ABSTRACT
Introduction Public administration and public policy have proud, long pedigrees. Our shared history of both (Lynn 2005; Parsons 1995) reveals cutting-edge developments in understanding bureaucracy and its administration as an eective organisational machine for both public and private purposes, as well as the subsequent advances in new public management (NPM), notions of post-NPM government (Halligan 2009), and networked arrangements amidst the complexity of today’s governance systems (Klijn 2008). Past decades have been littered with public policy initiatives which have been successful if we look at education, pension plans, disease control and economic growth, as well as unsuccessful, from our experience in drug control, paedophilia and internet bullying. Importantly, many areas of public policy, such as privatisation for example, have also seen high expectations and political promises dashed under the weight of more limited realworld reform outcomes.
