The UK public sector faces an unprecedented long-term challenge. A decade of plenty in the public finances has been followed by a decade and more of austerity. Public services are undergoing long-term annual spending cuts even as demographic changes create soaring demand in health, education and adult care. The challenge for the public sector is how to radically transform and adapt to the new era while avoiding the mistakes of previous reform programmes. In this first comprehensive 'bird's eye' account of public sector reform supported by studies from over 400 official sources, the book offers an invaluable practical guide to all those in the public, private and voluntary sectors grappling with the twin challenges of public spending austerity and the pressure to transform public services and ensure they are 'fit for purpose.'

This comprehensively revised replacement volume for Robert Pyper's popular text The British Civil Service explains and assesses the impact on the civil service of the historic Whitehall unitary model, the New Public Management of Thatcher and Major and the modernisation agenda of the Blair government. It provides a broad-ranging introduction to the civil service today and of the demands and pressures it faces from political leaders, policy-makers and citizen-users within the multi-governmental context of devolution and EU membership.

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Product Description: Richard A. Chapman is perhaps one of the most distinguished scholars in public administration in the United Kingdom. Moreover his work has invariably reflected practical concerns, some of which, particularly in relation to the ethical behaviour of officials and ministers, open government, and administrative and political reform, are of immediate constitutional importance...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: At no time has the British Civil Service faced more fundamental and far-reaching changes than during the 1980s and 1990s. This volume brings together the work of a number of leading specialist contributors, each focusing upon a particular aspect of change...read more

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Product Description: This work addresses the social construction of power inside the British state by using a quantative analysis of the social origins and career patterns of higher-level civil servants. It investigates the formulation of policies in four different social service ministries.

Product Description: Permanent secretaries are the most senior of Britain's civil servants. This work examines the role and functions of the post and summarizes the development of the office. Certain aspects of the development of the higher civil service are discussed in the wider context of the state...read more

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 Description: An introduction to the historical development, nature, organization and role of the British civil service and an analysis of its importance as a political institution. The key precepts of permanency, neutrality and ministerial responsibility are outlined and a comparison made between the British civil service and other executives...read more

Product Description: Focussing on the restructuring of the state sector in the UK, this book investigates the implications for labour relations between the state as employer and the civil service unions, arguing that in the past decade the civil service has been politicised as never before...read more

Product Description: The 1966-68 Fulton Committee set wide-ranging guidelines for the wholesale reform of the British Civil Service. This book is the account of the Committee's work. Geoffrey Fry obtained access to the Committee papers a decade before the customary 30 year rule on government documents expired...read more

Product Description: Sir Henry Taylor's classic treatise The Statesman, originally published in 1836, is the first modern book to be devoted to the subject of public administration. It has been read and studied by generations for its keen insights into the relationship between public administrators and elected officials in a democracy...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: In this controversial work, Kevin Theakston examines the "Yes Minister"-style accounts of civil service obstruction to Labour government policies popularized by Tony Benn and Richard Crossman. He argues that in fact Labour's problems and failures in office are largely political in origin...read more