David John Bromell

Victoria University of Wellington · School of Government

An effective policy analyst leverages the power of collective thinking for policy-making as social problem-solving. Policy analysis starts with conversations and thinking together with others—before we open a report template and write anything. Three mindsets to cultivate are: talk and think with others before you write; focus on the purpose of you...

Robust peer review and systematic quality assurance reduce the risk of error and mistaken or misleading advice. Three mindsets to help overcome an aversion to review and criticism are: it is never my report (it is our agency’s advice and it reflects collective thinking and input from many people other than the author); different knowledge, skills,...

A pluralist, democratic, and political politics acknowledges that while people may have some interests in common, we also have different, competing, and conflicting interests. It is difficult to identify a “general will” or to achieve consensus on a “common good”. Politics and policy-making aim to solve social problems by negotiating bargains, comp...

Policy analysis serves a democratic politics best when it is both responsive and responsible, contributing hindsight and foresight while serving the government of the day, the legislature and the public, and building strategic alliances for long-term, durable policy-making beyond the current electoral term. A nuanced approach to client focus, maint...

As we set about doing policy analysis, it is worth pausing to reflect on the purpose of public policy. What is the point of it, what is our overarching objective, and what might success look like? People have different ideas about this. When working as a policy analyst, you will find yourself engaging with colleagues, managers, politicians, and oth...

Effective policy analysis starts with clear commissioning. If we do not understand what exactly we have to produce, why we are doing it, who it is for, and when it is due, it will be difficult to develop a project plan to deliver timely analysis that is fit for purpose. Three mindsets to bring to the task are: listening and reading come before talk...

This introductory chapter outlines the purpose, content, intended audience, and distinctive emphases of this practical introduction to policy analysis. It examines gaps between theory and practice, and challenges rational-technocratic approaches to policy analysis, framing policy-making in a democracy as incremental social problem-solving that is p...

At its heart, public policy is about people and place. Population analysis (demography) is a critical tool for public policy-making. This chapter invites you to reflect on personal, social, and human identities, and introduces distinctions between statistical classifications and social groups, and between statistical correlations and the possible c...

In a democracy, policy analysis supports discussion and decision-making—talking rather than reading—to inform and support incremental social problem-solving. Telling a compelling policy story and communicating clearly and well are part of the craft. Three mindsets to frame the task and how you approach it are: policy analysis (and policy-making) st...

What motivates many people who work in public policy is wanting to make a difference. This chapter invites thoughtfulness about the difference you want to make, how you might know you have made it in contexts of uncertainty, complexity, and unpredictability, and the different roles and responsibilities of elected and appointed officials in defining...

As a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany, October 2020 to March 2021, I researched and wrote Regulating free speech in a digital age: Hate, harm and the limits of censorship (Springer, 2022). Reflecting on the Christchurch Call initiated by Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron following the terrorist attack...

A policy advisor juggles the demands of multiple clients and often must distinguish primary from secondary clients. Customer focus is constrained, moreover, by public servants’ responsibilities to the long-term public interest. The developing field of stakeholder theory provides a framework to help prioritise who and what we pay attention to, when...

Doing policy analysis in practice is not as rational and systematic as many textbooks seem to suggest. To understand this, we need to unpack the relationships between science, policy and politics, and between evidence, emotions and values in public persuasion and political decision-making. Public policy-making is incremental social problem-solving....

Deciding whether, when and how to restrict or counter the right to freedom of expression in ways that are lawful, necessary and proportionate requires broader consideration of moral principles that guide policy making and regulation in free, open and democratic societies. This chapter discusses hate and harm, “hate speech” and “hate crime”, and the...

Regulation to address abuse of the internet and of free speech presents a range of practical challenges as well as questions of moral principles that govern free, open and democratic societies. This chapter focuses on practical challenges that derive from the business models of big tech: the attention economy and a lack of transparency about the al...

Practical challenges in regulating online content derive from the internet as a global network of networks, the blurring of boundaries in a digital age between public and private communications, and challenges in moderating online content and determining who should be responsible for defining an effective and enforceable regulatory framework for co...

