What is happening to governance? INLOGOV Associate Professor Karin Bottom’s research, conducted in collaboration with leading UK public administration scholars, shows that the development of devolved governments as well as ongoing debates around regional and local governance have created increasingly fragmented places. The intensification of policies associated with the new public management has fragmented the provision of public services. And the absence of a common approach to professional development has led to growing fragmentation of public service workers from different professions and sectors. These trends reflect many of the aspects of an advanced or late-stage new public governance, raising important questions about what forms of public administration might emerge next.
Why are designs for urban governance so often incomplete – ask INLOGOV Emerita Professor Vivien Lowndes and former INLOGOV Honorary Professor Catherine Durose. They propose a novel conceptual framework distinguishing between incompleteness as description (a deficit to be ‘designed-out’), action (‘good enough’ design to be worked with and around), and prescription (an asset to be ‘designed-in’). An extended worked example of city regional devolution in England illuminates the three types of incompleteness in practice, whilst also identifying hybrid forms and cross-cutting considerations of power, time and space.
During 2023-24, INLOGOV affiliated faculty, including Catherine Mangan, Catherine Needham, Jason Lowther and Dave McKenna, will be updating the 21st Century Public Servant framework. The update looks at how public servants have responded to different challenges in their work over the last 10 years. The original research sought to explore the changing roles undertaken by public servants and their associated support and development needs.