Carole Johnson

Seasonal Cycles in Public Management: Disaggregation and Re-aggregation

A central feature of New Public Management (NPM) was the disaggregation of organizations into smaller units. This article examines the ebbs and flows of organizational size in the UK public sector—from the rise of the ‘small is beautiful’ idea in the 1980s and 1990s to the current ‘new big government’. This is not a simple cycle as the new big government differs in significant ways from the old—but there is clearly a cyclical element at play. Some proximate causes for the new wave of mergers given by policy-makers are explored.

The UK Parliament and performance: challenging or challenged?

Many governments across OECD countries now produce substantial amounts of performance information. This movement has increasingly become known variously as output- or outcome-based budgeting or governance. This article focuses on the important question of how legislatures are responding to this development. Using the case of the UKs public performance measurement systems — especially since 1997 and the introduction of Public Service Agreements — it examines the UK Parliaments response to this change. It poses the question: to what extent has Parliament used this new resource to challenge the executive arm of government or has been challenged itself to adapt its own role and activities to this new regime? From a detailed analysis of the conduct of parliamentary Select Committees and a survey of Select Committee members we find that Parliament itself has been more challenged by performance reporting than challenging of the executive, despite attempts by Parliament itself to institutionalize performance scrutiny. The article concludes with a discussion of how far legislative scrutiny, and even perhaps co-steering, of performance is feasible or desirable.

Scrutinizing local public service provision

Set in the context of an expansion of scrutiny by local authorities of local service provision, this article explores the key challenges ahead for managers and politicians in this area of local governance. Drawing on an evaluation of the development of health scrutiny, it outlines the different types of activities health scrutiny committees are engaging in to fulfil their legislative commitments and suggests lessons for the expansion of external scrutiny.

UK Parliamentary Scrutiny of Public Service Agreements: A Challenge Too Far?

This chapter turns its attention to the issue of how performance information is and isn’t used by the United Kingdom’s parliamentary scrutiny committees involved in scrutinizing government activity. Whilst performance management is largely rooted within the technocratic administrative arena, there is a growing trend towards the possibility, at least, that performance information could be used as one source of data for the purposes of supporting the democratic polity (Pollitt, 2006b). The case of the Public Service Agreements (PSAs) discussed below is, ostensibly, one example where there has been the intention to support the democratic use of performance information. The findings may lend support to Pollitt’s assertion that politicians, if interested in performance information at all, are interested in broad brush data only. They appear not to be engaged by the prospect of carrying out detailed scrutiny. However, the government itself has not given the PSA policy the precedence it deserved and may be partly responsible for the lack of scrutiny that PSA policy received.