Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom: Reinventing Whitehall? (Transforming Government)

Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom Reinventing Whitehall?

David Marsh, David Richards and Martin J. Smith

Transforming Government General Editor: R. A. W. Rhodes, Professor of Politics, University of Newcastle This important and authoritative new series arises out of the seminal ESRC Whitehall Programme and seeks to fill the enormous gaps in our knowledge of the key actors and institutions of British government. It examines the many large changes during the postwar period and puts these into comparative context by analysing the experience of the advanced industrial democracies of Europe and the nations of the Commonwealth. The series reports the results of the Whitehall Programme, a four-year project into change in British government in the postwar period, mounted by the Economic and Social Research Council. Titles include: Nicholas Deakin and Richard Parry THE TREASURY AND SOCIAL POLICY The Contest for Control of Welfare Strategy David Marsh, David Richards and Martin J. Smith CHANGING PATTERNS OF GOVERNANCE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Reinventing Whitehall? B. Guy Peters, R. A. W. Rhodes and Vincent Wright (editors) ADMINISTERING THE SUMMIT Administration of the Core Executive in Developed Countries R. A. W. Rhodes (editor) TRANSFORMING BRITISH GOVERNMENT Volume One: Changing Institutions Volume Two: Changing Roles and Relationships Martin J. Smith THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN BRITAIN Kevin Theakston LEADERSHIP IN WHITEHALL Kevin Theakston (editor) BUREAUCRATS AND LEADERSHIP Patrick Weller, Herman Bakvis and R. A. W. Rhodes (editors) THE HOLLOW CROWN Countervailing Trends in Core Executives

Transforming Government Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71580–2 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom Reinventing Whitehall? David Marsh Professor of Politics University of Birmingham

David Richards Lecturer in Politics University of Liverpool

and

Martin J. Smith Professor of Politics University of Sheffield

Foreword by R. A. W. Rhodes Director, ESRC Whitehall Programme, and Professor of Politics University of Newcastle

© David Marsh, David Richards and Martin J. Smith 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–79289–0 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marsh, David, 1946– Changing patterns of governance in the United Kingdom : reinventing Whitehall? / David Marsh, David Richards, and Martin J. Smith. p. cm. — (Transforming government) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–79289–0 1. Cabinet officers—Great Britain. 2. Civil service—Great Britain. I. Richards, David, 1968– II. Smith, Martin J. (Martin John), 1961– III. Title. IV. Transforming government (Palgrave (Firm)) JN405 .M37 2001 320.941—dc21 2001032123 10 10

9 09

8 08

7 07

6 06

5 05

4 04

3 03

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

2 02

1 01

To Emma, Jean and Suzy

Contents Foreword by R. A. W. Rhodes

ix

Acknowledgements

xii

1 Introduction

1

2 Culture and Power in Whitehall

14

3 Structural Change in Central Government

43

4 Departmental Cultures

69

5 Departments and the Core Executive

101

6 Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers

132

7 The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants

155

8 The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive

181

9 The Role of Europe

209

10 Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model

232

Appendix on Methods

251

Bibliography

254

Index

268

vii

Foreword: Transforming Government There are enormous gaps in our knowledge of the key actors and institutions in British government. We cannot do simple things like describing the work of ministers of state, permanent secretaries, and their departments. Also, there have been large changes in British government during the postwar period, such as: the growth of the welfare state; the professionalisation of government; the consequences of recession; the effects of New Right ideology; the impact of the European Union; the effects of new technology; the hollowing-out of the state; and the new public management with its separation of policy and administration. We do not know how these changes affected British government. And we cannot understand the effects of these changes by focusing only on Britain. We must also analyse the experience of the advanced industrial democracies of Europe and the Commonwealth. To repair these gaps in our knowledge and to explain how and why British government changed in the postwar period, the Economic and Social Research Council mounted the Whitehall Programme on ‘The Changing Nature of Central Government in Britain’ between 1994 and 1999. This series on ‘Transforming Government’ reports the results of that five-year research programme. The series has five objectives: • Develop theory – to develop new theoretical perspectives to explain why British government changed and why it differs from other countries. • Understand change – to describe and explain what has changed in British government since 1945. • Compare – to compare these changes with those in other EU member states and other states with a ‘Westminster’ system of government. • Build bridges – to create a common understanding between academics and practitioners. • Dissemination – to make academic research accessible to a varied audience covering sixth-formers and senior policy-makers. ix

x Foreword: Transforming Government

The book covers six broad themes: • Developing theory about the new forms of governance. • The hollowing-out of the state in Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth. • The fragmenting government framework. • The changing roles of ministers and the senior civil service. • Constitutional change. • New ways of delivering services. Apart from the now badly dated series on Whitehall departments produced by the Royal Institute of Public Administration, there are few studies of how central government departments work. There are some fine books on the Treasury, including Nicholas Deakin and Richard Parry’s study in this series, but little has been published on other departments. David Marsh, David Richards and Martin Smith admirably repair the gap with their study of the Home Office, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Social Security and the dear departed Department of Energy between 1974 and 1997. Based on interviews with 183 civil servants, ministers and interest group spokespeople, they provide an authoritative comparative analysis of how and why departments differ from one another. The authors focus on such questions as the importance of policy networks, the relationship between the prime minister and departments, fragmentation of the executive, and the extent to which the British state has been hollowed out. The first three chapters reporting their fieldwork deal with structural and cultural change in the four departments. Changes in policy are saved for a later volume. They then consider the role of departments in the core executive. Finally, they examine the role of such key actors as ministers and top civil servants before looking outwards at the effect of interest groups and the European Union. Among their many conclusions, three stand out. First, much remains the same. The extent of structural and cultural change varies between departments, with the Home Office lagging behind. Ministers and civil servants alike continue to speak the language of the Westminster model. Second, Whitehall remains federal, with most officials and ministers working inside their department. Finally, policy advice is no longer the exclusive privilege of top civil servants. This task has drifted outwards (to advisers) and downwards (to lower

Foreword: Transforming Government xi

grades of civil servants). Their overall conclusion is that British government remains marked by structured inequality in which a government subject to limited external constraints ‘knows best’. R. A. W. RHODES Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Acknowledgements This book owes its existence to the ESRC Whitehall programme. The programme, and a subsequent grant, not only funded (award numbers L124251023 and R00022657) the time to conduct the research but ensured that we had access to Whitehall. The success of the research owes much to the enthusiasm and hard work of Rod Rhodes. He provided support throughout the project, eased some sticky moments in terms of interviews and provided comments on the final draft. We would also like to thank the many officials and politicians who gave us their time. David Richards and Martin Smith, in particular, spent many months travelling the corridors of Whitehall and the leafy environs of south-east England speaking to retired and contemporary officials. They were invariably hospitable and, as readers will see, open about their views on the changing roles of officials and departments. Without their time and frankness there would have been no book. It is a credit to our ruling elite that we had very few refusals for interviews despite the many pressures on their time. We would also like to thank Jim Buller, John Chapman, Francesca Gains, Matthew Flinders and Bob Watt, for various forms of help in terms of conducting interviews, transcribing tapes and providing research assistance. Each was working on PhDs that had some relationship with our research and provided a further source of critical input for our work. Matthew Flinders and Bob Watt both worked as research officers on the project and gave much to the final product. Finally, this is a truly collaborative exercise. All three authors have been involved closely throughout the project and all chapters bear the imprint of the team. The opportunity for often frank but always friendly exchanges of view has, we hope, produced a better book.

xii

1 Introduction

The importance of British government departments both constitutionally and politically is unquestionable. Daintith and Page emphasise the constitutional centrality of departments (1999: 6): Our executive (while still conceived of as a unitary crown) is made up of departments, and it is normally to the heads of these departments (who are usually but not invariably ministers) not the government as a whole, that powers, and resources, are allocated by law. Departments are a concentration of political and bureaucratic resources. They are the source of most policy and they hold overall responsibility for delivering policies. As such, the activities of the core executive occur within the departmental framework. The majority of ministers operate within, and draw most of their resources from, departments. Officials are based in, and loyal to, departments. In fact, most of the key concerns of those analysing British government – for example the relationship between ministers and civil servants or between civil servants and interest groups and the power of the prime minister – are only meaningful in the context of departments. Despite their importance, there is an absence of research into government departments. Only the Treasury has received much attention (Heclo and Wildavsky 1981; Thain and Wright 1996; Chapman 1988; Deakin and Parry 2000), while there have been few studies of the operation of other departments. In addition, the studies undertaken have been largely descriptive and atheoretical (for a review of the existing literature see Smith, Marsh and Richards 1995). This paucity of work results, in large part, from an over-concentration on the role of the 1

2 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

prime minister (see Baker 1993; Madgwick 1991; James 1992; Kavanagh and Seldon 1999), an emphasis which was exacerbated by a fascination with Margaret Thatcher and her policy style (King 1985; Minogue and Biddiss, 1988). Departments are an important and under-researched area. In addition, a study of departments is long overdue given the extent of change in central government over the last two and a half decades. This change has been described in great detail by a number of authors (Hennessy 1989; Pollitt 1990; Fry 1995). Here, the key point is that during the Conservatives’ period of office from 1979 to 1997, there were three major reports into British central government: the Financial Management Initiative in 1982; the Next Steps Report in 1988; and the Senior Management Review (1995), with the linked fundamental Expenditure Review (for details see Smith 1999a; Richards 1997 and Chapter 3 below). These reports aimed fundamentally to change the culture, structure and management procedures of central government departments. Of course, we shall assess the extent to which those aims were achieved, but there is no doubt that the period upon which we focus saw greater change than any equivalent period, certainly in this century. As such, it deserves close attention. Our aim will be to examine the operation of four departments between 1974 and 1997 in order to establish the extent of, and reasons for, the changes that have occurred. Three of our research decisions need brief justification here, although we return to the last two in a methodological appendix (see below pp. 251–5). First, we concentrated upon the period between 1974 and 1997 for two reasons. As we have already emphasised, it was a period of significant change in central government; and, also, we used 1974 as a starting point to give us some limited perspective on the Conservative years. This last point raises another issue. It would have been interesting to compare the new Labour government with the Conservative. However, the vast majority of our interviews dealt only with the Conservatives’ period in office, as most of them were conducted between late 1995 and early 1998, either before Labour were in power or before our interviewees had any perspective on Labour’s time in office. We do have some interviews with civil servants and interest group officials undertaken in 1998 and early 1999 and, as such, a number of chapters include some consideration of the period since 1997. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasise that we use this material mainly to throw more light on the Conservative years.

Introduction 3

Second, our study is of four departments: the Home Office; the Department of Trade and Industry; the Department of Social Security; and the now dismantled Department of Energy. Time and resources prevented a study of all departments and no set of departments would be ‘representative’. However, our choice gave us a good spread of departments in terms of size, resources, functions and the extent of change that occurred in the period. We explain our choice in more detail in the methodological appendix. Third, our data are drawn from 183 semi-structured interviews conducted with ministers, civil servants and interest group representatives who, between 1974 and 1997, were associated with our four departments. All the interviews reported were conducted by one or more of the authors, and, where the interviewee agreed, the interview was taped and subsequently transcribed. Clearly then, we have not undertaken a behavioural study. There are two reasons for our approach. Most prosaically, it is not possible to observe or shadow civil servants and ministers. As such, we must depend on reports and interpretations of events by participants, and of course, on our interpretations of what we are told. As far as possible, we tried to ask a variety of respondents, politicians, civil servants and interest groups representatives for their ‘version’ of events and interpretation of motivations; this ensures a degree of triangulation so that the researcher can compare accounts and explanations. However, the researcher must always be aware of the perils of this type of research (see Devine 1995; Richards 1996). More fundamentally, we are not positivists. We do not believe that there is a ‘real’ world out there that we can discover merely by using the ‘correct’, to most positivists scientific, methods. This is not the place for a long exposition of our epistemological position (for a brief outline of the position we adopt see Marsh et al. 1999). Suffice it to say here that we are critical realists. In our view, there is a real world ‘out there’ that is independent of our construction of it; this much we have in common with positivists and it distinguishes us from relativists (for an outline of these different positions see Furlong and Marsh 2001). However, to us, while social phenomena exist independently of our interpretation, or discursive construction of them, nevertheless that discursive construction affects outcomes. The importance of this distinction will become clearer below when we discuss the structure/agency question. In fact, there are two related issues here: the status of the respondents’ views; and the status of the researcher’s interpretations. An

4 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

agent’s interpretation of the world, which itself may be structured by a dominant discourse, has a crucial effect on outcomes. So, if we are trying to explain why there have been changes in British central government we need to know how agents, whether civil servant or ministers, understand their world and the projected changes to it. In effect, we present a view of the British political elite’s interpretation of their world and the role of departments within it and we attempt to establish both how that view/interpretation is affected by structural change and how, in turn, it changes structures. As such, interviewing those involved within, and with, departments is crucial. Nevertheless, we have to recognise that the interviewees’ views are partial in both senses of the word. S/he will be narrating a particular story; probably one in which her/his role is exaggerated. One way forward, which we adopt, is to triangulate as much as possible, getting as many different views on, or interpretations of, an event or a relationship as practical. However, there are problems and we encountered a particular one in our study. Our interview material with ministers, and particularly civil servants, indicated that both tend to have a strong view of how policy is made. In our view, civil servants and ministers have a very agency-centred view of changes within departments and the policy-making process. They think of politics and policymaking in terms of the role of individuals and the interactions between them. Obviously, individuals are important in structural, cultural and policy change, but, in our view, it is important not to neglect the manner in which structures constrain or facilitate the actions of agents. A second key issue is the status of the researcher. Data is of no use until it has been interpreted and it is the researcher who does the interpreting. Of course, in large part, one’s interpretation is shaped by the theoretical framework one uses and, for this reason, we outline our position and concerns at some length below. However, we also quote extensively from our interviews to allow the reader to assess our interpretations of what was said. We have used a fairly standard procedure in quoting from our interviews: civil servants are never named, while ministers and interest group officials are named, unless we were specifically asked not to do so.

Developing a theoretical framework One of the weaknesses of most existing studies of British central government, and this reflects a weakness with the study of British politics

Introduction 5

more generally, is that they are atheoretical. We are usually presented with an analysis of an institution, for example Parliament or a department, that examines how it operates, but the study is not located within the context of broader questions about the nature of governance in Britain and fails to utilise meta-theoretical discussions, for example on structure and agency or the role of institutions and ideas, to help provide a more systematic explanation of outcomes. As such, we endorse the arguments of the editors of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations (The editors 1999: 3): Knowledge is not theory neutral. It is the explicit, or perhaps more usually implicit, theoretical assumptions that we make which influence what we study, how we study it and how we interpret the results which are generated. In other words, theory is not an optional extra; it underpins all the empirical studies that we undertake. Our broader view on British governance is based upon a sympathetic critique of Rhodes’s differentiated polity model. In this section, we shall begin with an exposition of Rhodes’s position; our critique of it will emerge throughout the book and we develop it more systematically in the conclusion (for an overview of our view see Marsh, Richards and Smith, 2001). However, in the final part of this section, we also outline our position on three seminal issues given our concerns in this volume: the power structure in Britain and how it should be conceptualised; the structure/agency problem; and the relationship between institutions and ideas.

Departments and governance in Britain In recent years there has been a growing literature on changing forms or patterns of governance in Britain (see Rhodes, 1997, 2000; Bevir and Rhodes 2001). This is an important development for us, given that it implies that there have been significant changes in the operation of the core executive, and of course departments, which is a key focus of this book. Rhodes argues that the dominant view of conceptualising British politics has been the Westminster model, the key characteristics of which are: • parliamentary sovereignty • accountability through free and fair elections

6 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

• • • • •

majority party control over the executive strong cabinet government central government dominance doctrine of ministerial responsibility non-political civil servants

As such, the Westminster model suggests that, while the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty underpins the institutions and processes of British politics, the way the system operates is based upon two linked characteristics of the British political system: a first-pastthe-post electoral system, which, while it holds the executive accountable at periodic free and fair elections, almost inevitably gives one party an overall majority; and fairly tight party discipline which, together with the electoral system, produces majority government, strong cabinet government and executive dominance of the legislature. Rhodes takes strong issue with the Westminster model and offers an alternative that he calls the differentiated polity model. Its main features are: • • • • • •

governance power dependence policy networks a segmented executive intergovernmental relations a hollowed-out state

The very use of the term ‘governance’, rather than government, is revealing; governance is a broader term implying the involvement of actors well beyond the core executive. At the same time, the view is that the core executive itself is not a simple unified whole; there will be divisions within Cabinet, between departments and among civil servants and ministers. More broadly, Rhodes suggests that the Westminster model is also wrong to see politics as a zero-sum game with the prime minister dominating ministers, ministers dominating civil servants or central government dominating local government. Rather, there are a series of exchange relationships; each actor possesses resources that the other needs. So, for example, the two models differ considerably in their view of the Civil Service. In the Westminster model, civil servants are nonpolitical, unlike in the US or France, but they are also ‘good and

Introduction 7

faithful servants’. In this view, civil servants give policy advice to ministers and then carry out the minister’s decisions. Of course, this is only one model of the nature of minister/civil servant relations. In the 1970s politicians (see Benn 1981) and academics (Kellner and Crowther Hunt 1980) increasingly argued that civil servants were the dominant partners, with ministers becoming the creatures of their department. This model became common currency, and perhaps the ‘accepted wisdom’, when it was enshrined in the popular TV programme, Yes Minister. In contrast, Rhodes argues that there is a problem with both these formulations because they treat the relationship as though it were a zero-sum power game. In Rhodes’s view, it is better understood as an exchange relationship. Ministers need civil servants to provide advice and help in the implementation of policy. Civil servants need ministers to win resources for the department from the prime minister/Treasury/ cabinet and promote and defend the department’s interests in Cabinet, Parliament and, increasingly, Europe. As such, on most occasions, and in most ways, relationships are better understood as a positive-sum game. In focusing upon the broader context of governance, Rhodes also pays particular attention to the role of policy networks. The German and Dutch literature on policy networks suggests that networks have replaced hierarchy and markets as the central mode of governance (see Marsh: 1998, ch. 1) and, to an extent, Rhodes draws on this literature. However, the British literature on networks is more circumspect (see Marsh and Rhodes (eds) 1992a; Smith 1993; Marsh (ed.) 1998; and for a critique see Dowding 1995). Actually, the chief proponents of this British view do not see tight policy networks as omnipresent or omnipotent; rather they view the presence and influence of networks as empirical questions. Of course, to the extent that tight policy networks do exist and are not dominated by government actors, then the role of departments as the key government actors in the policy-making process is more limited than the Westminster model implies. Despite all this, perhaps the most radical aspect of the Rhodes model is his emphasis upon the hollowing-out of the British state (see Rhodes 1997; also Weller, Bakvis and Rhodes 1997). Rhodes argues that its authority, autonomy and power have been reduced. Authority and power have dispersed: upwards, to Europe and other international political and economic institutions; downwards, through agencies, quangos and, more recently, the introduction of devolution; and out-

8 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

wards, through privatisation, marketisation and policy networks. Of course, to the extent that there has been hollowing out, then a, if not the, key feature of the Westminster model is undermined; the strong central executive. One of our aims, then, is to assess the utility of Rhodes’s differentiated polity model. More specifically, we shall address the following questions: • How important a role do interest groups play in the policy-making process? • Does the government dominate most policy networks? • What is the nature of relationship between the prime minister and departments? Does the prime minister dominate departments? • How segmented is the core executive? • To what extent has the state been hollowed out? In addition, the apparent threats to the traditional Westminster model raise questions concerning the nature of the relationship between civil servants and ministers and, as such, we are concerned with the issue of whether the nature of the dependency relationships between officials and politicians has changed to the extent that both the traditional constitutional rules, and the more informal ‘rules of the game’, no longer apply.

