Abstract
This chapter summarises how public management reform during the Thatcher, Major and Blair administrations made savings in public expenditure; improved service quality; made government operations more efficient; and increased the likelihood that the chosen policies will be effective. During these 30 years, control of politicians over bureaucracy strengthened, public officials gained greater freedom from bureaucratic restraints to expand their opportunities to manage and government’s accountability to the legislature and citizenry for its policies and programmes increased. The Next Steps agencies reform, begun by the Thatcher Government and continued during the Major administration, had the potential for making accountability stronger in the areas in which they operated, and performance management produced a permanent evolution towards a government by measurement. The legal framework of the Civil Service was revised to include the Civil Service Management Code, as well as the Code of Conduct for Special Advisers. A process of codification was undertaken in order to protect administrative traditions and constitutional conventions. Problem related to ministerial responsibility raised for the changing of bureaucratic organization. These issues are analyzed by the author and in the conclusions the relationship between administrative traditions and managerial modernization is enhanced as a characteristic of these three decades.
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Castellani, L. (2018). Management and Tradition in the British Civil Service: Assessing Institutional Development—Issues and Conclusions. In: The Rise of Managerial Bureaucracy . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90032-2_5
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