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 NETWORK GOVERNANCE
A N D T H E D I F F E R E N T I A T E D P O L I TY
Network Governance
and the Differentiated
Polity
Selected Essays, Volume I

R. A. W. RHODES

1
 3
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except where indicated in the first footnote of each chapter
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First Edition published in 2017
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2017, SPi

Preface

This collection of essays is in two volumes. Volume I is a retrospective. It

collects in one place for the first time the main articles I wrote on policy
networks and governance between 1990 and 2005. The introductory section
provides a short biography of my intellectual journey. Part I focuses on
policy networks. Part II focuses on governance. The conclusion provides
the critical commentary, both replying to my critics and reflecting on theor-
etical developments since publication. With the exceptions of Chapters 6, 7,
and 10, none of these articles and chapters appeared in my other books.
Chapter 5 has not been published before in English and Chapter 12 has not
been published before. The volume complements my other publications on
networks and governance. In effect, it updates my Understanding Govern-
ance, which was published twenty years ago. Finally, where necessary, I have
written an afterword to a chapter setting out the context in which it was
written, and identifying what has changed empirically. I have reserved my
discussion of both the continuing relevance of my argument and the perspi-
cacity of my critics to Chapter 12.
Volume II is prospective in that it looks forward and explores the
‘interpretive turn’ and its implications for the craft of political science,
especially public administration. It draws together articles from 2005
onwards on the theme of ‘the interpretive turn’ in political science. In Part
I, I provide a summary statement of the interpretive approach. It provides
the context for what follows. Part II develops the theme of blurring genres
and discusses a variety of research methods common in the humanities,
including: ethnographic fieldwork, life history, and focus groups. Part III
shows how the genres of thought and presentation found in the humanities
can be used in political science. It presents four examples of such blurring
‘at work’ with studies of: applied anthropology and civil service reform;
women’s studies and government departments; and storytelling and local
knowledge; and area studies and comparing Westminster governments. The
book concludes with a summary of what is edifying about an interpretive
approach, and why this approach matters. I revisit some of the more common
criticisms before indulging in plausible conjectures about the future of
interpretivism.
Volume II differs from my work with Mark Bevir in two significant ways.
First, it is not a book about interpretive theory. Briefly, I summarize the
theoretical case for interpretivism but my main concern is to make the case
for the approach by showing how it refreshes old topics and opens new
empirical topics. I seek new and interesting ways to explore governance,
vi Preface

high politics, public policies, and the study of public administration in general.
So, my emphasis falls on methods, and providing several examples of the
approach ‘at work’.
Second, with the exception of Volume II, Chapter 2, none of the articles was
co-written with Mark Bevir, although I acknowledge freely his influence
throughout Volume II. These essays complement but do not duplicate our
joint publications. None of these articles is in any of my single or co-authored
books, and Chapters 1 and 12 have not been published before. Volume II draws
together in one place for the first time my recent work applying interpretivism
to political science, especially public administration.
As the articles and chapters in Volume II are recent, I have not written
an afterword updating each chapter. Rather, I gather my reflections on the
chapters, with replies to my critics, in Chapter 12.
For Volume I, I have not changed the arguments in any chapter. However,
I have corrected factual mistakes and updated, standardized, and consolidated
the references. I am afraid I could not resist tinkering with my prose. Over the
years, I have acquired a growing aversion to the ‘hanging this’ and to long
sentences. I have pandered to both aversions. Inevitably with articles and
chapters written over 30 years, there is some duplication and overlap. At the
time, I could not assume that readers were familiar with earlier work. I have
eliminated most of the ‘catch-up’ passages in my previous work. For Volume
II, because all the chapters are linked by the twin themes of ‘blurring genres’
and ‘the interpretive turn’, I gave myself license to revise thoroughly and
rewrite to ensure internal and thematic consistency.
When writing, I do so to music, mainly folk, jazz, and rock. It is the ever-
present backcloth to my working life. Occasionally, I succumb to the conceit
that in another life I was in a rock band, playing air guitar of course. The
articles are the singles. The books are the CDs. These two volumes and edited
collections are compilation CDs. The lecture tours are the gigs. The hotels are
the motels of rock’s road songs. Song titles and phrases seep into my con-
sciousness and onto the printed page. You will find echoes of Bob Dylan,
Jethro Tull, Prince, and many more throughout these pages. I enjoy listening
to them, and now they are part of the backdrop to your reading.
 Acknowledgements

Volume I, Chapter 4 was written with Ian Bache and Stephen George. I thank
them for their generosity in allowing me to include the paper in this collection.
Many colleagues have given me the benefit of their comments and advice
over the years and the following list is an inadequate way of acknowledging my
debts and saying thank you.
Claire Annesley (University of Sussex)
Chris Ansell (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Ian Bache (University of Sheffield)
Mark Bevir (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Karen Boll (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
John Boswell (University of Southampton)
George Boyne (University of Cardiff)
Judith Brett (LaTrobe University, Melbourne, Australia)
Dominic Byatt (Oxford University Press)
Neil Carter (University of York)
Louise Chappell (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)
Jack Corbett (University of Southampton)
Charlotte Sausman (née Dargie) (University of Cambridge)
Carsten Daugbjerg (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
Patrick Dunleavy (LSE)
The late Andrew Dunsire (University of York)
Jenny Fleming (University of Southampton)
Francesca Gains (University of Manchester)
Andrew Gamble (Emeritus, University of Cambridge)
Stephen George (University of Sheffield)
Michael Goldsmith (formerly University of Salford)
Bob Goodin (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
Brian Hardy (formerly Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds)
Richard Harrington (Manchester Statistical Society)
Carolyn Hendriks (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
Susan Hodgett (University of Ulster)
Liesbet Hooghe (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA)
Ingi Iusmen (University of Southampton)
Lotte Jensen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
Bob Jessop (Lancaster University)
The late George Jones (LSE)
Josie Kelly (Aston Business School)
The late Adrian Leftwich (University of York)
viii Acknowledgements

