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Theorising the Ambiguitiesof DevolutionBob Lingard a & Fazal Rizvi aa The University of QueenslandPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Bob Lingard & Fazal Rizvi (1992) Theorising theAmbiguities of Devolution, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics ofEducation, 13:1, 111-123, DOI: 10.1080/0159630920130108

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26. Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, Canberra, 31 October 1974.27. R.B. Winder, address to hunter Regional Group, Australian College of Education and

Newcastle Association for Educational Administration on "Leadership and Responsibilityin Public Education", in Aces Review, Oct. 1986.

28. D. Swan, "Forces for Diversity", Priorities in Education, NSW Conference of PrimarySchool Administrators, Glenfield, 1983.

29. Anne Junor, "Qualitative Change", Education, 1 Nov. 1983.30. "An Administrator's View of NSW Education", in R.B. Winder, op. cit., p. 16.31. reprinted in Curriculum Australia, No. 7, October 1988.32. letters, S.M.H. 2 Oct. 1990.33. Richard J. Bates, "The Socio-political Context of Administrative Change", in M. Frazer,

J. Dunstan, P. Creed (eds.), Perspectives on Organisational Change, 1985, pp. 290-291,cited Badcock, op. cit., p. 296.

A REPLY TO BARCAN

Theorising the Ambiguities of Devolution

Bob Lingard and Fazal RizviThe University of Queensland

Introduction

The idea of devolution has become entrenched in political and educationaldiscourses throughout the world. Australia has been no exception.Simultaneously, however, there has also been a trend towards greatercentralisation. Exactly how the relationship between these two seeminglycontradictory themes is to be understood is an issue that requires systematichistorical and sociological analyses. Barcan's contribution is thereforewelcome. However, it is our contention that Barcan has misunderstood thechanging relationship between the two processes. Further, he has failed toappreciate the ideological implications of the conclusion that devolutiondoes not have an essential form applicable across time and political regimes.

Barcan's failure to identify two competing conceptualisations ofdevolution — one stemming from a social democratic tradition, the otherfrom an economic rationalist and managerialist one — has, we will argue,led him to misrepresent historical developments and current tensionsinherent in attempts to reconcile devolution and centralisation. Further, wewill suggest that an adequate understanding of these developments requiresan acknowledgment that over the past twenty years the Australian state hasexperienced major restructuring away from a welfare towards a competitiveform. It is within this framework that the discourses and practices ofdevolution and centralisation need to be understood. The major weakness ofBarcan's account is its failure to appreciate that recent changes to

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educational management cannot be divorced from what Yeatman (1990) hasdescribed as 'a revolution in Australian public sector management' since themid-1970s, a period that marked the end of post-war economic boom. Inturn, these changes are linked to what Lingard (1991) has called 'corporatefederalism'.

Following Offe (1975), we accept that the exogenous problems of thestate create numerous problems for its endogenous structure, for example,its mode of policy formulation and more generally its form of government.Specifically, in Australia, the end of the post-war boom and theglobalisation of the economy have resulted in substantial changes to thestructure and delivery of public policy and to the operation of federalism. Itis these changes that can suggest some explanation of the simultaneousdevelopment of devolution and centralisation.

Contrasting Conceptions of Devolution

Barcan has rightly noted that devolution has been a key idea in the thinkingof most recent governments, even when their ideological complexions havediffered markedly. However, what he has failed to stress is that the conceptof devolution is a highly contested one. And the contestations surrounding ithave increasingly served to define the form and scope of most of thepolitical debate witnessed in this country over the past twenty years. Thus itis not surprising that governments of different ideological leaning have hadvery different views concerning what the notion of devolution means, howit is to be put into practice and what implications it has for educationaldecision-making. In short, the idea of devolution has performed contrastingideological work in different States and at different times.

Contrary to Barcan's assertion that devolution in education 'started in the1980s, we believe that the idea has a much longer history than that. Mostnotably, it was central to the principles that the Karmel Report articulated in1973. Following the acceptance of its recommendation, the DisadvantagedSchools Program, for example, institutionalised a number of practices ofcommunity consultation and participation that the principle of devolutionimplied.

