Ortodoxya

THE NEW ORTHODOXY: THE DIFFERENTIATED POLITY
MODEL
DAVID MARSH
Anthony King (1989, p. 97) argued some time ago that: ‘most of Britain’s best political scientists (. . .)
are for some reason journalists’. This is a claim which could only be made by someone who thinks
that understanding, or explaining, politics merely revolves around knowing what happens at the
centre of power. It neglectsthe point that facts do not speak for themselves; rather, they have to be
interpreted within a conceptual or theoretical framework. Such theoretical frameworks are, for the
most part, conspicuous by their absence in work on British politics. This point is amply illustrated
by the most recent survey of work on British politics, Flinders et al. (2009), The Oxford Handbook
of British Politics,which almost totally neglects broader ways of conceptualizing British politics
that would allow us to situate some of the individual chapters against a wider background. There
are nine references to the, once ubiquitous, Westminster model, but these are all in two chapters,
Dennis Kavanagh’s chapter ‘Antecedents’ and Oliver James’ chapter ‘Central State’. Only James
discusses recent alternativesto the Westminster model and, although he deals with interpretivist
critiques, there is no reference to the ‘differentiated politymodel’ in the book’s index, let alone to the
asymmetric power model, two of the positions considered here. Rod Rhodes’ work provides a very
important exception to that omission, which has stimulated a great deal of interest and encouraged
younger scholars to moveaway from description and fairly mindless empiricism.
This piece focuses upon one of Rhodes’ major contributions, the differentiated polity
model. I use this term differentiated polity model, although, as we shall see, Rhodes
no longer does so. However, it is inevitable also that I touch on some of Rhodes’ other
contributions on policy networks, governance and, particularly, interpretivistapproaches
to political science. As such, this piece is divided into three substantive sections. The first
section briefly situates Rhodes’ work on the differentiated politymodel in the context of his
broader contribution to the political science/public policy literature. The second section
outlines the differentiated polity model and examines how it responds to the previously
dominant Westminstermodel. The final section then compares the differentiated polity
model with two alternatives, which Bevir and Rhodes barely consider, the asymmetric
power model and the metagovernance approach. My aim in this last section is not to
adjudicate between thesemodels, but, rather, tomake clear the distinctions between them
as a way of moving the debate forward and establishing Rhodes’ contribution.THE DIFFERENTIATED POLITY MODEL, NETWORK GOVERNANCE
AND INTERPRETIVE POLITICAL SCIENCE
In examining the differentiated polity model, it is important to situate the discussion
within the context of Rhodes’ intellectual development, because, as we shall see, Rhodes’
treatment of it, and even the nomenclature he uses, has changed over time.
Rhodes’ initial work was broadly institutionalist(see, for example, Lowndes 2010),
with more than a hint of behaviouralism (see, for example, Sanders 2010), although
before the growth of what is now termed new institutionalism (see, for example, Rhodes
1995; Lowndes 2010). However, his early work on local government and sub-national
Professor David Marsh is in the School of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian NationalUniversity (ANU), Canberra.
Public Administration Vol. 89, No. 1, 2011 (32–48)
2011 The Author. Public Administration 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
THE DIFFERENTIATED POLITY MODEL 33
government, and later on policy networks, led him to argue that governance was a much
better term than government for...