The Anglo-American Tradition

Abstract

The Anglo-American tradition is perhaps the most difficult to characterize. Although there are common roots, there has been a divergence between the United Kingdom and other Westminster systems and the United States. There are common roots among these cases, including a contractarian conception of the state, an emphasis on the separation of politics and administration, an emphasis on management rather than law in the role definition of public administrators, and less commitment to uniformity. But these common values are interpreted and implemented differently in the different countries. For example, the United States has a more developed system of administrative law than do most of the Westminster systems. All these administrative systems, however, have been more receptive to the ideas of New Public Management (NPM) than have other governments, although the United States and Canada had implemented many of those ideas long before NPM was developed.