Karmel's understanding of the concept of devolution was located largelywithin a social democratic framework, a clear expression of which may befound in Raymond Williams' influential book, The Long Revolution (1961).In it, Williams was centrally concerned with issues concerning thedemocratisation of social relations, with identifying conditions necessary forbringing about an achievable socialist democracy. For Williams, even afully representative democracy was not a sufficient condition of a socialistdemocracy, which, he believed, must ultimately involve the direct exerciseof popular power. Democracy, he argued, implied a 'distinctive principle ofmaximum self-management'. Highly distrustful of bureaucratic andauthoritarian solutions to social problems, he insisted that people ought tobe given the power and resources to manage their own affairs. Democracy,

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he argued further, had a" educative as well as a representative function(Rizvi forthcoming).

The Karmel Report of 1973 was centrally located within the frameworkof this political project. Its principles of devolution, equality of educationalopportunity and community participation were the same as those advocatedin The Long Revolution. Nowhere is this clearer than in the followingparagraph:

Responsibility should be devolved as far as possible upon the people involved inthe actual task of schooling, in consultation with the parents of the pupils whomthey teach and, at senior level with the students themselves. Its belief in thisgrass-roots approach to the control of the schools reflects a conviction thatresponsibility will be most effectively discharged where people entrusted withmaking decisions are also the people responsible for carrying them out, with anobligation to justify them, and in a position to profit from the experience. (KarmelReport 1973, p. 10)

The Karmel Report thus sought to bridge the gap between school andcommunity, with participation becoming the central value around which toorganise structures of accountability and responsibility. At the same time,however, the notion of participation was linked conceptually to the idea ofequality. Not only was the notion of equality of participation emphasised,but participation was also seen as a major strategy with which to pursue thegoal of equality of educational outcome. In this way, Karmel's was not avision of romantic localism, as some critics, such as White (1987, p. 23),have suggested, but a vision that stressed the need to strategically usecentralist structures to ensure greater democracy and equality. This meantgiving schools and local communities greater power to manage their ownaffairs, but the central state retained wide-ranging powers to influencecommunity and school development; in particular, on matters of equality,which required system-wide initiatives.

In a sense, the Victorian Ministerial Papers (1983) can be viewed as areassertion of this tradition, away from the idea of functionaldecentralisation promoted by Alan Hunt, the Liberal Minister of Educationin the "White Paper on Strategies and Structures in Victorian Schools"(1980) towards a more social democratic agenda. The White Paper andMinisterial Papers thus represented radically different responses to thecrises Victorian schools confronted. Barcan is correct in stating that thecrises of old bureaucracy, economy and public confidence were all factorsthat contributed to the development of the policies of devolution. But whathis paper does not make clear is how these crises and their solutions weredifferently understood, and how in developing a response governments wereinfluenced by different ideological and political pressures. It should benoted that governments do not only react to pressures, but also constructand manage them. The processes of legitimation are linked to the waypressures are managed. The state uses its steering capacity to determine theagenda of policy formulation (Offe 1975).

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Barcan's explanation of the role of the state in promoting devolutionseems to be located, on the other hand, within a pluralist framework, whichsees the state as a neutral arbiter of competing interests. Devolution is thusseen as a pragmatic response to a series of political problems in themanagement of schools. Barcan assumes that the state is neutral andpotentially open to any interest able to mobilise sufficient pressures. In theVictorian case, he views teacher unions as just one such group whom heconsiders to be 'the main beneficiaries in the transfer of authority'. Whatthis assessment seems to ignore, however, is that the teacher unions inVictoria have never been an homogenous group, and various union groupshave differed markedly on the form and scope of devolution they desired.This in part explains a contradiction in Barcan's own account of teachersrepresenting the most significant push towards devolution on the one hand,and resisting devolution on the other. The relationship between the unionsand the state has been a complex one, especially under Labor, asBlackmore's (1990) historical account of teacher unions in Victoria clearlydemonstrates. More generally, pluralism may present an accurate account ofhow the state responds to particular interests, but it simply cannot accountfor the way the state exercises its power and influence over the way agendasare constructed and the way it mobilises political groups to support thoseagendas.

The Victorian Ministerial Papers not only represented an attempt by thestate to deal with teacher and parent organisation demand for greaterinvolvement in decision-making but also mobilised support for a particularideological view of the relationship between schools and society. ThePapers led to the creation of a variety of forums, ranging from the StateBoard of Education to school councils, where educational issues could beexplored. These forums enabled community groups to have direct access tothe Minister, where once only the Education Department played such a role.