David Levi-Faur (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Rodney Lowe (University of Bristol)
Fiona MacKay (University of Edinburgh)
David Marsh (University of Canberra, Australia)
Janice McMillan (Edinburgh Napier University)
Mick Moran (Manchester Business School)
Mirko Noordegraaf (Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Johan Olsen (ARENA Centre for European Studies, Oslo, Norway)
The late Nelson Polsby (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Alison Proctor (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
David Richards (University of Liverpool)
Ella Ritchie (University of Newcastle)
The late Jim Sharpe (Nuffield College, Oxford)
Martin Smith (University of York)
John Stewart (Formerly INLOGOV, University of Birmingham)
Richard J. Stillman II (University of Colorado at Denver)
Gerry Stoker (University of Canberra, Australia)
Paul ‘t Hart (Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Anne Tiernan (Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia)
Nick Turnbull (University of Manchester)
James Walter (University of Monash, Melbourne, Australia)
John Wanna (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
Georgina Waylen (University of Manchester)
Patrick Weller (Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia)
David Wilson (De Montfort University)
The late Vincent Wright (Nuffield College, Oxford)
Tamyko Ysa (ESADE, Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain)
Many institutions have helped over the years—too many to thank—but I must
single out the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) and its state
divisions for repeat invitations to speak, hospitality, questions, and unfailing
good humour. I hope they enjoyed my visits as much as I did.
I am grateful to the following publishers for their permission to reprint in
whole or in part the following articles and book chapters.
Oxford University Press for: ‘Policy Network Analysis’. In M. Moran,
M. Rein and R. E. Goodin (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006: 423–45; ‘Policy Networks and Policy
Making in the European Union: A Critical Appraisal’. In L. Hooghe (ed.),
Cohesion Policy and European Integration. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996:
367–87; ‘What is Governance and Why Does It Matter?’ In J. E. S. Hayward
and Anand Menon (eds), Governing Europe. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003: 61–73; and ‘Waves of Governance’. In David Levi-Faur (ed.),
The Oxford Handbook of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012, 33–48.
 Acknowledgements ix
Palgrave Macmillan for: ‘From Prime Ministerial Power to Core Executive’.
In R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and
Core Executive. London: Macmillan, 1995: 11–37.
Sage for: ‘Policy Networks: A British Perspective’, Journal of Theoretical
Politics, 2, 1990: 292–316; ‘Bureaucracy, Contracts and Networks: The
Unholy Trinity and the Police’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of
Criminology, 38, 2005: 192–205; ‘The New Governance: Governing without
Government’, Political Studies, 44, 1996: 652–67; and ‘Understanding
Governance: Ten Years On’, Organization Studies, 28 (8), 2007: 1243–64.
Ant. N. Sakkoulas, Athens, Greece for: ‘Analysing Networks: From
Typologies of Institutions to Narratives of Beliefs’, Science and Society,
No. 10, Spring 2003: 21–56.
Taylor & Francis/Routledge for: ‘Putting the People Back into Networks’,
Australian Journal of Political Science, 37 (3), 2002: 399–415.
John Wiley for: ‘From Marketization to Diplomacy: It’s the Mix that
Matters’, Australian Journal of Public Administration, 56, 1997: 40–53;
‘The Hollowing Out of the State’, Political Quarterly, 65, 1994: 138–51;
‘Thinking On: I Was So Much Older Then’, Public Administration, 89,
2011: 196–212.
There were too many conferences and workshops at which colleagues com-
mented on drafts of these several papers, and it is not feasible to list them all.
So, this general thank you must suffice. I should also thank the many an-
onymous referees. I obeyed the ‘rules of the game’, even when convinced the
revised version was no improvement; for example, there is no advantage in
using the third person over the first person. It proliferates passive verbs in
pursuit of a spurious detachment.
I will not try to describe the stultifying claustrophobia of Bradford in the
1950s. In 1958, aged 14, I preferred Lonnie Donegan to Elvis Presley if only
because the latter was so exotic he seemed to be from another planet;
untouchable. At least Lonnie was one of us. Everybody knew someone in a
skiffle group. My mother, Irene Rhodes (née Clegg), loathed the confines of
the Rhodes’ extended family, of chapel, and of the narrow horizons of a textile
town. She insisted I think beyond the confines of provincial Yorkshire,
knowing the journey would take me away from her. It was a precious and
still valued gift. These two volumes are dedicated to her memory.
 Contents

List of Figures xiii

List of Tables xv

INTRODUCTION
1. What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been 3

PART I. POLICY NETWORKS

2. Policy Networks in Britain: The Early Years 15
3. Policy Networks: The Historical Moment 37
4. Policy Networks and Policy-making in the European Union 57
5. How to Manage Your Policy Network 74
6. Putting the People Back into Networks 87
7. Analysing Networks as Narratives of Beliefs and Practices 103

PART II. GOVERNANCE

8. The Hollowing Out of the State 119
9. From Prime Ministerial Power to Core Executive 137
10. The New Governance: Governing without Government 158
11. It’s the Mix That Matters: From Marketization to Diplomacy 173

CONCLUSION
12. What Is New about ‘Network Governance’ and Why Does
It Matter? 199

Appendix: Bibliography on the Anglo-Governance Debate 225

References 229
Author Index 265
Subject Index 271
 List of Figures

2.1 Approaches to networks 16

5.1 When to build a network: ten lessons 77
5.2 How to manage your network: ten commandments 82
5.3 Strategic storyteller 86
 List of Tables

3.1 Types of policy networks 39

3.2 Approaches to network management 46
5.1 Characteristics of networks 75
5.2 The sour laws of network governance 85
11.1 The characteristics of governance 176
Introduction
 1

What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been

I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN

It is intimidating to look back over a 45-year career as a political scientist. Has

it been that long? Can I remember ‘the gangling youth of the prominent
Adam’s apple variety’—as one of my referees expressed it back then? It is
tempting to claim I had a rationale to cover an unfolding research agenda but
I find myself reading the work of someone I struggle to remember. Any
overarching rationale would be a patina. Often I was lucky in the people
I met. The journey had many twists and turns. Looking back imposes a logic
that was not clear at the time. As Bob Dylan’s evocative line from his song ‘My
Back Pages’ suggests, I did seem older then but the certainties of a young
academic did not last; old beliefs gave way to new ideas. Life myths were
rewritten. And I told myself, the harder I worked, the luckier I got.1

In the Beginning, 1970–1976

The study of public administration in the 1970s was shaking off the old order. Its
grand old men were William Robson (1895–1980), Norman Chester (1907–86)
and W. J. M. (Bill) Mackenzie (1909–96). All were on the cusp of retirement. For
me, they represented traditional public administration, which was essentially
institutional and concerned to analyse the history, structure, functions, powers,
and relationships of government organizations (see Mackenzie 1975; Rhodes
1979a: ch. 5; Robson 1975). Robson represented that blend of institutional
description and Westminster reformism so typical of the British school. ‘His
great ability was to assemble a huge mass of data, to analyse order out of the
complexity, and to argue a coherent case for change.’ He was ‘one of the
Olympian Fabians, worthy company to the Webbs’ (Jones 1986: 12). Norman
Chester’s best books were the official history of the nationalized industries (1975)

1
Sections of this chapter appeared in R. A. W. Rhodes (2011c) ‘Thinking On: I Was So Much
Older Then’, Public Administration, 89 (1): 196–212. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley
and Sons.
4 Network Governance and Differentiated Polity
and a history of the English administrative system between 1780 and 1870
(1981). Bill Mackenzie (1975) was admired for his lucid, nuanced essays on
both British government and the study of public administration. All were
prominent in my undergraduate education. Robson’s Nationalised Industries
and Public Ownership (1962) was a birthday present—yes, I was delighted, and
still have it.
Like many a young scholar, my horizons were confined by my academic
training and employment opportunities. I had an undergraduate degree in
business and administration from Bradford Business School and a yet-to-be-
completed research degree from Oxford. I applied for jobs at Trinity College,
Dublin, under Basil Chubb, and Aberdeen, under Frank Bealey, but both in
their wisdom decided they could survive without my talents. John Stewart and
Richard Chapman at the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV),
University of Birmingham, were more discerning! So, I had ten years of
teaching and research on British local government. To put no finer point on
it, I floundered. I never intended to be a consultant for local government or
train local government officers. I don’t think I knew what I wanted to do. I had
no individual voice, just boundless, ill-directed enthusiasm. So, I wrote on the
reform of English local government, Anthony Trollope and the nineteenth-
century civil service, developments in the study of public administration, and
the impact of membership of the (then) European Economic Community
(EEC) on local government. From the vantage point of 2016, I can think of no
reason to be interested in competition for public works contracts, but I read
and wrote about these EEC regulations, and kept an interest in EU matters for
many years afterwards (Rhodes 1973, 1986c; Rhodes, Bache, and George 1996;
and Chapter 5, this volume).
INLOGOV expected applied work relevant to its local government audi-
ence, and micro-specialization was ever the lot of the novitiate academic, more
so today than then. Still, I had to prove myself. Some of my scribbling might
have had passing value, but are best classed as juvenilia. I made no lasting
contribution until I was commissioned by the Committee of Inquiry into Local
Government Finance (Layfield) to review the academic literature on the
relationship between central departments and local authorities (Rhodes
1976). This work led me to submit evidence to the (then) Social Science
Research Council (SSRC) Panel on Research into Local Government
(Rhodes 1977) and my appointment to the SSRC Panel on Central–Local
Government Relationships. For the first time, I had an intellectual agenda.

