From chaos to patterns of understanding: Reflections on the dynamics of effective government decision making

Like other liberal-democratic governments, Australia has been going through a process of dramatic change in political and administrative structures an d processes. There has been the well-documented shift from controlling inpu ts to managing for results which has resulted in the desired enhancement of executive government's responsibility and accountability for outcomes. A clear understanding of the evolving process of cabinet decision making po ints the way ahead to the next phase of reform. What lies ahead could, inde ed, be more revolutionary than what has been achieved to date. Weber's dynamic concept of authority and domination, when understood as Web er himself used it, can tell one much about change and future possible evol ution. It helps, heuristically, to indicate that government decision-making processes have already evolved to a sophisticated level. However, there is still much development that should be undertaken to maintain the quality o f decision making. For instance, the move to small policy-advising departme nts and separated administrative programme-delivery agencies could be seen as a natural evolution and quite predictable. Good governance relies much on attaining a balance, in Weber's terms,betwee n the ethics of intention (means) and the ethics of responsibility (ends). Together, they make the 'true man' who can have a 'vocation of politics' sa ys Weber - but the 'true man' is hard to find. What is needed, therefore, a re decision-making processes that are good at drawing out this balance. Wel l-established patterns of social action, encapsulated in Weber's sociology and typographically oriented hermeneutics, can help identify how this could be achieved. For instance, when one understands Webers ideal types of auth ority structure as the core of a comprehensive conceptual model with consta nt interplay and movement over time, one can get a hint of how government d ecision making could be further enhanced.