This paper discusses the role of public inquiries as an instrument of public policy-making in New Zealand, using mental health as a case study. The main part of the paper analyses the processes and outcomes of five general inquiries into the state of New Zealand's mental health services that were held between 1858 and 1996. The membership, form, style and processes used by public inquiries have all changed over time in line with constitutional and social trends. So has the extent of public participation. The records of five inquiries provide periodic snapshots of a system bedevilled by long-standing problems such as unacceptable standards, under-resourcing, and poor co-ordination. Demands for an investigation no less than the reports and recommendations of public inquiries have been the catalyst of some important policy changes, if not immediately, then by creating a climate of opinion that supported later change. Inquiries played a significant role in establishing lunatic asylums, in shaping the structure of mental health legislation, establishing and maintaining a national mental health bureaucracy within the machinery of government, and in paving the way for deinstitutionalisation. Ministers and their departmental advisers have mediated this contribution. Public inquiries have helped shape New Zealand's mental health policy, both directly and indirectly, at different stages of evolution. In both its advisory and investigative forms, the public inquiry remains an important tool of public administration. The inquiry/cause and policy/effect relationship is not necessarily immediate but may facilitate changes in public opinion with corresponding policy outcomes long after any direct causal link could be determined. When considered from that long-term perspective, the five inquiries can be linked to several significant and long-term contributions to mental health policy in New Zealand.

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Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees in Britain

The place of public inquiries in shaping New Zealand's national mental health policy 1858–1996

UK governments have frequently set up commissions to produce reports on complex policy problems, especially following “crisis” focusing events Such commissions are ad hoc, limited in duration, and engage external actors in providing policy advice and expertise to governments This problem-solving function is prominent in the literature: commissions are valued as a means of producing useful knowledge to inform policy responses However, we believe that the problem-solving rationale does not adequately explain the decision to set up a commission, given the additional resources required, and the risk that governments take in allowing quasi-independent bodies to produce recommendations Instead, we argue that the value of commissions may lie as much in their symbolic functions as their problem-solving ones: they are valued for their capacity to signal that governments are taking appropriate action to address policy problems This article explores how important these different functions have been with

/pdf/comparing-the-political-functions-of-independent-commissions-46ioyegjtp.pdf

Comparing the Political Functions of Independent Commissions: the Case of UK Migrant Integration Policy

The point-line geometry known as a partial quadrangle (introduced by Cameron in 1975) has the property that for every point/line non-incident pair (P, l), there is at most one line through P concurrent with l. So in particular, the well-studied objects known as generalized quadrangles are each partial quadrangles. An intriguing set of a generalized quadrangle is a set of points which induces an equitable partition of size two of the underlying strongly regular graph. We extend the theory of intriguing sets of generalized quadrangles by Bamberg, Law and Penttila to partial quadrangles, which gives insight into the structure of hemisystems and other intriguing sets of generalized quadrangles. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 19:217-245, 2011

Intriguing Sets in Partial Quadrangles

The point-line geometry known as a \textit{partial quadrangle} (introduced by Cameron in 1975) has the property that for every point/line non-incident pair $(P,\ell)$, there is at most one line through $P$ concurrent with $\ell$. So in particular, the well-studied objects known as \textit{generalised quadrangles} are each partial quadrangles. An \textit{intriguing set} of a generalised quadrangle is a set of points which induces an equitable partition of size two of the underlying strongly regular graph. We extend the theory of intriguing sets of generalised quadrangles by Bamberg, Law and Penttila to partial quadrangles, which surprisingly gives insight into the structure of hemisystems and other intriguing sets of generalised quadrangles.

Intriguing sets of partial quadrangles

An Anglo-American Comparison

Social science that studies human society and its development

Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees in Britain

Citations

The place of public inquiries in shaping New Zealand's national mental health policy 1858–1996

Comparing the Political Functions of Independent Commissions: the Case of UK Migrant Integration Policy

Intriguing Sets in Partial Quadrangles

Intriguing sets of partial quadrangles

An Anglo-American Comparison

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