Transformations to the British State 1

1
Transformations to the British State 1

• How do we explain their introduction and their
  consequences?

2
3 explanations

• New public management explains the changes to
  the UK state in terms of a wider movement.
• The hollowing out of the state- stresses the
  unintended consequences of state reforms
• Multi-level governance stresses shifts above
  and below the UK state as well as similar state
  reforms to suggest that decision-making has
  become a process of governance. The lines
  between public and private have become blurred.

3

• Even at the most superficial level the British
  state has been massively transformed over the
  last twenty five years. Privatisation has seen
  the transfer to the private sector of previous
  state monopolies, the European Union has had an
  increasing impact on the content and direction of
  state policy quangos have become major spenders
  of public money the central organisations of the
  state government departments have been
  increasingly transformed into executive agencies,
  operating in a different fashion from previous
  forms of public management local government and
  the National Health Service (NHS) have seen major
  changes in their financing, management and formal
  structures and there has been a growing trend
  towards multi-organisational forms of policy
  implementation.
• (Gray, 2000 A Hollow State? (Heavy Demand)

4
Fashionable terms?

• Other terms could come into play as a means of
  explain similar changes in other countries eg
  globalisation, reinvention, hiving-off
• Pity the Westminster model which has been proved
  wrong all over again

5
Westminster Model - No single accepted definition
but characteristics include

• Accountability through free and fair elections
• Parliamentary sovereignty and a unitary state
• Majority party control
• Strong cabinet government
• Central government dominance
• Individual Ministerial Responsibility

6
Strong core executive through

• The reliance on representative democracy and
  parliamentary rather than popular supremacy
  except during elections.
• The first-past-the-post electoral system allowing
  an exaggerated majority and hence governing party
  control over Parliament.
• The power of the prime minister to control
  cabinet and hence ministers.
• A politically-neutral civil service which
  operates under the convention of IMR. That is,
  civil service decisions are made on the basis of,
  or anticipation of, ministerial wishes.

7
Ideal type?

• Power is centralised, elitist and top-down
• Snapshot of British polity in 1950s?
• Ideal type used as a means of departure or
  comparison with the real world?
• Strawman?

8
Coverage of the 3 approaches

• A selection from
• The application of private business approaches to
  public management
• Agencification, or the hiving-off of
  (peripheral) functions of the state
• Privatisation, or the transfer of public
  companies to the private sector
• A move from direct service provision to enabling
  and regulation
• The Europeanisation of the state
• Changes in territorial government
• The blurred boundaries between formal and
  informal decision making/ makers, and hence the
  stress on governance rather than government.
• Government without a centre. (see Gray, 2000)

9
Is NPM different?

• Focus is relatively limited (1-4?)
• No discussion of shifting governance?
• If anything, NPM is the biggest of bigger
  picture explanations
• Each model seeks to explain changes to the state
  as part of a grand theme
• Hogwood (1997 Ingenta) discussion provides the
  alternative to bear in mind

10
Hogwood, 1997

• One approach would be to argue that there is no
  grand theme, at least in terms of original
  government intention. The changes to the
  machinery of government were not the working
  through of some blueprint which the Conservatives
  had when they came into office in 1979. Changes
  to the structure of central government
  departments were undertaken on a largely ad hoc
  basis.

11
Reforms to the Civil Service

• Take your pick from
• Attempts to reduce/ reclassify numbers
• 732000 1979 523000 2004
• Personalisation of promotion
• Delayering
• Rise in external sources of advice
• Market testing (see below)

12
Next Steps initiative context/ caricature

• Before agencies were created, the Civil Service
  was a large monolith governed by a body of
  centrally laid down rules, even though it was too
  big and diverse to be managed as a single entity.
  This led to a culture more focused on avoiding
  errors than improving results. The then Prime
  Minister commissioned her Efficiency Adviser, Sir
  Robin Ibbs, to suggest how to move matters on.
  (Better Government Services http//www.number-10.g
  ov.uk/files/pdf/opsr-agenciesm.pdf

13
Background

• Efficiency strategies headed by Rayner
• Small scale reviews by high flyers
• Larger scale Financial Management Initiative
  precursor to Next Steps
• Civil servants more accountable?
• Managing own budgets
• Emphasis on training and VFM

