INVESTIGATION
EYES ON THE WORLD Public agencies around the world are dealing with new and difficult problems. PETER MCKENZIE examines two articles that suggest new ways of dealing with challenges like pandemics and climate change.
There is, however, controversy about which lessons we should learn. Advocates of centralised government point to our experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand as proof that centralisation ensures efficiency and clarity. Meanwhile, advocates of decentralisation underline how important the semi-autonomy of states and cities has been in the United States, where clear federal co-ordination has been sorely lacking.
As it responds to huge problems like climate change and COVID-19, Aotearoa is entering a new era of governance – one marked by larger and more complicated problems that demand new and more innovative solutions. To face these challenges, the public service will have to adapt to new methods of working across categories and hierarchies.
Mulgan argues that neither of these impulses is correct. Instead, the most successful responses to COVID-19 have been marked not by an entrenchment of hierarchy but by a willingness to work across it. He calls this “mesh governance”, which he defines as “an integration of multiple tiers, acting together, sharing data, lessons and insights.” Physical mesh combines vertical and horizontal links in order to make a system (whether in fabric or in a computer-based system) stronger.
This Eyes on the World will focus on two articles that deal with this challenge. The first, “The Case for Mesh Governance” by Geoff Mulgan at University College London pushes back on the impulse to centralise and examines how different levels of government can co-operate across hierarchies. The second, “Think Tanks: New Organisational Actors in a Changing Swedish Civil Society” by Pelle Åberg, Stefan Einarsson, and Marta Reuter in Voluntas gives an insight into how civil society actors external to government can and should be integrated into the policy process.
He points to a number of examples of mesh governance, such as South Korea’s Central Crisis Management Committee (which is composed of representatives from both national ministries and large cities), Australia’s Council of Australian Governments (which brings together both national and state governments), and the UK’s now-defunct Government Regional Offices (which performed a similar function with different regions and cities).
“The Case for Mesh Governance” – Geoff Mulgan
According to Mulgan, mesh governance has a number of key features:
COVID-19 has put intense pressure on governments around the world. Aside from the tragic loss of life, the pandemic has also acted as a natural experiment in best-practice governance. We can learn from the variety of governmental responses in order to perform better when confronted by similar challenges.
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Support for relationships and networks – the central goal of mesh governance is not merely to establish meetings where different tiers of government are represented, but to foster
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allenandclarke.co.nz 13 PUBLIC SECTOR September 2020
