Peter Barberis

The New Public Management and a New Accountability

There has long been a disparity between the practice and the neo-Diceyan doctrine of accountability in British central government. This article shows that the New Public Management (NPM), while not itself the root cause of such disparity, has nevertheless both exacerbated and further exposed existing fault-lines. This much is evident from an examination of NPM’s theoretical bearings and from brief case studies of the Child Protection Agency and the Prison Service. Reflecting broad and deep-seated forces, the NPM is unlikely to disappear. Thus although there are certain attractions in retaining neo-Diceyan assumptions, it may be more appropriate to reconstruct the formal doctrine. Drawing upon Spiro’s notion of ‘multicentric’ accountability and within the context of calls for wider constitutional reform, the article sketches the basis for a new doctrine, having regard to relevant moralities and practicalities.

The Civil Service: continuity and change:

The White paper The Civil Service: Continuity and Change (Cm 2627) (Cabinet Office 1994) was published in July 1994. It was the latest in a series of major policy documents in recent years, the most recent instalment of what has been called Whitehall’s management revolution. As Sir Robin Butler has said (1993, p398), this management revolution did not ’spring on to the stage, fully formed, in 1976, 1979 or on any other date.’ Rather there has been a process of gradual and accelerating change in the shape of each new initiative. These initiatives have been well chronicled and widely analysed (Metcalf and Richards 1990; Massey 1993; Pollitt 1993; Greer 1994; O’Toole and Jordan (eds) 1995). They include the setting up of executive agencies and the separation of policy from operations; competition between different suppliers; the greater use of internal ,

The managerial imperative: Fifty years’ change in UK public administration

For at least fifty years and from uncertain beginnings, management has steadily advanced to become a dominant feature across the public sector. Management is necessary and, when purposefully and judiciously applied, can be efficacious. But it lacks the constitutional bearings of the traditional public administration that it has in large measure displaced. And, in the absence of the “sudden death” market discipline of the private sector, from which many of its practices have been imported, management has often become the self-serving entity described in this article as managerialism. Specified here in “ideal type” terms, managerialism is not so much the product of a conspiracy, rather that of a conjunction of factors, often lending plausibility to the need for more management. This article identifies some of these factors and their ill effects on the public sector.

Permanent Secretaries and Policy-Making in the 1980s

were thought often to lack imagination, ingenuity or sheer competence effectively to assist ministers in grappling with the issues of the day, sometimes obstructing rather than facilitating the objectives of democratically elected governments. Such views were given colour by the testimonies of ministers from both Left and Right, albeit with varying degrees of intensity and with differing emphasis as to the precise nature of the problem, be it an impersonal, institutional, conservatism inherent to bureaucracy or the active connivance of an elite group of policy saboteurs. If the conspiratorial thesis propounded by Brian Sedgemore in his proposed amendment to the English Report (1977) failed to find majority support in the Committee, the looser notion of ’government by civil servants’ nevertheless had a wider resonance among contemporaries. Fifteen years later such allegations, even in their milder form, seem overdrawn, perhaps fanciful. In his weighty treatise Middlemas (1991, p.422) observes wryly that mandarins have been relieved of an old incubus: no longer

Civil society, virtue, trust: implications for the public service ethos in the age of modernity

Laments about the decline of public morality and the public service ethos have found expression from across the political spectrum. The age of modernity (or post-modernism) makes more difficult, though by no means impossible, the maintenance of a civil society in which ‘virtue’ and ‘trust’. feed the public service ethos. Indeed modernity has greater need for civil society, virtue and trust at exactly the same time as their stock are receding. Governments have, among other things, applied indiscriminately the ‘heavy’ regulatory regimes necessary to deal with impropriety, in the process stifling the public service ethos. Virtue cannot be commanded; trust is an elusive ‘commodity’. Neither can be secured by administrative fiat, though government can help to create conditions conducive to their nourishment - or, more decisively, stifle their growth. Heavier regulatory regimes and more elaborate codes are understandable and perhaps rational responses to malfunctioning but, if pressed too far, become counterproductive. There should be a retreat from the excesses of ‘management by numbers’. Leadership remains important but, in the age of modernity, no longer suffices as the talisman. There must be greater emphasis upon citizenship.

