Colin Talbot

Agency fever? Analysis of an international policy fashion

In the last 15 years, the governments of many OECD countries have transferred a wide range of functions to new, agency-type organizations. Allowing for the fact that, for comparative purposes, it is difficult precisely to define agencies, and further acknowledging that in many countries agencies are far from being new, it nevertheless remains the case that there seems to have been a strong fashion for this particular organizational solution.This article investigates the apparent international convergence towards “agencification.” It seeks to identify the reasons for, and depth of, the trend. It asks to what extent practice has followed rhetoric. The emerging picture is a complex one. On the one hand, there seems to be a widespread belief, derived from a variety of theoretical traditions, that agencification can unleash performance improvements. On the other hand, systematic evidence for some of the hypothetical benefits is very patchy. Furthermore, the diversity of actual practice in different countries has been so great that there must sometimes be considerable doubt as to whether the basic requirements for successful performance management are being met.

Executive Agencies: Have They Improved Management in Government?

The UKs Next Steps programme has now been running for 15 years. It has been copied internationally, but has never been evaluated officially. This article looks at whether Next Steps has achieved its immediate goals of structural and institutional change, and whether these have led to behavioural change and improved performance.

Public Value—The Next “Big Thing” in Public Management?

Are we about to enter a new era of public management? There are good reasons to think that this may be the case. This special issue of the International Journal of Public Administration on “Public ...

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.

UK public services and management (1979‐2000) Evolution or revolution?

Examines the way the public sector and public management evolved in the UK over the last two decades of the twentieth century. Concentrates on the period between 1979 to 1997 when the UK had a succession of Conservative governments, when there was a kind of “arms race” of escalating rhetoric between the right and the left. Attempts to present a balanced account of what actually happened to the UK’s public sector in general. Concludes that public services are still a very large proportion of national life, and that they have not qualitatively altered the share of national resources they consume, the numbers of people they employ or the range of services they offer.

Performing ‘Performance’—A Comedy in Five Acts

The public service in the United Kingdom is awash with performance data. From the ubiquitous league tables for schools, local authorities and police services, through key performance indicators for civil service agencies right up to Government-level Public Service Agreements, the number of published performance data sets probably now reaches five figures annually. The author discusses some of the aspects of being what are probably the most ‘performance-reported’ public services in the world.

Performance Regimes—The Institutional Context of Performance Policies

Abstract Performance measurement, targeting, reporting and managing of public services has spread across jurisdictions in recent years. The most usual stance adopted by governments in developing performance policies has been shaped by principal-agent theory and a hierarchy of principal-agent relationships from core executive to service delivery. Such notions have been challenged from several directions, both in theory and empirically. Writers on accountability and those analyzing the “audit explosion” and the growth of “regulation inside government” have pointed to the way in which multiple actors and accountabilities have grown. Drawing on these and other sources this article develops a “performance regimes” perspective that offers a heuristic analytical framework of the main groups of institutional actors who can (but do not always) attempt to shape or steer the performance of service delivery agencies. The aim is to create a framework that can be applied comparatively to study changes in total performance regimes over time and between jurisdictions and sectors.

Paradoxes and prospects of ‘public value’

This article explains where we are with public value, how we got here and where we should go with it. It suggests a re-conceptualization that incorporates selfinterest, public interest and procedural interest as the fundamental bases of public value creation. It goes on to suggest ways in which this could be operationalized using a ‘scorecard’ approach.

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.

The public value of the National Audit Office

Purpose – Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) have become increasingly active in recent years in carrying out “performance audits” of various public bodies. But how does SAIs report on their own performance? The purpose of this paper is to report on a study (commissioned by the UK National Audit Office (NAO)) of how SAIs report on their own performance and explores a possible conceptual framework – a synthesis of work on “performance regimes”, “public value” and “competing values” approaches – which might provide a basis for enhancing such reporting.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based first on a review of self‐reporting of performance by SAIs in Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand and with a specific focus in more detail on the UKs NAO. In Section I, it explores existing self‐reporting practices of a number of SAIs based on their published reports. Section II of this paper is more conceptual. Drawing on notions of “performance regimes”, “public value” and “competing values”, it seeks to re...