Cultural change within the New Zealand and Australian Treasuries

Abstract

Cultural change within two Treasuries is explained in terms of their secretaries' use of agenda-setting, strategic recruitment and “expression games”. A different institutional context allowed the New Zealand Treasury (NZT) to exercise a more dominant influence than the Australian Treasury (AT) although the postwar hegemony of a market failure (MF) paradigm meant that a “culture of balanced evaluation” was preserved in both agencies. The erosion of this paradigm's authority in the 1980s prompted cultural re-invention in both agencies as they aligned themselves with reformists committed to policies derived from a government failure paradigm. The stronger reaction to the alignment of the more dominant NZT has placed it under more pressure than the AT to reinvent itself again in the 1990s.