14

• Next Steps Review suggests FMI popular. Also
  suggests
• That senior managers were adept at policy advice/
  formulation but had little management/
  implementation experience
• That while senior CS respond to priorities set by
  Ministers and the demands of Parliament, the rise
  of media and public demands for information has
  led to Ministerial overload
• That while there are internal or budget pressures
  in departments, these are not related to
  achievements
• That there are few external pressures for
  performance improvement and
• That the CS as a whole is too big and too diverse
  to be managed as a single entity
• That attempts to manage centrally (in terms of
  set budgets and objectives but also through e.g.
  recruitment, pay, promotion, grading, etc)
  undermined the abilities of individual managers
  to work effectively.

15
Recommendations

• agencies should be created to carry out the
  executive functions of government within a policy
  and resource framework set by a department
• Ministers free from day-to-day responsibility
• Chief executives free from day-to-day
  interference
• Chief Execs appointed through open competition
• Contract based on performance related pay as
  means to enforce targets (ie not through courts)

16
Effects

• How many Agencies created? 78 of CS in executive
  or similar agencies in 2001
• Success?
• How did it affect ministerial contact and
  parliamentary accountability?

17
Accountability what does it mean?

• Redirectory - passing the query to the
  appropriate person
• Reporting keeping Parliament informed on a
  routine basis
• Explanatory as in explaining something that has
  gone wrong or has been identified as a problem.
  So, keeping Parliament informed on an exceptional
  basis.
• Amendatory if something is identified as going
  wrong, then this suggests some action to make
  things right
• Sacrificial i.e. ministerial resignation
• 1 and 2 the norm, 3-5 exceptional?

18
Variability

• Structures some report directly, some to CS
• Personal meetings vary from zero to 43 (Prisons)
• Variability in role of ministers in answering
  routine PQs
• Variations in parliamentary interest
• More accountability?

19
Minster and CS relationship

• Relevance of Public Choice
• Niskanens Budget maximisers replaced by bureau
  shapers
• Next Steps in senior CS interests (hiving off to
  focus on policy/ status/ work)?
• Ministerial interests? Shuffling off low
  politics while keeping control? Eg CSA and
  Prisons?

20
Quangos/ Local Government

• What is a quango?
• A public body is not part of a government
  department, but carries out its function to a
  greater or lesser extent at arms length from
  central government. Ministers are ultimately
  responsible to Parliament for the activities of
  the bodies sponsored by their department and in
  almost all cases (except, for example, where
  there is separate statutory provision) ministers
  make the appointments to their boards.
  Departments are responsible for funding and
  ensuring good governance of their public bodies

21
4 types

• Executive NDPBs (206 in 2003) established in
  statute and carrying out administrative,
  regulatory and commercial functions, they employ
  their own staff and are allocated their own
  budgets.
• Advisory NDPBs (422) provide independent and
  expert advice to ministers on particular topics
  of interest. They do not usually have staff but
  are supported by staff from their sponsoring
  department. They do not usually have their own
  budget, as costs incurred come within the
  departments expenditure.
• Tribunal NDPBs (33) have jurisdiction in a
  specialised field of law. They are usually
  supported by staff from their sponsoring
  department and do not have their own budgets.
• Boards of Visitors (150) watchdogs of the
  prison system. Their duty is to satisfy
  themselves as to the state of the prison
  premises, their administration and the treatment
  of prisoners. The sponsoring department meets the
  costs.

22
Definitions vary

• Numbers down but expenditure up?
• Political imperative to narrow definition
• Contrast with Denmark
• Numbers up if we go beyond governmental
  definition to include local public spending
  bodies largely introduced to subvert local
  authorities?