The theoretical issues As we argued above, in explaining the changes in the structure and culture of our departments we shall take a position on three key theoretical issues: the question of power; the structure/agency question; and the relationship between institutions and ideas. As we shall see, the three sets of issues crosscut one another. (i) Power Although this is the most crucial question, it needs less exposition because it has been well aired. However, three points are important here. First, the dominant perspective in studies of British politics is pluralism (see Marsh et al. 1999; Marsh 2001). Second, Rhodes’s differentiated polity model is based upon a sophisticated pluralist conception of the distribution of power in Britain. Third, in our view, power is much more concentrated than pluralism implies. Each of these points deserves brief consideration.

Introduction 9

Rhodes’s differentiated polity model is essentially a pluralist model; although it is a sophisticated elite or reformed pluralist variant (on modern pluralism see Smith 1995; for the most sophisticated statement of modern pluralism see McFarland 1987). To Rhodes, as we saw, power is dispersed throughout the polity, at least among various elite groups. So, power is not exercised by a strong central government, rather it is present throughout the polity and expressed in and through a complicated series of exchange relations. As such, we need to understand the exchanges within the segmented executive (between the prime minister and the Cabinet, the departments and the Treasury, ministers and civil servants etc.), between central and local government (both disaggregated) and between government and interest groups (again disaggregated and occurring within policy networks). Rhodes’s analysis is an elite pluralists one because it acknowledges the existence of competing elites and plays down the role of the electorate and Parliament. In addition, unlike many pluralists he does acknowledge the importance of structures as constraints on the actions of agents. Nevertheless, Rhodes retains the key core proposition of pluralism: that power is diffused. To a large extent of course, the question of the utility of Rhodes’s differentiated polity model is an empirical one. However, no empirical investigation is theory-neutral; one’s theoretical position affects one’s definition, methods and empirical focus. So, it is as well to admit at the outset that we are not pluralists. In our view, power is concentrated. Actually, there are two aspects of this position, one of which is more important here. First, in our view, we expect to find that central government in Britain is more powerful than the differentiated polity suggests. Indeed, our view is that Britain, as the Westminster model suggests, retains a powerful executive. So, although Rhodes is right to emphasise that power is not a zero-sum game and that British government is based upon a series of exchange relationships, the balance of that exchange rests heavily in favour of the powerful executive. Second, although that strong executive has significant autonomy, it operates within a broader social, political and economic system that is characterised by structured inequality. This structured inequality is reflected in the privileged access which some interests have to government and, thus, it shapes, although by no means determines, political outcomes. This is not the place to develop this argument (see Marsh 2001), but we shall return to this issue both in Chapter 8 and in the conclusion to this book.

10 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

(ii) Structure and agency: a dialectical approach The structure/agency debate is one of the most important within social science. However, most social science authors tend to privilege either structural or intentional explanation and the position they adopt is strongly influenced by the power theory with which they are implicitly or explicitly working. So, for example, Dunleavy’s bureau-shaping approach to bureaucratic change focuses upon the interests of civil servants and explains the introduction of Next Steps Agencies in terms of his exposition of their preferences (see below pp. 156–68). In contrast, other pluralist authors have emphasised the role of Margaret Thatcher in shaping the changes in British central government in the 1980s. For example, some see her as politicising the Civil Service, while others argue that the reason Civil Service reform was successful in the 1980s, in contrast to previous attempts, was because of Thatcher’s active support. However, all these authors use intentional explanations and, as we suggested earlier, this is a view that is shared by most politicians and civil servants. There are fewer structural explanations of central government change, although Kingdom (1999) offers a Marxist explanation while some of the new institutionalist literature (for a review see Peters 1999), particularly historical institutionalism, with its emphasis upon path-dependency, has structuralist, and non-pluralist, roots. We shall return to some of these issues in subsequent chapters. However, our key point here is that both intentional and structural explanations take too simplistic an approach to the relationship between structure and agency (for reviews of the structure/agency literature see Hay 1995 and McAnulla 2001). Our own view follows inevitably from our epistemological position. We see the relationship between structure and agency as dialectical. Agents operate within structured contexts that constrain or facilitate their actions. As such, these structured contexts tend to make it more likely that agents will take certain actions; in the term used by historical institutionalists there is ‘path dependency’. At the same time, structures are not unchanging; in fact they change in large part because of the strategic decisions of agents co-operating within the structured contexts. The crucial thing is that agents do not control that structured context. However, they do interpret it and it is as mediated through that interpretation that the structural context affects the strategic calculations of actors. If this is our general position it still needs to be unpacked. In particular, we need a clearer idea of the nature of the key structural and

Introduction 11

intentional factors and in particular the role that ideas play in this relationship. There is little discussion in the literature on what is meant by structure or agency. In essence, most authors appear to be concerned with two types of structure: the particular institutional structures within which the relevant agent acts and the broader social structure within which the organisation and the agent are located. So, if we are concerned to analyse the behaviour of a minister, we need to examine it in the context of both his/her position within government – in relation to the department, the prime minister, the Treasury, the Cabinet etc. – and the broader social, economic and political situation – the state of the economy, the popularity of the government, the proximity of an election etc. This is important because many studies of central government focus only on the constraints within government itself, neglecting the way in which the broader social, economic and political context constrains or enables the actions of the core executive. We need to recognise that there are interactive effects between these two aspects of structure, the organisational and the social/economic/political, and between each of these and the actions of agents. Equally, there is little discussion of what is meant by agency. Here again two approaches are common in the literature. Authors either focus on the role of individual or group agents, for example, Thatcher’s influence on the Civil Service, or they are concerned with how the attitudes or preferences of agents shape outcomes, e.g. the Dunleavy (1991) and Dowding (1995) approach. What most, if not all, analyses fail to examine are, first, the role that ideas or culture have in relation to the structure/agency problem and, second, the way in which ideas affect both institutions and outcomes. This brings us to our third metatheoretical issue. (ii) The relationship between institutions and ideas As we have suggested, the literature on structure/agency generally avoids the role of ideas or discourse; of the ideational realm. Yet, this is misguided because ideas clearly affect outcomes. More importantly for the discussion here, ideas can be important elements in either a structural or an intentional explanation. So, ideas, or discourse, can clearly constrain or facilitate agents. In this way, as we shall see below, civil servants in departments are clearly constrained by the prevailing culture within a department; here culture, that is a set of interconnected ideas, roles and rules of the game, clearly acts as a structural constraint or enabler. In contrast, certain ideas may be a crucial part of,

12 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

or may underpin, an individual agent’s interests and preferences. Here, ideas are a crucial element of an intentional explanation. It is equally clear that ideas shape institutions and institutions reproduce, mediate and change ideas. So, the dominant ideas of the Industry section of the DTI stressed intervention and government aid to struggling manufacturing industry, but, as we shall see in Chapter 4, these dominant ideas were undermined by a combination of the increased structural importance of Trade, as distinct from Industry, in the DTI, together with the broader New Right ideas of the Conservatives and the efforts of key DTI ministers. In a different manner, the Home Office, a powerful institution of the state, was able to resist the increased role of New Right ideas during more than a decade of Conservative government. These relationships between structure and agency and institutions and ideas are interrelated and complex and cannot be resolved here. However, this book is informed by these debates and the questions they generate. We focus throughout on the role of structure, institutions, ideas, culture and agency and, even more importantly, upon the relationship between them. So, in our view, structure/institution and ideas/culture constrain or facilitate agents, but agents interpret and can change both structure and culture. As such, the relationship between structure/institutions, including culture recognised as a structural constraint, and agency is dialectical. At the same time, the relationship between structure/institutions and ideas/culture is also dialectical. This means that in this book, which focuses upon structural and cultural change, we examine how structure/institutions change ideas/culture and vice versa and also how both interact with agency. This inevitably means that we must operate with a historical perspective. Any dialectical relationship, by definition, involves constant iterations; an interactive process which works out over time cannot be studied using a short period.

The structure of the book We have so much material that it is impossible to report all our findings in a single monograph. For this reason, the book focuses on structural and cultural change in British central government chiefly in the period between 1974 and 1997. As such, it only deals with policy change indirectly. At the same time, we also pay less attention to those issues that have been extensively covered by other authors. So, for example, while there has been a great deal written on structural change

Introduction 13

in British central government over the 1980s and 1990s, much less attention has been paid to cultural change. For that reason, we have two chapters on cultural change and only one on structural change. Similarly, because Thain and Wright have dealt at length with relations between the Treasury and departments, we examine that issue more briefly, merely using our material to comment upon their conclusions and highlight any putative changes in the Treasury’s role since their study was published. This book has eight substantive chapters. The first three deal with structural and cultural change within British central government broadly and more specifically upon change within our four departments. Chapter 2 looks at cultural change across Whitehall before Chapter 3 considers structural change in Whitehall and our departments. Chapter 4 examines the impact of structural and cultural change on our departments. Chapter 5 examines the role of departments within the broader core executive. The next two chapters focus upon the role of the two most important sets of actors in departments. Chapter 6 highlights the change in the role of ministers over the last 25 years before Chapter 7 concentrates upon the role of civil servants, although also paying some attention to the relations between the departments and Next Steps Agencies and the position of special advisers. The final two substantive chapters highlight the departments’ relations outside Whitehall. Chapter 8 deals with relations with interest groups, the media and the public, with the greatest focus on the first of these relationships. Chapter 9 then considers the changing pattern of the departments’ links with Europe. The conclusion will return to the question of the differentiated polity and the impact changes may have had on the Westminster model.

2 Culture and Power in Whitehall

The notion of culture is central to any analysis of Whitehall and change in departments. Most civil servants have a notion of culture; it is a mechanism through which they are socialised into a common conception of the Civil Service. Indeed, in reforming Whitehall, governments have been concerned to create a departmental culture and maintain a common Whitehall culture (see Radcliffe 1991; Mountfield 1997; Richards 1997; Wilson 1999). This chapter has two aims: to develop a theoretically informed account of the cultural change in Whitehall since the 1970s; and to examine the implications of this cultural change. It demonstrates how culture operates as a structural constraint, but is also open to constant reinterpretation. The concept of culture is particularly important for a number of reasons: • Culture ties together issues of behaviour and organisation; it is the link between organisations, individual members’ beliefs about them and the way in which those members of the organisation act. Consequently, it is a concept which integrates both structure and agents. Agents are constrained by culture but it is their interpretation and reinterpretation of it which reproduces the cultural rules. • The Civil Service appears to be a particularly culture-bound and rule-bound organisation with a well-defined and distinct culture. • Culture is a power construct in the sense that it both reflects power relations – it is constitutive of power relations – and affects the way people behave by providing them with rules and partly constituting their interests. • Culture is reflective of, and reflected in, the behaviour of agents, the nature of institutions, the issues and processes within policy-making and the power relationships within organisations. Past decisions, 14

Culture and Power in Whitehall 15

interests and institutions shape culture. They are not purely ideational, but are reflective of the structural context. • Culture thus affects outcomes; both the behaviour of individuals in organisations and the outputs from those organisations. Culture is therefore a conceptual device for integrating structure and agency. Culture is a constraint on actors and, to some extent, it is a reflection of past decisions and past actions. The Whitehall culture is a mechanism for maintaining elite rule and is a reflection of, and reflected in, the British political tradition. As we will see in the next chapter, it is also a reflection of the functions and internal and external relationships of departments and the Civil Service. Nevertheless, culture is also reproduced and recreated by the actions and interpretations of actors. Cultures often have ambiguous and multiple meanings and, therefore, are continually affected by actors’ perceptions and the negotiation of cultural rules and values. Central to the reform process in Whitehall is the belief that there needs to be a change in the culture. Yet culture is a highly problematic term. First, it is difficult to define culture and definitions are many and varied. Second, the relationship between culture, organisations and behaviour is only partially and crudely theorised. Third, culture tends to be a ‘dustbin’ concept; what is left unexplained by other concepts is often accounted for by culture. Too often culture explains everything and nothing. The difficulty in defining culture and how it shapes behaviour often results in everything being seen as cultural. Nevertheless, the argument of this chapter is that we can sensibly talk about a Civil Service culture and, indeed, a departmental culture. Consequently, despite its complexity, it is a useful concept for explaining both the relationship between organisations and actions and the nature of the Civil Service. Our approach immediately raises a crucial problem for all social sciences; are we using culture as an independent or a dependent variable? Are we using culture to explain the behaviour of the Civil Service or are we trying to explain changes in the culture of the Civil Service? To put it another way, are we developing a theory of culture or a cultural theory? The answer, of course, is both: culture helps shape the nature of the Civil Service and, in that sense, is a useful independent variable; however, if we are trying to establish whether and why the culture of the Civil Service has changed, then we are treating it as a dependent variable. This chapter is divided into three substantive sections. In the first section, we briefly outline the cultural theory approach to the study of

16 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

culture before outlining our own position. The second section then examines the nature of the Whitehall culture and the relationship between power, organisation and culture. Finally, we focus on the putative changes that occurred in Whitehall culture over the last 25 years.

Culture as a concept Traditionally, organisational literature and management science have paid little attention to culture, instead adopting positivist accounts which focus on the nature of organisations as institutional structures (see Donaldson 1996: 1). In particular, rational choice theory attempts to build positivist, predictive, models of behaviour, focusing upon the motivations and actions of individuals. However, they largely ignore the issue of culture.1 Cultural theory An initially more attractive behavioural approach to culture is cultural theory as developed by Douglas (1982) and Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky (1990) (for applications and reviews see: Bale 1999; Hood 1990, 1998; Jensen 1998). Cultural theorists suggest that individuals have distinct ways of life which are defined in relation to two axes: grid and group. The concept grid refers to the extent to which behaviour is rulebound rather than open to negotiation; so a strong grid indicates the existence of rigid rules or norms over behaviour. The concept group refers to the degree of integration in a social organisation. A matrix based upon these two scales produces four ways of life (see Fig 2.1). As Jensen (1998: 121) summarises: cultural theory understands any social system as an interactive blend of four analytically distinct and empirically experienceable ways of life produced by ways of social organisations. The stability of the social system is due to the latent functions of actors defending their taken for granted world views. System changes are due to the ‘cumulative impact of successive anomalies or surprises that force individuals to search around for alternative ways of life that can provide a more satisfying fit with the world as it is’ (Thompson et al. 1990: 69).

1

Although positivists are highly critical of rational choice theory for introducing human motivations, see Zey (1998) and Donaldson (1996).

Culture and Power in Whitehall 17 Figure 2.1

A matrix of ways of life Group High Hierarchy

Egalitarianism

Grid High

Low Fatalism

Individualism Low

Hood has applied this approach to produce a categorisation of ‘four generic organisational ways of life’ which affect the control of public bureaucracy. Contrived randomness links to the fatalist cultural bias; review is a form of control related to the hierarchist’s way of life; mutuality links to the egalitarian cultural bias; and competition is an approach to control related to the individualist way of life. (Hood 1990: 210) Cultural theory is an advance on the managerial and organisational approaches, emphasising the way in which cultural values shape behaviour and options. However, this approach has problems. First, specifying just four ways of life seems unnecessarily reductive and overly simplistic. The numbers of ways of life are in fact infinite. More importantly, organisations like the Civil Service, which are highly culturally bound, contain competing ways of life. The Treasury, for example, is in many ways a highly rule-bound organisation with a strong sense of group and position; in that sense it is hierarchical. At the same time, in terms of the way the policy process operates and the relationships which exist within the Treasury, it has important egalitarian elements. Second, it is not clear what cultural theory adds to our understanding of organisations. Is cultural theory necessary to develop the forms of control Hood outlines? It tells us that there are four (and only four) competing ways of life but not much else. Third, cultural theory offers a predictive theory about how people with particular ways of life will behave. However, what it actually develops is a post-hoc rationalisation, ascribing a way of life to the behaviour of certain groups. As such, the criteria for establishing whether someone is a fatalist or an egalitarian involves imputing motives for actions. Similarly, the level of analysis involved is unclear: is the focus the individual or the organisation? Likewise, as Jenson (1998: 36) highlights, the theory fails to indicate the mechanisms for identifying the boundaries of an organisation. These problems are compounded

18 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

because cultural theory sees individuals as continually recreating institutions, whilst individuals are also moving across different ways of life. How, then, are we to see these ways of life as explanations of behaviour when they are so amorphous and fragile; how do we know which way of life is shaping individual actions at a particular time? It is also an anomaly that egalitarian ways of life are seen as not being highly rule-bound. Cultural theory does not, from our perspective, provide an adequate or particularly useful theorisation of culture. A culture may constitute a way of life but it also constitutes a system of power which is linked to organisational structures and it is this relationship between culture, power and structure that we wish to explore.

Beyond cultural theory As such, while behavioural theory sees culture as functional – it is there to facilitate organisational goals – cultural theory sees it as totalising – it is a way of life. For us, cultures are sets of values, rules and beliefs which operate within a particular organisational context. In the sense that organisations are metaphors, culture creates a thread of beliefs which hold the organisational elements together despite numerous intersections of networks and hierarchies some of which may be spatially – in terms of hierarchy and geography – far from the core of the organisation. As culture, and organisations, are social creations they are both the institutionalisation of past patterns of behaviour and the recreation and reformulation of new ways of behaving. In this sense, culture is not a ‘corporate culture’ imposed from above – although that could be part of the culture – rather it is competing sets of changing values fighting for dominance in Whitehall departments or sections or subsections of departments. Meyerson (1991: 259) sees culture as a mechanism for acknowledging ambiguity. Quoting Clifford (1983) she points out: ‘A “culture” is, concretely, an open-ended, creative dialogue of subcultures, insiders and outsiders, of diverse factions.’ At the same time, cultures are systems of power because they involve mechanisms for defining relationships and privileging certain values and forms of behaviour over others. In this way competing cultures, and subcultures, can be seen as different forms of what Foucault conceptualised as power/knowledge. Thus, a culture, or ‘common understanding’, is based on a shared sense of knowledge: Common sense knowledge of the facts of social life for the members of the society is institutionalized knowledge of the real world. Not

Culture and Power in Whitehall 19

only does common sense knowledge portray a real society for members, but in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy the features of the real society are produced by a person’s motivated compliance with these background expectancies. (Garfinkel 1967: 53) The central assumption is that organisations are socially created – the product of the intended and unintended consequence of human choice and action – and, consequently, ‘organisations are culture bearing milieus’ (Frost et al. 1983: 21) because they are the site of social interaction which is bound by sets of rules, values, norms and beliefs. In this way, the notion of culture can bind agent-orientated and structuralist perspectives. It is agency-based in two senses: it sees values and understandings as being affected by particular cultures, thus questioning the notion of an ‘objective’ culture-free truth; and it sees culture as a social construction that is continually produced and reproduced and institutionalised through the behaviour of humans (Berger and Luckman 1967). However, this institutionalisation of patterns of behaviour introduces an important structural element in that culture exists independently of individual agents and so the agents’ cultural norms appear as an object (Berger and Luckman 1967). As Riley (1983: 420) points out: ‘The structuring processes interpenetrate and create complex institutional patterns. Thus, structuration is grounded in individual actions that over time/space constitute institutions.’ Clearly, the ‘Whitehall culture’ imposes severe constraints on the behaviour of officials to the extent that they adopt very similar modes of personal behaviour; for example, the use of the word ‘chap’.2

2

Similar approaches have been developed within so-called ‘new institutionalism’ (March and Olsen 1984; Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Lowndes 1997). They reject rational choice notions of agent choice preferring the idea of taken-for-granted expectations, assuming that ‘actors associate certain actions with certain situations by rules of appropriateness’ (March and Olsen 1984: 741) absorbed through socialisation, education, on the job learning, or acquiescence to convention (DiMaggio and Powell 1991: 10). For new institutionalism action is structured through a ‘shared system of rules that both constrain the inclination and capacity of actors to optimize as well as privilege some groups whose interests are secured by prevailing rewards and sanctions’ (DiMaggio and Powell 1991: 11). New institutionalism recognises the way in which the values of organisations sustain organisations but do so in a way that privileges certain outcomes and so culture is power. Organisations are not formal institutions but ‘normative obligations’ which develop as facts and so are enstructured as institutionalised behaviour. It is through institutionalisation that subject becomes object (see Berger and Luckman 1967; Giddens 1986).

