Research Catalog
The civil service
- Title
- The civil service / Keith Dowding.
- Author
- Dowding, Keith M.
- Publication
- London ; New York : Routledge, 1995.
Items in the Library & Off-site
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Use in library | JN425 .D69 1995 | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- viii, 202 pages : illustrations; 22 cm.
- Summary
- Radical reform of the civil service during the 1980s and 1990s has broken up the unified hierarchical structures, leaving a central core concerned with making policies, and peripheral agencies for implementing them. The Civil Service provides an up-to-date critical introduction to the working of these bodies, combining descriptive history and theoretical explanation, with an emphasis on public-choice theory. The first part of the book concentrates on managerial issues. The second part focuses on policy-making and the role of the civil service in terms of theories about the modern state. Assessing the reforms in terms of the public-choice and managerial theories which underpin them, Keith Dowding uses budget-maximising and bureau-shaping models to predict the directions we can expect reforms to take in the future, and what their success might be.
- Central to the argument in The Civil Service is an examination of the term 'efficiency' in the context of the reforms. Comparing public choice 'rent-seeking' arguments with more traditional 'pluralist' accounts, the book examines the constitutional role of the civil service and its part in policy-making. This combination of the theories of bureaucracy with an account of the modern-day civil service will be essential reading for students of British politics and for civil servants themselves.
- Series Statement
- Theory and practice in British politics
- Uniform Title
- Theory and practice in British politics
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- 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.
- ISBN
- 041507567X
- 9780415075671
- 0415075688
- 9780415075688
- 9780203995433
- 0203995430
- LCCN
- 94048461
- OCLC
- ocm31754584
- 31754584
- SCSB-2064743
- Owning Institutions
- Princeton University Library