23
Quangos replace local authorities

• Urban Development Corporations taking over
  local development and planning controls regarding
  regeneration
• Housing Action trusts which could take over and
  regenerate housing estates
• HE colleges and polytechnics, sixth-form
  colleges, city technology colleges
• Grant maintained Schools
• Training and Enterprise Councils
• Careers Service pathfinders (local careers
  services were formerly run by councils)
• Police Service transferred to more Home
  Office-influenced authorities
• In Scotland the responsibility for water
  provision has been removed from local government,
  while in England and Wales it was privatised

24
Privatisation

• Asset Sales - 60 billion?
• Public employment in nationalised industries in
  1979 1.85 million
• 2002 21 to 242 thousand
• Other forms 2 waves of competitive tendering
• PFI value 3.3 billion up to 1997, 36.7 billion
  since

25
NHS Reform checks most NPM boxes

• Developing performance measurements / moving from
  output to outcome measures
• Developing private sector management styles (in
  part as a means of ensuring accountability
  following devolution of responsibility)
• Developing market competition (the
  purchaser-provider split) and hence a focus on
  contracts rather than hierarchy
• Agencification before Next Steps
• External appointments in the civil service (it
  has the most of any Whitehall department)
• The general promotion of greater efficiency in
  the use of resources
• The separation of steering and rowing
  (although this was apparent long before 1979)

26
Main reforms

• Pre-1984 context
• Griffiths Management reforms
• NHS Crisis (NB demographics)
• Quest for efficiency to match new money
• Working For Patients and purchaser/ provider
  split
• Labour and territorial dimension

27
New Public Management

• Does it explain the main changes to the British
  State?
• Is NPM in the UK part of an International Trend?
• Europeanisation and devolution later.
• Focus

28
NPM

• The application of private business approaches to
  public management (civil service reform, NHS
  reform)
• Agencification, or the hiving-off of
  (peripheral) functions of the state (Next Steps,
  quangos)
• Privatisation, or the transfer of public
  companies to the private sector
• A move from direct service provision to enabling
  and regulation.

29
International Trend?

• Very convincing at face value
• Apparent in most OECD countries in some form
• Hood The rise of new public management over
  the past 15 years is one of the most striking
  international trends.

30
Hood, 1991

• Its usefulness lies in its convenience as a
  shorthand name for the set of broadly similar
  administrative doctrines which dominated the
  bureaucratic reform agenda in many of the OECD
  group of countries from the late 1970s.

31
7 aspects

• Hands-on professional management (e.g. civil
  service reforms, Griffiths NHS reforms) i.e. a
  named individual is held responsible for
  decisions (to ensure accountability). Hood
  contrasts this with a diffusion of power.
• Explicit standards and measures of performance
  (i.e. quantitative targets e.g. Public Service
  Agreements) again as a means of accountability.
• Greater emphasis on output controls i.e. a
  stress on results rather than procedures (as
  above)
• Shift to disaggregation to create manageable
  units (Next Steps)
• Shift to greater competition in the public sector
  (NHS reform, CCT)
• Stress on private sector styles of management
  the move from military-style public service
  ethic to more flexible system of hiring and
  rewards
• Doing more with less

32
Explaining International Trend

• This is trickier why did NPM take off?
• Rise of New Right? (but NB Labour and NZ,
  Australia)
• Fashionable (but why did it endure?)
• Conducive conditions eg dissatisfaction with
  state, high taxes
• Fiscal crises associated with large state

33
Explaining International Trend

• NPM portable/ neutral valence issue?
• The NPM missionary
• Policy tranfer 1 international organisations
• Policy transfer 2 ready made solution
• Value of privatisation

34
Evidence Against

• Vague resemblance across countries
• NPM core restricted to few countries
• Endurance of national styles
• Different business methods Anglo-American,
  Japanese, German

35
NPM explaining UK?

• Vague term
• No single intellectual provenance
• Detail?
• Example of regulation
• Explanation
• Too much focus on inevitability of modernisation

36
NPM explaining UK?

• Incomplete policy transfer
• Coercive transfer
• Ideological gloss
• Politicisation
• Privatisation
• Next Steps
• NHS
• PFI
• Quangos

37

• Goldsmith and Page, (1997 150)
• While many reforms reflected some general overall
  principles, the precise contours of the reforms
  reflected more ephemeral interpretations about
  how such principles might be applied as well as
  the political conditions for their acceptance.

38
The Hollowing Out of the State

• Stresses unintended consequences
• Irony of hollowing out for Conservatives and
  Labour
• Rhodes argument is polemic?

39
Meaning of hollowing

• The phrase the hollowing out of the state
  suggests the British state is being eroded or
  eaten away However I refer to processes which
  contribute to a hollowing out of the state and I
  do not suggest the era of the hollow state has
  arrived.

