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Australia's Regions

Congested Governance or Institutional Void?

University of Queensland, Australia, j.everingham1{at}uq.edu.au

The article uses the example of a region in the Australian State of Queensland to illustrate the emergence during the 1990s of a plethora of regional organizations including Catchment Coordinating Committees, Regional Development Organisations and Regional Organisations of Councils. Some have regarded this profusion of sub-national bodies as diminishing the role of the state. Certainly one result was ambiguity in the roles and responsibilities of different bodies and different levels of government. Weaving together these disparate initiatives into a coordinated system of regional governance is a significant challenge. A case study of the Central Queensland region supports recent sociological accounts of changes in governance notably those of Fung and Wright (Empowered Participatory Governance), Healey (Collaborative Planning) and Sorensen and Torfing (Network Governance). The analysis identifies institutional features and normative principles of an emerging, multi-layered and multi-stakeholder, form of governance where a network employing deliberative practices coordinates formal political institutions and other actors from non-state sectors. These offer a potential model of regional governance suggesting the network form (with a role for state actors, but not state-dominated) and deliberative decision-making practices may provide coherence and coordination in policy-formulation and administration at a regional level.

Key Words: collaboration • coordination • deliberation • governance • networks • regions

Public Policy and Administration, Vol. 24, No. 1, 84-102 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0952076708097910


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