| Summary: | <p>In 1992 the Commonwealth of Australia and all State and Territory Governments committed to reducing the incarceration rate of First Nations Australians. But, over thirty years that policy response has failed. Between 1991 and 2020, the incarceration rate of First Nations Australians more than doubled: from 1,122 per 100,000 adults in 1991 to 2,285 in 2020. This thesis asks whether failings in the Australian system of governance – the machinery of government – were a cause of the failed policy response. It focuses upon two weak mechanisms within the governance of the policy response: the mechanism of policy change at the elite level and the mechanism of policy effect at the local level. Using the methodology of process-tracing, the thesis builds an explanatory causal model for each of these mechanisms, which it uses to gain insights into where the mechanisms broke down by comparing cases where the mechanisms operated to those where they did not.</p>
<p>What emerges is a relational account of failing governance in a complex policy domain: a mechanism of policy change, reliant upon delegations to State and Territory governments, that stalled in the absence of sufficient political will; and a mechanism of policy effect that empowered local leaders and often succeeded in reducing incarceration, only to be frustrated by unstable public administration and unreliable funding. For future policymakers, the thesis shows the practical potential of local self-determination to achieve genuine social change but also warns that the complexity of Australia’s public administration must be successfully managed in order to realise this potential in all but exceptional cases.</p>
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