A Professional Political Scientist at Last, 1976–1988

During the 1970s, change was also afoot in the wider world. The young lions
were at public administration’s door. I experienced the change first-hand at
 What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been 5

the Public Administration Committee’s (PAC) Conference on 13–15 September

1971, at the University of York. It was my first academic conference and I was
excited because it had such luminaries as Ron Brown (1971) extolling the
virtues of organization theory, John Stewart (1971) on public policy-making,
Lewis Gunn (1971) on public management, and Peter Self (1971), who
exorcised the evil spirits of economic efficiency. The conference explored
new ways of studying public administration. I was a spectator of the new
generation—the successors to Robson, Chester, and Mackenzie. I also saw the
future in the guise of the theory and methods of American social science. In
John Stewart, I had a mentor whose commitment to ideas, to INLOGOV, and
to local government was as admirable as it was infectious, even if I did not
share his enthusiasm for corporate management (Rhodes 1992b).
As a postgraduate, I read American social science avidly. I was an admirer
of the theoretically informed case studies of, for example, Michel Crozier
(1964) and Philip Selznick (1966). I saw this work as the intellectual challenge
to traditional public administration. Policy studies and organization theory
were the way forward (see also Hood 1990). The temper of the times encour-
aged me to apply the theory and methods of American social science in case
studies of British local government in its dealing with central government. Of
the distinguished speakers at the PAC conference, all are now retired and
several are dead. The generations pass. But, for a time, I was heir to their ideas
and enthusiasms; a modernist-empiricist in all but name. In other words,
I treated institutions such as central departments, local governments, and
policy networks as discrete, atomized objects to be compared, measured, and
classified. I sought to explain these institutions by appealing to ahistorical
mechanisms such as functional differentiation (see Bevir 2001).
In January 1978, I was invited to join the SSRC Panel on Central–Local
Government Relationships. The Panel commissioned me to write a review of
the existing literature on the subject and develop an analytical framework. My
work was completed in May 1978 and an article-length version was published
as an appendix to the Panel’s own report in January 1979 (Rhodes 1979b). The
full-length version of my report to the Panel was published as Rhodes 1981.
The work I did for the SSRC was modernist-empiricist: the subtitle of one
report was ‘the search for positive theory’ and gives the game away (Rhodes
1978a). The theory was ‘interorganizational analysis’ and my main influences
were Kenneth Benson (1975), Michel Crozier and Jean-Claude Thoenig
(1976), and James Thompson (1967). To this day, exchange theory lies at
the heart of policy network theory. Thus, ‘an organisation has power, relative
to an element of its task environment, to the extent that the organisation has
the capacity to satisfy needs of that element and to the extent that the organi-
sation monopolises that capacity’ (Thompson 1967: 30–1). I elaborated this
idea arguing that any organization is dependent on other organizations
for resources. To achieve their goals, the organizations have to exchange
6 Network Governance and Differentiated Polity

resources. The organization’s dominant coalition employs strategies within

known rules of the game to regulate this exchange relationship (paraphrased
from Rhodes 1979b; 1981: 98–9).
So, I argued local authorities were embedded in sets of relationships and we
should analyse the patterns of interdependence, not just the links with central
departments. Following the lead of Heclo and Wildavsky, I suggested that
these networks were structured by policy area or function (Rhodes 1978b;
1981: ch. 5). So, the interorganizational links between central departments and
local authorities took the form of ‘policy communities’ of:
personal relationships between major political and administrative actors—some-
times in conflict, often in agreement, but always in touch and operating within a
shared framework. Community is the cohesive and orienting bond underlying
any particular issue (Heclo and Wildavsky 1974: xv).
I did not know it at the time but here were the roots of ten years’ work on
policy networks (see Chapter 3, this volume).

Policy Networks

As I began to explore policy networks, Margaret Thatcher was intent on

transforming the public sector about which I was writing. The age of man-
agerialism in its twin guises of performance measurement and marketization
was upon us. Mainstream public administration embraced the new public
management. There were a sceptical few. Christopher Hood (1990) argued
that the rise of managerialism meant the field had lost coherence. It had
fragmented into subdisciplines, still including, but not limited to, organiza-
tional studies and policy analysis. The challenge was to find a framework and a
language to compare and contrast these several paradigms. I argued for an
explicit multi-theoretic approach, methodological pluralism, and, above all,
the need to set our own research agendas (Rhodes 1991a). No matter how
individuals responded to the changes in the public sector, few would deny
managerialism was pre-eminent (see also Hood 1991; Pollitt 1993).
I spent the 1980s in the Department of Government at the University of
Essex. It set out to emulate American political science. It became, and remained,
among the best political science departments in the UK. Initially, I did not
prosper. The Department of Government rigorously pursued the highest stand-
ards of professional excellence in which research was the clear priority. Running
an undergraduate degree may be necessary, but it was a chore. The thrill lay in
your next grant, article or book, and building an international reputation. It was
a lesson to learn quickly if you wanted promotion. I learnt, but perhaps not as
quickly as I should. My pet project was a new undergraduate degree in public
administration, which grew from zero to 30 admissions a year. Pet projects can
 What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been 7

slow you down. I did not publish enough. I was not promoted. So, I resigned as
degree director and inflicted two large, 400-pages-plus books on a world that
had done nothing to deserve such punishment.
My fieldwork on the local government peak associations and their linked
specialist, advisory bodies was part of the (now) Economic and Social Research
Council’s (ESRC) Research Programme on Central and Local Government Rela-
tionships. It was published in 1986 as The National World of Local Government.
Subsequently, I won an ESRC personal research grant to draw together the
findings of the 16 major research projects that formed the Research Programme.
It resulted in Beyond Westminster and Whitehall (1988). This book provided a
full-length treatment of policy networks and argued that Britain should be seen as
a differentiated polity.
In 1988 I became Head of Department and had the task of compiling the
department’s submission for the first Research Assessment Exercise (RAE),
now the Research Evaluation Framework (REF). I enjoyed the job—it was easy
because colleagues were not only productive but are among the best in the
country. We got our five stars. So, Essex in the 1980s was a department to
admire. It turned me into a professional political scientist and gave me my first
taste of university management.