40
4 trends

• Privatisation and limiting the scope and forms of
  public intervention.
• The loss of functions by central and local
  government departments to alternative service
  delivery systems (such as agencies)
• The loss of functions by British government to
  European Union institutions.
• Limiting the discretion of public servants
  through the new public management, with its
  emphasis on managerial accountability, and
  clearer political control through a sharper
  distinction between politics and administration.

41
4 themes

• Redefining Public Intervention
• Alternative Service Delivery Systems
• The Europeanisation of Everything
• New Public Management

42
Unintended Consequences

• Fragmentation
• Accountability
• Catastrophe
• A decline in central capability

43
Is the British State Really Hollowing Out?

• What does hollowing mean?
• Formulation/ implementation?
• Europeanisation
• (1) Not one way
• (2) Variance by policy area
• (3) Similar implementation problems

44
Is the British State Really Hollowing Out?

• Lean state not hollow
• Shuffling off low politics
• Rejuvenated state
• Privatisation government did not control
  Nationalised Industries anyway
• Overload thesis
• The centre can fill as well as hollow

45
Is the British State Really Hollowing Out?

• Agencies one step removed can be taken back
• Rolling back state misleading irony of
  increased regulation
• Hollowing better applied to local government?
• Local government had some autonomy

46
Is the British State Really Hollowing Out?

• Quangos
• Rise of new magistracy?
• Key point is responsiveness not accountability?
• Not al quangos out of control e.g. FE
• Quangos not all bad e.g. EAGA
• Arms length necessary?

47
Rhodes Final Note

• Defence of hollowing as
• (1) Alternative to Westminster model
• (2) Qualification to the assumption of Blair's
  presidentialism.

48
New Labour and the Problem of Governance
49
Rhodes evaluation

• The doubling or the core executive or the
  Cabinet Office unit is a response to perceived
  weakness
• A focus on modernisation and joined-up government
  is a reaction to a lack of central strategic
  capability

50
Richards and Smith, 2004

• Labour recognised the problem of governance in
  1992 ie while in opposition
• Recognised not only as a problem of hollowing
  following Conservative reforms
• Also problem of departmentalism or silos or
  policy chimneys

51
Departmentalism

• Refers to the insular nature of departments and
  the unintended effects of one departments
  activity on another
• E.g. Excluding pupils from school (to achieve
  exam targets) has an effect on policing
• Punitive effect of policing on health policy
• Protection of agricultural interests at expense
  of human health (CJD)

52
Labours response

• Joined up government based on a model of central
  control (No. 10/ cabinet office)
• Evolving or mutually beneficial relationship
  between the public and private sectors (i.e.
  partnerships as opposed to mere contracting out
• Key measures Modernising Government,
  Comprehensive Spending Review, Public Service
  Agreements

53
CSR

• An important conclusion from the CSR has been
  that dividing up responsibility for overlapping
  policy areas between several departments can make
  government intervention less effective. Giving
  individual departments separate responsibility
  for tackling one part of a multi-faceted problem
  is a recipe for failure

54
CSR/ Modernising measures

• A raft of cross-cutting budgets or joint working
  relationship plans for a wide range of policies

55
Joined-up policies

• Pre-school education
• New Deal for Communities/ Neighbourhood renewal
• Asylum Support
• Welfare to Work
• Coordination on the CJS
• Countryside policy
• UK Anti-Drugs Co-ordinator (Czar)

56
Joined-up policies

• Social Exclusion Unit
• Womens Unit
• Performance and Innovation Unit
• Crime Reduction Programme
• Customs/ Inland Revenue
• Small Business Service

57
Local level joining up

• Health and social services authorities to put a
  proportion of their funds in a pooled budget.
• Local authorities, the police, the Probation
  Service and health authorities to work together
  in Youth Offending Teams

58
Sure Start as example. Targets

• 1 Increase in personal, social development (local
  government SW and education?)
• 2 Reduction is smoking mothers (health education
  reinforced in GP/ education settings?)
• 3 Improving speech and learning (educational but
  through GP surgeries/ health visitors?)
• 4 12reduction in proportion of young children
  living in households where no one is working
  (DFEE plus Treasury (benefits, tax credits)

59
Examples of targets in other areas

• Sport
• Under 18 conception rate
• Air quality
• Economic performance of regions
• European Security
• Conflict orevention

60
Evaluation reforms

• Richards and Smith
• After 2 years Labour expressed doubts.
• After 4, abandoned joined up government to focus
  on delivery of public services through PSA
  targets.

