Royal commissions are often used to buy time, not create change
As public pressure mounts on the Albanian government to establish a royal commission into the Bondi Beach murders, a familiar assumption has resurfaced in Australian political debate: When matters of public concern are serious enough, only a royal commission can ensure truth, accountability and justice.
This assumption is common and understandable, but academic evidence shows that it is only partially true.
Royal commissions are inherently no better at uncovering truth or reform than other types of investigations. Rather, it is a specialized political tool that is effective in certain situations and clearly ineffective in others.
Pat Rafter, Jess Fox, Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett are among leading Australian athletes who have signed an open letter calling for a royal commission into antisemitism.Credit: composite image
Royal commissions derive their prestige from perceived independence. Typically headed by senior judges and equipped with coercive powers, they can compel testimony, override institutional secrecy and create a public record that is difficult to ignore. This makes them especially valuable in situations where government agencies are involved or public trust has collapsed.
As Australian public administration expert Scott Prasser observes (“Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries“), royal commissions are “most effective where the underlying problem is a lack of legitimacy rather than a lack of information.” In other words, they are best used when the public no longer believes the state can investigate itself.
This explains why royal commissions are so powerful in areas such as police corruption, institutional child abuse and financial malfeasance – cases marked by entrenched power imbalances and systemic denial.
But decades of research also show what royal commissions fail to reliably deliver: enforcement.
Comparative studies of inquiries in Australia, Britain and Canada consistently find that royal commissions fail to achieve higher policy acceptance rates than ministerial reviews, parliamentary committees or statutory inquiries. Governments regularly delay, dilute or selectively adopt recommendations, no matter how thorough the investigation.
Halliday, McLean, and Prasser (in “State of Inquiry,” 2013) note that commissions “have no authority over political will while producing authoritarian narratives of failure.” In practical terms, their impact ends when the final report is tabled.