From Government to Governance, 1988–1998

After a decade of Thatcherism, the 1990s were an inauspicious time for the
theory and practice of public administration. Managerialism was rife. The
civil service had been the butt of criticism and reform for over a decade. I had
just been appointed to my first chair at the University of York, and I did not
think I had inherited either a healthy department or discipline. I wrote a
couple of pessimistic pieces on the decline of public administration (for
example, Rhodes 1997a: ch. 8). I was not the first (Ridley 1975). I was not
alone among my contemporaries. Dunsire (1995: 34) noted that implementa-
tion theory and contingency theory had died. I set about doing something
to revive my field, and those things were the ‘Local Governance’ and the
‘Whitehall’ research programmes.
A senior Danish colleague once told me he had reached the summit of his
career when he became a full professor. I was surprised. I found becoming a
professor was the start. Now, I could do things that had been closed to a mere
lecturer. For example, I sat on the ESRC’s committee responsible for research
programmes. I argued for both a local government (Rhodes 1991b) and a
central government programme (Rhodes 1993). With Gerry Stoker, I set up
the local governance programme (Rhodes 1999b). I then stepped down from
the committee so I could be director of the central government programme
that became known as the Whitehall Programme.
8 Network Governance and Differentiated Polity
I had always been told by my elders that researchers could not get access
to central government. Heclo and Wildavsky (1974) showed that claim to
be inaccurate. Of course, came the retort, it was because they were foreign-
ers. British academics could not penetrate the veil of secrecy. I had my
doubts. I suspected we said ‘no’ for the ministers and senior civil servants
instead of asking and letting them say ‘no’ for themselves. I drew a simple
lesson. I would ask. I was organizing the annual PAC conference at
University of York, so I invited the (then) Head of the Home Civil Service,
Sir Robin Butler, to give the Frank Stacey Memorial Lecture in which he
signalled his willingness to encourage research on central government
(Butler 1992). Subsequently, the Cabinet Office and the ESRC signed a
formal accord with the former participating in a joint steering and com-
missioning panel to develop the research programme. So, we had access.
Even more striking, the accord was to conduct ‘curiosity research’. It was
agreed by the ESRC and the Cabinet Office that the Research Programme’s
primary objective was not to provide policy relevant advice. Rather, it
would provide an ‘anthology of change’ in British government. To continue
with the language of the civil servants with whom I worked, the Programme
was ‘holding up a mirror to government’ and ‘learning each other’s
language’. The task was ‘to help one another understand the changes’.
According to Peter Hennessy, Sir Robin was every head teacher’s dream
of the perfect head boy. For me, he was the essential ingredient for getting
the ERSC Whitehall Programme off the ground, making his time and other
people available as necessary.
I make this process seem all sweet light and reasonableness. So it seemed
most of the time. My equanimity would have been disturbed had I seen the
advice given to Sir Robin at the time:
Having read the papers my own advice is that Sir Robin should treat this with a
long spoon. . . . There is a lot of excitement in the academic community at the
moment about ‘public sector organisation theory’, but it is never clear exactly
what it means, except a desire to be academic about essentially practical matters.
. . . it looks as if, in order to develop academic theories, the authors of this
proposal want to put a lot of senior civil servants and Ministers to a good deal of
bother in submitting to interviews, answering questionnaires and being mem-
bers of ‘Advice Workshops’.
. . . behind it seems to lie some jealousy of the skill with which Peter Hennessy
has got into and explained present changes in the Civil Service—there are . . .
some rather snide comments on the Peter Hennessy-style approach, i.e. ‘telling
the story of current events or descriptions of institutional and legal arrange-
ments’, because ‘such approaches are atheoretical’
(dated 26 August 1992; personal correspondence received 26 June 2016).

Even today my heart flutters on reading this assessment. And I was not jealous
of Peter Hennessy. I was a fan who wanted to follow in his footsteps, and to do
 What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been 9

so I had to be different. My fortunes hung by a slender thread and I am ever

grateful to Sir Robin for preferring his own counsel.
The Programme’s main aims were: to describe, to explain, and to create a
better understanding of both recent and long-term changes in the nature of
British government; to develop new theoretical perspectives; and to encourage
the use of new research methods in the study of central government. The
Programme comprised 23 projects costing £2.1 million. The first project began
in March 1995. The last project finished in December 1998. At its peak the
Programme employed 49 people (for a short history see Rhodes 2000b).
My rationale for the Programme lay in two ideas; the core executive and
network governance. Instead of asking which positions are important in
British government, prime minister or Cabinet, the core executive idea asks
which functions define the heart of the machine. The core functions of the
British executive are to pull together and to act as final arbiters of conflicts
between different elements of the government machine. This notion directs
our attention to two key questions: ‘Who does what?’ and ‘Who has what
resources?’ (see Chapter 9, this volume).
In his review of administrative theory in Britain, Dunsire (1995: 34) specu-
lated that just as public administration had become public management in the
1980s, it could become governance in the 1990s. I first used the term ‘govern-
ance’ for the launch of the local governance initiative when I wrote a short
piece entitled ‘Beyond Whitehall: Researching Local Governance’ in Social
Sciences (Rhodes 1992a). This work on governance was a logical extension of
my previous work on policy networks. It came out of my reappraisal of Beyond
Westminster and Whitehall (1988), which was necessary after Thatcher’s
reforms. My reappraisal was published as Understanding Governance (1997
and Chapter 9, this volume), which developed over the next few years into
‘the Anglo-Governance School’ (Marinetto 2003). The notion of governance
became ubiquitous, and, as with any idea worth its salt, fuelled critical debates
(for a survey of the critics and a reply see Rhodes 2007b and Chapter 12,
this volume).
Apart from studying British government, a central aim of the Whitehall
Programme was to compare the changes in British government with those in
other member states of the European Union (EU) and other states with a
‘Westminster’ system of government.2 Until now, with Vincent Wright as my
patron, my comparative interests had been limited to writing the chapter on
Britain in edited collections of country studies (Peters, Rhodes, and Wright
2000). Vincent got me invited to various international workshops. Others
were irritated by the brusque Northerner in love with the chip on his shoulder.
Vincent just smiled and steered me in productive directions. The Whitehall

2
It is pedantic and tedious to switch between EEC, EC, and EU depending on the date. I refer
to the EU throughout.
10 Network Governance and Differentiated Polity

Programme gave me the opportunity to branch out on my own and do

genuine comparative work. It fostered my collaboration with Patrick Weller
(Griffith University, Brisbane).
The initial product of our partnership was a collaborative project structured
around the ideas of the hollowing out of the state and the changing role of the
core executive (Weller, Bakviss, and Rhodes 1997). We covered Australia,
Britain, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands but we did not write country
studies. Instead, everyone wrote on every country and we focused on the
functions of the core executive: winning and keeping support for government,
collective government, policy advice, resource allocation, coordination, and
reform. If there is a single conclusion it was that we told ‘sad stories of the
death of Kings’ as we identified the manifold shackles on leadership.
We then turned to the changing role of the public service (Rhodes and
Weller, 2001). It was a collaborative project again, although this time the
research was based around country studies. We covered Australia, Britain,
Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and New Zealand. However,
there was a shared framework and a set of agreed methods. We created a data
set on the characteristics of the administrative elite, covering such topics as
age, sex, education, recruitment, training, career paths, and departure. We
explored a common set of topics on what they did and how their roles were
changing. Finally, and most distinctive, we wrote short biographical portraits
constructed from lengthy interviews with the public servants. We tried to let
them speak for themselves. This work demonstrated that the social science
ideas of hollowing out, the core executive, and network governance have
purchase; they travel and illuminate governance practices in other countries
(see Bevir and Rhodes 2003a and 2003b; Elgie 2011; Eymeri-Douzans et al.
2015; Heilman and Stepan 2016).

CONCLUSIONS

In 1996, I had a downbeat view of the state of my discipline. Hood (1999:

288) noted, I was a pessimist who thought ‘an optimist would describe the
future as bleak. A pessimist would be living and working in America.’ Hood
(2011: 128) demurred and inclined cautiously to a ‘never had it so good’ view
of the state of the discipline. In fact, emigrating to America (or Australia for
that matter) was not the only option. I may have thought the discipline was
in a precarious condition but that did not stop me from trying to do
something about it—hence my involvement with the ESRC. I would date
the good times from the mid-1990s when I wrote my prophecy of doom! In
the 1990s, the ESRC funded major research programmes on local governance,
Whitehall, and devolution.
 What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been 11

The discipline has survived, even thrived, because some of its leading
players mastered the ‘trick’ of linking policy and academic relevance. We
may specialize in central–local relationships, public service delivery or other
topics of the day, but we must link such topics to broader agendas in the social
and human sciences. Otherwise we become either mere technicians or loyal
servants of power or, of course, both. I have been fortunate. My field has
benefited from the work of many outstanding scholars throughout Europe
over the past 25 years, including, to name but a few, Christopher Hood, Erik-
Hans Klijn, Christopher Pollitt, Johan P. Olsen, Renate Mayntz, Fritz Scharpf,
Paul ‘t Hart, and Jean-Claude Theonig. Indeed, a significant trend over the
past 25 years is this shift to a European community of scholars known to one
another and engaging with one another’s work.
I get ahead of myself. All journeys have starting points and mine was the
study of policy networks and governance. These topics are the focus of the rest
of this volume. The interpretive leg of the journey is the subject of Rhodes
(2017, Volume II).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
And when the lamb heard this, it suffered Moses to take it up and lay
it upon his shoulders; and, carrying the lamb, he returned to the
flock.
Now whilst Moses walked, burdened with the lamb, there fell a voice
from heaven, “Thou, who hast shown so great love, so great
patience towards the sheep of man’s fold, thou art worthy to be
called to pasture the sheep of the fold of God.”[487]
 4. MOSES BEFORE PHARAOH.

