Paradoxes of Independence and Accountability in Commonwealth Regulatory Governance

It has often been said that the welfare or provider - state has been substantially displaced by ‘the regulatory state’. This claim refers to a complex set of changes in public management involving: the separation of operational from regulatory activities in some policy areas, sometimes linked to privatization of the operational activities; a trend towards separating purchasers and providers of public services through pol icies of contracting out and market testing; a trend towards separation of operational from policy tasks within government departments, notably under the Commonwealth Services Delivery Agency Act 1997. Each of these policies shifts the emphasis of control, to a greater or lesser degree, from traditional bureaucratic mechanisms towards mechanisms of regulation.