Realizing the Democratic Potential of Quangos

Abstract

The platform that won Labour the general election in May 1997 reflected a mixture of economic caution, political morality and constitutional radicalism. Plans for devolution, decentralization, openness and the dispersal of power permeated Labour’s manifesto. A new social contract was to be drawn up between the governors and the governed. Given the anti-quango rhetoric of the pre-election build-up it was widely assumed that a central strand of the reform package would be an attack on the ‘quango-state’. Yet one of the first decisions of the new government was to pass over control of interest rates from an elected and parliamentary accountable minister to the unelected Bank of England. This paradox — the election of a government committed to democratization and the immediate transfer by that government of a crucial instrument of macroeconomic management to a quango — is that the move received virtually universal approval.