coordination. The means are many and varied. The outcomes remain uncertain. In
response to the prime minister of Australia’s call for a ‘‘whole of government
approach,’’ the Australian Public Service (APS) producedConnecting Government
(MAC 2004 , 1 ), which deWnes the whole-of-government approach as ‘‘public
service agencies working across portfolio boundaries to achieve a shared goal and
an integrated government response to particular issues.’’ Detailing the speciWc
mechanisms is less important than noting the several problems that quickly
emerged. First, how do you get ministers to buy into interdepartmental coordin-
ation? The short answer is reluctantly because they want to make a name for
themselves, not their colleagues. Second, departments are competing silos. The
rewards of departmentalism are known and obvious. For interdepartmental
coordination, it is the costs that are known and obvious! For most managers,
coordination costs time, money, and staVand is not their main concern. Third,
coordination isforcentral agencies! It serves their priorities, not those necessarily
of the line departments. Fourth, there is a tension between managerialism, which
seeks to decentralize decision-making, and the call for better coordination,
which seeks to centralize it. Fifth, in countries like Australia and Canada, federal-
ism is a major check of Commonwealth aims. Coordination is for the Common-
wealth, not state governments and other agencies. The Commonwealth does not
control service delivery. It has limited reach, so it has to negotiate. Central
coordination presumes agreement with the priorities of central agencies when it
is the lack of such agreement that creates many of the problems—a Catch- 22.
All of these problems are common to executives in parliamentary government. We
know that despite strong pressures for more and proactive coordination throughout
Western Europe, the coordination activities of central governments remain modest.
Such coordination has four characteristics. First, it is ‘‘negative, based on
persistent compartmentalization, mutual avoidance, and friction reduction between
powerful bureaux or ministries.’’ Second, it occurs ‘‘at the lower levels of the state
machine and is organised by speciWc established networks.’’ Third, it is ‘‘rarely
strategic’’ and ‘‘almost all attempts to create proactive strategic capacity for long-
termplanning...havefailed.’’Finally,itis‘‘intermittentandselective...improvised
late in the policy process, politicised, issue-oriented and reactive’’ (Wright and
Hayward 2000 , 33 ). In sum, coordination is the ‘‘philosopher’s stone’’ of modern
government, ever sought, but always just beyond reach, all too often because it
assumes both agreement on goals and a central coordinator (Seidman 1975 , 190 ).
- 3 Accountability
Mulgan’s ( 2003 , 113 ) survey of accountability documents how government account-
ability is ‘‘seriously impeded’’ by an executive branch that ‘‘remains over-dominant
and too easily able to escape proper scrutiny.’’ There are three common problems in
330 r. a. w. rhodes