20 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

In seeing culture and organisations from a perspective which recognises the duality of structure and agency, we shift from the idea of a hierarchically imposed, uniform culture to the notion of socially created, ambiguous, and relatively open, culture which, nevertheless, is an important constraint on the behaviour of actors. Consequently, we have to accept the idea that organisations, particularly large ones, will be replete with sub-cultures and overlapping cultures. Most organisations are part of wider sub-sets of organisations and broader social systems. The local Benefits Office is within the Benefits Agency that is linked to the benefits section of the DSS which is part of Whitehall which is in turn a key institution within the state. Each section will have its own culture reflecting its tasks, history, relationships and actors, but, at the same time, it will be influenced by the cultures of its wider networks. One DSS official reported ‘considerable differences’ between the culture of the department and its largest agency, the Benefits Agency: One key thing is the way that agencies think and do things differently. They are very much into delegating tasks downwards to the lowest level, so responsibility is found more at lower levels. But, in the policy unit we are quite small but deal with ministers and the stuff which is salient politically. Whereas in an agency the stuff is operational, so it is not so sensitive and there is a different approach to all the work because of that. For Van Maanen and Barley (1984: 40): ‘To the extent that segmentation is accepted as natural and appropriate, differentially integrating role clusters emerge. As each develops its own language, norms, time horizons and perspectives on the organisation’s mission, subculture proliferation should be expected.’ At the same time, even within tightly defined organisations, there is a strong tendency for sub-units to define themselves by identifying an ‘other’ and creating a distinctive culture (Young 1991). In this vein, Michael Bichard, the former Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency, felt that creating a distinct culture within the Benefits Agency was necessary for the smooth functioning of the organisation (Walker 1999: 29). Within Whitehall, the Treasury has a sense of its own superiority (see Kogan 1971; Young and Sloman 1982; Haines 1977). Similarly, within the Foreign Office, one senior official was prepared to say that the West Africa section does not attract: ‘the brightest and the best in

Culture and Power in Whitehall 21

the Foreign Office’ (The Times, 12 May 1998). The absence of a unified culture, and the consequent existence of overlapping cultures, means we cannot speak to the leaders of an organisation and see their view as representative of the organisational culture. We also have to be careful that what we see as representing a particular organisational culture is not actually part of the wider social or political culture in which the organisation operates (Louis 1985). Culture is fragmented into vertical sub-systems and hierarchy. Those at the top of an organisation can have differing cultures from those at the bottom. For example, although they are both civil servants, the Cabinet Secretary has a different world-view from someone delivering benefits in the Benefits Agency. A structurationist perspective suggests that it may be the level of social integration in the dominant groups which is important and therefore: ‘distinct subgroups in organisations could easily lead to the existence of subcultures that adhere to different values’ (Riley 1983: 417).3 As Louis (1985: 79) argues: The (top of the) organisation, vertical and horizontal slices, and other formal unit designations (such as department) all represent typical sites in and through which cultures may develop. Some relevant properties of organisations, and of these sites in particular as ‘culture-bearing milieus’, are: they are regularly convening settings; they impose structural interdependencies among people performing tasks; they provide opportunities for affiliation and the constitution constellations of interest or purposes. As such, they serve as breeding grounds, if you will, for the emergence of local shared meanings. Further fragmentation is apparent when we consider the elements of culture and its relationship with organisation. Culture can be seen in three elements which are separate, but mutually reinforcing. First, they are ‘webs of meaning’ (Smircich 1983: 63). The web of meaning includes values about what is good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable and in and out of the culture. Essentially, it is a language that is

3

Again this raises the issues, not discussed in this book, of how the elite of Whitehall can impose its culture on the rest and how there is considerable space for subversion in the lower levels. To some extent, the inability of the administrative class to create a unified culture demonstrates why agencies are so satisfactory for them.

22 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

common to all who share the culture and often not understood, or misunderstood, by those who are excluded. Second, it includes actions; the values affect the behaviour of agents who have to act according to particular rules. These rules eliminate certain actions and include others. In acting, individuals are creating a performance which ‘effectively projects a definition of the situation’ (Goffman 1969: 24). Cultures are sustained by the performances of actors operating within culturally bound rules. According to Goffman (1969: 24): We must not overlook the crucial fact that any projected definition of the situation also has a distinctive moral character of projections … Society is organised on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way. Connected with this principle is a second, namely that an individual who implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has a certain social characteristics ought in fact to be what he claims he is. In consequence, when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that a person of his kind have a right to expect. Civil servants recreate a culturally bound moral universe which underpins their distinct and well-defined performances and creates expectation of how ‘others’, whether politicians or citizens, act. Understandings of the world often occur without full awareness of their existence and this leads to ambiguities and sometimes confusions. It is often the failure of politicians to act in an expected manner (rather than simple conflicts of interest) that create ‘embarrassment’, to use Goffman’s term, between officials and ministers. For example, such embarrassments are apparent in the cases of Tony Benn and Michael Howard (see below and Chapter 6). Goffman also argues that performers often have ‘an idealized view of the situation’ (Goffman 1969: 44). This has particular resonance when analysing civil servants. In their performance, civil servants incorporate the official view of themselves and represent themselves as apolitical, neutral and with little real influence. Their own interpretation of the role of a civil servant is an idealised one. In this sense, the performance accentuates, or distils, the essence of the nature of the task, thus

Culture and Power in Whitehall 23

reinforcing the cultured patterns of behaviour by making them more identifiable. Civil servants will act more like civil servants in front of a Select Committee than they will in an official interdepartmental committee dealing with export licences4 for arms. Goffman highlights that what seems the normal moral order is in fact a social construction (see Garfinkel 1967) and the assumptions of this normal order contain important implications for the nature of power. Thus, in looking at culture we are trying to understand what the shared ‘common understandings’ mean. By emphasising the role and performance of the actor we are focusing on agency; a focus which is largely ignored except in the rational choice literature (see Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Smith 1998). In attempting to understand action, we can follow the ethnomethodologists and adopt an approach which seeks to understand the origins and content of the actors’ perceptions of the world. In this sense, notions of culture are linked to the actions of actors because the choices these actors make are linked to their cultural universe that serves as a guide to, but not a determinant of, action. In this vein, it is impossible to understand the actions of civil servants from a purely objective standpoint; this is the failure of rational choice theory. We have to understand their subjective perceptions of the world. However, as Powell and DiMaggio argue, ethnomethodology fails to explain why actors sustain these structures, how they produce or reproduce social order and what is the origin and role of actors’ interests. Consequently, a theory of action is of little utility without a theory of power. The relationship between cultures and institutions is also crucial for our study. Culture creates institutions and institutions reinforce the culture. Thus, culture is Janus-faced; it looks inwards, defining the relationships and rules of engagement between actors, and it looks outwards, defining the ‘other’ and creating barriers to inclusion in the institution (see Fig. 2.2). Organisations are the sources of socialisation which imbue actors with cultures. As a number of

4

This also raises important methodological issues when the civil servants present to the interviewer an idealised ‘performance’. This happened on a number of occasions when an official would not comment on the relationship with ministers or accept they had any influence. It could also be present in the manner of interview, where a number were diffident and concerned to protect traditional notions of the role of a mandarin. The solution to this problem lies in interpreting the actor’s perceptions (see below).

24 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom Figure 2.2

Elements of culture

Values

Actions

Institutions

What is good and bad Who is good and bad What is acceptable and unacceptable Defining self-perception and perception of others and what is other.

Performance Action according to the rules Set patterns of behaviour (for example in relation to a minister or in front of a select committee)

Organisational elements such as processes of selection; socialisation and inclusion and exclusion which both define the self and other and reinforce the values and actions of organisational members

writers suggest, organisations often have symbols and myths that reinforce the culture of the organisation. This notion of culture and its relationship to organisation and action leads us to what Benson (1977: 6) called a dialectical view: Any organisation as part of the social world is always in a state of becoming; it is not a fixed and determinate entity. Its main features, goals, structural arrangements, technology, informal relations, and so on – are the outcroppings of the process of social construction. The dialectical perspective focuses attention upon this process through which a specific organisational form has been produced, the mechanisms through which an established form is maintained (or reproduced), and its continuous reconstruction. Thus, organisations and their interrelationships are continually being reproduced through the actions of agents within an organisation but those actions are structured by the values and relationships which reinforce the institution. For Benson, organisations have a morphology which is the official view of the organisation and it may be seen as an accurate representation of the organisation. Essentially, for Benson, organisations are about power and we need to examine the power base.

Culture and power In shaping how people see themselves, see others, conceive of the world (as an empirical object), relate to others (inside and outside the

Culture and Power in Whitehall 25

organisation) and define the limits of the acceptable in terms of behaviour and decisions, culture is a form of power. It shapes behaviour (it is affective), but it also constitutes relationships and perceptions, and it is through this constitution that power exists (Dyrberg 1997). Carruthers (1994: 23) points out how cultures create legitimacy for groups which can allow greater autonomy in their behaviour, citing the example of the prevalence of the Treasury view in the interwar years in allowing its perspective to dominate economic choices in the face of depression. There are numerous ways in which culture can be conceived of as power. In the most literal sense it creates a system of acceptable behaviour which encourages the workforce to behave in a particular fashion. Moreover, from this perspective, culture is a source of discipline which does not have to be hierarchically imposed because fellow workers may say, ‘this is not the way things are done around here’ (Louis 1985). However, this notion of culture as power is exogenous. It is imposed on actors as a form of discipline. A second conceptualisation of culture as power focuses upon structuration whereby structures create systems of legitimation and domination. This conceptualisation emphasises that unintended consequences of past actions can constrain actions in the future. As such, organisational culture explains how ‘symbolic orders sustain the forms of domination’ in the ‘everyday context of lived experience’. It is through an organisation’s ‘political image’ which is ‘composed of deeply embedded master structures’ that ‘the organisation’s, or subgroup’s, political self-definition … embody the rules that guide political actions and the chronic political habits that are mindlessly enacted’ (Riley 1983: 418). However, accounts of this sort, derived from Giddens, only focus upon half the picture. A structural account, following Berger and Luckman, emphasise how actions, rules and norms become institutionalised. In our view, the notion of culture implies more than this; we need to break down the division between dominator and dominated and focus upon how culture constitutes action. Culture is not an external set of institutions but, in Garfinkel’s terms, it is common sense; it constitutes the actor’s understanding of the world both as a system of knowledge and as an interlinked system of ethics which both derives from and legitimises the knowledge. As Burrell argues: ‘Our knowledge of reality is enmeshed in a power field’ (Burrell 1998: 17). This view comes close to a Foucauldian perspective because it suggests that what is seen as truth and knowledge is a system of discipline and that this knowledge ‘cannot be divorced from techniques of normalisation

26 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

which structure through and discourse into mutually exclusive categories’ (McKinlay and Starkey 1998: 1). For Foucault: there is no power relation without the correlative constitutions of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations … the subject who knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications of power knowledge. (Foucault 1977: 27–8). Unlike traditional approaches, this perspective suggests that Civil Service power is not merely reflected in the exercise of domination over ministers, or other civil servants or outside actors, but, rather, is constituted in the very definition of the role of the Civil Service and in all the attendant cultural baggage. For Foucault power is everywhere and infects superordinates as much as subordinates (Burrell 1998). It is within, rather than above, the subject (Clegg 1998; Dyrberg 1997). Foucault also rejects the notion that subjects have an essence that exists outside of ‘discursive practices’. This explains the importance of culture; it is the discursive practice that defines knowledge, rules, behaviour, membership and performance. By inculcating the culture, actors are adopting the method of domination which shapes the way they behave and how they act. The important point, as Dyrberg (1997) indicates, is that both structure and agency are also constituted by power and, therefore, we cannot see power as something that exists outside of the individual. For Dyrberg power cannot exist prior to the individual and therefore power: must be studied as an immanent process, that is, in the becoming of identity. … The techniques of disciplining and regulation both trigger and embody power and knowledge which mutually condition each other and form a constitutive part of the political authorisation of power. In this scenario power cannot be understand as essentially oppressive. (Dyrberg 1997: 87). From this perspective, power is not monolithic and unified but a set of shifting and unstable networks and alliances (Clegg 1998: 31). Culture is a process of discipline and surveillance; it inculcates sets of behaviour and expectations of action; to break with the Civil Service culture

Culture and Power in Whitehall 27

is to break the rules of the game but officials are so well imbued with the culture that they rarely break it. For Clegg (1998: 41): Power inscribes itself within contextual ‘rules of the game’ that both enable and constrain action. These rules form the underlying rationale of those calculations that agencies routinely make in organisational contexts. Action designates itself as such-and-such an action by reference to rules that identify it as such. Such rules can never be free of surpluses of ambiguous meaning: they are always indexical to the context of the interpreters and interpretation. Therefore, despite a relatively well-honed system of socialisation for both officials and ministers conflicts of interpretation can arise, as both the Arms to Iraq and Sandline affairs testify (Scott 1996; Legg and Ibbs 1998). These conflicts are more likely to occur between ministers and officials than between officials, because ministers and officials have different power interests and alternative moral universes and so constitute themselves in varying ways. Consequently, there is no single, set, culture but several in a continual process of flux and negotiation. This conceptualisation of power (which does not necessarily operate in all relationships) as not involving dominance helps to explain how officials, despite considerable resources, accept the authority of ministers and ministers, who have great authority, do not always achieve their goals. However, unlike postmodernist approaches, we suggest that culture is not purely ideational but reflective of the material interests and structural position of Whitehall. It is a reflection of the attempt to maintain rules and the specific institutional interests of departments and their functions.

The Whitehall culture Whitehall has a particularly clear and well-defined culture. Civil servants operate in and are constituted by a culturally bound universe (see Dale 1941; Heclo and Wildavsky 1981; Thain and Wright 1995). This culture constitutes the nature of the Civil Service, how they act, their relationships and what they do; it is the source of their power. Unlike most organisational cultures, Civil Service culture is less concerned with defining relationships between civil servants, although it does do that, than with defining the ‘other’, whether the ‘other’ is politicians or the public. Civil Service culture is very much concerned

28 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

with boundaries: who is and who is not a civil servant – witness the arguments over the role of Jonathan Powell; what is public and private; who should and should not be allowed into the centres of policy-making; and who should and should not be given access to official papers. The rules concerning who has access are very much tied to the culture. For instance, in an interview following his retirement from the Civil Service, the former Cabinet Secretary, Robin Butler, warned that the influx of political advisers and increasing openness were diluting the professionalism of Civil Service advice (The Guardian, 5 January 1997). From this perspective, Civil Service power is not something that is exercised against ministers but is constituted in the Civil Service culture, with its particular rules of behaviour, ethics and knowledge. Civil servants have a clear set of ethics that are based on the notions of integrity, objectivity and neutrality. It is this ethical position which is the basis of their power. Officials define and control objective knowledge – they define who knows and what is known and the modalities of the knowledge – and it is this control, and indeed construction, of knowledge which gives them power. Because it is based on ‘fact’, neutrality and integrity, it is difficult for ministers to challenge this information without being seen as difficult or dogmatic. Because much of it is secret and presented in terms of the public interest, it is very difficult for the public or outsiders to challenge (on issues of accountability see Flinders 2000). Civil servants also carry this system of knowledge to the minister and, as such, define his/her role. This, in turn, sustains the official and can often limit the minister. However, a number of crucial points distinguish our interpretation of culture from that of constructivists who see the world as a pure social creation of competing interpretations. Culture is not purely a self-referential and continually changing set of meanings but is a reflection of the historical and institutional context of the British state. The culture of present-day civil servants and ministers is affected by the development of institutions evolved through a conception of government which is representative rather than participatory (see Judge 1999). The culture reproduces the elite nature of the British political system which, in turn, is reinforced by the British political tradition of elitist, secretive and closed government (Kenny 1999; Marsh 2001; Marsh, Richards and Smith 2001). The culture derives from the creation of departments in the nineteenth century which ensured that decisions were locked into a Whitehall system where ministers adopted

Culture and Power in Whitehall 29

the prerogative of the Crown (Smith 1999b). Thus, the British political tradition sees certain agents as important for governing and, in this sense, ensures that power is located within the core executive. As such, culture is a system of power that both reflects and reinforces existing institutions and histories. One can see this process in the way the words of current Labour ministers frequently vary little from those of their Conservative predecessors. For example, a recent leaked memo from the Health and Safety Executive named four individuals who made ‘persistent … enquiries to the HSE’. It stated that the HSE wished to monitor those who have an interest in the HSE and suggested that their activities should be reported to the Open Government Unit. When the responsible minister, Angela Eagle, was pressed on this point in Parliament she responded: ‘The purpose of the memoranda is to ensure that the named enquirers get all the information they required’ (The Guardian, 21 May 1998). Rather than criticise her department and question the officials involved, she adopted the ‘official’ line and defended the Department. She adopted the correct role for a minister. This case didn’t involve officials tricking or conspiring against a minister; rather, the officials and the minister shared a view of their ‘proper’ roles. However, as we shall see below, this is not to suggest that there is a single, unified culture in Whitehall; indeed, the existence of competing cultures may have been made greater by the post-1979 reform process. The system of power/knowledge which underpins the role of officials is effectively self-regulating. There is no Civil Service act in Britain defining the duties of officials and, therefore, any putative transgression of Civil Service norms is adjudicated not by external actors but by the Head of the Home Civil Service, the Cabinet Secretary. Of course, there is some ambiguity about what would constitute improper behaviour by officials (Chapman 1988). For example, is it improper for an official to whistle-blow to another department or to Parliament if he/she feels a minister is acting improperly? Many officials think it is unacceptable (see Barker and Wilson 1997). Indeed, Chapman (1988: 305) quotes the Establishment’s Officer’s Guide which highlights the complacency of the official view of ethics: (It has never been) thought necessary to lay down a precise code of conduct because civil servants jealously maintain their professional standards. In practice, the distinctive character of the British Civil Service depends on the existence and maintenance of a general code

30 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

of conduct which, although to some extent intangible and unwritten, is of very real influence. In Chapman’s view, control is exercised largely though the process of socialisation and the role of leading civil servants. It is perhaps indicative of the approach of these leaders that one of them, William Armstrong, could say, without irony, that he was accountable to himself, a great taskmaster: ‘I am accountable to my own ideal of a civil servant’ (quoted in Chapman 1988: 306). In failing to challenge this perception, ministers are consequently involved in the recreation of the civil servants’ power which is not against the minister but against those outside of Whitehall. In a way, it is the minister and the relationship with the minister, that defines, and is defined by, Civil Service culture. It is important, however, to recognise that, despite its relative unity, Civil Service culture is not monolithic. Within the broad Civil Service universe there are different cultures linked to institutions. Although it is well-bounded, the culture does not exist independently of the rest of the world. Therefore, the subcultures within the Whitehall world reflect the wider political world. At the macro-level there is a political culture which reflects both paternalistic Conservatism and British, Fabian-influenced, social democracy and promotes a deferential culture built on the notion that ‘Whitehall knows best’ and that officials can be trusted to act in the public good. This means that officials can be left to ‘get on with it’ and that the process of decision-making should remain secret because officials can be trusted and only they can really make a proper judgement; release of full information, it is frequently argued, will lead to misunderstanding because the public cannot judge the evidence or the arguments properly (see Scott (1996); Salmonella in eggs (Smith 1991) and BSE (Phillips 2000)). This emphasis upon ministers and civil servants ‘knowing best’ and upon the related need for secrecy is perhaps the key feature of the British political tradition. What is interesting is that, because there is no written constitution, there is no binding, legal document which formally outlines the duties and responsibilities of officials. Neither is there any explicit statement about the basis upon which officials should make ethical and professional judgements. Quite clearly, the readily accepted view in Westminster/Whitehall circles has been that the distinctive character of the British Civil Service has been based on a general code or ethos, which, although unwritten and almost mystical in character, is, nevertheless, very real and powerful. They define and reproduce the culture themselves.

