Introduction

One cannot make sense of policy analysis in Australia without an appreciation of the economic challenges that have faced Australian governments over the past 40 years. Those challenges, and the resulting preoccupation with economic reform, have dominated public policy and been central to analysis and debate. A conjunction of cyclical and structural problems in the Australian economy over the two decades from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s forced a re-evaluation of the policy framework that had guided the country's development since the beginning of the century, and that had, in some respects, embedded itself in the Australian way of life. That re-evaluation came in the form of a historic shift towards economic liberalisation in both the regulation of the private sector and the operation of the public sector. No aspect of public policy was immune, as economic reasoning established a presence in policymaking across all domains.

Much of the changed approach to the operation of the public sector can be summarised in the term ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) – adopted earlier and more enthusiastically in Australia and New Zealand, it has been argued, than elsewhere. If this, indeed, represents a case of ‘Antipodean exceptionalism’ (Rhodes and Weller, 2001, p 230), the reasons lie in a particular convergence of economic conditions in Australia and New Zealand. These two countries exhibited peculiarities of economic development that created a distinctive compound crisis in the 1970s and 1980s. While Australia was far from alone in the economic difficulties it faced in this period, and in the general direction of the policy response (Brennan and Pincus, 2002, p 78), there was a distinctly local flavour that reflected distinctive local conditions.

These profound and pervasive policy changes were built on a substantial amount of policy analysis. At the same time, the changes were highly contested and sparked an ongoing debate about the merits of what generally came to be known as ‘economic rationalism’, later subsumed under the term ‘neoliberalism’. In addition, they provided substantial grist to the academic mill, with scholars being interested not only in prescriptive debates about ‘what should (or should not) be done’, but also in more analytic questions of why and how things were being done.