Do Iterative, Place-Based Modes of Governance Change How Government Actors at Different Institutional Levels Work Together? Evidence from a UK Flagship Public Sector Reform Programme

Governments face increasing pressure to ensure that public spending delivers measurable improvements in citizens’ outcomes. In response, advanced democracies are experimenting with new approaches to policymaking and public service design that emphasise devolved, collaborative, and learning-oriented governance, treating services as evolving responses to dynamic problems and co-designed and co-delivered with residents. These approaches promise greater responsiveness by granting local discretion to deploy user research, act on citizen feedback, and sustain interaction between local and central government, alongside network-building across civil society and other local actors. This marks a clear departure from traditional policymaking practices characterised by centralised, hierarchical decision-making, favouring top-down directives that leave limited space for local and street-level discretion. Despite their growing prominence, however, systematic evidence on whether these approaches work, how and why remains limited. This study examines whether participation in iterative, place-based governance reforms changes how government actors at different institutional levels work together, using the UK’s flagship Public Sector Reform Test, Learn and Grow (TLG) programme as an empirical case study. Launched in 2024 as a £100 million, three-year Cabinet Office initiative, the programme aims to reimagine public service delivery across ten local authorities in England through iterative cycles of trial and adaptation, delivered by cross-disciplinary “accelerator” teams drawn from central and local government and informed by real-time user feedback. TLG’s sample of participating officials offers a rare opportunity to observe managerial practice within an ongoing governance reform. Methodologically, the study employs an individual-level longitudinal survey design. A baseline wave, fielded prior to full implementation, serves as a benchmark, followed by two subsequent waves tracking the same officials as exposure to TLG accumulates. This design enables within-person estimation of change over time and strengthens causal interpretation relative to cross-sectional comparisons. Analytically, I estimate change using fixed-effects (within-respondent) models and panel difference-in-differences specifications where appropriate, supplemented by pre-registered robustness checks, attrition diagnostics, and heterogeneity analyses by role, site, and intensity of programme engagement. Survey items draw on established measures of frequency and tone of iterations, relational quality (Provan et al., 2005), relational coordination (Bolton et al., 2021) and attitudes towards inter-organisational collaboration (Campbell, 2018). I also explore whether participation in these reforms changes the decision flexibility (Moynihan & Landuyt, 2009), managerial discretion (Kroll & Moynihan, 2015) and perceived influence over service design and implementation (Tummers et al., 2012). By triangulating perspectives from both local and central government actors, the study sheds light on how governance arrangements that prescribe frequent and structured interaction are experienced across institutional levels, and how they reshape the ways of working and the locus of decision-making authority. The findings provide unique empirical evidence on how adaptive, place-based reforms reconfigure relational coordination, discretion, and inter-governmental cooperation.