Memory and Institutional Amnesia in Government examines the way in which government suffers from institutional amnesia, meaning that it cannot hold or use memory of the past. Consequently, a great deal of important knowledge is erased and those who work in government find themselves repeating the mistakes of the past.
The book explores these issues through a comparison of the public services of Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in which the authors establish the causes of institutional amnesia, analyze its effects, and recommend a series of treatments that might remedy the problems that it causes.
1: Remembering the Past to Govern in the Present Part I.
Formal-Institutional Amnesia 2: Formal-Institutional Amnesia 3: The Causes
of Institutional Amnesia 4: The Effects of Institutional Amnesia Part II.
Cultural Amnesia and Storytelling 5: Cultural Memory, Storytelling, and the
Loss of Remembrance 6: The Ghost of Aid Agencies Past: Narrating the Lives
and Deaths of an Institution 7: Remembered, Retold, and Forgotten: New Public
Management Stories in New Zealand 8: The UK Treasury: Memory as Orthodoxy and
Convention 9: Trauma, Radical Acceptance, and Machinery of Government Changes
in the Energy Sector 10: Treatments for Institutional Amnesia 11: Conclusion
Alastair Stark is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland and the Director of the Graduate Centre of Governance and International Affairs.
Hridesh Gajurel is an ARC Laureate Research Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at Australian National University.
Jack Corbett is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Vice President of Academic Board at Monash University, Australia.
Dennis C. Grube is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, and a Professorial Fellow at St Catharine's College.
Heather Lovell is Professor of Energy and Society at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and holds a joint position in the School of Social Sciences and the School of Geography, Planning & Spatial Sciences.
Rodney J. Scott is Vice Chancellor's Fellow at RMIT University.