Had Barcan attempted to explain why Victoria moved from a Departmentto a Ministry structure, which implied a partial rejection of the ideologicalthrust of the Ministerial Papers, he would have noted that such a shiftrepresented the triumph of one model of devolution over another. As theDeakin study (1984) had noted, the problem with the model of decision-making implicit in the Ministerial Papers was that it had made policy co-ordination difficult to achieve since there were now multiple sites whereeducational decisions were being made. People were now provided manyforums where they could have their say, but the idea that this form ofdemocracy made it difficult for the state to reconcile contradictory interestswas a pretext against which a shift to the Ministry structure was justified.There may be some truth to this claim, but we want to argue that it was thebroader context of public sector reform throughout Australia that moreadequately explains the shift. Facing a changed economic and politicalclimate, the Victorian Government found the corporatist discourse of thepublic sector reform hard to resist. In its report, Taking Schools into 1990s(1986), it accepted the role of corporate management in the reassertion of

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government control over the decision-making processes in Victorianschools.

The view of devolution implicit in Taking Schools into 1990s stressed theneed for the creation of an elite corporate management group which wasgiven the ultimate authority for 'the more efficient and effective use ofresources' and a 'responsibility for the identification of objectives and theestablishment of strategic plans for achieving them'. The rhetoric ofdevolution was preserved, but was now directed towards 'more dynamic andflexible arrangements that allow schools to be more adaptable in meetingthe needs of their students'. In this sense, devolution was seen as a means toan end, which was itself no longer negotiable at the local levels. Thelegitimate voices of interests groups were still recognised, but while theMinisterial Papers sought to empower those groups, the new agenda was tomanage them.

The ideological shift to a corporate-managerialist style of educationaladministration in Victoria meant that participation became narrowly basedand limited in scope, concerned with processes of gaining consensus, andthe incorporation of interest groups into the centralised decision-makingapparatus of the state. Nowhere was this more evident than in the changesaffecting the work of the State Board. Under the earlier policy regime, theState Board was a representative body of a range of interests, the 'fiveorganisations' — the teacher unions and parent federations — as well asother educational institutions such as the universities and the independentschools. It gave independent advice to the Minister, often contrary to theviews of the traditional departmental bureaucracy. At the time of the Deakinstudy, there was considerable tension between the State Board, whichwished progress towards devolution speeded up, and the department, whichincreasingly resisted any move to whittle away its traditional power. Withthe advent of the corporatist Ministry, this democratic orientation wasweakened. The State Board was incorporated within the advisory structureof the bureaucracy. Since it no longer had direct access to the Minister, itsindependence was compromised.

Corporate managerialism also served to define the Greiner government'scommitment to devolution. But in New South Wales the idea of devolutiondeveloped within the framework of an ideology of individualism. Indeed,the Greiner Government has followed the British example in attempting tocapture the popular vocabulary of the Left to serve a set of contradictorypolitical purposes. Thus, the idea of 'self-management' proposed by the Leftas a central mechanism for releasing 'a tremendous reservoir of socialenergy, now locked in resentment of bureaucratic and hierarchicalorganisations' (Williams 1961, p. 334) and for creating caring participativecommunities, is now being used by new conservative governments in a verydifferent way, to support the political rhetoric about the rights of individualsto make their own choices. The idea of devolution is being rearticulatedaway from a communitarian vision to an individualistic one; away from anemphasis upon the distinctive social democratic value of sharing to the

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values of self-interest and the right of consumers to make their own choice.Market ideologies have become dominant, with the idea of devolutionbecoming detached from the necessary connection its social democraticversion has to a commitment to equality.

What we have seen over the past decade in Australia has been thedevelopment of a corporate managerialist view that is increasingly linked tomarket ideologies. Both Labor and conservative governments havesupported the rhetoric of devolution, but their view of devolution has soughtto manage participation. As Hall (1988, p. 66) argues, such

participation without democracy, without democratic mobilisation, is a fakesolution. Decentralisation which creates no authentic, alternative sources of realpower, which mobilizes no one, and which entails no breakup of the existingpower centres and no real shift in balance of power, is an illusion.

There appears to be an emerging settlement in Australia concerning the waydevolution is understood. And while there is considerable opposition to theeconomic rationalism that informs that notion of devolution, itsmanagerialist tendencies now dominate. But how should such a settlementbe theorised is an issue that requires attention to the way the Australianstate is being restructured, something which Barcan has singularly failed todo.

