The Civil Service

by Keith Dowding

Overview

Radical reforms of the civil service during the 1980s and 90s have broken up the old unified hierarchical structures. In their place are peripheral agencies concerned with policy implementation and a central core comcerned with policy-making. The radical reforms are described and assessed in terms of the public choice and public management theories which underpin them. Bureau-maximizing and bureau-shaping models are used to predict the directions we should expect the reforms to take and their likely success. The key central chapter of the book examines the equivocal use of the term "efficiency" used to justify the managerial changes. This is the first textbook which critically examines theories of bureaucracy together with an introductory and descriptive account of the civil service today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415075688
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/07/1995
Series:	Theory and Practice in British Politics
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Keith Dowding is Lecturer in Public Choice and Public Policy at the London School of Economics.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: the civil service and the state 2 Hierarchy: Weber and the old model 3 Efficiency: its meaning and its abuse 4 Budget-maximizing: evidence of and ending it 5 Bureau-shaping: the new model and the new manager 6 Policy-making: civil servants in the crossfire 7 European Union: new opportunities 8 Accountability: myths and empirical evidence