One day that Moses was keeping sheep, his father-in-law, Jethro,
came to him and demanded back the staff that he had given him.
Then Moses cast the staff from him among a number of other rods,
but the staff ever returned to his hand as often as he cast it away.
Then Jethro laid hold of the rod, but he could not move it. Therefore
he was obliged to let Moses retain it. But he was estranged from
him.
Now Pharaoh was dead. And when the news reached Moses in
Midian, he gat him up, and set his wife Zipporah and his son
Gershom on an ass, and took the way of Egypt.
And as they were in the way, they halted in a certain place; and it
was cloudy, and cold, and rainy. Then they encamped, and Zipporah
tried to make a fire, but could not, for the wood was damp.
Moses said, “I see a fire burning at the foot of the mountain. I will go
to it, for there must be travellers there; and I will fetch a brand away
and will kindle a fire, and be warm.”
Then, he took his rod in his hand and went. But when he came near
the spot, he saw that the fire was not on the ground, but at the
summit of a tree; and the tree was a thorn. A thorn-tree was the first
tree that grew, when God created the herb of the field and the trees
of the forest. Moses was filled with fear, and he would have turned
and fled, but a voice[488] called to him out of the fire, “Moses, Moses!”
And he said, “Here am I.” And the voice said again, “Put off thy
shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground.” This was the reason why he was bidden put off his shoes;
they were made of asses’ hide, and Moses had trodden on the dung
of his ass as he followed Zipporah and Gershom.
Then God gave Moses his commission to go into Egypt, and release
His captive people. But Moses feared, and said, “I am of slow lips
and tongue!” for he had burnt them, with his finger, when he took the
live coal before Pharaoh, as already related. But God said to him, “I
have given thee Aaron thy brother to speak for thee. And now, what
is this that thou hast in thy hand?”
Moses answered, “This is my rod.”
“And to what purpose dost thou turn it?”
“I lean on it when I am walking, and when I come where there is no
grass, I strike the trees therewith, and bring down the leaves to feed
my sheep withal.” And when he had narrated all the uses to which he
put the staff, God said to him, “With this staff shalt thou prevail
against Pharaoh. Cast it upon the ground.” And when he cast it
down, it was transformed into a serpent or dragon, and Moses
turned his back to run from it; but God said, “Fear not; take it up by
the neck;” and he caught it, and it became a rod in his hands. Then
said the Most Holy, “Put thy hand into thy bosom.” And he did so,
and drew it forth, and it was white, and shining like the moon in the
dark of night.
Then Moses desired to go back to Zipporah his wife, but the angel
Gabriel retained him, saying, “Thou hast higher duties to perform
than to attend on thy wife. Lo! I have already reconducted her to her
father’s house. Go on upon thy way to Pharaoh, as the Lord hath
commanded thee.”
The night on which Moses entered Egyptian territory, an angel
appeared to Aaron in a dream, with a crystal glass full of good wine
in his hand, and said, as he extended it to him:—
“Aaron, drink of this wine which the Lord sends thee as a pledge of
good news. Thy brother Moses has returned to Egypt, and God has
chosen him to be His prophet, and thee to be his spokesman. Arise,
and go forth to meet him!”
Aaron therefore arose from his bed and went out of the city to the
banks of the Nile, but there was no boat there by which he could
cross. Suddenly he perceived in the distance a light which
approached; and as it drew nearer he saw that it was a horseman. It
was Gabriel mounted on a steed of fire, which shone like the
brightest diamond, and whose neighing was hymns of praise, for the
steed was one of the cherubim.
Aaron at first supposed that he was pursued by one of Pharaoh’s
horsemen, and he would have cast himself into the Nile; but Gabriel
stayed him, declared who he was, mounted him on the fiery cherub,
and they crossed the Nile on his back.
There stood Moses, who, when he saw Aaron, exclaimed, “Truth is
come, Falsehood is passed.” Now this was the sign that God had
given to Moses, “Behold he cometh to meet thee.”[489] And they
rejoiced over each other.
But another account is this: Moses entered Memphis with his sheep,
during the night. Now Amram was dead, but his wife Jochebed was
alive. When Moses reached the door, Jochebed was awake. He
knocked at the door; then she opened, but knew him not, and asked,
“Who art thou?”
He answered, “I am a man from a far country; I pray thee lodge me,
and give me to eat this night.”
She took him in, and brought him some meat, and said to Aaron, “Sit
down and eat with the guest, to do him honour.” Aaron, in eating,
conversed with Moses and recognized him.
Then the mother and sister knew him also. And when the meal was
over, Moses acquitted himself of his mission to Aaron, and Aaron
answered, “I will obey the will of God.”[490]
Moses spent the night, and the whole of the following day, in relating
to his mother the things that had befallen him.
And on the second night, Moses and Aaron went forth to Pharaoh’s
palace. Now the palace had four hundred doors, a hundred on each
side, and each door was guarded by sixty thousand fighting men.
The angel Gabriel came to them and led them into the palace, but
not by the doors.
When they appeared before Pharaoh, they said: “God hath sent us
unto thee to bid thee let the Hebrews go, that they may hold a feast
in the wilderness.”
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to
let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”[491]
Tabari tells a different story. Moses and Aaron sought admittance
during two years. Now Pharaoh gave himself out to be a god.
But Moses and Aaron, when they spake at the door with the porters,
said, “He is no god.” One day the jester of Pharaoh heard his master
read the history of his own life, and when he came to the passage
which asserted he was a god, the jester exclaimed, “Now this is
strange! For two years there have been two strangers at thy gate
denying thy divinity.”
When Pharaoh heard this, he was in a fury, and he sent and had
Moses and Aaron brought before him.
But to return to the Rabbinic tale. Moses and Aaron were driven out
from the presence of Pharaoh; and he said, “Who admitted these
men?” And some of the porters he slew, and some he scourged.
Then two lionesses were placed before the palace, to protect it, and
the beasts suffered no man to enter unless Pharaoh gave the word.
And the Lord spake to Moses and Aaron, saying, “When Pharaoh
talketh with you, saying, Give us a miracle, thou shalt say to Aaron,
Take thy rod and cast it down, and it shall became a basilisk serpent;
for all the inhabitants of the earth shall hear the voice of the shriek of
Egypt when I destroy it, as all creatures heard the shriek of the
serpent when I stripped it, and took from it its legs and made it lick
the dust after the Fall.”[492]
On the morrow, Moses and Aaron came again to the king’s palace,
and the lionesses would have devoured them. Then Moses raised
his staff, and their chains brake, and they followed him, barking like
dogs, into the house.[493]
When Moses and Aaron stood before the king, Aaron cast down the
rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a
