Stephen Cope

Globalization, new public management and the enabling State: Futures of police management

Explores the links between processes of globalization and new public management (NPM), and examines their effects on the management of the police in particular. Assesses whether managerial unity or managerial disunity will characterize the future of police management. Looks at the effects of globalization on academic disciplines; the role of the State in an era of globalization; the rise of NPM; the effects of NPM on the management of the British police; the implications of police management reform for the police; and future scenarios of police management.

Reforming the police in Britain: New public management, policy networks and a tough “old bill”

Since the late 1970s the public sector in Britain has been subject to major reforms, which have been consistent with the prominent international trend of bringing new public management into government. The police service has escaped significant reform, particularly when compared with other policy areas. But in 1993 the Conservative government put forward a series of police reform measures, corresponding largely to the tenets of new public management. However, despite political commitment to reform, the implementation of many of the reform proposals has been successfully resisted by the police. Provides an explanation of the attempt to reform the police service by using a policy networks approach.

Regulating Collaborative Government: Towards Joined-Up Government?

This article examines the role of regulatory agencies in the development of joined-up government. It argues that they have the potential to both control and influence those agencies they regulate, and consequently constitute potentially significant catalysts for joined-up government. However, there are dangers that rivalry between regulatory agencies (and their different sponsors) and non-collaborative regulatory regimes (including game-playing and regulatory capture) may frustrate such moves towards joined-up government. It also argues that joined-up government requires joined-up regulation, otherwise so-called “wicked problems” that spread across the joins of government are likely to remain unsolved, or at best partially solved. Moves towards joined-up government, including joined-up regulation, are likely to be hindered by the way in which the state is functionally organised and the entrenched interests of politicians, bureaucrats and professionals that have sustained such an organisational and functional carve-up of the state. Consequently progress towards joined-up government, if the past is anything to go by, is likely to be slow and possibly more aspirational than real.

The Audit Commission and Public Services: Delivering for Whom?

This article examines the role of the Audit Commission in the delivery of public services. It charts the changing role of the Audit Commission since its inception in 1983 from that of a financial watchdog to a delivery monitor. Though its impact upon public services generally has increased, its impact is uneven between public services because of their different regulatory regimes. The authors conclude that the public, however defined, has very little influence upon the regulation of public services—despite official rhetoric. Consequently, the role of the public in regulating the delivery of public services represents a relatively excluded and even forgotten dimension, thus undermining claims made by the Audit Commission of acting in the public interest when monitoring the delivery of public services.

Modernising Regulation or Regulating Modernisation? The Public, Private and Voluntary Interface in Adult Social Care

Regulation is a very significant form of managing public services in Britain, as central government increasingly relies upon regulatory agencies and mechanisms to measure and improve the performance of agencies delivering public services. The present Labour Governments modernisation strategy has strengthened the key role of state-sponsored regulation of public services, including social care. A key plank to its modernisation agenda facing public services, and underpinned by Third Way thinking, is a move towards partnerships and collaborative governance embracing public, private and voluntary sector bodies in the delivery of public services. In the case of adult social care, this push furthers moves towards a mixed economy of welfare, where ideological ‘state-versus-market’ arguments take backstage to managerialist discussions about ‘what works’. Public service regulation represents a ‘third way’ between state and market provision of public services. Our preliminary research findings support the view that regulation of adult social care, though not new nor without its tensions, has been and is being transformed as New Labours modernisation programme of reforming public services increasingly takes hold, and that the transformed adult social care regulatory regime is consistent with and informed by Third Way thinking.

Restructuring Local Government in Hampshire: A Case of Mistaken Community Identity?

This article examines the impact of the idea of community identity upon the Local Government Review in England. It considers the extent to which the notion of community identity was built into the Local Government Review nationally and, moreover, locally in Hampshire, and the extent to which it shaped the outcomes of the Local Government Review. Three conceptions of community identity are examined - affective, effective and deliberative community identity - and their interplay assessed in shaping the process of restructuring local government. The article argues that the issue of community identity figured prominently in the early stages of the Local Government Review, but faded away as it got caught up with the political machinations of central government, local authorities and political parties.

Analysing Criminal Justice Policy-Making: Towards a Policy Networks Approach?

This chapter examines the increasingly fashionable and salient concept of policy networks as a way of understanding criminal justice policymaking. More broadly, network analysis has been an increasingly prominent form of analysis in understanding economic, political and social life (Knoke, 1990; Law, 1992; Castells, 1996). Indeed Castells argued that ‘as a historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the information age are increasingly organized around networks’ (1996: 469). Networks are often portrayed as alternative forms of coordination to those of hierarchies and markets (Thompson et al., 1991; Maidment and Thompson, 1993; Jackson and Stainsby, 2000). In ideal terms, whereas the principle of command underpins hierarchies and that of competition underpins markets, it is the principle of cooperation, stemming from shared interests and interdependence, that underpins networks. In reality, of course, a specific system may be characterised by a mix of these three coordinating principles, with perhaps one such principle dominant (Hay, 1998: 39).

Getting to the top?:selection and training for senior managers in the police service

This paper examines the processes by which the senior police officers in England and Wales are chosen and prepared for their role. Based upon research interviews with a sample of chief constables and assistant chief constables, it develops a critical assessment of the quality of each of the three key stages in this respect: the selection of those considered to have the potential to become senior officers, senior management training, and the appointments process at police authority level. In the light of the assessments made, the paper considers alternative schemes to those which currently operate at each stage of the process.

Regulating the New Governance.

Abstract This article arises out of a research project that sought to assess the development of regulation within the public sector. It examines the forms and impact of the regulatory systems that now operate within the public sector focusing on the further education sector. The research project developed out of an awareness that the increase in various forms of regulation and control by central government, that was begun under the Conservative government prior to 1997, has continued under successive Labour administrations. The project sought to assess current forms of control, to examine the relationship between the regulators and the regulated, and to consider various alternative accounts of this relationship. It examined the regulatory regimes in such areas as health care, personal social services, policing, further education, probation, social security and housing. The project used a range of methods, including documentary research, questionnaires to local level managers and officers, and semistructured interviews with key individuals involved in the implementation of regulated services.

Changing Styles of Governance since 1979

In Chapter 2 we considered the structural context of governance under the Conservatives as providing one set of constraints within which specific areas of policy have emerged. This chapter discusses the issue of ‘styles’ of governance as constituting a closely related set of processes which, together with structure, have further formed the context of public policy in Britain since 1979. ‘Style’ is an elusive notion, difficult to pin down and open to a variety of interpretations. In the world of politics ‘style’ is often used to refer to the general style of a government: its style of policy-making, style of management, the style of leadership of the prime minister, etc. All of these meanings convey the ways in which government seeks to govern and the image it presents to the public. Having discussed the structures of governance in Chapter 2, in this chapter we concentrate on the styles of governance that have characterised the period since 1979. We shall place particular emphasis on the debates surrounding the following dimensions of governance as they have functioned under the Conservatives since 1979: (i) the concentration of power within central government; (ii) central-local government relations: (iii) managerialism (iv) theCitizen’s Charter.