Introduction

Abstract

This book reports on a project financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which included two conferences between senior British and American politicians, public servants and academics as well as research in three British universities. One conference was held in England, at Ditchley, near Oxford, in 1969, and the other at Williamsburg, in Virginia, in 1971. The Carnegie project began by trying to answer a difficult question, though it was one which could be stated in familiar terms. It was: how can we decentralise public activities and yet ensure that those to whom these activities are devolved remain accountable? Managers appear to do this successfully in other organisations, especially private business. Can it be done in government too? ‘Big industry’ and ‘big government’ share a dilemma that was stated in the first book on the Carnegie project.¹ This contained the papers and the record of the discussion of the Ditchley Conference, which had forty participants, about half from Britain and half from the United States. The dilemma was this: Do we insist on holding all public and quasi-public bodies accountable in detail for what they do, and so destroy their initiative? Or do we insist on their autonomy, and so lose effective control over them?