serpent, which opened its jaws, and it laid one jaw beneath the
throne, and its upper jaw was over the canopy above it; then the
servants fled from before it, and Pharaoh hid himself beneath his
throne, and the fear it caused him gave him bowel-complaint for a
week. Now before this Pharaoh was only moved once a week, and
this was the occasion of his being lifted up with pride, and giving
himself out to be a god.[494]
Pharaoh cried out from under the throne, “O Moses, take hold of the
serpent, and I will do what you desire.”[495]
Moses took hold of the serpent, and it became a rod in his hands.
Then Pharaoh crawled out from under his throne, and sat down upon
it. And Moses put his hand into his bosom, and when he drew it
forth, it shone like the moon.
The king sent for his magicians, and the chief of these were Jannes
and Jambres. He told them what Moses had done.
They said, “We can turn a thousand rods into serpents.”
Then the king named a day when Moses and Aaron on one side
should strive with Jannes and Jambres[496] and all the magicians on
the other; and he gave them a month to prepare for the contest.
On the day appointed—it was Pharaoh’s birthday—all the inhabitants
of Memphis were assembled in a great plain outside the city, where
lists were staked out, and the royal tent was spread for the king to
view the contest.
Moses and Aaron stood on one side and the magicians on the other.
The latter said, “Shall we cast our rods, or will you?”
Moses answered, “Do you cast your rods first.”
Then the magicians threw down a hundred ass-loads of rods, tied
the rods together with cords, and by their enchantment caused them
to appear to the spectators like serpents, leaping and darting from
one side of the arena to the other.
And all the people were filled with fear, and the magicians said, “We
have this day triumphed over Moses.”
Then the prophet of God cast his rod before Pharaoh, and it became
a mighty serpent. It rolled its tail round the throne of the king, and it
shot forth its head, and swallowed all the rods of the enchanters, so
that there remained not one.
After that all had disappeared, Moses took the serpent, and it
became a rod in his hand again, but all the rods of the magicians
had vanished.
And when the magicians saw the miracle that Moses had wrought,
they were converted, and worshipped the true God. But Pharaoh cut
off their hands and feet, and crucified them; and they died.
Pharaoh’s own daughter Maschita believed; and the king in his rage
did not spare her, but cast her into a fire, and she was burnt. Bithia
was also denounced to him, and she was condemned to the flames,
but the angel Gabriel delivered her. The Mussulmans say that he
consoled her by telling her that she would become the wife of
Mohammed in Paradise, after which he gave her to drink, and when
she had tasted, she died without pain.
Then Moses and Aaron met Pharaoh in the morning as he went by
the side of the river, and Moses said to the king, “The Lord of the
Hebrews hath sent me unto thee, saying, Let My people go, that they
may serve Me in the wilderness.”
But Pharaoh would not hearken to him. Then Aaron stretched out his
rod over the river, and it became blood.
All the water that was in the vessels also became blood, even the
spittle that was in the mouth of the Egyptians. The Rabbi Levi said
that by this means the Israelites realized large fortunes; for if an
Israelite and an Egyptian went together to the Nile to fetch water, the
vessel of the Egyptian was found to contain blood, but that of the
Israelite pure water; but if an Israelite brought water to the house of
an Egyptian and sold it, it remained water.[497]
But Pharaoh’s heart was hard; and seven days passed, after that the
Lord had smitten the river.
Then went Moses and Aaron to him. But the four hundred doors of
the palace were guarded by bears, lions, and other savage beasts,
so that none might pass, till they were satisfied with flesh. But Moses
and Aaron came up, collected them together, drew a circle round
them with the sacred staff, and the wild beasts licked the feet of the
prophets and followed them into the presence of Pharaoh.[498]
Moses and Aaron repeated their message to Pharaoh, but he would
not hearken to them, but drove them from his presence. Aaron
smote the river; but Moses on no occasion smote the Nile, for he
respected the river which had saved his life as a babe.[499] Then the
Lord brought frogs upon the land, and filled all the houses; they were
in the beds, on the tables, in the cups. And the king sent for Moses
and said: “Intreat the Lord, that He may take the frogs from me and
from my people.” So the Lord sent a great rain, and it washed the
frogs into the Red Sea.
The next plague was lice.[500]
The fourth plague was wild beasts.
The fifth was murrain.
The sixth was boils and blains upon man and beast.[501]
The seventh was hail and tempest. Now Job regarded the word of
Moses, and he brought his cattle within doors, and they were saved;
but Balaam regarded it not, and all his cattle were destroyed.[502]
The eighth was locusts; these the Egyptians fried, and laid by in
store to serve them for food; but when the west wind came to blow
the locusts away, it blew away also those that had been pickled and
laid by for future consumption.[503]
The ninth plague was darkness.
The tenth was the death of the first-born.
The Book of Jasher says that, the Egyptians having closed their
doors and windows against the plagues of flies, and locusts, and
lice, God sent the sea-monster Silinoth, a huge polypus with arms
ten cubits long, and the beast climbed upon the roofs and broke
them up, and let down its slimy arms, and unlatched all the doors
and windows, and threw them open for the flies and locusts and lice
to enter.[504]
But the Mohammedans give a different order to the signs:—(1) the
rod changed into a serpent; (2) the whitened hand; (3) the famine;
(4) a deluge, the Nile rose over the land so that every man stood in
water up to his neck; (5) locusts; (6) anommals,—these are two-
legged animals smaller than locusts; (7) blood; (8) frogs; (9) every
green thing throughout the land, all fruit, all grain, eggs, and
everything in the houses were turned to stone.[505]
After the plague of the darkness, Pharaoh resolved on a general
massacre of all the children of the Hebrews. The Mussulmans put
the temporary petrifaction of all in the land in the place of the
darkness. The Book of Exodus says that during the darkness “they
saw not one another, neither rose any from his place;” but the Arabs
say that they were turned to stone. Here might be seen a petrified
man with a balance in his hand sitting in the bazaar; there, another
stone man counting out money; and the porters at the palace were
congealed to marble with their swords in their hands.[506] But others
say that this was a separate plague, and that the darkness followed
it.
And now Gabriel took on him the form of a servant of the king, and
he went before him and asked him what was his desire.
“That vile liar Moses deserves death,” said Pharaoh.
“How shall I slay him?” asked Gabriel.
“Let him be cast into the water.”
“Give me a written order,” said the angel. Pharaoh did so.
Then Gabriel went to Moses and told him that the time was come
when he was to leave Egypt with all the people, for the measure of
the iniquity of Pharaoh was filled up, and the Lord would destroy him
with a signal overthrow.
 5. THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.