International human rights standards indicate that states may justifiably and must prohibit public communication that intends or is imminently likely to incite discrimination, active hostility or violence, provided any such prohibitions are lawful, necessary and proportionate. More challenging questions for policy and regulation arise from communic...

Policy makers and regulators have a duty to prohibit public communication that intends or is imminently likely to incite discrimination, active hostility or violence, provided any such prohibition is lawful, necessary and proportionate. Communication that does not meet this high bar requires policy makers and regulators to strike a fair balance bet...

When bad things happen, two common reactions are that a government’s job is to protect us from all harm, and that “there should be a law against it”. This chapter describes the call for reform of “hate speech” laws in New Zealand following the 2019 terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques, law changes proposed by the New Zealand Government in June...

The attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, was the first time a terrorist attack had been livestreamed on social media. It prompted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron to issue the Christchurch Call in May 2019 to “eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online”. This chapter...

Who calls the shots in moderation of online content that defines the boundaries of free speech—private companies, or governments and the courts? This question came into sharp focus with the deplatforming of then-President Donald Trump by Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and the deplatforming of Parler by Google, Apple and Amazon following the insurrec...

When deciding whether and how to restrict or prohibit harmful communication, international human rights standards establish a bottom line for policy makers and regulators. Our starting point should always be the presumption of liberty and strong protection of the right to freedom of expression. While this is a qualified right in international law,...

Passing more laws does not solve complex social problems and there are alternatives to censorship and criminalisation. Governments need to invest, not just regulate—in building social cohesion; public-interest broadcasting; education in civics, human rights, conflict resolution and digital literacy; in countering violent extremism and de-radicalisa...

Policy-making in a democracy is incremental social problem-solving through public persuasion. Skills in argument and effective communication are, therefore, essential tools for the art and craft of policy advising. This requires ongoing training and development in both written and oral communication. Document templates, quality assurance processes,...

Public policy advisors work in contexts of resource scarcity and need to demonstrate value for money in the work we do and how we go about doing it. We should not assume that government is or has the answer to every issue and we need to be thoughtful about what is private, what is public, and how policy advisors might contribute to creating value i...

Increasingly, policy advisors need to acquire and practise skills in co-ordination, collaboration and networked governance, finding new ways to work with others to facilitate incremental social problem-solving. Collaboration is not the answer to everything, however, and it incurs costs as well as benefits.Responsible policy advising in the long-ter...

Public servants fulfil three distinct but related functions in policy-making: analysis, advising and advocacy. This book is a practical guide to effective public policy advising. While policy cycles and staged models of policy analysis provide useful reminders of things to think about, in practice, effective policy advising is less about cycles, st...

This is working paper 7 of 7 written as #CAISFellow on After Christchurch: Hate, harm and the limits of censorship. It discusses counterspeech strategies as alternatives to censorship and criminalisation of #hatespeech, suggests where governments need to invest (and not just regulate), and urges civility as everyone’s responsibility. Open access at...

This paper urges a fair balance when regulating #hatespeech between protection from harm and #freedomofexpression, and careful distinctions between public and private communication, harm and offence, and persons and groups. It also reflects on power, numbers and the heckler's veto. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1932766/WP-21-06...

Public policy decisions about whether, when and how to regulate harmful communication in a free, open and democratic society necessarily involve values and moral principles. Political philosophy can shed light on these, to inform and guide decision making about the right thing to do, or not do. This paper analyses arguments for and against restrict...

This paper summarises provisions in international human rights standards, and in New Zealand law, that protect and qualify the right to freedom of expression. It also notes relevant recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques. The paper then summarises regulation of harmful communication and...

The NZ Government is reviewing legislation on 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' following the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques in March 2019. This working paper summarises survey findings in New Zealand, Australia, Europe and Germany on the extent of ‘hate crimes’ and exposure to ‘hate speech’. A difficulty is that these surveys use broad and...

Working paper 1 in a series of 7 on After Christchurch: Hate, harm and the limits of censorship. This paper summarises the voluntary (non-binding) commitments made by governments and online service providers that have signed up to the Christchurch Call and other initiatives, and reviews progress in implementing it since May 2019. While the Christch...