Culture and Power in Whitehall 31

A key notion of the Whitehall culture is the public service ethos. Officials have traditionally been perceived, by their political masters, as exhibiting great integrity. This, in turn, has enabled public servants to be regarded as politically neutral actors. Although the public service ethos has never been formally codified (indeed, due to its intangible nature, it cannot be) it has, until recently, established and re-confirmed the three mantras on which the modern day Civil Service was established – neutrality, anonymity and permanence. In so doing, the central pillar of the Whitehall culture – the public service ethos – has enabled officials to act in such a way as to provide an effective check on ministerial power. This has been one of their most fundamental roles and is at the heart of the Whitehall/Westminster system. Whitehall culture: the case of Tony Benn The strength and importance of Whitehall culture and the way it defines and restricts behaviour is well illustrated by the case of Tony Benn. Here, conflicts of interpretation of roles and values revealed the cultural limits upon behaviour. When Benn was a cabinet minister between 1974 and 1976 he effectively refused to play by the ‘rules of the game’ vis-à-vis his colleagues or the Civil Service. Consequently, the process of co-operation broke down and Benn was frustrated in his policy goals. The breakdown in these relationships occurred for a number of reasons. Benn felt that the Civil Service would serve ministers effectively only if they did not rock the boat. He believed that civil servants think: that the continuity of government works within the Department and then people come in and stay for a year or two in the bridal suite in the Grand Hotel and they still run it. I think they do think that and it’s your job not to get angry about that but to shift it. Benn suggested that the Civil Service did not like the fact that he wanted to implement the manifesto commitments. They saw it as a ‘funny little advertising’ brochure and ‘the term “Bennery” was invented either by the Treasury or the Permanent Secretary of my department to try to stop me. They were feeding out all this Bennery’. Consequently, the trust which is crucial to the civil servant–ministerial relationship was lost. Benn broke three cardinal rules of the Whitehall culture. First, he did not trust his officials. In the words of one former DTI official: ‘he had

32 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

reached the view that the bureaucracy was against him, so it was an embattled situation’. Similarly, a former Permanent Secretary in DTI said: ‘He didn’t use the Department. Partly I suppose because he didn’t trust it.’ Second, he did not accept their interpretation of the ‘facts’ – in this sense he was operating within an alternative power/knowledge framework based on his conception of socialism and his view that the crucial role of the minister was to implement party policy. Third, he looked to alternative sources of advice. Because Benn did not always trust his officials he consulted with both the trade unions and his special advisers Frances Morrell and Francis Cripps who provided the support which was not coming from the Department. Benn not only talked to the unions but was prepared to show them Civil Service briefs and get their reaction, although, as one official admitted: ‘Of course it didn’t do him any good, because we immediately started writing different kinds of briefs.’ A former DTI official accurately summed up the departmental view of Benn: He was completely irrational by then, and used to do extraordinary things like, for example, having a meeting with trade unions, which he was very keen on, and chucking his departmental brief across the table to the trade unions saying, ‘Well that is what my officials are telling me, I don’t believe a word of it, what do you think?’ From Benn’s perspective: ‘the idea that the people at work had any right in policy making was absolutely foreign to (the Civil Service)’. Indeed, he was highlighting an important Civil Service norm which emphasises that they are the policy advisers. It is interesting that an official sees it as ‘irrational’ and ‘extraordinary’ that a minister would show briefs to outsiders and ask their views. Benn also recalls that, on one occasion, his Permanent Secretary drafted a paper which failed to reflect Benn’s view and, as such, clearly broke a rule of the game: ‘So I handed it to Frances Morrell and Francis Cripps, and they drafted the papers. Then my Permanent Secretary went round all the other Permanent Secretaries to try to get it stopped.’ The use of these advisers was distressing to officials, as one observed: He had these rather pernicious political advisers and he discussed things with them and told them what he was doing and what he

Culture and Power in Whitehall 33

wanted to do and so on, but he didn’t always tell officials, so it was very difficult to know exactly what was happening. This quote illustrates a crucial element of Civil Service culture; it is officials who are supposed to be the confidants of ministers and their closest political advisers. Civil servants want to be, and feel they should be, close to the hub of ministerial policy-making. Benn broke a rule of the game by not being close to his officials; he should have trusted them and kept them in the inner circle while the outside world of unions and special advisers were relegated to the outer ring. These conflicts were exacerbated by Benn’s reading of the roles of a minister. He combined two contradictory elements in his interpretation. On the one hand, he believed that he was there to implement party policy and so, unlike most ministers, his legitimacy derived not from Parliament or the Cabinet, but from the Party and the manifesto. On the other hand, he retained the constitutional notion of ministerial authority and responsibility; he believed that officials should do what he told them to do. Generally, officials are culturally bound to be loyal. But loyalty is offered in exchange for trust and involvement and, because Benn excluded and distrusted his officials, and as he did not abide by their rules, they withdrew their loyalty. As another former DTI official, later a Permanent Secretary admitted: Whereas other ideological ministers I’ve worked for, not all of them, but certainly some of them, Tebbit and Ridley for example, and also Joseph, were sophisticated enough to see that bureaucrats are not against ministers. And that bureaucrats taken into confidence and trusted will do their damnedest to deliver a radical programme. The shock of Benn’s refusal to play by the rules is apparent in the attitude of officials to him. One former DTI official said: ‘Benn was mad, or at any rate irrational.’ Another derided him as ‘a very peculiar character indeed’. A third argued that, in the 1970s ‘He got much more radical and much more unreasonable.’ It was Benn’s failure to abide by their rules of the game, which meant he was seen as ‘mad’ or ‘irrational’ or, at the very least, unreasonable. One Energy official made a revealing point: To me coming in from outside, from the Coal Board, where you were always arguing hopeless causes anyway, it was natural that you gave a brief that your minister wanted without any consideration as

34 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

to how it would fare with the Treasury. But that was not the culture at the time in the seventies where there was a feeling that there was a madman on our hands who I must isolate and cool down and the Treasury were putting a lot of pressure on the Department of Energy civil servants to just control him and try and knock some of the battiness out of his ideas. Benn’s problem with his civil servants would not have been so difficult if he had sustained good relations with the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. In fact, officials could justify their disloyalty to Benn in terms of their loyalty to government as a whole and, in doing so, draw upon the doctrine of ‘collective responsibility’. The argument of officials was that Benn was not following policy agreed by colleagues. Typically, one official said that Benn would agree a line in a Cabinet committee and then argue against that position in full Cabinet. Similarly, a former Permanent Secretary said: ‘He worked inside the Department very much against his colleagues and against Harold Wilson.’ His former Cabinet colleagues concurred. One claimed: ‘Benn had one or two allies in the Cabinet but he was largely isolated. His contributions to Cabinet were always nonsense but they did give us a good laugh.’ Another said his contribution had no clout in Cabinet, ‘none at all’. Thus, in Civil Service terms, officials were not undermining the rules of the game. The Benn case is significant because of what it reveals about the nature of Civil Service culture. It indicates the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. In the Whitehall world of the 1970s, officials expected to be included. Their role is to present the minister with the limits of the possible and a minister who does not recognise their limits is mad or irrational. To quote one official: Benn was not thwarted exactly. He was subjected to a good deal of advice which he found unwelcome. The job of the Civil Service is, as best it can, to point out the realities of the situation to ministers. Despite the formal constitutional position that ministers decide, officials believe that policy (or realistic policy) cannot be made without them. Benn undermined the relationships of dependence which officials saw as crucial to their professional integrity and selfimage. Benn also highlights the role of loyalty in official culture. Loyalty for officials is multi-faceted. They are loyal to the corp of the Civil Service, to the government, to the Department and to the min-

Culture and Power in Whitehall 35

ister. In this sense, they always have conflicting loyalties. On one side, they have loyalty to their political masters, the government and ministers. This loyalty is part of an important exchange relationship because without political support officials cannot act. However, as we saw in the Benn case, loyalty to the government and to a minister can conflict. Officials also have loyalty to the Civil Service and their department. In the Benn case, the argument of the officials was that they were being loyal to the government, but, from Benn’s perspective, they were protecting departmental interests in certain policies. However, perhaps what is most startling in this episode is how loyalty to the minister broke down and whilst this has happened on other occassions, with Michael Howard and the Home Office being perhaps the prime other example, it is rare. One senior official did reveal that an official in Energy: … saw his obligation to the Wilson administration and if he thought that Benn was doing crazy things then he had no compunction in going to talk to his mates in the Treasury or the Cabinet Office to see if other ministers could be persuaded in a suitable way to stop him. And to some extent that goes on now (1997). It is usually pretty covert. These conflicts of loyalty did cause problems. In particular, the role of the minister’s private office is to protect the minister and to be his/her eyes and ears in Whitehall. The strength of this loyalty is highlighted by the Benn case because his private office remained loyal. One former private secretary revealed the problems this created: We had to provide the Secretary of State with the best information we could. My recollection was that I served the Secretary of State but not necessarily the government as a whole. It’s a question of where your loyalties lie. But it was difficult as you had this hostility and tension between Tony Benn and the top officials in the Department. It was bizarre at moments and I can remember one particular day when Tony Benn went off and the Department had given its advice to Tony Benn and he had not replied to it and then he sent out a message that he wished me to spend a day with Frances Morrell and Francis Cripps and we should negotiate an agreed cabinet committee paper. I went to the Permanent Secretary and said, ‘What guidance do you give me on this?’ and he said, ‘The Department has already given its advice and the minister has not yet responded to

36 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

that advice and you have no authority to draft a paper which might conflict with our advice.’ I had a terrible day trying to draft a paper without having to give advice which would get me into trouble with the Permanent Secretary… You are right; there is a constitutional issue about who you serve. These issues are reflected generally in the Whitehall culture. Nevertheless, there is no single, uniformly accepted, culture. Competing cultural frameworks in Whitehall There are distinct sub-cultures within departmental divisions and agencies and competing cultures and interpretations of cultures in Whitehall as a whole. As we will see in Chapter 4, the DTI for a long period had two very distinct cultures in Trade and Industry. It is also increasingly apparent that agencies are developing particular cultures which separate them from their parent departments. Even within a department particular divisions may have a distinct and long-term culture. However, culture at this level is important because, whilst much of the generic Whitehall culture is concerned with defining the ‘other’, it is at the departmental or division level that officials define themselves, defining what they do and how they should relate to the rest of Whitehall. The overlaying of a departmental culture upon the broader Whitehall culture can also create an underlying and ever-present tension for officials. The Whitehall culture prizes loyalty to ministers, whilst the department culture usually prizes loyalty to the department, except in the private office where loyalty to the minister vis-à-vis the department is the overriding precept of action. Thus, the existence of these competing sub-cultures creates ambiguities that allow for subversions and conflicts. What is constant in the clashing cultures is the adherence to the general Whitehall culture at the elite levels and the process of insulation which it creates. Whitehall is insulated by two elements of the culture. One is the notion of the public service ethos, meaning that decision-making goes on within Whitehall without any direct accountability to, or interaction with, the public and this is reinforced by the parliamentary state (Judge 1993) which means that it is ministers not officials who are accountable and responsible for the policy process. A further fracture in the culture of Whitehall is the distinction between ministers and officials. Although, to some extent, officials define the way ministers behave, ministers and officials conceive of themselves in very different ways; they operate according to distinct

Culture and Power in Whitehall 37

rules. Furthermore, the basis of official power is knowledge and the basis of ministerial power is authority. Officials are socialised to accept ministerial authority whilst ministers need official knowledge in terms of both the technical knowledge about the policy concerns of the department and administrative knowledge about how to run the department. This creates two problems: one is the imbalance of resources, with officials having much more knowledge, time, information and know-how; and the second is the fact that ministerial authority is often delegated to officials, who make decisions with little or no reference to the minister. The paradox of the imbalance of resources is resolved because the actors – ministers and officials – operate within a structured world into which each brings different resources and, in order to achieve goals, they need each other. The relationship is structured by: the institutions within which they operate (i.e. the departments, the mechanisms of cabinet government and party); the different resources which they possess, which again are institutional and constitutional; and their different perceptions of each other and their respective roles. However, whilst it is a structured relationship, it is one to which both parties bring their own resources and one which, because it is based on perceptions and a constitution, exists through the reproduction of rules, rather than on paper and which is continually open to re-interpretation. Ministers and civil servants have different resources; they do not occupy the same structural positions or face the same constraints; and their abilities to act and to achieve their goals vary. As one former official said of the relationship: ‘It seems to me that the essence of it (the relationship) is dynamic interaction. It is not that there is one set of values, propositions, positions and needs that the politicians have and another set that the official system has and there is some sort of compromise, rather they interact.’ Another official saw the relationship working well when it was one of ‘give and take’. Officials are restrained by the culture that empowers them; they accept ministerial authority in two senses: the minister is the author of action but under that cover and the cover of ministerial responsibility, they are delegates and implementers, with all that implies, of ministerial authority (see Chapter 7).

The changing culture within Whitehall As we have argued, culture is always being contested and the 1980s saw a clear conflict between the traditional Whitehall culture of the

38 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom Figure 2.3

Competing cultural frameworks

Managerialism

Traditional Whitehall Culture

Values

Actions

Institutions

Efficiency Effectiveness Economy Integrity Neutrality Elitism

Can-doer Policy implementer Policy adviser Fact imparter

Flexible/and fragmented Hierarchical/and unified

public service ethos and the new culture of managerialism. In terms of the senior Civil Service, the impact was a very explicit expectation, in the words of the current Cabinet Secretary: ‘that they had to become managers – a major cultural change’ (Wilson 1999: 7). Each of these cultural frameworks presupposes distinct values, actions and institutions. Within Whitehall, there are competing cultural frameworks (see Fig. 2.3). These are, of course, sets of socially constructed values which protect the interests of various actors. The public service ethos is about maintaining a particular perception of the Civil Service which both identifies and hides the nature of their power. It identifies the power of officials because it places the determination of the public good in their hands and it hides it by presuming their neutrality and the purity of their motives. Officials are working for the public good and, therefore, they have no interest in power for its own sake. At the same time, the ethos identifies politicians as the decision-makers. The public service ethos provides a framework for official influence. Through their integrity they can do the ‘objective analysis’ and advise the minister on the best course of action. However, if they fail to influence the minister, the ethos also justifies and legitimises their behaviour because it is for the minister to decide and the official to implement his or her wishes. In this sense, the public service ethos constitutes the power of officials and defines the nature of the relationship with ministers. The public service ethos operated smoothly in a particular, historical, context. It could work within the postwar era because of deference and consensus. Deference meant that people were, on the whole, prepared to accept closed Whitehall policy-making without questioning policy makers and, indeed, with little debate. The consensus meant that officials had a relatively clear idea of what ministers from either party

Culture and Power in Whitehall 39

wanted to achieve. Hence, they were permitted a relatively large degree of autonomy in developing policy within that framework which was seen as essentially one of pragmatism rather than ideology. A number of officials reported how, in the 1950s, especially with fewer junior ministers, they were left very much to their own devices. From the late 1960s, a number of factors changed this context and, to some extent, began to challenge the public service ethos. In the 1960s and 1970s, government was seen to be failing. The elitist Whitehall machine was not regarded as providing either political or economic success. With political failure in Suez and increasing awareness of economic decline, respect for the ancien régime began to diminish. In the 1960s, many of the old institutions in Britain were questioned and the complacent continuation of the old ways was threatened. In the 1970s, it appeared that there was ‘overload’ and government was unable to deliver the demands of its constituencies. This resulted in a loss of legitimacy and the decline of deference (Jessop 1974; King 1975; Beer 1982). Ministers in a number of Labour governments were less enamoured of their officials and they were concerned that, through their autonomy, they were pursuing their own policies, rather than those of the government (see Crossman 1972a, 1972b; Benn 1980; Castle 1984). At the same time, a number of academic, journalistic and political works pointed to the failures of the official machinery (Balogh 1959; Sampson 1962; Hennessy 1989). In response to these concerns, the Fulton Committee was established in 1966 to examine the ‘structure, recruitment and management’ of the Civil Service. The Fulton Report was critical of the amateurism of the Civil Service and called for professionalisation and the imposition of greater managerialism. Although many of the Fulton recommendations floundered on Civil Service resistance, they did indicate a questioning of many of the traditional values. (For a full account see Hennessy 1989; Kellner and Crowther Hunt 1980; and Fry 1993.) Second, after 1979 Thatcherism presented a challenge to this consensus, particularly given its lack of faith in the public service. This was a reaction to what the new government conceived as an elitist, ‘worldweary’ and defeatist view of politics festering away in the corridors of Whitehall. It was encapsulated, in a now infamous statement attributed to William Armstrong, Head of the Civil Service between 1968 and 1974, that the role of Whitehall was to ‘manage the decline of Britain in an orderly fashion’ (Richards 1997: 116). Thatcher thought that civil servants were too wedded to the consensus and that their role should be to serve ministers and not their perception of the public interest.

40 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

According to Fry (1995: 38): ‘The Higher Civil Service, like the career Civil Service of which it was a part, was a natural adversary for the Thatcher Government because of its guilt by association with the former economic and social order.’ Thatcher did not value the public service ethos, because it was associated with big government and ministers being dominated by officials. Rather, as she reveals in her memoirs, she embraced private sector values: I knew from my father’s accounts that the free market was like a vast sensitive nervous system, responding to events and signals all over the world to meet the ever changing needs of peoples in different countries, from different classes, of different religions … Governments acted on a much smaller store of conscious information and, by contrast, were themselves ‘blind forces’ blundering about in the dark, and obstructing the operations of markets rather than improving them. (Thatcher 1993: 11) Thatcher saw the Civil Service as wedded to consensus and as dominating the actions of ministers (Fry 1995). She believed this would have an insidious effect on the radical policies her government proposed. Also, according to Ian Gilmour (1997: 227): ‘Mrs Thatcher … had no great admiration for the public servant in general – much preferring businessmen, sometimes rather dodgy ones – or for the civil servants in particular, thinking if they had been any good they would have been in the City making money.’ The solution was the introduction of market values as a way to reassert ministers’ managerial control and to improve the efficiency of the Civil Service. Crucially, she explicitly wanted to ‘de-privilege’ the Civil Service, so that it operated similarly to the private sector. For Thatcher, the public service ethos was a discursive construct which privileged officials. It also reflected a particular view of the state, state institutions and certain forms of political economy; the Keynesian welfarism which contain both strong statist and laissez-faire elements but essentially a strong element of elite control from Whitehall. The 1980s saw tensions develop in relation to the ethos because of the decline of deference to the men in Whitehall which resulted from the problems of overload and government failure and the rise of an ideology which favoured the private sector over public service. This ideology was propounded by a government committed to achieving its goals and so it was not prepared to privilege the Civil Service. Therefore, the ideology raised questions and provided the means to challenge the public service

Culture and Power in Whitehall 41

ethos. The role of officials was not to be policy advisers, bound up in a symbiotic relationship with ministers, but to implement as effectively and efficiently as possible the policy preferences of ministers (see Campbell and Wilson 1995; Foster and Plowden 1996). Consequently, the new culture was about officials as efficient managers, thus reconstructing the nature of their power and their relationships with ministers. The combination of failures in Whitehall, a new approach to political economy and the state and a distinctive ideology, resulted in an attempt to articulate a new construction of the civil servant and the Whitehall culture. The impact of this cultural change on departments will be examined in Chapter 4 and its impact on minister–civil servant relations in Chapter 7.

