Machinery of government and standards in public service: Teaching new dogs old tricks

Du Gay, Paul (2006). Machinery of government and standards in public service: Teaching new dogs old tricks. Economy and Society, 35(1) pp. 148–167.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140500465949

Abstract

For much of the last thirty years the main leitmotif animating Civil Service reform in the UK has been that efficiency and effectiveness in public services can be achieved by adapting management methods and practices derived from commercial enterprise. In the process of making the dreams and schemes of that plural singularity we have come to call `managerialism' operational though, something valuable appears to have been lost, and that something is the Civil Service as a unified `constitutional bureaucracy'. In this article I explore some of the unfortunate governmental and administrative consequences of these managerially minded reforms. In particular, I seek to highlight the continuing relevance of what have been routinely characterized as outmoded and anachronistic machineries of government, and to stress the importance of the increasingly forgotten core business of public administration: the running of a state and of a constitution.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI

About

• Item ORO ID
• 16008
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 0308-5147
• Keywords
• Public administration; Civil service; Local government; Public welfare; Management; Bureaucracy; Civil service reform; Political planning; Constitition and Philosophy; Government; Managerialism; Public service; Great Britain;
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) > Social Sciences and Global Studies
  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS)
• Depositing User
• Users 8955 not found.