Restructuring of the State and Educational Reform

We want to argue that such a settlement in education is part of a broaderrevolution in public sector management in Australia (Yeatman, 1990). Inturn, that public sector management revolution is a very importantcomponent of the reshaping of the Australian state in the context ofeconomic difficulties, the globalisation of the economy and both ideologicaland financial pressures upon the state itself. Further, federalism is anotherimportant internal feature of the Australian state structure which has beenaffected quite considerably by those pressures manifest in changes in theoperation of federalism in schooling policy making (Lingard, 1991). Barcanfails to acknowledge this situation in his analysis and consequently is unableto understand the relationship between the occurrence simultaneously of twoostensibly contradictory developments, notably devolution and centralisationwithin state systems, and at the national level.

The impact of the 1974 OPEC oil crisis, the internationalisation of theeconomy and the continuing volatility of the world economy, have meantthat since the Whitlam era the Australian state has increasingly moved awayfrom a social democratic, Keynesian welfare state structure and mode ofoperation. The 1975 Whitlam budget and the Fraser era saw an attempt toinstall a monetarist policy regime, which like its progenitors elsewhereattempted to peel back the state and alter the state/market balance firmly infavour of the latter. The Hawke government initially attempted to establisha set of neocorporatist institutional arrangements (the Accord and the

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Economic Planning Advisory Council) to pursue a social democratic agendain difficult economic circumstances. Very quickly, however, the progressivepotential in those structures was lost, as the economic rationalism ofTreasury asserted its influence, particularly after the Treasurer's 1986Banana Republic speech concerning Australia's balance of paymentsproblems. Hawke Labor quickly became committed to preferring the marketover the state, thus embracing economic over social liberalism. Reforms tothe internal operation of the state formed part of that agenda.

At least since 1986 the Hawke government set about reforming the publicsector in the direction of corporate managerialism. Yeatman (1990) arguesthat corporate managerialism with its emphasis upon both efficiency andeffectiveness was Labor's response to New Right calls for a smaller state;Labor sought a more efficient state run along the lines of private sectorfirms in an attempt to deflect such a push. What resulted was theestablishment of a Senior Executive Service and a corporate managerialistmode of policy delivery. The goal was to achieve a public sector moreobediently responsive to the changing policy demands of the governmentand specific ministers, given the economic changes alluded to above. Theminister gained the upper hand in this process, which some havecharacterised as the ministerialisation of policy formation (for example,Beare, 1990).

Corporate managerialism has been defined by Sinclair (1989, p. 383) asinvolving 'a rational, output-oriented, plan-based and management-led viewof organisational reform', while Weller and Lewis (1989, p. 1) suggest that'managing for results' best encapsulates the intention of the reforms.Corporate planning, program budgeting, program goals, performancemeasures or indicators, some performance-based employment contracts forsenior managers, the notion of generic managers, some move beyond apermanent career service towards a permeable bureaucracy, efficiency auditsand the like have characterised this pattern of reform.

At the federal level, after 1986 the progressive aspects of Labor's reformagenda (equal employment opportunity, representative bureaucracies,priority to equity goals, democratic processes) were progressivelyweakened. In the worsening economic circumstances, the focus increasinglymoved to efficiency alone, 'doing more with less' (Thompson, 1991).Furthermore, the 1987 restructuring of the Commonwealth public servicefrom 27 to 16 megadepartments and the amalgamation of Employment,Education and Training (DEET) into one department ensured a tighterframing of educational policy within the metapolicy of economicrestructuring (Yeatman, 1990) and the ideology of economic rationalism(Pusey, 1991). Within education, efficiency and a microeconomic humancapital conception of schooling were supported by a minimalist definitionand support for social justice.

Considine (1988) has noted how the efficiency concern of corporatemanagerialism has spawned an emphasis upon policy integration and theabolition of policy duplication. These emphases result in the reduction

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and narrowing of the policy goals to be pursued (the emphasis onmeasurable outcomes is also a factor here), and a lifting of the level atwhich this narrower set of objectives is set (Considine, 1988, p. 9). Further,the move to generic managers supposedly ensures policy regimes withingiven departments which are in line with the overall policy aims of thegovernment, rather than captured by policy communities. Additionally, thestress is now on policy outputs as opposed to the inputs focus of the earlierperiod.

Now, a trend towards such managerialism was first noted in the NewSouth Wales public service during the Wran era, and subsequently in theother Labor States and at the federal level after 1983. The non-Labor Stateshave also pursued such reforms because they have faced similar financialand ideological pressures. After 1987, reductions in Commonwealth grantsto the States also encouraged the efficiency focus of systems of education atthe State level. It should be noted, though, that Labor has still held on to anequity agenda in a somewhat circumscribed form, while non-Labor hasstresed efficiency through market operations over all else. At the Statelevels across the policy portfolios (including education), corporatemanagerialism can be seen to result in the tighter articulation at the centre(head office) of a narrower range of policy goals. Within the managerialistframework, the pyramid of the old bureaucracies is supposedly to bereplaced by the 'flatter', 'clotheshanger' model (Evatt Research Centre,1989) with some devolution from the centre.

