In 1900, the modern nation states of Europe faced many challenges in terms of how they were run, with poverty and disease still prevalent. The largest problems were more or less successfully addressed by 2000. The road involved world wars and civil wars, but the essential reci...

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This recent essay in the Mandarin is a reworking of an essay I wrote in 2016 in a string of essays in which I developed the idea of the Evaluator General. I was following Gary Sturgess' suggestion that governments should not think of themselves as producing complex services in...

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Cross posted with the Mandarin Nicholas Gruen has argued that it’s much harder to realise evidence-based policy – both institutionally and intellectually – than many calling for it realise. Here he explains how putatively ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ approaches can, paradoxica...

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From around January this year I've tried to get the column below published – in the Guardian UK where my previous column was published. Unfortunately, and even after endless cajoling via the Guardian at this end, I couldn't get a reply which is piss poor but there you go. Mart...

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When policy problems are complex, we need to understand and learn from the front line. With desperately need to improve the early, middle and late stages of institutional learning and change-making, to enable successful policy development. From the recent Mandarin article . It...

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It’s impossible to avoid misjudgements in life or to get all one’s predictions right. But should economists get caught out quite so often. https://youtu.be/rWQ3jCURzy0 Paul Krugman is honest and self-critical. So he’s up for identifying what economists missed about globalisati...

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