The Israelites had made their preparations to depart out of Egypt a

month before the call came to escape.
And when all was ready, Moses called together the elders of the
people and said to them, “When Joseph died, he ordered his
descendants to take up his bones, or ever they went out of the land,
and to bear them to the cave of Machpelah, where lie the bones of
his father Jacob. Where are the bones of Joseph?”
The elders answered him, “We do not know.”
Now there was an old Egyptian woman, named Miriam, and she
believed in the Lord. She said to Moses, “I will show thee where is
the tomb of Joseph, if thou wilt swear unto me that thou wilt take me
with thee from Egypt, and that thou wilt ask the Most High to admit
me into Paradise.”
Moses said, “I will do these things that thou askest.”
Then the woman said, “The tomb of Joseph is in the middle of the
river Nile, which flows through Memphis, at such a spot.”
Moses prayed to God, and the water fell till the bed of the river was
left dry; and then he and the woman went into it, and came on the
tomb of Joseph; it was a sarcophagus of marble without joints.[507]
Moses made preparations for departure, and said to the children of
Israel, “God will destroy the Egyptians, and will give you their
precious things.”
Then every one among the Hebrews who had an Egyptian neighbour
said to him, if he was rich: “I am going to a feast in the country, I pray
thee lend me jewels of gold and silver to adorn my wife and
children.”
The Egyptians lent their precious things, and the Israelites by this
means found themselves possessed of borrowed jewels in great
abundance. Then Moses said, “We will leave Egypt this night when
the Egyptians are asleep. Let every housekeeper softly desert his
house, and bring with him his precious things, and meet outside the
town. And let every one slay a lamb, and sprinkle with the blood the
lintel and door-posts of the house, that the neighbours may know,
when they see the blood, that the house is empty.”
When the middle of the night was passed, the Israelites were
assembled outside Memphis, at the place which Moses had
appointed. Then the host was numbered, and it contained six
hundred thousand horsemen, not including those who were on foot,
the women, the children, and the aged. All who were under twenty
were accounted infants, and all who were over sixty were accounted
aged.
After that, Moses placed Aaron in command of the first battalion, and
he said to him, “March in the direction of the sea, for Gabriel has
promised to meet me on its shores.” At that time one branch of the
Nile (the Pelusiac branch) flowed into the Red Sea, which extended
over where is now sandy desert to Migdol.
Moses made the host follow Aaron, troop by troop, and tribe by tribe;
and he brought up the rear with a strong guard of picked men.
It was dawning towards the first day of the week when Israel
escaped out of Egypt.
And when day broke, behold, they were gone away. Then the
Egyptians came and told Pharaoh. He sent to search all the houses
of the Israelites, but they were all empty, only their lamps were left
burning. Pharaoh said, “We will pursue them.” The Egyptians said,
“They have borrowed our jewels; we must follow after them, and
recover what is our own.”
Now Moses had used craft touching these ornaments, in order that
the Egyptians might be constrained to follow. For if the Israelites had
gone without these, the Egyptians would have rejoiced at their
departure. But because they had borrowed of the Egyptians,
therefore the Egyptians went after them to recover their ornaments,
and by this means rushed into destruction.
And Israel marched all day through the wilderness protected by
seven clouds of glory on their four sides: one above them, that
neither hail nor rain might fall upon them, nor that they should be
burned by the heat of the sun; one beneath them, that they might not
be hurt by thorns, serpents, or scorpions; and one went before them,
to make the valleys even, and the mountains low, and to prepare
them a place of habitation.[508]
Also, when the morning dawned, there was not a house in all Egypt
in which there was not a first-born dead. And this delayed the people
from pursuing after the Israelites; for they were engaged in bewailing
their dead, and in digging graves for them. Thus they were not at
leisure to follow after their former slaves, till they had escaped clean
away.
Also that night was every metal image in Egypt molten, and every
idol of stone was broken, and every idol of clay was shattered, and
every idol of wood was dissolved to dust.[509]
The same day Pharaoh sent into all the cities of Egypt and collected
an army. When even was come the whole army was assembled
about the king, and Pharaoh said to Dathan and Abiram, who had
remained behind,[510] “The Israelites are few in number, they are
entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.” For all the
way was full of marshes and canals of water and desert tracts. “They
have acted wrongly by us, for they have carried away the ornaments
and jewels of our people; and Moses, by magic, has slain all our
first-born, so that there is not a house in which there is not one
dead.”
On the morrow—it was the second day of the week—the army was
reviewed, and Pharaoh numbered the host, and he had six hundred
chosen chariots, and two million foot soldiers, and five million
horsemen, and, in addition, there were one million seven hundred
thousand horses, and on these horses were black men.
When the sun rose on the third day, Pharaoh marched out of
Memphis, and he pursued for half a day with forced marches. At
noon, Pharaoh had come up with Moses, and the fore-front of
Pharaoh’s army thrust the rear-guard of the army of Moses. Then the
children of Israel cried unto the Lord, and they said to Moses,
“Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to
die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to
carry us forth out of Egypt?”
They were divided into four opinions. One set said, “Let us fling
ourselves into the sea.” Another set said, “Let us return and
surrender ourselves.” The third set said, “Let us array battle against
the Egyptians.” The fourth recommended, “Let us shout against
them, and frighten them away with our clamour.”[511]
And Moses said unto the people, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see
the salvation of the Lord. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall
hold your peace.”[512]
Then Moses raised his rod over the sea, and it divided, and let
twelve channels of dry land appear traversing it, one for each of the
twelve tribes. “When Moses had smitten,” says the Koran, “the sea
divided into twelve heaps, and left twelve ways through it, and each
heap was as a great mountain.”[513]
The Israelites hesitated to enter; for they said, “O Moses! the bottom
of this sea is black mud, and when we place our feet on it we shall
sink in and be swallowed up.”
But Moses prayed to God, and He sent a wind and the rays of the
sun, and the wind and the sun dried the mud, and it became as
sand.
Then Gabriel and Michael appeared to Moses, and said, “Pass on,
and lead the people through. As for us, we have orders to tarry for
Pharaoh.” So Moses galloped forward into the sea, crying, “In the
name of the merciful and glorious God!” and all the people went in
after him. But as they marched by twelve ways, and there were walls
of water between, they could not see each other, and they were in
fear; therefore Moses prayed to the Lord, and the Lord made the
water-heaps rise and arch over them like bowers, and shelter them
from the fire of the sun; and He made the watery walls so clear they
were as sheets of glass, and through them the columns of the
advancing army were visible to each other.
Moses traversed the sea in two hours, and he came forth with all the
people on the other side.
Then Pharaoh and his host came to the water’s side, but he feared
to enter in. Now Pharaoh was mounted on an entire horse of great
beauty. He reined in his steed and would not go forward, for he
thought that this was part of the enchantment of Moses.
But now Gabriel appeared mounted on a mare, and this was the
cherub Ramka.[514] And when the horse of Pharaoh saw the mare of
Gabriel, he plunged forward and followed the mare into the sea.
Then, when the Egyptian army saw their king enter fearlessly into
one of the channels, they also precipitated themselves into the ways
through the deep.
They advanced till they reached the middle of the Red Sea, and then
Gabriel reined in and turned and unfurled before Pharaoh the order
he had given for the destruction of Moses in the water, and it was
signed by Pharaoh and sealed with his own signet.
“See!” exclaimed the angel. “What thou wouldest do to Moses, that
shall be done to thee; for thou art but a man, thou who fightest
against God.”
Then the twelve heaps of water overwhelmed the host. But
Pharaoh’s horse was so fleet of foot that he outfled the returning
waters, and he brought the king to the shore. He would have been
saved, had not Gabriel smitten him on the face, and he fell back into
the sea and perished with the rest. Then said Miriam, as he sank,
“Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and
his rider hath He thrown into the sea.”[515]
Another curious incident is related by Tabari. When the water
reached Pharaoh, and he knew that he must perish, he cried out, “I
believe in the God of Israel!” Gabriel, fearing lest Pharaoh should
repeat these words, and that God in His mercy should accept his
profession of faith, and pardon him, passed his wing over the bottom
of the sea, raised the earth, and threw it into the mouth of Pharaoh
so as to prevent him from swallowing again, and said, “Now thou
believest, but before thou wast rebellious; nevertheless, thou art
numbered with the wicked.”[516]
It was the ninth hour of the day when the children of Israel stood on
dry land on the further side of the sea.
On the morrow, the children of Israel assembled around Moses, and
said to him, “We do not believe that Pharaoh is drowned, for he had
peculiar power. He never suffered from headache, nor from fever,
nor from any sickness, and was internally moved but once a week.”
Then Moses clave the sea asunder with his rod, and they saw
Pharaoh and all his host dead at the bottom of the sea. The bodies
of the Egyptians were covered with armour and much gold and
silver, and on the corpse of Pharaoh were chains and bracelets of
gold. The children of Israel would have spoiled the dead, but Moses
forbade them, for he said, “It is lawful to spoil the living, but it is
robbery to strip the dead.” Nevertheless many of the Hebrews went
in and took from the Egyptians all that was valuable. Then God was
wroth, because they had disobeyed Moses, and the sea was
troubled, and for ten days it raged with fury, and even to this day the
water is not at rest where the Israelites committed this sin. And the
name of that place at this day is Bab el Taquath.[517]
 6. THE GIVING OF THE LAW.