The impact of this broader corporate managerialist reform of the publicsector on education has been nicely encapsulated by Angus (1990), a seniorofficial within the Western Australian Ministry of Education:

In the education context, the government was not intent upon devolving toschools the authority to determine what the ends should be. Quite the opposite.Underpinning the paradigm is the belief that better performances will result fromsharper focusing on systemic priorities. What is being devolved to schools is theauthority (and the capacity) to determine the way in which the school will achievethe agreed outcomes. (Angus, 1990, p. 5)

Thus the twin processes of centralisation and devolution can be explained atthe state system level; they are in fact the two arms of the same process ofcorporate managerialist reform aimed to give government's greater policyflexibility and to achieve efficiencies in policy delivery.

Two factual errors in Barcan's account of the devolution reforms inQueensland and Western Australia stem from his failure to understand thateducational 'reforms' in those two States resulted from public sectorreforms. The document in Western Australia did not result from a requestby the Minister for Education, Bob Pearce, to the government's FunctionalReview Committee to suggest ways to streamline the Department ofEducation, as suggested by Barcan. Rather, the Burke government set aboutreforming the public sector (set out in Managing Change in the PublicSector), precursors to which were functional review of all State

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departments. Better Schools (1987) was a result of a functional review ofthe Department of Education; the motivation for such a review came fromthe Premier's Department as part of the reform of the Western Australianpublic service, not from the Minister as argued by Barcan. Pearce, then WAMinister of Education, noted that point in an interview conducted forresearch into the WA restructure by Porter, Knight and Lingard(forthcoming). Indeed, Pearce also suggested he was 'happy' to let thefunctional review recommend new structures, but that he was meticulous inensuring that his department held onto questions of curriculum andpedagogy. The Beasley Report (1984) was significant in the latter respect.The reforms to flow from Better Schools, then, were framed by thecorporate managerialist reform of the Western Australian public service.Elsewhere, that reform has been categorised under the rubric of Labor's'efficient corporate state strategy' (Porter, Knight and Lingard,forthcoming).

On Queensland: Barcan suggests that moves towards devolution in 1987came from the 'educational administrative bureaucracy', rather than fromthe politicians, an error also made by Casey and MacPherson (1989), uponwhich Barcan's account is based. This is an error of fact, which can betraced to Barcan's failure to see the educational restructurings as part of abroader public sector reform movement which in turn is part of thereshaping of the state. Furthermore, Powell as Minister (1983-87) sponsoredmanagerialist reforms with the report, Education 2000, and other relatedinternal reviews. After Ahern became premier in late 1987, and Powell lostthe Education portfolio, educational reforms were totally subsumed withinpublic sector restructurings.

In December, 1985 the Review of Queensland Business Regulations,chaired by Sir Earnest Savage, was submitted to the government. ThisReview was highly critical of the quality of management within theQueensland public service, arguing that too much use was made ofregulations and that departments lacked statements of corporate policygoals. Across 1986 the government sought to implement the corporatemanagerialist reforms to the Queensland public service recommended bySavage. In December, 1986 the government established the Public SectorReview Committee, again chaired by Savage, to advise on how to improvethe productivity of the Queensland public sector. This move kept thepressure on the departments to embrace managerialism, while the outputorientation was to be another step in the managerialist reforms inQueensland. The Public Sector Review Committee Report was submitted tothe Premier in July, 1987, and subsequently legislated for in the 1988 PublicSector Management and Employment Act. The point to note here, however,and it is a point made by Kidston (1989), that the moves to devolution inthe Queensland Department of Education in 1987 were driven by thecorporate managerialist reform agenda, combined with the fundingconstraints facing the State given the huge cuts in Commonwealth grants in1987. The latter added further impetus to managerialist reforms. In the

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context of these two factors, the Treasurer and Treasury pressured for thedevolution of some budget items to the school level. The educationalbureaucrats moved to implement some aspects of devolution as suggestedby Barcan, but they did this because of the imposition of managerialistreforms in the public sector and efficiency pressures resulting from a tightfunding situation. The production of the Department's Interim Strategic Planin November, 1989 resulted from corporate managerialist reforms to theQueensland public service. A significant point about these reforms inQueensland education under the National Party government was the absenceof any equity considerations (Lingard and Collins, 1991).

