Projects in development
Books
- Avoiding Unicorns and Fairy Dust: Policy Design and Performance in Digital Westminster. How has digital government impacted policy design? Informed by interviews with key public servants, this book compares the strategies, organizational approaches, and policy design practices in Australia, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand. Analysis reveals significant variation – with rhetoric far outpacing practice in some countries, while others have experienced meaningful modernization. The book argues that to varying degrees four newer types of ‘low fidelity’ policy design are occurring. These are contingent upon the quality of feedback available to designers and their ability to integrate it into policy design and include: confident iteration & stress testing, advocacy & hacking, tinkering & shots in the dark, or coping. The book explores the conditions that favour and constrain low fidelity policy design. The initial focus on service level ‘delivery’ is argued to have hampered digital era approaches. I argue for ‘upstreaming’ of digital ways of working earlier in policy processes coupled with greater attention to design performance through institutionalization of appropriate policy ‘loops’ and ‘gates’.
- Policy Advisory Systems Handbook (eds. with Capanno, and M. Howlett). This handbook is the definitive source on policy advisory systems and encapsulates key and emerging research on policy advice. Featuring leading scholars, the handbook consolidates lessons of research and provide a single volume in which both classics in the field and new directions for policy advisory systems research are highlighted and situated, summarizing both existing knowledge and outlining possible future findings.
- Governance in Turbulent Times: Canada in Comparative Perspective (eds. with E. Lindquist). This edited collection deepens and enriches perspectives on broad questions of governance and public administration in periods of turbulence. It locates Canadian practice and reform strategies which often lag other countries that feature more consistent and stronger responses. Turbulence makes it difficult for governments and observers to get their bearings, to adapt, and to adopt reforms with confidence. The collection features leading Canadian and international scholars engaging on specific topics to develop a better sense of what Canada is experiencing, compare Canada to other jurisdictions, and to identify governance and public service reform strategies for Canada.
Centres of Government: Trends and Tactics. Cabinets, Central agencies, and the political offices of Prime Ministers are unique and important sites of policymaking and governance. With an eye to enduring and new developments, this book departs from debates about the relative influence or centralization of power to comparative analysis focused on the organizational, strategic, and tactical approaches used by centres of government in specific policy domains and across complex governing environments. It charts and analyzes the ways by which actors and organizations at the centre of government have sought to manage and advance policymaking in today’s governing contexts.
Policy Ready Digital Government Case Study Series
- A collection of open access case studies in partnership with Code for Canada and the Institute for Public Administration are available open access through Policy Ready here. New cases are always, welcome, get in touch if you would like to collaborate.
Scholarly Articles in progress
- Craft, J. Don’t Forget the Elites! Policy Feedback, Resource Capacity, and Policy Advisory Systems.
- Lindquist, E, Craft, J. Canadian Public Sector Reform: Moving Towards a Neo-Weberian State?
- Craft, J. Performance Management in and of the Digital Era.
- Craft, J. Comparing Digital Policy Design in Westminster Systems.
- Craft, J., Henderson, S. Digital Era Federalism: COVID and Intergovernmental Relations in Australia and Canada.
- Craft, J. Centres of Government: Comparative Perspectives and New Developments.
Book Chapters in development
- Craft, J. Yes, the public service has enough independence from political control. Ohemang, Leone, Shepherd (eds) Core debates in Public Administration.
- Craft, J., Lindquist E. Turbulence and Governance: Taking Stock and Putting Canada in Comparative Perspective, in Craft and Lindquist (eds.), Governance: Canada in Comparative Perspective.
- Husted, T. Craft, J. Advising Governments in a Crowded and bumpy Landscape: Practices, Systems, and Managing the Mix, in Craft and Lindquist (eds.) Governance: Canada in Comparative Perspective.