The 1964 General Election and the Liberals' False Dawn

The Liberal revival of the early 1960s gave the party good reason for optimism about the 1964 general election. Financially and organisationally the Liberal party was in reasonable shape; there had been a vigorous outpouring of policy; and in Jo Grimond there was a leader who, in terms of personal appeal, could match his rivals. But in spite of receiving more votes and a greater share of the poll than at any previous post-war election, the party failed decisively to increase its presence at Westminster. The electoral system, jibes about ‘wasted votes’ and, arguably, ‘policy theft’ by the other parties may be cited by way of explanation. Moreover the Liberals under Grimond had in certain respects appeared closer to Labour than ever before; certainly his reforming demeanour was similar to that of Harold Wilson. In the aftermath of the election, Grimond resurrected his earlier call for a realignment of the centre-left—this time more tentatively and to little effect. His party had not done quite well enough to hold the balance in the Commons. The false dawn was not inevitable, though.

Introduction: The 1964 General Election—the ‘Not Quite, But’ and ‘But Only Just’ Election

Polling in the British general election of 1964 took place on 15 October. It had been almost exactly five years since the election of 1959—not quite the only occasion that a parliament had lasted its maximum legally permitted duration, but the first of only two such instances in peacetime during the twentieth century. It was not quite the first general election in which television featured prominently, the 1959 contest usually being seen as having marked the watershed. But 1964 heightened its significance. Nor did the election of 1964 quite bring within the fold the first post-war generation of voters. Most of them had to wait until 1970 before they cast their first votes in a national election. But the appeal to youth was nevertheless a feature in 1964, perhaps more so than in any previous election. The election brought to an end 13 years of Conservative government—not quite the longest unbroken period in office exclusive to one party during the twentieth century, but the longest to that point, surpassed only later by the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997. In 1964 the Conservatives polled better than had seemed likely a few months earlier, though not quite well enough to remain in office. Nor did the Liberal party quite make the breakthrough that many had believed to be within their grasp—but they captured a greater share of the popular vote than at any time since 1929. So in the end it was a victory for Labour, Harold Wilson becoming the party’s third prime minister—but only just. The change of government was by no means unexpected. Although the Conservatives drew close and even slightly ahead of Labour in some of the opinion polls conducted during the summer and early autumn of 1964, it had been over three

Echoes of Administrative History: Three Cadences

Works by Samuel Finer, Oliver MacDonagh and Maurice Wright illustrate different dimensions of influence in the genre of administrative history. In chronicling the deeds of Sir Edwin Chadwick, a high profile nineteenth century civil servant, Finer demonstrated the purchase of (Benthamite) ideas upon the role and organization of government. No less so he set new standards in administrative biography, mobilising a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Oliver MacDonaghs contribution to administrative history was not so much a body of empirical material as an explanatory tool. Whatever its weaknesses, his model of government growth stoked controversy, providing a foil for his critics as well as inspiration for his advocates. The simple elegance of his model as an ‘ideal type’ gave it an extensive applicability beyond the period for which it was developed. Maurice Wrights work on the mid-nineteenth century Treasury was more in the Finer mould, setting new standards for the study of public agencies, based as it was upon a careful sifting of archive sources. Thus he successfully challenged previously held assumptions about the ability of the Treasury to control an important area of public expenditure. No serious scholar ever again took Treasury power at face value.

Editorial Constitutional change

The British constitution has long tormented its observers, champions and critics alike. It is an enigma. As a single, codified set of written rules it has no existence; yet there are a number of important documents, such as the Parliament Act, 1911 and Questions of Procedure for Ministers, formulated in the 1940s though becoming publicly available for the first time only in 1992. It is said to rest heavily upon convention and this is true; but closer inspection often shows that the nature and origins of particular conventions were never quite what they were later assumed to have been. The constitution seems at times almost

The Keynesian Revolution in Whitehall: A Study in Public Policy

This paper examines some of the public policy implications of the debate about the Keynesian Revolution. This it does by testing more recent (revisionist) interpretations which have challenged traditional (Keynesian) beliefs that a revolution took place. It is argued that the notion of a revolution remains broadly serviceable: and that some of the revisionists have overstated their case, while providing valuable correctives to the cruder varieties of Keynesian interpretation.