Joined-Up Government

• Week 4 studies the concept of 'Joined-Up Government'.

Where We Are Now

• Week 2 saw governments favouring devolution, disaggregation, and specialization when addressing public problems through agencification, privatization, and contracting out.
• Week 3 looked at NPM situated within a broader pluralization of the policy process involving various governmental and non-governmental actors at national, supra-national, and sub-national levels leading to the hollowing out of the state.
• Week 4 addressed Joined-Up Government as a response to the unintended consequences of NPM which is fragmentation.
• Fragmentation challenges the government's capacity to address complex or wicked problems that span different organizational jurisdictions, for example, climate change, poverty, and homelessness.
• NPM reforms enhanced managerial autonomy while weakening political control.
• Focus is on Joined-up Government for greater Horizontal and Vertical Coordination.

Seminar Overview: Key Questions

• What are "wicked problems"?
• Why coordinate, and are there reasons not to?
• How can governments coordinate and integrate public service delivery?
• What are the challenges to effective coordination and what makes it successful?
• How does "joined-up government” or “whole of government” break from NPM, and does JUG represent a new style of governing, also, how well have governments responded to the “challenge of governance”?

Characteristics of a Wicked Problem

• Wicked problems are difficult to define as there is no definite formulation.
• Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
• Solutions to wicked problems are good or bad rather than true or false.
• There is no immediate or ultimate test for solutions.
• Attempts to solutions have effects that may not be reversible or forgettable.
• These problems lack clear solutions, or even a set of possible solutions.
• Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
• Wicked problems may be a symptom of another problem.
• There are multiple explanations for the wicked problem.
• The planner or policy-maker has no right to be wrong.

Super Wicked Problem Characteristics

• Time is running out.
• There needs to be a central authority or only have a weak central authority to manage the problem.
• The same actors causing the problem seem to solve it.
• The future is discounted radically so that contemporary solutions become less valuable.

UK Net Zero Ambition

• Despite the UK's world-leading ambition in net zero, delivery needs to be strengthened, turning ambition into success.
• Delivery of net zero requires a whole of Government effort which means that the UK Government and the Devolved Administrations must work together more effectively if they are to deliver net zero effectively.
• Net zero requires strong leadership and a joined-up approach, with coordinated action across Government.
• Decarbonisation challenges are shared across different parts of Government.

Organization of UK Climate Governance, 2019

• The organization includes parliament, No. 10 (Prime Ministers Office), European Union, HM Treasury, National Infrastructure Commission, Secretary of State for BEIS, Minstry of Housing and Local Government, Department for Transport, Ofgem, Energy Industry, City and Local government, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Ireland governments.

Policy Briefing Exercise

• A task force of policy advisers in the UK Cabinet Office are set up to consider the review's recommendations that the government adopt a joined-up approach to delivering Net Zero.
• You are tasked with preparing a short oral briefing to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.
• The briefing should address three areas: whether the UK government should adopt a joined-up approach to delivering Net Zero, mechanisms to promote coordination across the public sector on Net Zero, and barriers to effective coordination on Net Zero.

Joined-Up Government?

• The extent that "joined up government” or "whole of government” represents a break from the NPM.
• Whether JUG represents a new style of governing and if so, how?