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Commissions and Local Government Reform: Expressed Leadership Identities of Commissioners in Inquiries Proposing Municipal Mergers in Northern Ireland and New South Wales
Author(s) -
Wallis Joe,
Brodtkorb Tor,
Dollery Brian,
MacCarthaigh Muiris
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/polp.12199
Subject(s) - commission , politics , public administration , political science , parliament , local government , government (linguistics) , identity (music) , sociology , royal commission , law , art , linguistics , philosophy , aesthetics
Commissions of inquiry are frequently used as venue-alteration mechanisms to investigate and ‘depoliticise’ local government reforms. Through the application of a leadership identity framework that examines the judgements that commission chairs make during the course of the inquiry, this paper explores the roles that commission chairs play as interpretive authorities. The judgments that commission chairs make about the scope of stakeholder engagement and whether to adjust the agenda of the inquiry generate four types of leadership identity: conservator, consolidator, advocate and catalyst. The leadership identity framework is applied to two commissions conducting inquiries into proposed structural reform of local government in two sub-national systems: Northern Ireland and New South Wales. The application of the framework reveals that the commission process itself leads to a shift from a conservator to a consolidator leadership identity in both systems, despite their different and distinctive historical, social and political contexts.