The importance of culture The Civil Service is an intensely culture-bound organisation. Culture is learned through the processes of recruitment, training and work and continually modified and reinforced through action. Culture is underpinned by interrelated actions, values and organisations. Organisations hold cultures, they institutionalise sets of rule-bound behaviour which exist beyond the individual. They do this by reaffirming sets of values that govern behaviour, relationships and solutions to problems. Values underpin action which, in turn, creates and recreates values and organisation. Civil servants are constituted through their culture and it is this culture that defines and informs the exercise of power. It governs the way officials behave and their relationships with ministers. It is through maintaining this relationship that Civil Service power is constituted. They are fact-givers, advisers, judges of the constitution and constituters of the role of officials. Therefore, they do not conspire to have power over ministers, but the nature of the relationship means that they have power over ministers through their interpretation of the rules. At the same time, they are governed by rules of loyalty to ministers and the binding nature of ministerial authority and so power is not a zero-sum game; it is present in every aspect of the culture. However, competing cultural concepts construct different power relationships. From 1979 onwards, the Conservative government challenged the public service ethos through the notion of new public management, undermining the core of Whitehall culture. In addition, it introduced crucial organisational changes through the creation of agencies and the strategic management review which changed the organisational basis

42 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

of the Whitehall culture. Finally, through a number of programmatic changes, the Thatcher government assaulted the particular cultures of department. It is one of the aims of this book to assess the impact of these factors on the culture of Whitehall departments. This returns us to perhaps the key problem of cultural accounts. As DiMaggio and Powell (1991: 30) argue: ‘If institutions exert such a powerful influence over the ways in which people can formulate their desires and work to attain them, then how does institutional change occur?’

3 Structural Change in Central Government

The last chapter highlighted the Conservatives’ conscious attempt to change the culture within Whitehall. In this chapter, we analyse institutional/structural change in central government during the same period. There are many narrative accounts detailing the changes (Hennessy 1989; Plowden 1994; Campbell and Wilson 1995; Fry 1995) and we shall not rehearse these accounts. Unfortunately, however, most of these accounts are descriptive rather than explanatory. In contrast, rational choice theorists (see Dunleavy 1991; Dowding 1995) have attempted to explain these changes, but only by offering an agencycentred account. Our aim here is to provide a fuller and more comprehensive analysis which acknowledges both the structural constraints upon change and the role of individuals in bringing change about. More specifically, in our view there are four sets of structural factors – political, economic, ideological and organisational – which have a crucial impact upon reform in central government. Certainly, we would question any unidimensional explanation of change. At the same time, we must also acknowledge that agency, as well as structural, factors have shaped the process of change. In order to help explain the organisational changes in British central government in the 1980s and 1990s, this chapter is divided into three sections. The first section argues that in 1979 the Conservatives did not have a ‘grand strategy’ (see Fry 1984), nor a ‘general game plan’ (see Dowding 1995), for reforming the machinery of government. There was not (see Greer 1994; Rhodes 1997) a ‘revolutionary evolution’ but a process of incremental reforms, developed in situ, which led to a process of ‘evolutionary transformation’. Consequently, in the second section, we question the notion that the government developed a coherent New Public Management (NPM) 43

44 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

programme. We are not arguing that after 18 years the Civil Service remained broadly unchanged. Undoubtedly, the state in 1997 was vastly different to the one in 1979, but this ‘transformation’ was achieved more by a process of trial and error in which a series of, often (ideologically) conflicting, piecemeal reforms were cobbled together. However, talk of NPM is misleading because it suggests that there was a blueprint for reform where none existed. Our final section argues that the transformation which occurred during this period fundamentally altered the power-dependency relationship between ministers and civil servants (see Rhodes 1981; Smith 1999a). In 1979, it was generally perceived that the power of the civil servants vis-à-vis ministers had increased. Many suggested that there was a need for parliamentary sovereignty, or more precisely executive sovereignty, to be reasserted. By 1997, the Conservatives had achieved this goal, but not to the extent of destroying the ‘Whitehall paradigm’ (see Campbell and Wilson 1995; Foster and Plowden 1996). We would therefore contend that the issue of power has been one of the key dynamics which underpinned the last 18 years of reform, but which has been often understated in accounts of this period. Clearly, this third point indicates that we perceive political factors to be the key determinant of recent changes in central government. However, we do not wish to discount the role of economic, ideological or organisational explanations which also played a role in informing the last Conservative governments’ approach to reform. Finally, we assess the degree to which structural and institutional change has created or helped to create a ‘differentiated polity’. In subsequent chapters we examine the impact of these changes on departments.

A grand strategy before 1979? When the Conservatives were elected in 1979, they had no ‘grand strategy’ (Fry 1984) to reform the state (see Dowding 1995). Indeed, the Conservatives took far less interest in the machinery of government when they were in opposition between 1974 and 1979 than they had under Heath between 1966 and 1970, when they produced a series of reform proposals. Consequently, soon after it was elected, the Heath government introduced a White Paper, The Reorganisation of Central Government. David Howell (1970), the author of A New Style of Government which provided much of the intellectual backdrop for the White Paper, explained to us that:

Structural Change in Central Government 45

There is a view that the change in culture happened nine years earlier than 1979, with the Heath government talking about a new style of government. In those days we thought about hiving-off and quangos, as well as unravelling departments. The Civil Service first of all fought a rear-guard action against that and then began to embrace it and, to some extent, I think that carried on under the Labour government. So, when we were re-elected in 1979, some cultural change had occurred already. The key aim of the 1970 White Paper was to change the structure of government, by merging a number of small departments into larger, federal departments, which would mean a smaller number of Cabinet ministers. Through the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) and Programme Analysis and Review (PAR), the hope was that the Cabinet could develop a broader, strategic overview of the government’s programme. After the Heath government’s electoral defeats in 1974, followed by the installation of Margaret Thatcher as party leader in 1975, Conservative attitudes to the state, and more particularly the party’s attitude to the Civil Service, were re-examined. The new ‘Thatcherites’ argued that the state institutions, including the Civil Service, enshrined a deeply entrenched, corporatist settlement and the state was now overloaded (Brittan 1975, 1979; King 1975; Jay 1977; Adonis and Hames 1994; Gamble 1994; Cockett 1995; Hay 1996; Kavanagh 1997). They were also influenced by public-choice analyses of bureaucratic behaviour, which saw the public sector as ‘flabby’; a result of public servants not being exposed to the rigours of the market. This, it was argued, led to over-spending, over-manning and inefficiency. These accounts portrayed public sector officials as budget maximisers who acted in their own self-interest, rather than in the interest of the government, or, more broadly, the public’s interest (see Niskanen 1971, 1978; Breton and Wintrobe 1974; Migue and Berlanger 1974; Noll and Fiorina 1979). The idea of government overload coupled with public choice accounts of bureaucratic behaviour provided a political discourse about the role of the state which the Thatcherites embraced. For example, as Campbell and Wilson (1995: 304) observed: ‘Thatcher herself brandished Niskanen’s work on bureaucracy at her colleagues and pressed them to read it.’ So, it is important not to discount the role of ideas and discourse. This evolving New Right discourse found favour with a number of Conservative Shadow ministers, notably

46 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Keith Joseph, David Howell, John Nott and, more latterly, Margaret Thatcher. Finally, there was an evolving critique, voiced as much by those on the radical left of the political spectrum as by the emerging New Right, that the Civil Service was over-powerful and too wedded to a postwar settlement and the postwar consensus. The New Right asserted that any government with a radical agenda which wished to break free would be hampered by the Civil Service’s commitment to this consensus. They argued that the way in which senior mandarins had constrained the Fulton Committee’s remit and subsequently systematically emasculated its report provided ample evidence of the Civil Service’s resistance to change (see Kellner and Crowther Hunt 1980; Richards 1997). In this context, it is not surprising that a number of authors suggest that to understand subsequent change we need to focus upon the role of the emerging neo-liberal wing of the Conservative Party. This explanation focuses upon the role of ideology and upon intentional explanation. However, it fails to recognise the structural context within which the New Right discourse was evolving. In particular, the composition of the Conservative Party in the late 1970s and the political priorities of the newly elected Conservative government acted as powerful structural constraints on the growth of this political discourse in the Conservative Cabinet. New Right ideology didn’t dominate the Conservative Party in the late 1970s; neither was Mrs Thatcher’s position as leader unchallenged. The Parliamentary Conservative Party has always been a broad church (see Gamble 1994; Ludlam and Smith 1996; Hay 1996; Kavanagh 1997; Gilmour 1997; Heath 1998). Certainly, under Thatcher, the Opposition front bench contained an array of individuals with differing political views and between 1975 and 1979 the ‘neoliberal’ wing of the party was not dominant. As such, it is unsurprising that the Shadow Cabinet had an ambivalent attitude towards the Civil Service. Progressive or one-nation Conservatism regarded the Civil Service as one of the great institutions underpinning the status quo that the Party should acknowledge and protect. Lord Carrington articulated this view in an interview: I think the top of the Civil Service is very good. I think their procedures were very good, as were the people who worked for me. I mean the people I had working with me could not have been bettered anywhere. It’s also a great mistake to think that what the civil

Structural Change in Central Government 47

servants want to do is not necessarily what you want to do. I’m not quite sure why people say: ‘He’s a prisoner of his department’. I happen to think that most of what the Foreign Office advised me to do was absolutely right, but I was not a prisoner of the Foreign Office. I happened to agree with the policy and I found them extremely loyal. I think that if you do have a relationship with them then you are more likely to get your way. Clearly, this view was at odds with the view of those on the ‘dry’ wing who demanded some form of radical political reform. As we saw in the last chapter, they argued that the elite in Whitehall were too closely associated with consensus politics and were therefore partly responsible for Britain’s relative economic decline. As Thatcher (1993: 48) retrospectively observed about the attitudes of her senior mandarins in 1979: ‘What lay still further behind this … was a desire for no change … The idea that the Civil Service could be insulated from a reforming zeal that would transform Britain’s public and private institutions over the next decade was a pipe-dream.’ In part then, the delay in the reform of central government was the result of the division within the government on the Civil Service. However, more importantly, the effects of rising inflation and increasing unemployment, and a desire to curtail the perceived power of the trade unions, meant that economic policy, not central government reform, dominated the political agenda. Whereas Heath had regarded reorganising the machinery of state as at the core of his government’s broader policy objectives, in contrast, Civil Service reform was not a pivotal concern for the Thatcher government during its first term. Indeed, the government’s attention was increasingly concentrated on the economy as Britain slumped into recession by 1981. By 1979 then, one wing of the Cabinet stressed the need for public sector reform and, in particular, change in the Civil Service. However, at that stage, the neo-liberals did not have a coherent radical package of structural change. In addition, because of the ideological tensions within the Thatcher Shadow Cabinet, coupled with the need to prioritise economic policy, there was no cohesively thought-out, strategic, blueprint or ‘grand strategy’ for Civil Service reform. Neither was there an ideologically informed ‘general game plan’, as some public choice theorists suggest. In fact, it was not until 1983 that any strategy at all emerged, provided by what became known in Whitehall folklore as the Hoskyns’ critique (see Hoskyns 1983).

48 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

A grand strategy in power: towards a new public management? The Conservatives learnt a number of strategic political lessons on how to approach the Civil Service from the experiences of the 1970s. In particular, there was a widespread belief that the emasculation of the Fulton Report reflected a growth of Civil Service power in Whitehall. The fate of the Fulton Report has been comprehensively covered elsewhere (see Ponting 1986; Hennessy 1989; Drewry and Butcher 1991; Pyper 1991; Plowden 1994; Theakston 1995; and Richards 1997). Essentially, the Report was never effectively backed by the Wilson Cabinet and, as such, it was open to manipulation by Whitehall insiders. However, a decade later, the Fulton Report proved important to the Thatcher government, who used it to argue that there was an imbalance in Whitehall between policymakers and effective managers of the machine. This theme resonated throughout the reforms of the 1980s. The Fulton Report, and Whitehall’s de-radicalisation of it, taught the Thatcher administration three important political lessons: senior civil servants could be a powerful reactionary force when confronted with radical reform; it was crucial to have the right personnel in key positions in order to ensure support for reform; and it was essential to give strong political backing if any reform of the institutions and practices of Whitehall was to be effective. Indeed, this last point was affirmed by the Conservatives’ experiences in government between 1970 and 1974. From the outset, the Heath government had a coherent strategy for transforming the machinery of government which the Thatcher government lacked. Yet, Heath’s reforms floundered because he and his government lost interest; Thatcher did not.

Re-inventing public administration in the Thatcher era? In recent years, much has been written on the eclipse of public administration. It is argued that it has been supplanted by a post-modern ‘new managerialism’ paradigm (see Clegg 1990; Hood 1991; Rhodes 1997; Weller et al. 1997; Parsons 1998). Is there evidence of such a change in Britain? We are more sceptical than some. In part this is because we believe this assessment is based upon a misreading of the past. As we saw, managerialism was a theme which affected public administration in both the 1960s and 1970s. So, in determining the true nature of public administration under the Conservatives, it is important to acknowledge that the period after 1979 was marked by both continuity and change. As such, our argument has three key elements:

Structural Change in Central Government 49

• The Conservatives pursued a course of reform that altered both public administration and concomitantly the structure of the state. • Their reform programme was broadly ad hoc. It was based on a series of distinct measures which, retrospectively, can be portrayed as contributing to a process of evolutionary reform. • Their programme lacked a blueprint and, as such, had contradictory elements. In particular, they remained committed to key features of the constitution. This continued commitment leaves open the question of whether there was a paradigmatic shift from public administration to new managerialism

Although the structural framework of the state was to a degree recast during the Conservative administrations, its fundamental nature was preserved by the maintenance of the existing constitutional status quo. As such, we question the view that there has been a move to ‘new managerialism’ accompanied by a ‘hollowing-out’ of the state. Instead, we contend that the state has always been a complex, amorphous and changing entity so that, although it was re-constituted under the Conservatives, this was not unique nor did it amount to a transformation. In addition, both ministers and civil servants have generally remained committed to the Westminster model of British government based upon a closed, elitist and secretive system (see Smith 1999a; Richards and Smith 2000). Overall, the Thatcher government’s reform agenda remained structurally constrained by its commitment to most elements of the Westminster model. This commitment mitigated against the formation of an alternative, coherent, radical reform package for Whitehall. Continuity and change under the Conservatives: re-assessing new public management Regardless of how we define NPM, our interviews indicate that the process of Civil Service reform was not based on a clearly constructed blueprint of reform, or even a loosely assembled range of goals (see Hogwood 1997; Ling 1998: 118). So, for example, Peter Kemp, one of the key figures involved in the Next Steps process, maintains that the Conservative administration: … had a vague feeling that there was something wrong with the Civil Service machinery of over half million people … I think it is fair to say with all the reforms (and I accept there are some political overtures to some of them) there was a natural evolution … It was simply a case of tapping ahead with a white stick. Some of us felt,

50 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

and Margaret Thatcher was included in our number from the point of view of the management and administration of the Civil Service and John Major from the point of view of customer service, that something was not quite right. It was a political feel at the top end, while it was official drive at the lower end. Similarly, another retired senior official observed: Some of the things that were being proposed were very vague and one or two things were accepted maybe two or three years later, while other proposals simply faded away. There was no real substance to the reforms up until the Next Steps. As such, the process of reform is much more properly understood as a response to a combination of political, economic, ideological and organisational factors. The reforms were based upon a normative view that the private sector was dynamic and efficient, while the public sector was stagnant, reactionary and wasteful. They reflected a process of strategic learning by a Conservative administration that was in office for a long time. This learning was a response to lessons learnt from the previous decade and based upon an ill-defined, and often unpredictable, process of trial and error when in power (see Hogwood 1997: 715). Nevertheless, whilst there was some pressure from the centre for change, the implementation process was very much in the hands of departmental ministers. This produced contradictions and delays in the reforms. Indeed, an official argued: We did actually produce systems and methodology for doing all this ‘MINIS’ stuff for our ministers and I’m afraid I had to say they weren’t interested. Fowler hadn’t the least interest in this sort of thing because it wasn’t political. I mean what was the good of telling him precisely how every penny in the Department was being spent when what he wanted to do was get some political changes. I remember a presentation we gave to ministers about this when we got the first round of this process set up and Hugh Rossi, he was a junior minister then, said in rather supercilious way: ‘Of course this is just Yes Minister stuff, isn’t it?’ And we were absolutely bloody furious. I mean we really could have taken him outside and duffed him up because we were trying to provide what Mrs Thatcher wanted and they weren’t interested …

Structural Change in Central Government 51

As such, the use of NPM as a framework for analysing change in British central government is problematic. In particular, it often leads analysts to portray the reform as part of a coherent, neo-liberal agenda that swept through Britain and other similar liberal-democratic states, such as New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Holland, France, Canada and the United States. As we have seen, the reform process was initiated well before Thatcher with Heath and Fulton and was given further impetus by the IMF’s demands for cuts in Civil Service numbers (see Chapter 4). The NPM thesis suggests that the state changed from being stable, unilinear, consensual, centralised, rule-bound and paternalistic to being responsive, flexible, dynamic, outcome-orientated, decentralised and enabling. This clearly oversimplifies the process of change. In particular, it is crucial to disaggregate. So, for example, as we show in Chapter 4, a department like the Home Office remained rule-bound, hierarchical and centralised, while the Next Step Agencies connected to the DSS were much more flexible, decentralised and enabling.

Re-interpreting change in British central government in the 1980s and 1990s: a power dependency perspective If NPM does not provide a suitable framework of analysis for understanding the process of reform, then how should the events of the last eighteen years be properly explained? Our interviews suggest that one of the key dynamics was political; the Conservatives were concerned that civil servants had become too powerful, at the expense of ministers. Executive sovereignty needed to be reasserted and this required change in both the culture and operational practices of Whitehall. The Conservatives argued that the Civil Service should no longer be regarded as a ‘special case’ enjoying a whole range of privileges accumulated over two centuries. Instead, it should revert to its original role, as, in Northcote-Trevelyan’s terms, courtiers to their political masters. For the Conservatives, the raison d’être of Whitehall was to serve the duly elected government of the day, rather than attempting to impose its own consensual views on the political process. In order to understand the reform in Whitehall, it is crucial to recognise the Conservatives’ desire to reassert the power of the executive in pursuit of an image of strong government and of governing competence (Bulpitt 1986). Here, we do not wish to discount the role of ideology, or more specifically of new business models of management in the reform process, but instead to suggest that political factors are often given insufficient attention.

