The Political Administration of Economic Decline: British Central Government Since the 1960s

Abstract

Most British public administration textbooks still seem to conclude with discussion of the way ahead after the Fulton Report on the Civil Service; of the creation of new giant departments and semi-independent agencies; or of improving techniques for policy analysis and the medium-term planning of public expenditure. Yet to the designers of Whitehall these are the themes of a bygone age: tunes played with gusto in the late '60s and early '70s which quickly became quite unfashionable. A more pessimistic, pragmatic style has long since replaced the optimistic rationalism of that distant-seeming period. The present paper seeks to map this change by identifying some of the key structural elements underlying the watershed of the mid-1970s.1 In so doing certain tentative parallels (and differences) are identified as between the British and U.S. public sectors.