Ctrl + Alt + Govern

Originally when I decided I was going to do a Masters in Social Policy, I anticipated my dissertation to be on something sexy (well, sexy in policy terms anyway…). I toyed with ideas like multi-agency operations; geographic variations in policy implementation; or the real world applications of the theoretical policy lifecycle. After a lot of mental ping pong, I ended up settling on the subject I hadn’t expected to find so compelling: governance. Prior to professionally and academically being involved in governance, I thought about corporate meetings as verbose, with the mental image of balding men sat around a table smoking cigars in leather backed chairs – specifically thinking of Winston Churchill in black and white, with his suit and bow tie, seated at a desk surrounded by papers. It wasn’t until I started working in the public sector and being involved in governance that I realised how interesting governance was. Governance is powerful and it’s complicated – but it’s often overlooked in favour of the sexy (again…in a policy context) subjects of front line operations. I finished my dissertation with a whole new appreciation of governance.

Having spent the last 2 years saying I definitely wanted to do a PhD, when I actually completed my dissertation in August 2025 I realised I needed an academic break. I’d been studying part-time and working full-time for 7 years and I needed to rest from competing deadlines and priorities – I needed a bit of life balance back. I lasted 2 months before the creep started to come back – thinking more about governance and how much I still had left to learn, especially if I want to do a PhD on the subject eventually. So, on one cold dark night, driving Northbound on the M5 I decided I was going to write a blog.

This blog will serve as a way of keeping my brain tuned in to the subject of governance – not just the theory, but also the messy, fascinating, and often overlooked realities of how decisions are made and organisations are sustained. I plan on publishing short commentaries on different aspects of governance including some more information on my dissertation, the challenges of governing multi-agency partnerships, and the challenge of administering “good governance”.

Expect reflections, questions (mostly hypothetical), and the occasional policy rant as I infodump on the most mundane special interest ever: governance.