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

Abstract

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.

We made a big mistake as to the realities of power.

Businessman consultant to the Government

Mr. East [businessman-adviser in the Treasury] will say how we ought to go about it and Mr. Couzens [Treasury undersecretary] will say what we are in fact doing.

Treasury Deputy Secretary introducing PAR to the Expenditure Committee (Steering Subcommittee), 27 January 1972

You’re always wondering if you shoot off your mouth about somebody else’s department the next minute you’ll meet that chap in committee or tête-à-tête and you have destroyed your relations with him.

A minister

It appears to us that adequate provision has not been made in the past for the organised acquisition of facts and information, and for the systematic application of thought, as preliminary to the settlement of policy and its subsequent administration.

Report on the Machinery of Government, 1918, Cmnd. 9230 p. 6