Against the background of the terrorist attack on mosques in Christchurch NZ in March 2019 and the Christchurch Call, this brief article for the online edition of the GJIA summarises steps New Zealand has taken and some recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry that reported in November 2020. Policymakers everywhere face hard questions on...

Public sector leadership often demands fast thinking and rapid response. Our decisions are more likely to be sound, however, when they are informed by ‘slow thinking’ when we are not in crisis mode. The art of ‘thinking, fast and slow’ (Kahneman, 2011) is illustrated by decisions of the Office of Film and Literature Classification (the Classificati...

A short piece published in November 2020 by ESADgov's e-bulletin, PUBLIC: http://esadepublic.esade.edu/posts/post/ethical-competencies-for-public-leadership

This book identifies six ethical competencies for public leadership in contexts of pluralism. While diversity in proximity generates conflict where people want and value different things, the right kind of leadership and the right kind of politics can minimise domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence. Written by a public policy advisor for fe...

Rights claims have expanded beyond “first-generation” civil and political rights to include the rights of national parks, rivers and mountains as “legal persons”. This chapter reflects on theories of rights, and difficulties rights claims present in politics and public life in pluralist societies. Bromell argues that in general, public policy goes...

In this concluding chapter, Bromell sums up the kind of leadership and the kind of politics needed where diversity in proximity generates conflict. We need to cultivate leadership practices of being civil, diplomatic, respectful, impartial, fair and prudent. And we need a pluralist, democratic and political politics. The goal is to minimise dominat...

Bromell suggests that while we invoke the symbol of the rainbow to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, the fact we need to invoke it at all points to enduring social realities of domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence. This chapter reflects on diversity and super-diversity, our human tendency to cluster into tribes of “us” and “them”, the r...

Bromell asks: Who do I need to be and become, and how do I need to behave, to work well in public life with people who want and value different things? This introductory chapter sets out the challenge of public leadership when working with diverse publics. It distinguishes between leaders and leadership and summarises some recent thinking about pub...

In a liberal society, the price we pay to secure our own freedom is relinquishing the power to impose our ideas, beliefs, opinions and values on others. Bromell argues that freedom is not the only value, but it has a very high priority in a pluralist democratic politics. This chapter reflects on what freedom means and why it matters, principles tha...

A concern for fairness appears to be a “wired” trait in humans, a universal norm and a product of both nature and nurture. Concern for fairness often begins as an emotion or intuition expressed as a moral judgment (“But that’s not fair!”). We then apply reasoning, somewhat after the fact, to justify to ourselves and to others the moral judgment we...

The charge is sometimes made that liberalism has failed because it has promoted individual rights and freedoms at the expense of community and sustainability. Bromell argues that we should think about the debate between liberalism and communitarianism as a both/and, not an either/or. The individual, intermediate associations (communities) and the s...

In liberal democratic societies, there is broad agreement that human persons are of equal moral worth and that we should treat one another as equals. Bromell notes that we do not agree, however, on what it means to treat one another equally, above all in the distribution of social goods. This chapter reflects on what equality means; the basis of hu...

This book identifies six ethical competencies for public leadership in contexts of pluralism. While diversity in proximity generates conflict where people want and value different things, the right kind of leadership and the right kind of politics can minimise domination, humiliation, cruelty and violence. Written by a public policy advisor for fel...

Public servants fulfil three distinct but related functions in policy-making: analysis, advising and advocacy. This book is a practical guide to effective public policy advising. While policy cycles and staged models of policy analysis provide useful reminders of things to think about, in practice, effective policy advising is less about cycles, st...

Public policy advisors work in contexts of relative resource scarcity and need to demonstrate value for money in the work we do and how we go about doing it. We should not assume that government is or has the answer to every issue, and we need to be thoughtful about what is private, what is public, what is ‘in the public interest’ and how we might...

Policy making in a democracy is incremental social problem solving through public persuasion. Skills in argument and effective communication are, therefore, essential tools for the art and craft of policy advising. This requires ongoing training and development in both written and oral communication. Document templates, quality assurance processes,...

Doing policy analysis in practice is not as rational and systematic as textbooks make it sound. To understand this, we need to unpack the relationships between science, policy and politics, and between evidence, emotions and values in public persuasion and political decision making. Public policy making is incremental social problem solving. The mo...