52 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

After eighteen years of reforming central government, the Conservatives were successful in reasserting executive authority, but this shift in the power balance between ministers and civil servants needs to be situated within the context of a model of power-dependency (see Rhodes 1981; Smith 1999a). We would question the accounts of authors such as Foster and Plowden (1996) who suggest that the Whitehall paradigm has been eclipsed by a post-Whitehall, minister-dominated, paradigm. Foster and Plowden (1996: 244–5; see also Campbell and Wilson 1995: 294–301) contend: Not since the seventeenth century has any one element in the constitution arrogated as much power to itself as ministers have recently … Future politics could be much more overtly ‘political’ in the absence of both effective parliamentary scrutiny and the traditional restraining influence of the Civil Service. Such accounts which portray the change in power relations between ministers and civil servants as a zero-sum game and which suggest that, by the mid-1990s, ministers dominated the policy process, fail to understand the fluid nature of power within the core executive. There are tensions within the core executive between the authority of ministers, which results from the royal prerogative, parliamentary sovereignty and their control of departments, and the crucial role ascribed to officials, which reflects the Haldane model of a relationship and recognises their role as custodians of the rule book and their control of the administrative machinery. In the rest of this chapter, we outline the structural and organisational reforms within the Civil Service which occurred under the Conservatives, in order to demonstrate that, although ministers were successful in increasing their power in relation to civil servants, it remained an exchange relationship. Moreover, in our view, the role of particular officials reflected the views and actions of individual ministers, as much as the structural reforms.

Re-asserting executive sovereignty: reform of Whitehall under the Conservatives The Conservatives adopted a pragmatic approach to reform which centred on restructuring the balance between the public and private sector, while leaving the constitution untouched. They adopted a dual strategy; reorganising the state, while undertaking an ad hoc programme of de-privileging and reforming the Civil Service. To an extent, the

Structural Change in Central Government 53

main aims were political, to re-establish executive control over the bureaucracy, while at the same time reducing the role of the state. Reorganising the state Under the Conservatives, the boundaries of the state visibly shifted. However, there are different interpretations of these changes. So, as we saw in the introductory chapter, some authors argue that the state was hollowed out. In contrast, others see the state as having undergone a process of reconstitution, in which the power and the size of the state remain, but in a more diffuse, decentralised, form (see Saward 1997; Smith 1999a; Marsh, Richards and Smith 2001). However one interprets the re-drawing of the state boundaries under the Conservatives, it is clear that it produced contradictory outcomes. Such changes, when coupled with the organisational and personnel changes the Conservatives introduced, made the lines of accountability more fissiparous, increased the complexity of the policy process and threatened collective decision-making (see Chapter 7 and Flinders 2000). On the other hand, the changes allowed ministers to assert greater control over what remained at the core, i.e. the senior Civil Service involved in policy-making. Re-imposing authority over the core In order to analyse the Conservatives’ strategy for re-imposing executive authority over what they perceived as an overly powerful bureaucracy, two key areas need to be examined: personnel reform and managerial reform. Personnel reform The Conservatives’ initial approach to the personnel reform of Whitehall was primarily political; it was a programme based on deprivileging the Civil Service. As one retired senior official argued: ‘It soon became obvious after 1979 that the Civil Service was no longer to be regarded as a “special case” and we were about to come under attack. Something unusual from a post-war Conservative Government.’ Thus, there followed a period in which the Civil Service Department was abolished (1981), there was a move towards a de-centralised pay system following the Megaw Committee’s recommendations (1982) and the CPRS was abolished (1983). The Thatcher government’s strategy to realign the power balance between the executive and Whitehall also embraced changing the culture and attitude of most senior civil servants. As has been shown

54 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

elsewhere (Richards 1997), the Thatcher government did not attempt to politicise the senior Civil Service by appointing a series of Conservative Party sympathisers to the most senior posts in Whitehall. However, given the longevity of Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister, she had responsibility for approving a large number of appointments to the top two grades in Whitehall. In so doing, she personalised the appointments system, ensuring that individuals who were ‘managerially-orientated, can-doers’ were appointed to a number of strategic posts (Richards 1997). This had an effect on the culture at the highest tiers in Whitehall, which Thatcher hoped would permeate downwards throughout the rest of the senior Civil Service. Senior officials began to concentrate more on finding ways to implement government policies, rather than adopting the more traditional, ‘snaghunter’ role of previous Whitehall generations. The vast majority of the senior officials we interviewed, both retired and still serving, accepted that a transformation in their role occurred during the 1980s. So, as one contemporary official commented: I think what happened during the 1980s is that the Civil Service moved to recognising their job as delivering what ministers wanted. Can-do man was in and wait-a-minute man was out. Ministers not only knew what they wanted, but often how to get there. The Civil Service role as ballast was sidelined. There was no room for it. So officials buckled down and really got on with it. Similarly, a retired Permanent Secretary emphasised: I think Conservative ministers tended increasingly to want somebody to run the machine and do it effectively, but not to offer independent advice. That was the biggest change and I think this has had an effect to this day on the calibre of the people coming into the Civil Service. In personnel terms, one of the key changes during the Thatcher period involved an increased emphasis upon the need to appoint efficient managers of the policy and implementation process, rather than policy advisers (see Chapter 7). Here, the process of reform should be understood as political, involving the reassertion of ministerial power over the Civil Service. However, at a secondary level, it is also organisational and economic, emphasising the need for senior civil servants to be efficient managers of the machine.

Structural Change in Central Government 55

In the Major years, a whole series of personnel reforms were introduced: the Efficiency Unit’s Career Management and Succession Planning (1993); a White Paper, Continuity and Change (1994); a second White Paper, The Civil Service: Taking Forward Continuity and Change (1995); and the Senior Management Review (SMR). Gradually, but in the view of many people far too slowly, the system was changing from one in which individuals gained entry into a career to one in which the individual was appointed to a specific job. This was reflected in the two central aims of the White Papers: to break down the hierarchy in the upper echelons of the senior Civil Service and so increase delegation and diversity of advice within the policy process; and, where possible, to eliminate layers of management among the 3000 top civil servants in Whitehall. It was the 1995 Senior Management Review that had the most pronounced effect on the policy-making process. It led to the creation of the Senior Civil Service, the removal of a whole bureaucratic tier (Grade 3) and the devolution of responsibility down the Whitehall hierarchy. However, here it should be noted that there were political, economic and organisational factors underpinning this change. At the most formal level, the SMR was an organisational reform. Its rationale was to move closer to European models of bureaucratic organisation; so, for example, Deputy Secretaries (Grade 2) were to adopt the EU title of Director-Generals. As such, the aim was to break down the traditional hierarchical (gradist) nature of policy-making in Whitehall, so officials would now be known by their job titles instead of their grade. At the same time, the SMR was underpinned by a Treasury initiative aimed at reducing Whitehall departments to an elite core of policymakers, with other activities being further contracted out either to agencies or the private sector. In this sense, the reforms were justified in economic and political terms. They would result in cost savings and give ministers greater control over the rump of the bureaucratic machine left at the heart of Whitehall. Managerial reform During the 1980s, the Conservatives undertook a series of managerial reforms. Underpinning these reforms was a belief that officials allotted too much time to policy-making to the detriment of efficient management (see Adonis and Hames 1994). The key reforms were: Raynerism; the Financial Management Initiative; and, most importantly, the introduction of the Next Steps reforms in 1988. The latter established a range of agencies, with accountable chief executives, providing a

56 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

service along similar lines to a business operating in the private sector. Next Steps was not a radical departure from earlier attempts at reform, rather it was a reaction to, and consolidation of, previous ad hoc attempts at change. Indeed, the incremental manner in which the Conservatives arrived at Next Steps is symbolic of the whole process of evolutionary transformation during the 1980s. Subsequently, during the 1990s, the Major government surprised many by not only picking up the mantle of Civil Service reforms bequeathed by the Thatcher government, but also dramatically increasing the pace of reform. Between 1990 and 1997, there was a proliferation of Next Steps Agencies, increased contracting-out (privatisation) of government business and the introduction of the Citizen’s Charter. Cumulatively, these all eroded the Northcote–Trevelyan notion that the Civil Service should be a career-oriented, unified and centralised organisation. The introduction of market forces to the structural and operational framework of the Civil Service in the 1990s, created a cogent logic for the extension of these principles to the management of personnel at the core of Whitehall (see above). However, it could be argued that it was the Next Steps programme that was at the core of the most dynamic phase of the Conservatives’ Whitehall reform. Although superficially Next Steps can be regarded as a reform programme based on an organisationally informed agenda, the rationale underpinning the initiative was political. The Conservatives believed that hiving-off departmental administrative functions would leave ministers with a smaller, policy-making elite based in Whitehall, whose role would be to assist the government in its broader, strategic goals. As such, it would make it much easier for ministers to make policy. In our account, the reform process was driven by the politicians, in order to restore executive authority, while, at the same time, establishing a more efficient model of the way in which to conduct government business (this argument is developed below, see Chapter 7). Despite internal opposition, Next Steps eventually overcame the residual barriers erected in Whitehall. Initially, the Treasury was very much opposed to the agencification process, while, more broadly, other departments were apathetic, in large part because they failed to appreciate the radical nature of Next Steps. Public-choice accounts of Next Steps suggest that the resistance by the Treasury was due to its unwillingness to cede power and control over departmental budgets (see Dowding 1995). However, it is clear from our interviews, that such accounts fail to understand the political context in which the

Structural Change in Central Government 57

reforms were introduced. As one senior official at the centre of reform noted: The Treasury was hotly and very aggressively opposed to it purely on principle for a long time. Robert Armstrong, the then Cabinet Secretary, was fairly pro-Next Steps, but he was a lame duck as his retirement was fast approaching ... By mid-summer 1987, it was well known round Whitehall circles that Butler would be his successor ... Armstrong came up with the idea that 12 units should be identified for possible agency status. There then followed a severe argument led by Peter Middleton at the Treasury against Butler and Armstrong. The reason for this was the needle between Armstrong and Middleton, as Middleton would have dearly liked to have been the next Cabinet Secretary. Middleton is not a man to take hostages, so anything Butler liked he was going to kill. Thus, Middleton, as Head of the Treasury, came out against Next Steps. In the face of such opposition, a compromise had to be reached and this was achieved by allowing the Treasury a vestige of control in the reform process. As another official noted: The whole thing was very petty, but a deal was done and a so-called concordat was worked out between the Treasury and what was then the OMCS under which the Treasury was to retain quite a lot of power. On the basis of that deal, Middleton did not withdraw his hostility, but he could no longer force Lawson to oppose it so much. So, it went back to Cabinet in early 1988 and it was duly launched in February 1988. The cumulative effect that this, and the ensuing reform programme, had on the functioning of government departments and their relations with the Prime Minister, interest groups, agencies and Europe will be discussed in subsequent chapters. However, it is important to emphasise here that these reforms directly impacted on the relationship between the executive and the bureaucracy. So, for example, a retired Civil Service Commissioner concluded: If you are looking at the structure of the senior Civil Service, I don’t think you can ignore the introduction of Agencies. They have very much affected the nature of the senior people advising ministers. I would say that it is one of the most significant changes to the Civil

58 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Service, since perhaps the Northcote–Trevelyan reforms. It seems unfortunate to me that it has been done without Parliamentary legislation. But if you are talking about the type of people now involved at the highest levels in the agencies, I think you will find a great deal of them come from the private sector. So you have got this infusion of people from outside. The reforms have produced tangible effects both for the Civil Service and the functioning of British government as a whole. The above analysis was consistently substantiated by interviews with civil servants. Indeed, the broad, consensual view was provided by one, recently retired, Permanent Secretary: So much has now gone out to Executive Agencies and they have largely an executive job to do. We have lost those days when you had the key policy makers also running the big executive functions, within a large department. That opens some new questions about the role of the Permanent Secretaries and higher civil servants in what is left of the policy-making departments, as distinct from the Executive Agencies. At the same time, it raises further questions about the degree to which the existing Civil Service Code has come under attack (see Richards and Smith 2000). As a contemporary senior official put it: I think the current reforms are extremely worrying. I think there is a danger of destroying the existing code and with it the Civil Service ethos. You are going to have separate departments, you are going to have people with an alien culture, which raises questions of accountability and also, I think, standards. However, it is clear that reform in the late 1980s and 1990s produced a sea-change in the structure, culture and operating procedures of Whitehall. While Fulton was defused by the dynamic conservatism of the Civil Service, the reforms from Next Steps onwards have altered the balance of power between ministers and civil servants. As Metcalfe (1993: 352) concludes: Management methods, concepts, models, and values have been accepted as an integral part of the way the business of government is conducted. Whether they are the right management concepts is

Structural Change in Central Government 59

open to debate, but then acceptance goes much deeper than almost anyone thought possible in 1979. It is difficult to imagine these reforms being reversed. … Without suggesting that a total transformation has occurred or that the changes have been completely successful. It is increasingly clear that a fundamental shift has been made which will have a permanent influence on the functioning of British government. Nevertheless, whilst the role of senior civil servants was to be more managerial and departments were to become less hierarchical, much of the role as defined by the Whitehall culture remained. They continued as the key policy advisers, they were still loyal and they continued to control the administrative machinery. They also continued the important ‘political’ role; civil servants know how to play both the Whitehall and Westminster games and thus retain a monopoly of advice to ministers on how they should defend themselves in Parliament, in Whitehall turf wars and in the spending round. Consequently, ministers’ dependence is high and so much of the traditional role is retained (see Chapter 7). Moreover, whilst a few ministers have been less willing to trust their officials (see the next chapter) the majority in the last Conservative administration retained traditional ‘Westminster model’ perceptions of the roles of officials.

The changing organisational structure in our four departments An analysis of reform in central government would be incomplete without also considering the reorganisation of Whitehall departments. In the following section, we will look at change in each of our departments between 1964 and 1999. The organisational history of each of our departments is unique and, in many ways, this reflects the nature of the policy areas with which they deal. The Home Office has had the most stable organisational history, having, until very recently, never undergone any fundamental reorganisation. On the other hand, the Department of Trade and Industry has experienced the greatest organisational dislocation involving a series of splits and mergers in the last thirty years. The Department of Social Security has not endured the same degree of organisational trauma as the DTI, but it too underwent a fundamental reorganisation when it was split from Health in 1988. Finally, the Department of Energy’s lifespan was closely linked to rapid changes in the energy policy area. The Department was set up in 1974

60 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

in response to the energy crisis. It existed for less than two decades and its demise reflected the Conservatives’ view that Britain’s energy policy should be determined by market forces with the state playing a limited role. As such, even a cursory examination indicates that each of our departments has its own unique history. The Department of Trade and Industry Of the four departments we examined, the DTI has had by far the most turbulent history of organisational reform. It is a department with a complex history and a wide range of functions. At present, the DTI has responsibility for activities which include trade, competition policy, company regulation, the implementation of the single market and energy. Despite the difficulty involved in restructuring departments, the DTI has been subject to many changes. In its modern guise the DTI was created in 1970 in the drive for super-departments following Heath’s White Paper on the Reorganisation of Central Government (see Cmnd 4506 1970; Radcliffe 1991). It was broken up in a 24-hour period in 1974 (Part 1990: 168). The split took place in March 1974, following the February General Election when three new departments were created: the Department of Trade; the Department of Industry; and the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection. The observations of both the ministers and civil servants involved in that split indicate that there were two political dynamics involved. Firstly, Harold Wilson wished to create a Cabinet Portfolio for Shirley Williams, a close ally whom he wanted as part of his ministerial team. Under the existing arrangements he had inherited, Wilson could not find a suitable position for Williams and so he created the Department of Price and Consumer Protection. The creation of this department also fitted in with Labour manifesto commitments. As one senior official commented: What drove the split between Industry, Trade and Prices? I suspect it was one of those things that Labour ministers have always been more interested in that sort of area of government and given that Wilson had to find a certain number of holes for people, he found it convenient to have three separate departments … In particular, to create a portfolio for Shirley Williams. However, splitting the DTI was also a response to another more important political imperative. Harold Wilson did not want to have Tony

Structural Change in Central Government 61

Benn in charge of such a powerful Whitehall department. By 1974, Benn had become a talisman for many on the left of the Labour Party and Wilson was keen to see his growing parliamentary power base constrained by the exigencies of ministerial office. With his experience in MinTech during the 1960s and his enthusiasm for large, technically innovative, science-based programmes, Benn’s talents clearly suited a department whose responsibility lay in the industrial field. Yet, allowing Benn to take on responsibility for both Trade and Industry would provide him with a power base in Cabinet which was unacceptable to Wilson. By splitting up the department, he not only created more Cabinet portfolios for his own allies, but, more importantly, circumscribed the position of Benn within the government. As one former senior official in the Cabinet office, who was in the DTI at the time of the split, commented: ‘There was a desire by Wilson to split the power base of Tony Benn, as, by that stage, Benn was already perceived to be a growing problem.’ Similarly, another retired official, who at the time held a very senior post in the DTI, commented: The split occurred quite simply because Wilson was not prepared to hand the whole thing over to Benn … The thing then was that Tony Benn was a real maverick in the side of the Wilson government. Wilson had put counterpoises into the Department, in the sense that the Ministers of State below Benn were to the right of the Department, but that was not really strong enough. Benn had brought in one or two personal advisers and he worked in the Department very much against his colleagues and against Harold Wilson. Having seen this was likely, but having for Party political reasons had to give him [Benn] the senior post, corralled him and did not give the whole of the Department. The official then went on to note that the political imperative of ensuring that Benn’s power base was constrained, superseded the organisational logic of keeping certain functions in the department: There is one very interesting example; the Department before had been responsible for the printing and publishing industry and it was quite natural that it should stay within the Department of Industry, but Harold said ‘In no way am I going to let Tony Benn have that particular industry under his wing.’ So, we will put it in Trade, although it doesn’t really belong there.

62 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Wilson’s antipathy to Benn was also clear when he moved him from Industry to Energy in 1975. Yet, for Wilson, the irony of this move was that it occurred at a time when the energy issue was being thrust further up the political agenda, and so, this actually increased Benn’s clout within Cabinet. As Benn observed: I was dismissed by Wilson … He told me later that if I had not agreed to go he would have taken charge of the Department … It was a demotion and yet I think I went up in the pecking order in Cabinet … I think Wilson did not realise that he gave me Energy in 1975, just at the moment that the oil was beginning to bubble ashore. The three departments were kept separate throughout the rest of Labour’s period in office. Subsequently, in 1979, the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection was abolished as it had no role to play given the ideological outlook of the new Conservative government. Industry and Trade were kept apart until 1983, but, by this stage, the general feeling within the government, as it pursued a policy of privatisation, was that such a division was no longer tenable. They were therefore merged back together and initially placed under the ministerial control of Cecil Parkinson.