Since the election of a Labor government in December, 1989 inQueensland, the structure of educational administration has been furtheraffected by Labor's managerialist reforms of the structure of the Queenslandpublic service (Lingard and Collins, 1991).

Barcan also notes the move to centralise goals and curriculumframeworks at the national level. Once again such moves must beunderstood against a backdrop of reforms to another internal feature of theAustralian state, namely, federalism. There appears to be bipartisan politicalacceptance of moves to integrate the Australian economy in a non-tariffprotected fashion within the global economy. In that context, federalismmust be overhauled, as it were, so that a more efficient national economicinfrastructure can be created. In education this has resulted in a new nationalpolicy focus within the Australian Education Council (AEC), the meeting ofthe Federal and State ministers for education. The AEC has been effectivelyutilised by Dawkins to get around any possible constitutional difficulties toachieve coordinated National policies. In a sense, this is corporatemanagerialism writ large. The number of Labor governments at the Statelevel, combined with the ministerialisation of policy formulation which isinherent in managerialism, has clearly facilitated that process. Themicroeconomic human capital focus of schooling has also been a factor inincreased federal involvement in schooling policy formulation. Given thatthe federal government is responsible for the economy and given thatschooling is being recohceptualised as central to microeconomic reform,then ipso facto the Commonwealth ought to have a greater say in schoolingpolicy. The result has been a new 'corporate federalism' in schooling policyformulation (Lingard, 1991).

There are potential dangers to the equity agenda in this process for itseems that the Commonwealth is seeking to pull to the centre themicroeconomic aspects of educational policy, including TAFE, while beingprepared to grant the States block grants rather than tied ones for equityproposes (Lingard, Knight and Porter, forthcoming). This is one quid proquo that the Commonwealth is holding out to the States for Commonwealth"control" of TAFE so that the Finn recommendations can be fullyimplemented.

Thus recent changes in the structure and administration of schooling canonly be understood against a backdrop of changes to the Australian state.

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The move from the fetish of proceduralism of the old bureaucracies to theflexibility and flatter structures of the new managerialism has resulted fromthe impact of unmediated international economic pressures upon theAustralian state. As Yeatman notes:

... in a global economy of 'restructuring', there is likely to be a tendency for theadministrative state at national and provincial levels to free up as much activity aspossible to permit flexibility of response ... (Yeatman, 1990, p. 40)

Educational reform in contemporary Australia at both the national andState levels can only be understood against this backdrop of aneconomically pressured move away from the Keynesian welfare statetowards a competitive state (Cerny, 1990). Failure to understand thissituation, as with Barcan's analysis, can only limit the possibilities forcreating effective opposition to its negative features.

Conclusion

We agree with Barcan that education needs to highlight a set of liberalcritical values. Such values are even more important now than ever before,given the technocracy of our age and the consumerist individualism uponwhich it is based. However, what Barcan's argument seems to suggest isthat since the old bureaucracy failed to deliver a liberal-critical education,devolution might at least ensure that some schools are able to provide suchan education, through parental pressure and involvement in decision-making. In our view this would create two classes of educational provisions— those involved in educational decision-making and those who, for avariety of reasons, have decisions made for them. Thus, we do not share hisoptimism. Given our description of the restructuring of the Australian statetowards a set of contrary values of managerialism, efficiency and economicoutputs — the leaner, meaner state — the form of devolution offered to thecommunities is a limited one (see Rizvi 1989). It provides communities theopportunity to implement policies determined at the centre, whereeducational issues are often secondary. Communities become an instrumentof the central state, rather than empowered in a way celebrated in the socialdemocratic construction of devolution.

The idea of devolution is not neutral in relation to questions of equality.Barcan recognises this fact, but does not adequately address thecomplexities of the relationship between democracy and equality ineducational provisions. He is right to suggest that old centralisedbureaucracies at least guaranteed some measure of fair go for all, though ina misguided uniform way. The challenge before us is to devise ways ofensuring that equality is not left out of an agenda that seeks to providegreater democratic participation. The problem is not one of structures alonehowever; it is also an issue of resources and redistributive practices of thestate. Our argument is that a genuine democracy is unlikely to obtain in a

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political/economic climate in which the pressures for a more efficient andproductive state, rather than a more humane and caring one, predominate.

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