Welcome to Paul 't Hart's Website

Paul 't Hart (PhD Leiden, 1990) arrived at ANU in December 2005. Prior to that, he was research professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht School of Governance (where he maintains a part-time appointment), in addition to holding an adjunct professorial position at the Swedish Defence College in Stockholm (2001-2005) and serving as Dean of the Executive MPA Programme at the Netherlands School of Government in the Hague (2002-2005). He was at Leiden University's Department of Public Administration from 1987-2004, and has held visiting positions at the University of Canberra, Nuffield College Oxford, and the Stockholm Centre of Organizational Research (SCORE) of Stockholm University.

His research interests include: public leadership (political, bureaucratic, societal); elite behaviour and group dynamics in government; policy evaluation and policy change; political and bureaucratic responses to 'crises'; the organisation of public and organisational memory; relations between political and bureaucratic officials within government; and the design and practice of accountability in public organisations.

Among his published works in English are: Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure (Johns Hopkins UP, 1994); Understanding Policy Fiascoes (with Mark Bovens, Transaction, 1996); Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policymaking (co-edited with Erik Stern and Bengt Sundelius, University of Michigan Press, 1997); Public Policy Disasters in Western Europe (co-edited with Pat Gray, Routledge, 1998); Success and Failure in Public Governance: A Comparative Analysis (co-edited with Mark Bovens and B. Guy Peters, Edward Elgar, 2001); The Politics of Crisis Management (co-authored with Arjen Boin, Eric Stern and Bengt Sundelius, Cambridge University Press, 2005); Observing Government Elites: Up Close and Personal (co-edited with Rod Rhodes and Mirko Noordegraaf, Palgrave, 2007); Governing After Crisis: The Politics of Investigation, Accountability and Learning (co-edited with Arjen Boin and Allan McConnell, Cambridge University Press, 2008), Public Leadership: Perspectives and Practices (co-edited with John Uhr, ANU E Press 2008), Dispersed Democratic Leadership (co-edited with John Kane and Haig Patapan, Oxford UP 2009), and Framing the Global Meltdown: Crisis Rhetoric and the Politics of Recessions (co-edited with Karen Tindall, ANU E Press 2009.

In addition, he has written or edited sixteen books in Dutch, contributed numerous book chapters (most recently to volumes such as the Handbook of Disaster Research, and the Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, as well as numerous articles in journals such as Political Psychology, Journal of Human Behavior and Organizational Decision Processes, Public Administration, Governance, Government and Opposition, Public Administration Review, German Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Australian Journal of Political Science.

He is co-editor of Political Psychology (2009-2011) and editorial board member of various scholarly journals including Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Cooperation and Conflict, Chinese Review of Public Administration, and European Political Science Review, and regularly reviews manuscripts for many more.

He received the 1988 Blozo Award from the government of Flanders, Belgium for his book on the Heysel Stadium soccer disaster; the 1990 GA van Poelje Award from the Dutch Society of Public Administration for his dissertation on Groupthink; and the 1997 Erikson Award for Early Career Achievement from the International Society for Political Psychology for outstanding contributions to the field. Finally, he was co-recipient of the 2007 Herbert A Simon Award for the Best Book in Public Administration from the American Political Science Association for his book The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure (Cambridge UP, 2005, co-author).

He has taught, trained and lectured to thousands of mid-level and top-level public officials in the Netherlands and beyond. In the mid-nineties, he was seconded to the Dutch Intelligence Service as well as the Public Prosecution Service. In the last few years he has been a member of several government advisory or evaluation committees in Dutch local and national government.

He now convenes the Towards Strategic Leadership program, and teaches the Leading Public Sector Change course within the Executive Master of Public Administration program of the Australia New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). He also contributes its Executive Fellows Program (EFP). In recent years, he has lectured among others for the Australian Attorney General's Department, the Department of Infrastructure, the Australian Federal Police, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, as well as the Centre for Social Impact.