The Department of Energy Of our four departments, the Department of Energy had by far the shortest lifespan. It was originally established in 1942 as the Ministry of Fuel and Power. It was merged into the DTI in 1970, but re-emerged with its own identity in 1974 as the Department of Energy. The new department had been set up in response to the dual crisis of rising oil prices and the 1974 miners’ strike. As such, it never really developed a clear identity. During the 1970s, the department’s role was very much one of intervention in the field of energy. However, after 1979 the Conservative government was committed to a policy of privatisation. The consequences for the department soon became clear; privatisation policy and, in particular, Nigel Lawson’s shift to a market-based energy policy meant that the department lost its raison d’être. As a now retired senior energy official argued: The largest change between the two governments was that during the 1970s, the Labour government believed that you should have an

Structural Change in Central Government 63

energy policy and, indeed, we did produce a Green Paper in about 1977–8 which was the last paper ever produced on energy policy in this country. Nigel Lawson on the other hand said that there was no such thing as an energy policy, arguing that energy is a product like anything else, it can be traded and so should be part of our wider economic and industrial policy … He made a speech at Church Hill college to an assembly of energy economists when he declared there was no such thing as an energy policy and he attached an awful lot of weight to that. Another senior energy official concurred with the view that Lawson saw no need for an energy policy and that the natural logic of such a position was to signal the demise of the Department. The thrust of his [Lawson] reasoning was that there was no need for an energy policy division and that disappeared very quickly. In Lawson’s view what was important was to get these industries privatised and that became the big motivation for the Energy Department and gave it a direction. But when that actually got under way and there was less international pressure on energy and the Department had got smaller and smaller, then clearly there was only one logic and that was to merge what was left with the DTI. Nigel Lawson confirmed this analysis: My belief was that what was needed in the energy field was to apply economic principles, which included privatisation – the market approach … There was this whole nonsense of treating energy as a special case. There is no more reason why you should conserve energy than you should conserve food. It was part of this myth that energy was special, which came into fashion when OPEC came along with its oil embargo and everyone thought we were going to run out of energy and everything would grind to a halt. Consequently, in April 1992, the few functions that were left were transferred either to the Department of Trade and Industry or the Department of Environment. So, the Department of Energy provides an interesting contrast with the DTI. The DTI was essentially reorganised for political reasons; in contrast, the break up of Energy was driven by the Conservatives’ neo-liberal ideological views.

64 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

The Department of Social Security The DSS in its present guise was formed in 1988 when it was split from Health. It is important to point out that, in the postwar period, the Department of (Health and) Social Security, underwent regular, and substantial, structural reorganisation. Such structural changes were a reflection of various governments’ attempts to fulfil the commitments laid down by the Beveridge Report (see Rose 1993) and referred to as the welfare settlement (see Cronin 1991; Hay 1996). To understand why this is so, one must appreciate the nature of social welfare. A key component of the postwar settlement was the Attlee government’s development of the welfare state. The state took responsibility away from voluntary and charitable organisations for the provision and delivery of social welfare. A newly organised bureaucratic state was regarded as the most effective means of delivering social welfare, in the form of health care, education, housing, insurance, social security and pensions, for the whole nation (see Butcher 1995). Given these principles, there was a logic to linking Health and Social Security in one department and this occurred in 1968 during the era of the ‘superdepartments’ and under the ministerial direction of Richard Crosman. However, the 1988 split provides the most interesting case study. One, now retired, senior official who spent his lifetime in the D[H]SS argued that one of the key reasons for the split was that the demands placed upon the single ministry had become too great: ‘There were all these junior ministers in the old department [DHSS] but only one Secretary of State and that was why Health was split from Social Security. It simply placed too much demand upon one person.’ Another retired senior official concurred: During the 1980s, it was gradually becoming more obvious that the DHSS was getting bigger and bigger, trying to negotiate with the Health Service on the one hand and build a pension scheme on the other. It was becoming apparent that the job was simply becoming too big. We were trying to reform Social Security at the time and the whole of the Health Service at the same time – it was too much. It was the Prime Minister who took the decision, but it became more a question of where do you split it – does Personal Social Services go with Health or Social Security and so on. Where do you draw the line? In the months leading up to the break-up of the department, officials outside the two most senior grades were not aware that a split was

Structural Change in Central Government 65

imminent. For example, one official, who at the time was a Grade 3, argued: ‘Well, it all came as a bit of a surprise because one of my colleagues had actually been working on a new system of co-ordination on both sides of the Department and he had just brought this to fruition when it was split.’ From our interviews, it became clear that the primary reason for dividing the two departments was organisational; the DHSS had simply become too big. However, underpinning this was the fact that the then incumbent Secretary of State, John Moore, did not have the political character required to drive through major reform on both the Health and the Social Security sides which, by the mid-1980s, the Conservatives had been pursuing. As one senior DSS official observed: ‘I think it is quite possible that if say Kenneth Clarke had been the Secretary of State of the Department it would not have been split.’ Another official was far more blunt in his assessment: I think it was all proving physically too much for John Moore. I think at the time the Conservatives had no one else around who they wanted to appoint to that position and who was capable of driving both agendas through and so could have done the job better than Moore. His problem was that, in a sense, he wanted to innovate along Thatcher lines but he did not have the vision intellectually or the personality to keep the show on the road. As such, the split-up of the DHSS is an example of a case in which the prime reason behind the split was simply organisational; the department had become too large. However, there was also a political dimension to the reorganisation. In 1988, the leadership of the Conservative Party felt there was no one available on the backbenches (or elsewhere) with the requisite talent to drive through two major programmes of reform on both the Health and Social Security sides. The only logical step was to divide the department and so greatly reduce the pressures and demands on the two new Secretaries of State. The Home Office The Home Office differs from our other departments in that, despite its longevity as an institution (it was founded in 1782), it has, until recently, never undergone a fundamental process of restructuring or reorganisation. The Home Office is also a rather unusual department because of its eclectic range of functions which include: criminal

66 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

policy, equal opportunities, immigration, fire, emergency planning, gambling, the Royal Family, MI5 and the Forensic Science Service. Such diversity has prompted officials (normally from other departments) to label the Home Office as the ‘dumping ground of Whitehall’. Such a label is misleading. It is not the case that certain functions have been moved from other departments to the Home Office. In fact, the process has been the exact opposite. During the last 200 years, the Home Office has continually had functions stripped from it as new departments of state have been created. As the above list shows, this has left the present department responsible for a disparate collection of residual functions. Despite the diversity of the functions for which it is responsible, the Home Office has, even during the managerial reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, shown great tenacity in resisting fundamental reorganisation. As one recent Home Office Permanent Secretary observed: There has never been a fundamental restructuring of the department. I never felt that there was a case for turning the Home Office upside down. I felt that the organisation I had inherited, the structure I had taken over, was broadly right and I am not one for making changes. It was this type of self-confident attitude which helped the Home Office gain the reputation elsewhere in Whitehall, which has persisted into the 1990s, of being an arrogant and aloof department (see Chapter 4). Ironically, for a department so impervious to change, it is possible to argue that, since 1997, the Home Office has done more to reorganise itself than any other Whitehall department. As a contemporary senior official in the Home Office pointed out, even in the mid-1990s: The Department was fragmented into stove pipes. Directorates which had major policies which affected other areas of the Department would pursue their directions from the ministers with very little contact with other parts of the Department. There was no policy centre, no strategy unit and very little central programming and financial management. Such observations from a very senior official in the Home Office indicate the degree to which the Home Office had successfully resisted much of the managerial reforms the rest of Whitehall underwent during the 1980s–1990s. The Department had remained hierarchical,

Structural Change in Central Government 67

inward looking and unresponsive to change. The same official argued that part of the problem had been the rather residual corporate nature of the Home Office, which in part reflected its institutional history: The big change came with the Civil Service Review and the adoption of a single mission statement for the Department. If you look up the Civil Service Yearbook you will see that the Home Office is described as the Department for England and Wales which deals with subjects which are no longer the province of any other department. So it is a negative mission statement. Today (1999), we have this wonderful statement which took a lot of negotiation: ‘To Build a Safe, Just and Tolerant Society’. We have gone on to break that down into seven aims. The point is that the work which the Home Office now does can be described entirely by these seven aims … We have introduced a new management board and on it we have seven officials each responsible for delivering one aim. In organisational terms, since 1997, the Home Office has certainly pursued a model of organisational reform that, at the very least, represents a break with over 200 years of institutional inertia. As another contemporary senior official observed: By setting horizontal delivery aims we have broken down the vertical barriers so prevalent in the Home Office in the form of policy chimneys. So the traditional Home Office bastions like criminal justice policy and police policy and so on now know that policy has to be made horizontally.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have examined the evolution of central government over the last 30 years and analysed the forces driving this change. In our view, such change was mainly driven by political considerations, although these were often ad hoc and not part of any grand strategy. Indeed, in our view the Conservatives did not begin with, neither did they develop, a coherent plan for reforming central government. Rather, their programme of reform was undertaken in a broadly ad hoc manner as a number of largely separate responses to a series of ideological, managerial and organisational critiques of central government. In retrospect, it is clear that such an approach contained a number of contradictions that led to a series of unintended outcomes.

68 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Overall, in our view, most prior explanations of the process of reform are based upon a zero sum conceptualisation of power. So, we are critical of those accounts (Campbell and Wilson 1995; Foster and Plowden 1996) which argue that 18 years of Conservative administration led to the replacement of the traditional ‘Whitehall paradigm’ by a new ‘minister-dominated’ paradigm. Instead, we argue, following Rhodes, that power in the core executive should be conceptualised in terms of a series of interdependencies based on resource exchange. From this perspective, while the Conservatives were broadly successful at realigning the balance of power in favour of ministers, there were different relationships between ministers and civil servants across different departments, to some extent depending on the personalities involved, but nowhere was the relationship one of total executive dominance. As such, most accounts over-simplify the complex array of dynamics involved in a highly complicated set of relationships between the various actors located within the core executive. Using a power-dependency model, subsequent chapters in this book will attempt to shed light on the various complex set of relationships which occur in and around the terrain of Whitehall departments by examining the individual sets of actors involved; ministers, the Prime Minister, civil servants, interest groups and European officials. In the next chapter, we examine the impact of these structural and cultural changes in the 1980s and 1990s on the policy and organisational cultures of our four departments.

4 Departmental Cultures

As we saw in Chapter 2, there is a contested idea of Whitehall culture that frames the actions of civil servants. In addition, there are also particular departmental cultures. These cultures reflect the broader Whitehall culture but also, to some extent, the activities of individual politicians and the imprint of the external world on the policy process. Departmental cultures are the result of past decisions, policy, organisations and beliefs. They reflect a combination of grounded philosophical beliefs, competing sets of ideas and entrenched policy decisions. They have functional (what they do), philosophical (the ideas that underpin what they do) and relational (the impact of relationships with both the rest of Whitehall and the outside world) elements. Consequently, they define the nature and role of the department, including its pecking order in the Whitehall hierarchy, and often favour a set of long-term solutions to particular policy problems. Essentially, department cultures are structured patterns that provide the framework within which officials and ministers act. They contain an organisational element that structures the processes of policymaking and a policy element which structures the content of policymaking. However, they are not determining partly because they are open to interpretation – cultures are not fixed meanings and there is rarely a single departmental culture. More importantly, because one of the crucial Whitehall rules is that ministers are key actors, ministerial authority literally means they are authors of the department’s actions. In addition, they have a set of other resources to draw on, for example, ideology, civil service loyalty, prime ministerial support and electoral mandates, so they can challenge the pre-existing culture of the department. As we will see here and in Chapter 6, one of the central concerns in relation to culture is how ministers react to the cultural frameworks 69

70 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

they find when they join a department. Chapter 2 demonstrated that there have been attempts to change the broader Whitehall culture and in Chapter 3 we saw that there have also been important structural changes in the organisation of Whitehall and departments. The aim of this chapter is to see how a combination of cultural change, structural reform and individual ministers have impacted on the organisational and policy cultures of our departments. This chapter will examine the cultures of our four departments and how they have changed. It will focus on two elements of culture: the policy culture, that is, the way certain beliefs and ideologies underline the agenda; and the organisational culture, that is the rules of the game and the perspective which underpin the roles of officials and the way policy is made within the department. Our claim is that culture shapes both the development and content of policy and the roles and relationships of the key actors in the department but it is not static and a combination of external factors and actions by agents can change cultures. Hitherto much literature has suggested either that ministers can have a significant effect on a department (Headey 1974) or minimal impact (Rose and Davies 1994). As such, this chapter will look at the nature of, and patterns of change in, the policy cultures in our four departments and examine the extent to which the change is dependent on the actions of ministers. It will also examine how the departments have responded to the broader changes in the Whitehall culture and to the pressures for better management. For this reason the Department of Energy is largely excluded here as most significant cultural change in Whitehall occurred after its demise. The chapter will begin by examining the Home Office.

The Home Office The policy culture of the Home Office is more defined by its philosophical base than is the case for any of our other departments. It is a department that is fundamentally concerned with the problem of order and its culture revolves around the issues of the individual versus the state and liberty versus order. Of course, these philosophical concerns reflect its functions such as immigration, prisons and law and order. At the same time, its elevated position within the Whitehall pecking order, its relative isolation from all but a number of selected interest groups and its lack of executive functions mean it has always been a particularly insulated department.

Departmental Cultures 71

There has been a clearly identifiable Home Office culture, the origins of which can be traced back to the interwar years, which endures to the present day. This culture reflects an attempt to find a balance between maintaining civic order and ensuring the liberty of the individual (see Callaghan 1982: 10). In the last sixty years, two values, those of state intervention to ensure social order and libertarianism to defend individual liberty, have been fundamental precepts around which the Home Office culture has evolved. During the postwar period, these two values have sometimes appeared complementary and at other times contradictory. As a serving official argued: The Home Office has always been concerned, ever since it was founded in the eighteenth century, with how to reconcile the interests of the state with the rights of the individual. You can boil down virtually everything that has gone on in the Home Office to the central dilemma of balancing those two concerns. Despite being regarded as reactionary in some quarters, I think we have always been conscious of the need to encroach on the rights of individuals, to assert the rights of the state, as little as possible. We have always been preoccupied with that central question. The balance of liberty versus order has been affected by the position of governments, external pressures and internal conflicts. As one serving Grade 2 pointed out, there are clear sectional cultures in the Home Office: You must also realise that there are cultures within cultures. I can see a different approach to life between the operational immigration service side and the case working side. The latter tends to be much more cautious whereas the former is much more go getting. As a former Home Secretary said: ‘there is not a Home Office view; there is a divisional view – particularly in the prisons division’. From 1945 until the late 1950s, social conservatism was the dominant strain within the Home Office. Social conservatism structured the policy options faced by ministers and to the extent they accepted the policy agenda of department. However, the progressive spirit of the 1960s left its mark on the cultural outlook of the Home Office. The combination of greater liberalism in society and a liberal Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, resulted in an important cultural change in the

72 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

department. Throughout both his spells as Home Secretary, Jenkins influenced Home Office attitudes in favour of liberalising laws affecting human behaviour. As one official, who served in the Home Office for over 30 years, observed: ‘Jenkins not only liberalised the criminal justice system, but was responsible for changing the culture of the whole Department with his progressive approach in the field of abortion and the treatment of homosexuals.’ What is interesting is the extent to which Jenkins’ period in the Home Office shaped the thinking and attitudes of the officials in that department for the next 25 years. Social liberalism remained in the ascendancy, even after the change of government in 1979. Not only was there broad consensus and continuity in policies under Merlyn Rees and William Whitelaw, but social liberalism continued to inform and influence Home Office thinking in the policy-making process. Effectively the culture of social liberalism shaped the world-view of officials; they were socialised into the view that their role was to project the rights of individuals and this provided the framework of advice to ministers. As one former official said: The Home Office, it is weird, given its public image, did contain a lot of quite liberal minded people who when you scratched them care strongly about individual civil liberties and about the integrity of government’s dealings with individual citizens. Consequently, during the 1990s, it was a shock to officials to be faced with a Home Secretary like Michael Howard whose goal was to enforce a ‘prison works’ philosophy and, as a consequence, a number of senior officials left; so deep was their belief that the Home Office should be a liberal organisation.1 The strength of the liberal policy culture and the way it structured policy outcomes is indicated by the policies of the Conservative administration after 1979. Despite the consistent use of strong rhetoric on crime by various Conservative Home Secretaries, in policy terms there was little to distinguish the 1980s from the preceding Labour years. The culture provided the frame of reference within which both officials and ministers made decisions. Although ministers may see themselves as actors who want to pursue policies, they are still con-

1

At least two of the officials we interviewed either left the Home Office or resigned because of the direction of penal policy in the latter years of the Thatcher administration.

Departmental Cultures 73

strained by the cultural milieu of the department. Even right-wing Conservative ministers found themselves developing policy within the context of the existing policy agenda. So, even as late as 1989, the former Home Secretary, David Waddington felt: You were very much given the impression, when you went to the Home Office, that governments came and went and ministers come and go but things went on as they had always done. That they had responsibilities which went far wider than the political concerns of ministers who were here one day and gone the next and they had to operate grand empires whether it was the Prisons or the Immigration service and it was a fair assumption that, whichever party was in office, they would expect those functions to be performed in very much the same way. A former Permanent Secretary was perhaps unintentionally revealing when he said: Ministers will come in, perhaps rebelling against (the Home Office culture). But a strong minister will listen and will assess for himself or herself, what is the strength of the department, what are the reasons for it and whether he seeks to modify the department’s position, or his own in the light of departmental advice, that will vary from time to time. However, when Waddington replaced Hurd in 1989, he was the first pro-capital punishment, socially conservative, Home Secretary during the Thatcher era. To some, it appeared that Thatcher wanted an end to the dominance of social liberalism within the Home Office; that here was a conscious attempt by Thatcher to change the policy culture of the department. One contemporary Home Office official commented: ‘There was a felt need in the Conservative government that a show of strength was required and that the voice of David Waddington should be the sort being heard, rather than that of a Hurd, Brittan or Whitelaw.’ However, as Waddington admits: ‘I realised that, if you wanted to bring about radical change, it would be a very hard slog.’ Kenneth Baker, Major’s first Home Secretary, was generally regarded, later on in his ministerial career, as being on the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative Party, but both he and his successor, the more liberal Ken Clarke, left no significant mark during their spells in office (respectively 1990–2 and 1992–3). Baker said that, although he wanted to increase

74 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

police numbers, he was very much constrained by circumstances from changing the agenda of the department. This indicates how even in the 1990s the liberal agenda was continuing to shape policy. In fact, his main policy goal was liberal prison reform which he saw as being consistent with the policy of previous Home Secretaries. In 1993, Michael Howard was appointed Home Secretary. He was the first Conservative Home Secretary to have both the time and inclination to develop an alternative agenda. From his own perspective there was much to do: ‘The Home Office, together perhaps with the Department of Education, seemed completely untouched by all the changes that had affected other departments in the period since 1979. It just had not changed.’ Howard picked up on the themes tentatively outlined during the Waddington era in order to shift the priorities of the department away from individual liberty towards civil order. In an interview, Howard recalled: I looked for effective policies which would change these things. I thought you could do something about crime. I thought the police were demoralised – the whole of the criminal justice system they felt, with some justification, was weighted against them. Nowhere was this desire for change more clearly encapsulated than in one of the labels associated with his spell in the Home Office – ‘Prison Works’. As one official suggested: I think there was a great trend, which Howard has reversed, of greater liberalism in penal matters, real endeavours to reserve prison for people who really had to go to prison and not simply clutter them up with people who had only defaulted on fines. A greater use of cautions, of alternative penalties and a greater emphasis on probation. All these things Howard has reversed. Roy Jenkins was a Home Secretary who believed prison was an expensive way of making bad people worse. Howard’s doctrine is the exact opposite. Another official also emphasised the change: I don’t think that he [Howard] has changed the direction of the Home Office in a narrow sense of the institution, but I think the