Increasingly, policy advisors need to acquire and practise skills in co-ordination, collaboration and networked governance, finding new ways to work with others to facilitate incremental social problem solving. Collaboration is not the answer to everything, however, and incurs costs as well as benefits. Responsible policy advising in the long-term...

A policy advisor juggles the demands of multiple clients, and often must distinguish primary from secondary clients. Service excellence is constrained, moreover, by public servants” responsibilities to the long-term public interest. The developing field of stakeholder theory provides a framework to help prioritise who and what we pay attention to,...

Why political philosophy? Why do I read it, teach it and encourage others to engage in it? Simply, because I am driven to it by my practice as a public servant. I have spent a great deal of my working life in meetings where we discuss, decide or make judgements about public policy. I notice how often we express or imply ‘big ideas’ in our discussio...

In the context of the 2013 retirement income review (CFLRI, 2013), Kathryn Maloney and Malcolm Menzies from the Commission for Financial Literacy and Retirement Income put the question to me: what does ‘a fair go’ mean in public policy? I mentioned this in a chance conversation with Colin James, who suggested tackling the question in an active, ver...

As a public servant I live with the tension captured in Richard Mulgan’s question: ‘How much responsiveness is too much or too little?’ (Mulgan, 2008). On the one hand, my job is to be responsive to portfolio ministers and to the prime minister and Cabinet. On the other hand, Westminster conventions of public service imply that I ought not to becom...

Ethical dilemmas in public policy making arise because resources are inadequate to meet all demands, and because people are committed to different values and ideas. How ought the state allocate resources and determine ‘trade offs’ between conflicting priorities? By empirical analysis of ‘the evidence’ and ‘what works’? By calculating ‘the greatest...

This occasional paper addresses a set of four related questions. • What is the proper task of ‘public theology’? • Does public theology have a valid claim to be taught and practised as an academic discipline in a state-funded university? • If public theology is a legitimate academic discipline, is it necessarily theology of the Christian sort? •...

Among OECD countries, New Zealand has moved from having relatively low income inequality in the early 1980s to having above average inequality by the mid-2000s (OECD, 2008). Research conducted by Bryan Perry (2009) at the Ministry of Social Development shows that in New Zealand in 2008 the percentile ratio of income inequality (equivalised disposab...

Much of the work of public officials – elected or appointed – involves choices amongst values; indeed, it is this characteristic of their role in a liberal democracy that often makes their decisions contestable, debateable and requiring public justification. Therefore, nothing is more dangerous to the well-being of the body politic than a public of...

A challenge for public policy in New Zealand, as elsewhere, is how to keep a diverse society democratic and, conversely, how to make democratic practice more inclusive in an increasingly diverse society.

This paper follows the discussion of a number of factors surrounding skills and social mobility by a broad panel of participants.

“Social inclusion and participation” was a shorthand term for the 5th Labour Government's vision of fairness, opportunity and security for all New Zealanders, and also described means employed to achieve those ends. The report provides a conceptual framework and step-by-step guide for policy development and service delivery planning in relation to...

This article reports on the development 1999-2003 of a sexual identity group programme within the Kia Mārama Special Treatment Unit at Rolleston Prison for men who have offended sexually against children. There are some indications that sexual identity confusion may be a more significant factor in sexual offending than has previously been thought t...

Sallie McFague a beaucoup travaille sur la relation entre la litterature et la theologie, ce qui l'a conduite a insister sur l'importance de la metaphore dans le travail theologique et a proposer une methode qu'elle a appelee theologie metaphorique. Sa pensee est exposee dans trois ouvrages: «Speaking in Parables» (1975), «Metaphorical Theology» (1...

This article supplements Wolfhart Pannenberg's Metaphysics and the Idea of God by offering a systematic introduction to the tasks and criteria of metaphysics through an exposition of various statements of Charles Hartshome on the subject, chiefly his Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. The article is focused around Hartshorne's understanding...

This paper explores one aspect of the contemporary relevance of process thought. My work as a Christian theologian occurs within a context of parish ministry in a City Mission. In this context, I am seldom confronted with questions of truth alone. More commonly, I am confronted with questions of meaning, of relevance—hence my intention to address t...