in context by canvasing different accounts of what Westminster is, before assessing the critiques about what it has become. The article argues that Westminster is not broken beyond repair, but rather it has been remolded to suit the needs of contemporary governance.