Left on the shelf: Explaining the failure of public inquiry recommendations
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Alastair Stark |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12630 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Left on the shelf: Explaining the failure of public
inquiry recommendations
Alastair Stark
Department of Political Science and
International Studies, University of
Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Correspondence
Alastair Stark, Department of Political Science
and International Studies, University of
Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane 4072,
Queensland, Australia.
Email: alastair.stark@uq.edu.au
Abstract
Public inquiries remain the pre-eminent mechanism for
lesson-learning after high-profile failures. However, a regu-
lar complaint is that their recommendations get ‘shelved’.In
political science, the most common explanation for this lack
of implementation tells us that elites mobilize bias in order
to undermine inquiry lesson-learning. This article tests this
thesis via an international comparison of inquiries in
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. A series of
alternative explanations for shelving emerge, which tell us
that inquiry recommendations do not get implemented
when: they do not respect the realities of policy transfer;
they are triaged into policy refinement mechanisms; and
they arrive at the ‘street level’without consideration of
local delivery capacities. These explanations tell us that the
mobilization of bias thesis needs to be reworked in relation
to public inquiries so that it better recognizes the complex
reality of public policy in the modern state.
1|INTRODUCTION
A widespread assumption about public inquiries is that they often fail to facilitate policy reform because their recom-
mendations are not implemented (Ashforth 1990; Brown 2004; Lauder 2013; Eburn and Dovers 2015). Within politi-
cal science, the most common explanation for the ‘shelving’of inquiry recommendations suggests that powerful
elites mobilize their bias in ways which undermine demands for reform. This mobilization of bias explanation tends
to be expressed through descriptions of inquiries as agenda management mechanisms that elites can use to delay,
derail or dilute unpalatable calls for reform (Clokie and Robinson 1937; Herbert 1961; Prasser 1994; Resodihardjo
2006; Marier 2017) or via arguments that suggest that powerful actors will mobilize bias in ways which allow recom-
mendations to be suppressed or ignored (Acland 1980; Prasser 1994; Stone 1994). Thus, politics prejudices learning,
and the public inquiry is rendered ineffectual.
Received: 23 April 2019Revised: 10 July 2019Accepted: 13 October 2019
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12630
Public Admin. 2020;98:609–624.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd609
However, closer inspection of the scholarship surrounding inquiries reveals that little attention has been given to
the analysis of recommendations that get shelved. Political science has remained silent about where in the lesson-
learning process inquiry recommendations get killed off, how the process of shelving is conducted and why some
recommendations go on to reform public policy while others fall by the wayside. Consequently, the mobilization of
bias explanation, despite its popularity, ought to be treated as a thesis that is yet to be proven rather than anything
more substantive. This article therefore tests the validity of the mobilization of bias thesis in order to develop a bet-
ter understanding of the way in which inquiry recommendations are shelved.
This agenda is facilitated in two steps. Step one involves the presentation of a conceptual model of the public
inquiry, which is sympathetic to the complexity of policy-making, upon which explanations for failed recommenda-
tions can be identified. Step two delivers data from an international comparative analysis of public inquiries in four
Westminster systems (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK), which relies on 100 interviews with ministers,
public officials and public sector leaders. The data provide three ‘locations’in the conceptual model where inquiry
recommendations became vulnerable to shelving, which tell us that inquiry recommendations fail when: (1) they are
produced in the inquiry room in ways which do not respect the realities of policy transfer and implementation;
(2) they are triaged into a policy refinement process which subsequently deemed them unfit for implementation;
(3) they arrive at the street level without thought for local (in)capacity and are subsequently reinterpreted or rejected
by local actors.
The findings therefore show that many of the issues that prevent recommendations from being implemented
have little to do with the disinclination of elites at the central level. This is not to say that the politics of policy is
unimportant but rather that, in the context of inquiries at least, we need to refine the mobilization of bias thesis with
more accurate explanations that recognize the complex reality of policy-making.
The article proceeds through several steps. Directly below, the major claims of the mobilization of bias thesis are
provided. Thereafter the research design is outlined. A reconceptualization of the public inquiry, built from a mix of
theory and empirical findings, is then presented. Finally, the three explanations for shelving described above are laid
out and related to the conceptual model.
2|INQUIRIES AND THE MOBILIZATION OF BIAS
The claim that inquiries can be used as agenda management tools has existed since the early twentieth century. Cen-
tral to this has been the view that they are a means of defusing threatening issues (Clokie and Robinson 1937; Her-
bert 1961; Ashforth 1990; Prasser 1994; Resodihardjo 2006). In 1934, for example, Gosnell (p. 110) made the case
that inquiries tended to be ‘appointed to shelve a given question until public attention is attracted elsewhere, and
that report is destined to go into a pigeonhole’. Years later, Clokie and Robinson (1937, p. 135) essayed that claim in
greater depth, stating:
Very often, it is clear, pressure of opinion—which may be that of the general public, of the press, or of
politicians—forces the Government to action which will to some degree satisfy the current demand
while at the same time postponing the matter for later, probably much later, consideration. Commis-
sions, in other words, are often established with hope of ‘shelving’an issue which is thought to be of
no urgency and which promises nothing but trouble for the Minister.
Two years after Clokie and Robinson, a UK parliamentarian put the issue in more colourful terms when he told the
House of Commons, in a now well-cited statement, that, ‘A Royal Commission is generally appointed, not so much
for digging up the truth, as for digging it in: and a government department appointing a Royal Commission is like a
dog burying a bone’(Herbert 1961, pp. 263–64). This argument, that the inquiry can be a means of ‘cooling’hot
610 STARK
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