61
PSA targets 4 points

• Stress between diverse delivery and central
  intervention
• Weak role of centre? Target responsibility moved
  from No. 10 to Treasury
• Focus on top-down implementation?
• Unintended consequences of doing well?

62
Labours contribution to hollowing out?

• Restatement of quasi-markets in NHS
• Rejection of CS advice?
• Rise of voluntary sector?
• Bank of England independence
• Devolution and regional governance
• EU social chapter and ECHR
• Abandonment of joined-up government and
  short-termism

63
Multi-level governance

• Extension of Rhodes argument without worry over
  hollowing out?
• While there is a view that states are losing
  control in the context of governance, the
  alternative view focuses on new state strategies
  for coping with the challenge of governance
  (Bache and Flinders, 2004 36).
• But what exactly is MLG?

64
Multi-Level Governance

M L G
MLG
MLG
65
Defining MLG

• Governance suggests a blurred distinction between
  formal and informal (or public and private?)
  modes of decision-making, while multi-level
  suggests that this occurs on more than one level!
  
• If it means everything then it means nothing?

66
Definitions

• The definitions in the literature stress
• MLG as continuous negotiation at several
  territorial tiers
• Mobilisation of resources across the
  public-private border
• Policy-making transformed from state-centred/
  driven to a complex mix of hierarchies, networks
  and markets

67
Set up in contrast to WM

• Its over-emphasis on the political elite, its
  narrow conception of politics, its simplistic
  assumptions about the location and focus of power
  leading to false dualities (eg cabinet v prime
  ministerial power, politicians v judiciary, etc.)
  and its essentially insular (domestic focus)
  (Bache and Flinders, 2004 33-4).

68
(No Transcript)
69
Two types of MLG?

• Type 1 dispersal of authority limited and
  relatively stable (as in discussion of devolution
  in UK)
• Type 2 complex, fluid patchwork of innumerable
  overlapping jurisdictions (as in quango state)

70
Issues with MLG the Emperors New Clothes?
71
Issues with MLG

• Descriptive or prescriptive?
• Still a dependence on government to explain
  governance (country level differences)
• Is negotiation necessary?
• Does MLG describe a lack of capacity to impose
  policy or a decision not to?

72
Issues with MLG

• How do we demonstrate the decision not to impose?
• Example of banking reform
• Governments using informal measures is nothing
  new?
• MLG argument it is the scale and intensity
  which is new

73
Issues with MLG

• Echoes policy communities literature on blurred
  boundaries on decision-making
• Yet crucial part of this literature is common
  interests and institutional norms
• Do MLG participants want the same thing?
• Pierre and Stoker (2000 43) put it It is not
  clear that most of those involved in government
  have the capacity or, indeed, even the desire
  to behave in tune with a governance mission
  statement and governing style.

74
Asymmetry?

• MLG and hollowing out suggest pluralism?
• Asymetric Power Model as alternative. 5
  features
• Structured inequality in British society
• A top-down view of democracy in central
  government
• The key resources still lie with the PM and
  chancellor.
• The constraints on executive power should not be
  exaggerated.
• So, while exchange relationships exist between
  governmental and non-governmental actors, these
  should be place within the context of Asymmetry.
  That is, governments have more resources than
  others and this determines the balance of power
  within modes of governance.

75
Practical Use for MLG discussion of Devolution
in Scotland

• Perhaps the best use of MLG comes in a practical
  sense in the recognition that policy areas are
  complex and subject to influence from multiple
  organisations at multiple levels of government.
• Examples
• Health
• Health related Issues
• Environment and Agriculture
• Economic Policy
• Higher Education

76
Revisiting the WM

• Critiques of WM do not dismiss it
• Importance of political attachment to WM
• 2 practical effects from Judge
• (1) WM sets the parameters for ministerial and CS
  action.
• (2) They act under the cover f the WM