Mark Evans

Professor Mark Evans is the Director for the ANZSOG Institute for Governance. This role draws on Mark’s considerable international experience in supporting and training senior civil servants and in evaluating public policy programs. The emphasis of his work at ANZSOG will be fourfold: the provision of the ACT with strategic training and research support; the delivery of an Executive MPA module in designing public policies; the development of short courses in conflict transformation; and, in the medium-term the development of an international MPA program.

Before taking this role, Mark was Head of the Department of Politics and Director of York MPA and professional training programs at the University of York in the United Kingdom. Between 1998 and 2009 Mark played the central strategic role in the development of the department’s graduate school and the creation of three successful interdisciplinary research centres – York MPA and professional training programmes, Politics, Economics and Philosophy and Post-war Reconstruction and Development.

Mark has also played an international role in supporting good administrative practices in public administration in developed and developing contexts as well as the reconstruction of public administration in war-torn societies. He has delivered training and managed evaluation projects on the behest of the World Bank, United Nations agencies, the European Union, the Consortium of Humanitarian Affairs in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the British Council and the West Asia and North Africa Forum, as well as government departments such as: the UK’s Cabinet Office and departments for International Development, Work and Pensions, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; China’s National School of Administration and Social and Economic Reform Commission and others.

His recent books include: Constitution-making and the Labour Party (2005); Post-war Reconstruction and Policy Transfer (2009); New Directions in the Study of Policy Transfer (2009) and Understanding Competition States (2009) and has been the editor of the international journal Policy Studies since 2005.

The Rudd Government »

Australian Commonwealth Administration 2007–2010

Publication date: December 2010
This edited collection examines Commonwealth administration under the leadership Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from 2007-2010. This was a remarkable period in Australian history: Rudd’s government was elected in 2007 with an ambitious program for change. However, as the chapters in this book demonstrate, these ambitions were thwarted by a range of factors, not the least being Rudd’s failure to press ahead when he confronted ‘road blocks’ such the ETS or managing his massive agenda which constantly elevated issues to ‘first order priority’. Although he started his term with stratospheric approval ratings, only two years later his support had collapsed and on 24 July 2010 he became the first sitting Prime Minister to be removed by his own Party before the expiry of his first term. In this book, expert contributors consider the Rudd Government’s policy, institutional and political legacy. The 14 chapters are organized into four sections, outlining the issues and agendas that guided Rudd’s government, changes to the institutions of state such as the public service and parliament, followed by discussions of key issues and policies that marked Rudd’s term in office. The final section examines Rudd’s leadership and reflects on the personal foibles and political factors that brought his Prime Ministership undone. The Rudd Government has been produced by the ANZSOG Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra. It is the tenth in a series of books on successive Commonwealth administrations. Each volume has provided a chronicle and commentary of major events, policies and issues that have dominated successive administrations since 1983. As with previous volumes in the series, contributors have been drawn from a range of universities and other organisations.