Possible topics: Debates regarding the role of business in the work of

government

Both of your assessment pieces for this subject will address a single topic.

What should a topic look like?

Choosing a topic involves identifying a current real-world debate about the role of business in
public policy making, public service delivery or public regulation.
To be an appropriate choice of topic for this course, the debate you choose should involve some
context-specific debate about:
How the influence of business over government decisions or activities should be
enabled and/or delimited; and/or
How the roles and responsibilities of business should be defined and delimited.
You are free to choose any topic that meets this broad description. To help you brainstorm
possible topics, included in this document below are a number of specific suggestions of
relevant debates about business-government relations, each of which maps onto one or more
of our weekly seminar topics.
It is important to note that while the suggested topics are listed here as general questions, a full
definition of your topic would require pinning down a specific policy-making, service-delivery
or regulatory jurisdiction or context in which you want to explore the question. This will
enable you to explore your chosen topic in a much more detailed, contextually-sensitive and
practically relevant way.
It is also important to note that in defining your specific topic, you should be as explicit as
possible about the evaluative standards you will be using to critically evaluate the roles of
business in policy, regulation or service delivery, and to make prescriptive arguments about
how such roles should be enabled or constrained. These standards should relate broadly to some
dimension of the democratic process or public interest, but since these concepts are very broad,
you should be clear which particular dimensions of democratic process or public interest you
want to focus on. Each of the topics listed below gives an indication of possible evaluative
standards around which it may be appropriate to organise your analysis, but you are welcome
to re-word or re-focus, as appropriate to your specific topic and personal interests.

How do the two assessment tasks relate to one another?

Although you will work on the same broad topic for both pieces of assessment in this subject,
the task for each assignment has a distinct focus. The two assessments are designed to build
cumulatively on one another, enabling you to expand and deepen your analysis throughout the
semester.
In the first assignment the central purpose is to map and review what others have said about
your chosen debate. Certainly, you should engage critically with what you are reading, and
begin to develop your own perspective and argument about the topic, but the goal is limited to
developing a critical overview and synthesis of existing debates. Your focus should be on
critically analysing the roles, responsibilities and sources of influence of business in your
chosen context, and implications for democracy or the public interest. You are not expected to
develop any prescriptive conclusions at this stage.
In the second assignment, the goal is to build on the theoretical and empirical arguments that
you have reviewed in the first assignment, as a basis for developing your own prescriptive
argument about how the debate ought to be addressed or resolved in practice. Not only
will you develop a more explicit prescriptive argument in this assignment, it will also be
important to consider in some specificity how your proposal for shaping/delimiting the role of
business could work in practice in your chosen context.

What are some examples of possible topics?

1. Impact of business lobbying on the democratic process

To contextualise the topic, you would need to specify a particular jurisdiction or
forum, eg. Australia, the European Union, or the negotiation of international
agreements on trade or the environment.
If you wanted, you could focus on a specific form of lobbying eg corporate
political advertising, or involvement of business in expert committees or forums.
You may wish to focus on a particular policy or regulatory issue-area (eg energy
policy or environmental regulation)
For the first assignment, you would review debates about if/how different kinds of
business lobbying (in your chosen context) threaten (and/or support) the
democratic process
For the second assignment, you would develop a prescriptive argument about what
policy or regulatory measures can best ensure (in your chosen context) that
business lobbying activities support rather than undermine the democratic process
2. Managing the business interests of politicians and public officials in ways that protect
the public interest and democratic process
Here it would make sense to choose a specific jurisdiction, to enable you to explore
context-specific details of business-government links, and existing regulatory
regimes
For the first assignment, you would analyse the risks and challenges associated
with business interests of politicians and public officials, and examine competing
arguments about what constitutes a conflict of interest, and how such conflicts
ought to be managed
For the second assignment, you would develop a prescriptive argument about what
regulatory approaches can best ensure that conflicts of interest resulting from
business interests of politicians or public officials do not undermine democratic
process or the public interest
3. Regulating corporate media ownership to protect democracy and the public interest
As above, retaining some focus on a particular jurisdiction would make sense,
though you may also wish to consider implications of globalized media, and online
as well as traditional media sources
 For the first assignment, you would critically examine existing debates about the
impact of existing media ownership patterns on democracy and/or other aspects of
the public interest
For the second assignment, you would develop an argument about what approaches
to regulating corporate media ownership can best balance principles of free market
association with concern for protecting the independence and integrity of public
media, proposing specific ways of achieving this in practice in your chosen context
4. Enabling, limiting and/or regulating private sector delivery of public infrastructure
and services in ways that protect the public interest, and support democratic
accountability to affected service users
Here it will be important to specify a particular sector and location, eg private
prisons, privatized water, private immigration detention
For the first assignment you would critically examine existing debates about private
delivery of public infrastructure and services analysing impacts on democracy/the
public interest
For the second assignment you would develop a prescriptive argument about how
private sector delivery of public infrastructure and services should be regulated in
order to protect the public interest, and/or support democratic accountability to
affected service users
5. Design, implementation and regulation of business-community partnerships
Here you will need to specify the sector and location you want to focus on
reasonably tightly. You may wish to look at partnerships initiated by a specific
company by way of illustration. The health and mining/resource sectors around the
world offer many potential examples you might wish to examine.
Although it will help to take a specific partnership or partnerships as a reference
point for the contextualised parts of your analysis, you will need to draw on broader
literature and examples as part of your critical literature review for the first
assignment
The first assignment would involve critical analysis of varying approaches to
business-community partnerships, reflecting on possible ways they can contribute
to the public interest, potential risks, and conditions under which they are most
likely to serve public as well as private interests
For the second assignment, you would develop an argument about how a specific
partnership (or narrowly defined type of partnership) should be designed,
implemented and if necessary regulated, to support the public interest
6. Business self-regulation and its relationship with governmental regulation
Here you will need to specify a particular context of self-regulation specifying not
only a particular location/sector, but also a particular model of self-regulation (eg
voluntary standards, ethical labelling, etc)
For the first assignment you would critically review debates about the potential and
limitations of self-regulation, and various possible means of underpinning business
self-regulation with harder forms of government regulation
 For the second assignment you would develop a prescriptive argument about
when/in what forms business self-regulation is appropriate (for your context), and
if/how it should be underpinned by government regulation
7. The potential and limits of collaborative regulatory initiatives to support effective and
legitimate forms of global business regulation
Here you will need to select a specific example of a collaborative regulatory
initiative (such as a multi-stakeholder initiative), and focus on a specific debate
about their design, particularly with regard to the role of governments and/or
international organisations in bolstering their effectiveness or legitimacy
The first assignment would critically review the potential and limits of collaborative
regulatory initiatives. It would be a good idea to contextualise your discussion with
reference to a range of different kinds of collaborative regulatory approaches, but
then focus on a more specific example that you can examine in greater depth
The second assignment would develop a prescriptive argument about how a
particular collaborative regulatory initiative (or narrowly defined category of
initiatives) should be designed to support effective and legitimate global business
regulation