Hugh Heclo

The Illusion of presidential government

What do you do to start reading the illusion of presidential government? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. Its not fault. Someone will be bored to open the thick book with small words to read. In more, this is the real condition. So do happen probably with this the illusion of presidential government.

There Must Be a Better Way: PAR and the New Rationalism

To ask ‘how shall public money be spent’ and ‘what should government do’ are kindred, though not identical, questions. Decisions about public expenditure shade imperceptibly into decisions about public policy and more subtly still into judgements on the general welfare of society. No person in the British Isles is immune from the consequences of these decisions.

The Politics of Advice: CPRS and the Government Centre

The problematic survival of the CPRS in its present form and with its existing personnel is not so important as the issues it raises. Whether or not the CPRS endures for any length of time, its initial problems and experiences are invaluable to anyone interested in Her Majesty’s government. No post-war reform has more directly highlighted the private relations of those who claim to exercise supreme power. The politics of advice is a permanent feature of the government centre.

Kinship and Culture: The Expenditure Community

The part of society that interests us is government. Within that sphere we ask: Who matters most? How are they related? Who owes what to whom and how are these obligations repaid? This is kinship. Culture comprises the standards through which these relationships are regulated. How do participants structure competition and facilitate co-operation? What are the ties that bind and the feuds that divide? How is the new accommodated to the old?

Village Life in Civil Service Society: Department—Treasury Bargaining

The Treasury is responsible for managing the economy, departments for managing their subject matter. Since the Second World War, this theoretical distinction has been increasingly accepted by both sides and it has contributed much to the improved spirit of co-operation between Treasury and spending departments. Yet relationships between the two also constitute a mixed-motive game. Each can both help and harm the other immeasurably. They need each other but they also need to get around one another. Their conflicts are rooted in the institutional differences that separate those whose criteria for success depend on spending (and hopefully accomplishing) more, and those whose first obligation is to keep spending (and hence taxes) within acceptable limits. Their co-operation works through membership in a common society where some perform the substantive operations and others authorize the necessary funds.

The Nuclear Family: The Treasury

No one doubts that H.M. Treasury plays the central role in the expenditure process. But beyond this simple and important statement lie vast, uncharted realms of political life. One way to begin coming to grips with this ‘most British institution’ might be to list the Treasury’s formal powers. However, as one zealous Parliamentary committee discovered, definitions of these powers are scarcely to be found in documents, much less statutes. ‘What is called “Treasury control” is better described as a complex of administrative practice … empiric rather than theoretical.’ 1

The Earthly City: Cabinets, Politicians and other Worldly Men

If nothing else, the preceding chapters should have helped dispel the simplistic view held by many outsiders and a few exministers: the expenditure process does not turn on a minister successfully putting his case to the Treasury. We have tried to show how a vast amount of expenditure business is conducted between Treasury and department officials, men who are familiar with each other and each other’s strategies. Over most of this bargaining, ministers serve as ex officio presiding officers.

Idylls of the Constitution

Continuity and chance have been our themes. But which is which and is either improvement? And, more important, can there be improvement? There has been no shortage of brave new styles, white-hot technological revolutions, and new looks in British government. We began our research against the soot-caked facade of Whitehall; as we finish, the black smudgy face has been sandblasted into its original, pristine appearance. Even the Treasury building in Great George Street looks brighter. Fresh bodies — or a whited sepulchre? Inside the ‘with it’ post-Fulton Civil Service Department, the ancient varnished panelling of the old Admiralty Building has been overlaid with plum and white trim. Beyond the brilliant, plastic reception area and its crimson furniture lie ministers’ offices straight out of Habitat’s catalogue, magenta chairs like quicksand and tables which defy anyone to sit around them. It is change of a sort, but what does it signify? Is PAR just a new bit of plum and white trim on the old ways, CPRS another piece of mod administrative furniture which no one can figure out how to use? For show or for real can the constitution accommodate these and other strange growths on the body politic?

PESC and Parliament: New Machines for Old Problems

British government during the last ten years has been particularly fecund with new mechanisms in the expenditure process. Claims for these innovations vary from the totally euphoric to the utterly cynical; a recent PESC white paper has been variously described as ‘probably the most important state document of the year’ and ‘flogging a dead mouse’.1