As long as Moses was with them, the Israelites did not venture to
make idols, but when God summoned Moses into the Mount to talk
with Him face to face, then they spake to Aaron that he should make
a molten god to go before them.
Aaron bade them break off their earrings and bracelets and give
them to him, for he thought that they would be reluctant to part with
their jewels. Nevertheless the people brought their ornaments to him
in great abundance, and one named Micah cast them into a copper
vessel; and when the gold was melted, he threw in a handful of the
sand which had been under the hoof of Gabriel’s horse, and there
came forth a calf, which ran about like a living beast, and bellowed;
for Sammael (Satan) had entered into it. “Here is your god that shall
go before you,” cried Micah; and all the people fell down and
worshipped the golden calf.[518]
And when Moses came down from the Mount and drew near to the
camp, and saw the calf, and the instruments of music in the hands of
the wicked, who were dancing and bowing before it, and Satan
among them dancing and leaping before the people, the wrath of
Moses was suddenly kindled, and he cast the tables of the
Commandments, which he had received from God in the Mount, out
of his hand and brake them at the foot of the mountain; but the holy
writing that was on them flew, and was carried away into the
heavens; and he cried, and said, “Woe upon the people who have
heard from the mouth of the Holy One, ‘Thou shalt not make to
thyself any image, a figure, or any likeness;’ and yet at the end of
forty days make a useless molten calf!”
And he took the calf which they had made, and burned it with fire,
and crushed it to powder, and cast it upon the face of the water of
the stream, and made the sons of Israel drink; and whoever had
given thereto any trinket of gold, the sign of it came forth upon his
nostrils.[519]
Of all the children of Israel only twelve thousand were found who had
not worshipped the calf.[520]
The Mussulmans say that the Tables borne by Moses were from ten
to twelve cubits in length, and were made, say some, of cedar wood,
but others say of ruby, others of carbuncle; but the general opinion is
that they were of sapphire or emerald;[521] and the letters were
graven within them, not on the surface, so that the words could be
read on either side. When the golden calf had been pounded to dust,
Moses made the Israelites drink water in which was the dust, and
those who had kissed the idol were marked with gilt lips. Thus the
Levites were able to distinguish them; and they slew of them twenty
and three thousand.[522]
It is a common tradition among the Jews that the red hair which is by
no means infrequently met with in the Hebrew race is derived from
this period; all those who had sinned and drank of the water lost their
black hair and it became red, and they transmitted the colour to their
posterity.
Another version of the story is as follows. Samiri (Micah), who had
fashioned the golden calf, was of the tribe of Levi. When Moses
came down from the Mount, he would have beaten Aaron, but his
brother said, “It is not I, it is Samiri who made the calf.” Then Moses
would have slain Samiri, but God forbade him, and ordered him
instead to place him under ban.
From that time till now, the man wanders, like a wild beast, from one
end of the earth to the other; every man avoids him, and cleanses
the earth on which his feet have rested; and when he comes near
any man, he cries out, “Touch me not!”
But before Moses drave Samiri out of the camp, he ground the calf
to powder, and made Samiri pollute it; then he mixed it with the
water, and gave it to the Israelites to drink. After Samiri had
departed, Moses interceded with God for the people. But God
answered, “I cannot pardon them, for their sin is yet in them, and it
will only be purged out by the draught they have drunk.”
When Moses returned to the camp, he heard a piteous cry. Many
Israelites with yellow faces and livid bodies cast themselves before
him, and cried, “Help! Moses, help! the golden calf consumes our
intestines; we will repent and die, if the Lord will pardon us.”
Some, really contrite, were healed. Then a black cloud came down
on the camp, and all those who were in it fought with one another
and slew one another; but upon the innocent the swords had no
power. Seven thousand idolaters had been slain, when Moses,
hearing the cry of the women and children, came and prayed; and
the cloud vanished, and the sword rested.[523]
According to some, the complaint caused by swallowing the dust of
the calf was jaundice, a complaint which has never ceased from
among men since that day. Thus the calf brought two novelties into
the world, red hair and jaundice.
And Moses went up again into the Mount, and took with him seventy
of the elders. And he besought the Lord, “Suffer me, O Lord, to see
Thee!”[524] But the Lord answered him, “Thinkest thou that thou canst
behold Me and live?” And He said, “Look at this mountain; I will
display Myself to this mountain.”
Then the mountain saw God, and it dissolved into fine dust. So
Moses knew that it was not for him to see God, and he repented that
he had asked this thing.[525] After that he went with the seventy elders
to Sinai, and a cloud, white and glistening, came down and rested on
the head of Moses, and then descended and wholly enveloped him,
so that the seventy saw him not; and when he was in the cloud, he
received again the Tables of the Commandments, and he came forth
out of the cloud. But they murmured that they had not also received
the revelation. Then the cloud enveloped them also, and they heard
all the words that had been spoken to Moses; and after that they
said, “Now we believe, because we have heard with our own ears.”
Then the wrath of God blazed forth, and a thundering was heard so
great and terrible that they fainted and died. But Moses feared, and
he prayed to God, and God restored the seventy men to life again,
and they came down the Mount with him.[526]
And it was at this time that the face of Moses shone with the
splendour which had come upon him from the brightness of the glory
of the Lord’s Shekinah in the time of His speaking with him. And
Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, and, behold, the glory of
his face was dazzling, so that they were afraid to come near to him.
And Moses called to them, and Aaron, and all the princes of the
congregation; and he taught them all that the Lord had spoken to
him on Mount Sinai. And when Moses spoke with them, he had a veil
upon his face; and when he went up to speak with the Lord, he
removed the veil from his countenance until he came forth.[527]
This was the reason why the face of Moses shone. He saw the light
which God had created, whereby Adam was enabled to see from
one end of the earth to the other. God showed this light now to
Moses, and thereby he was able to see to Dan.[528]
When Moses went up into the Mount, a cloud received him, and bore
him into heaven. On his way, he met the door-keeper Kemuel, chief
of twelve thousands of angels of destruction; they were angels of
fire; and he would have prevented Moses from advancing: then
Moses pronounced the Name in twelve letters, revealed to him by
God from the Burning Bush, and the angel and his host recoiled
before that word twelve thousand leagues. But some say that Moses
smote the angel, and wounded him.
A little further, Moses met another angel; this was Hadarniel, who
had a terrible voice, and every word he uttered split into twelve
thousand lightnings; he reigned six hundred thousand leagues
higher than Kemuel. Moses, in fear, wept at his voice, and would
have fallen out of the cloud, had not God restrained him. Then the
prophet pronounced the Name of seventy-two letters, and the angel
fled.
Next he came to the fiery angel Sandalfon, and he would have fallen
out of the cloud, but God held him up. Then he reached the river of
flame, called Rigjon, which flows from the beasts which are beneath
the Throne, and is filled with their sweat; across this God led him.[529]
It is asserted by the Rabbis that Moses learnt the whole law in the
forty days that he was in the Mount, but as he descended from the
immediate presence of God, he entered the region where stood the
angels guarding the Mount, and when he saw the Angel of Fear, the
Angel of Sweat, the Angel of Trembling, and the Angel of Cold
Shuddering, he was so filled with consternation, that he forgot all that
he had learnt.
Then God sent the Angel Jephipha, who brought back all to his
remembrance; and, armed with the law, Moses passed the ranks of
all the angels, and each gave him some secret or mystery; one the
art of mixing simples, one that of reading in the stars, another that of
compounding antidotes, a fourth the secret of name, or the Kabalistic
mystery.[530]
It is said by the Mussulmans, that when the law was declared to the
children of Israel by Moses, they refused to receive it; then Mount
Sinai rose into the air, and moved above them, and they fled from it;
but it followed them, and hung over their heads ready to crush them.
And Moses said, “Accept the law, or the mountain will fall on you and
destroy you.”
Then they fell on their faces and placed the right side of the brow
and right cheek against the ground and looked up with the left eye at
the mountain that hung above them, and said, “We will accept the
law.” This is the manner in which the Jews to this day perform their
worship, says Tabari; they place the brow and right cheek and eye
upon the ground, and turn the left cheek and eye to heaven, and in
this position they pray.[531]