Departmental Cultures 75

whole debate has shifted. Clearly he played a part in that, so the climate is very different in a way. I think you have put your finger on an interesting phenomenon about the Home Office. Jenkins was not the first Labour Home Secretary under the Wilson government and Howard was not the first Tory Home Secretary. The big changes came with changes in personality, not changes of party. During the 1990s, Michael Howard attempted to change the policy culture of the Home Office. However, there was much resistance by officials to the new line and, whilst there have been many changes in policy, it is too early to know whether there has been a permanent change in culture. Whilst Jack Straw has continued the trend to social conservatism, only time will tell whether the views of officials have significantly shifted to the extent that the culture of the department has changed. At present, the picture is confusing. One senior official close to Straw suggested that he was actually moving back to more liberal policies: I think what’s actually happening is there is a Home Secretary who is certainly very keen to be serious and tough on crime but not necessarily to use a huge prison population as the instrument and very prepared to try to get the prison population down but wanting to do that in a sort of measured way. Odd bits and pieces are gradually being put in place and I think that two or three years on we should see a prison population that’s lower than we expect. However, the more consistent line of most senior Home Office officials is that, while Jack Straw has been willing to consult more widely than his predecessor, and hence there has been a change in style, the substance of the law and order agenda has remained similar to Howard’s. Indeed, this can be seen by examining the content of the ‘Crime and Disorder’ Bill published in December 1997. On this basis, it will take time, and perhaps a Home Secretary with a clearly discernible liberal agenda, to determine the extent of the cultural change in the Home Office. Nevertheless, the case of the Home Office does illuminate an important theoretical problem. The suggestion is that the department had an entrenched culture which survived well into the Thatcher years. Moreover, the argument derived from cultural theory is that culture constrains the activity of actors. Yet, it appears that Howard was able

76 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

to change the direction of the department relatively easily. This account given of culture change is essentially agency-centred. So, whilst we have a theory that attempts to reconcile agency and structure, the empirical account of change is substantially agency-based. How do we account for this paradox? Part of the explanation derives from the nature of the British constitution and the subsequent perceived roles of ministers and officials. As we saw in the last chapter, one of the rules of the game is official loyalty; it is a crucial element of the culture of the officials to serve the minister. Consequently, officials were quite prepared to set the direction of the Home Office when ministers allow them to do so, but, when a minister wanted a new policy direction, they did, despite some resistance, oblige. As a former Permanent Secretary said: In the past there wasn’t a lot of active policy coming out of the political system, quite a lot of it was coming out of the official system. But the moment you get a really strong ideological drive coming out of the political system which a new government will tend to have, the official system accommodates to that, getting more into compromise. Moreover, the change in direction did not occur purely as a consequence of the volition and will of the minister. The new policy agenda reflected wider structural factors. Firstly, Howard had the support of the Prime Minister which is an important structural resource in the Whitehall world. Secondly, there was considerable concern amongst the electorate and the Conservative Party about rising levels of crime and the apparent inadequacy of liberal approaches to penal policy. Therefore, Howard’s agenda was not developed in a vacuum but in response to widespread societal concerns. Nevertheless, the cultural constraints on ministers in the Home Office are significant. Howard may have changed policy more than culture but, for instance, he faced determined resistance, as many Home Secretaries have, to plans for a harsher prison regime. Kenneth Baker suggested that, ‘The Home Office is not really susceptible to short term intervention as the Home Office goes on. There is very little that a Home Secretary can do – as Michael Howard found out – it rolls on.’ How the Home Office view is impressed on ministers was revealed by Baker and Howard. Baker said that he was given a forecast of the

Departmental Cultures 77

increase of crime and the rate of crime was shown to increase ‘irrespective of any policy changes’. For Howard there was a view: that the problems the Home Office faced were different – that they were intractable and there was nothing you could do about rising crime … I was actually told in one of my first briefings, I was shown a graph that showed the growth in rising crime, and that the first thing I had to learn was that there was nothing I could do about it …It always had and always will increase. I think that was a very powerful view in the Home Office. The culture of the department shaped official advice to ministers and in a sense dictated the power/knowledge framework of decision-making. However, the actions of ministers are not determined by this framework because they often have their own ideological value system to draw on and the resources which derive from their ministerial position which they can use to force departments to accept policy change.

Organisational culture Whilst there appears to be a change in the policy culture of the department with a move from a focus on individual liberty to one on social order, there is also a second important issue concerning the extent to which broader cultural changes in Whitehall (see Chapter 2) have affected the culture of the Home Office. The Home Office is widely perceived as resistant to change. Traditionally, the Home Office was the archetypal Whitehall department conforming closest to the Yes Minister stereotype. First, senior officials were closely involved in the policy process. Their key role was as policy advisers and, to some extent, the policy process resembled the seminar approach to policymaking where a number of key officials would sit around bouncing ideas around until a solution emerged. As one former Permanent Secretary claimed: Perhaps 10 or 12 people would spend the morning discussing, for example, majority verdicts (for Juries), which is what we brought in, which was a very important change. It is very difficult to say that the policy was decided by the Permanent Secretary or the Department or by the minister, it really developed from an interchange of views. I thought this was perhaps the Whitehall machine at its best [our emphasis].

78 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Second, in the Home Office, the role of ministers was to carry out departmental policy. One official in the prison service recalled this conversation: The first meeting that Derek (Lewis) and I attended when we came to the Prison Service was an under-secretary’s meeting and I remember a very powerful member of that group was talking and we asked what is the relationship with the Home Office and she said: ‘We’ve got seven ministers who do not understand what we are doing, have no coherent ideology, no coherent philosophy and we’ve just got to get in there and educate them.’ I was absolutely staggered … it was just the orthodoxy that the Home Office knew best. This outsider’s view was confirmed by a long-serving former Permanent Secretary and a number of others who served in the 1960s and 1970s. The Home Office view was that the role of ministers was to serve the department and it was officials who were the experts and understood the problems and therefore ministers should take their advice. Hence, Home Office officials expected ministers to deliver for the department and not rock the boat. Third, the Home Office has often been perceived as arrogant, isolated and hierarchical. One former Permanent Secretary when asked if the Home Office was arrogant said: ‘Very much so’. A number of interviewees pointed out how hierarchical the Home Office was and suggested that, when compared to the Treasury, it was much less collegial. Indeed, it was only with Roy Jenkins that all minutes to the minister stopped going through the Permanent Secretary. There was also a tendency for people to stay within the Home Office throughout their careers. According to one former Permanent Secretary: It was a rather self-contained department … it was less involved in general central government processes than many other departments, it had very much its own self-contained responsibilities … And particularly on its main field of dealing with police matters, with criminal justice, with the prison service, it felt very much that this was its business and it got on with that business and it didn’t need to consult with other government departments There are a number of suggestions that, because of its isolation and innate superiority, the Home Office has been slow to respond to pressure for greater managerialism. As one official said:

Departmental Cultures 79

The Department has changed only a bit. If you give most of them a budget they will run a mile because they don’t know what it is. They haven’t got a clue about managing money. There are some people who can do it. [A current senior civil servant in the Home Office] has more idea about money and about what the role of money is or how you get it or what it matters to the Home Office. But he is not a manager, he is a policy adviser. The same official argued that, unlike in other departments, even in 1997, Grade 2s were still involved in detailed policy-making: ‘One of the things that is different about the Home Office … is that people at the top of the office still write their own memos.’ One recent former Permanent Secretary admitted: ‘Because the Home Office had been strong on law and order, which was sacrosanct in the 1980s, it had powerful ministers who could get the money they wanted and protect the Department from change.’ However, another official argued that there had been change: ‘We have adopted the delayering principle and the work has been pushed down.’ He also claimed both that, as a Grade 2, he was ‘much more of a manager/director’ and that the role of the Permanent Secretary was no longer that of ‘chief policy adviser’. He also suggested that more policy advice was coming from outside the department: It may well be that my colleagues and I might end up doing some innovative policy thinking but if you look at the Labour manifesto, if you look at the actual words that have gone into it, then you can see the tips of several tiny icebergs. If you look at the work of the Constitution Unit outside government, I think you might be seeing some kind of change of emphasis. More research has been done, more discussions held and we are being seen as the kind of operators and administrators and I think that is not necessarily a bad thing as our expertise lies in making things happen in terms of legislation, finance and mobilisation of people. But we do not have a monopoly of wisdom. This perspective indicates the extent to which the views of at least some civil servants in the Home Office have changed. From the 1950s they were the key policy makers and management was for executive officers, but in the 1990s their role is to manage and facilitate policy-making.

80 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

The Home Office was the slowest department to react to changes in Whitehall after 1979. Its arrogance and insularity enabled it to resist some of the pressure for management change. In addition, many of the Home Secretaries in the 1980s were either happy to accept the culture of the department or were so overwhelmed by everyday events that change was not possible. The public service ethos, and the autonomy it bestowed on officials, remained strong in the Home Office and there was strong resistance to the culture of NPM. However, in the 1990s there was a change in the policy culture with a shift to a more socially conservative framework; a shift in the relationship between ministers and officials, with ministers wanting the Home Office to serve them rather than to debate the pros and cons of a policy; and a decline in the hierarchical nature of the Department as a result of the SMR. As in other departments, the policy role was pushed further down the hierarchy. The relationship of dependency between ministers and officials has changed with ministers becoming more directive in terms of the policy direction of the department. One Home Office Permanent Secretary summed up this change: I feel that all permanent secretaries wherever you go spend more time in the managerial role than they did fifteen years ago. A lot of the business of the Home Office, especially on the law side, is extremely difficult stuff. I’d say roughly I do a managerial part, a policy part and an accounting officer part of the job. The balance depends on the time. I see my role as reading vast volumes of paper every night and I read what goes though and if I feel things have not gone right I will intervene. If I feel the Home Secretary is doing something wrong I will intervene and say ‘this is wrong’. I’d brief myself and go and see him about it. If people came to see me and said they were worried about something that was going on I would think about it and then go and see the Home Secretary.

The Department of Trade and Industry Policy culture: free trade ethos vs interventionism The two distinct elements of the DTI draw upon two different philosophical traditions; on the trade side laissez faire and on the industry side intervention. These philosophical traditions reflect and reinforce the different functions of the two departments and their different relationships with business and industry. The Department of Industry effectively was created in order to intervene in the economy and devel-

Departmental Cultures 81

oped important relationships with industry through the creation of sponsorship divisions within the department (see Chapter 4). The Department of Trade was created to ensure smooth trade policy and trade relationships with other nations. Subsequently, it has favoured free trade over protectionism. Moreover, its policy is clearly developed within the context of the international political economy and transnational policy structures, such as Bretton Woods, GATT, the European Union and the World Trade Organisation, which place major constraints on the sorts of policies that can be developed.2 The trade side of the DTI probably has one of the most persistent and influential cultures in Whitehall. Since the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Board of Trade has strongly advocated free trade and very few ministers, whether Labour or Conservative, have not succumbed to the free trade ethos. As one former Permanent Secretary reported: In the Department of Trade there was a strong Cobdenite free trade ethos. And, I think it is fair to say that almost anyone who served in that department at any respectable level became infected with it, up to and including the Secretary of State … A senior trade official admitted: ‘most of us who work on the trade side … are personally fairly convinced of the merits of trade liberalisation’. Moreover, because of the technical and bipartisan nature of the work in trade, officials have a broad degree of discretion when conducting trade policy negotiations. Officials see themselves judging the minister’s preferences and negotiating within a given context. However, the framework of beliefs within which a trade official negotiates emphasises free trade and this clearly influences policy outcomes. As one official acknowledged: On the trade side – I have worked in the trade area on and off most of the time since 1960 – I would say there is a great deal of continuity. I suppose historically Labour governments have been somewhat more ready to look at protectionist measures or restrictions on free trade for non-trade reasons. But, I would say that both parties have switched to a liberal direction. The Labour Party, if anything, more so.

2

As Chapter 9 demonstrates within the context of the EU a purely British trade policy no longer exists. Britain is represented in the WTO through the EU.

82 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Although there have been significant changes in policy and culture on the Industry side of the department, Trade has avoided any radical changes in direction. The culture on the Industry side of the department has been very different. In the words of a former Permanent Secretary: The culture of industry was much more a culture of intervention, of assisting industries which were in difficulty, and assisting areas of the country which were in difficulty, or less well served in terms of employment. The roots of the Industry culture were not so much grounded in a commitment to interventionism but, rather, in the view that a close relationship between government and industry was crucial (Middlemas 1979). As one senior official argued, the Industry side of the department was based on the notion of sponsorship and advocacy of the interests of industry: ‘The industry section was driven towards closer relations with industry itself.’ As another official said, emphasising the relational element of culture: ‘Intervention is the wrong word. It was a very intimate relationship; a knowledgeable relationship and, to some extent, a power relationship. We actually stopped them doing things … ’. This often led officials within Industry to push for protection and the provision of assistance for particular industries. With the Conservatives’ Industry Act of 1972, there was a move towards much greater intervention: ‘The Heath period was actually a very interventionist period and, in that sense, the Industry side of the department was very much more in line with the Government’s thinking than the old BoT side, which is why it seemed ante-diluvian at the time’. When Keith Joseph was appointed Secretary of State for Industry in 1979, he was confronted by a highly interventionist department. His explicit intention was to change the policy culture by introducing a free market policy, but, as we argue in Chapter 6, this was not a success. Following Joseph, Thatcher appointed a succession of ideologically motivated ministers, such as Cecil Parkinson, Norman Tebbit and Leon Brittan, who shared a laissez-faire outlook. These ministers produced an important reorientation in the department’s preferences. Norman Tebbit suggested that he was able to impose a new frame of reference on officials: I built on what Sir Keith Joseph had done. He’d tackled it from an intellectual standpoint and I think he always thought he had to

Departmental Cultures 83

convince people intellectually of the need for a change, whereas I tended to short-cut the people sometimes and tell them what was going to happen and if they were unconvinced by the arguments it was tough. So, it was a bit easier in that respect. Just the process of reducing the number of industries for which we were responsible was helpful. I did not find it too difficult. However, despite clear goals, Tebbit was aware of official opposition and the need to by-pass their attempts to ameliorate the new agenda: The trouble I had was over things like regional policy where we had an exceptionally able woman who was the Deputy or Assistant Secretary and she knew and understood the area and had been involved with the policy for years and was quite emotional about it and the idea of it being scrapped … I think I could not have made it harder for her if I’d told her I was going to slaughter her first born. I then realised there was a strong case for moving people in order that they did not get emotionally attached to a policy area. She went on in the Civil Service and had a successful career but I just could not get her to accept new ideas in that area, so I moved her. The changing policy agenda led to something of a crisis of identity for the DTI, with-right wing critics questioning the basic need for a Department of Industry in a government which was supposedly committed to a free-market ideology – a question which has recurred (see Daily Telegraph, 16 October 1995; Independent, 20 June 1998). Indeed, Young, when taking up his position as Secretary of State, felt that it was the ‘Department of Disasters’ and had lost its way (Young 1990: 237). As we will see in Chapter 6, it was Lord Young who had the ideas and the will to impose new free-market values on the department. These objectives were obtained by rejecting state intervention and, instead, opting for the discipline of the market, deregulation and advice to business. For Young, the department’s main role was to influence attitudes. Consequently, the foci of the department became: the establishment of a Deregulation Unit, which was concerned with eliminating red tape; the implementation of the Single European Act through the single market initiative; and the establishment of the advisory division concerned with providing advice to industry. In essence, despite frequent changes in structure and a major shift in ideological direction since 1979, it was only after 1987 that the

84 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

significant change in the department’s culture and policy orientation was consolidated. One official confirmed this analysis: I think that Lord Young had a very big impact. I do not think that many of his predecessors did and I do not think that many of his successors have – even though it might seem that there was one exception to that, as Michael Heseltine had a great impact in terms of organisation and structure, but I’m not sure if that process hadn’t really started sometime before and the reason he found quite fertile ground was because the process had actually started before he arrived so he wasn’t an absolute step change. Between 1979 and 1997 the nature of the policy culture on the Industry side changed completely. In 1979, the department was extremely large, it had a significant budget and it had a panoply of administrative and legal mechanisms for intervention in the industries. By 1997, the department had lost most of its interventionist machinery, regional policy had disappeared or moved to the EU level and the main focus of its activities was competition policy and deregulation. In terms of public expenditure, it had probably seen the largest reduction of all departments; a cut of at least 65 per cent in its budget. This change partly resulted from the decisions and actions of ministers, but they were assisted by a favourable structural and ideological context which undermined the interventionist role that had previously dictated the direction of the department.

Organisational culture Whilst there have been significant changes in the policy culture of the DTI, it has also been greatly affected by the broader changes in Whitehall culture. Maybe more than any other department, it embraced the managerial changes coming from the centre. The willingness to change is perhaps a reflection of two factors. First, there was a succession of ministers ideologically committed to the Thatcherite project (or in the case of Heseltine committed to managerialism) and, therefore, they consciously imposed the new culture on the department. Second, the department’s relationship with the private sector made it more receptive to managerial thinking. Indeed, the department, as we saw, has attempted to present itself as the Department of Enterprise and to encourage efficiency and enterprise. The DTI attempts to present a corporate image of itself in its literature, and

Departmental Cultures 85

even in its physical surroundings. In 1994, the department wholeheartedly adopted and implemented the government’s senior management review. As one Grade 2 indicated: I think the DTI probably embraced managerialism more wholeheartedly than most of Whitehall and I think we had the first Next Steps Agency and developed our Agencies quicker than other departments.3 I think the DTI was perhaps more ready for it, but needed the impulsion of the FMI or we would not have done the kinds of things as quickly as we did without the FMI. A second official confirmed: I think the DTI, probably by mid to late 80s, was a bit ahead of the general game in developing its internal management mechanisms. It was a good deal more sophisticated, for example, than anything I found in the Treasury; which was absolutely unbelievably awful when I got there in 1992. The department eliminated a layer of management, accepting that: ‘With no unnecessary layers of management, responsibility can be delegated down the organisation to the point where decisions are most effectively made’ (DTI 1995: 21). With this change, there was an explicit attempt to increase team-working, delegate decision-making further down the hierarchy and improve the collective approach to cross-cutting issues. Clearly, Grade 2 civil servants in the DTI – what are now called Director-Generals – have become increasingly managerial. As one said: I don’t mind spending my time on management. Indeed, I think I should and the balance is about right. The balance is still approximately 60 per cent policy, 40 per cent management but I think ten years ago it would have been 90 per cent policy and 10 per cent management. A former Permanent Secretary said that when he joined the Board of Trade in the early 1950s ‘management scarcely existed within the service’.

3

Although as is apparent above the DSS makes a very similar claim.

86 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

However, there are still those who question the impact of the SMR. One contemporary civil servant suggested that the SMR was ‘a very curious thing in the DTI’ and that the changes which occurred were more a ‘reflection of personal style of the DG than anything else in a world in which they were looking for a certain level of cuts … I think here the whole experience was immensely dispiriting’. Another suggested that it was only in theory that the Grade 2s and 3s had a greater managerial role: ‘There are a lot of Grade 2s who are very much in the front line, particularly in the DTI which is, shall we say, an undermanaged Department. I would say it hasn’t changed all that much. I would have expected it to have changed more.’ Despite the sceptical voices, the DTI seems to have gone through significant change in relation to its policy culture, the role officials undertake and its organisational culture. The interventionist and corporatist culture of the department changed significantly and, rather than looking to the state to solve industrial policy, the predominant view is now that markets offer the best solution. In a sense, what was the Trade culture has become the dominant culture within the DTI, despite explicit resistance by a number of Industry officials in the early 1980s. Likewise, organisational culture has undergone significant change. The DTI was always a relatively open department in the sense of having strong links with particular external interests and increasingly with the EU (see Buller and Smith 1998; and below Chapter 9) and it therefore seemed relatively open to the influences of managerialism. It is also apparent that under New Labour, the DTI has continued to embrace a generally laissez-faire position.

The Department of Social Security The philosophical base of the DSS was provided by the Beveridge Report and reinforced by its major function: to provide social welfare to citizens. One retired official reminisced that there was a strong Beveridge imprint on the department: ‘Beveridge, that was very much the sort of spirit in which the secretaries and the people I knew grew up. They came up along the Beveridge route and I think they were very much heirs to Beveridge.’ Another former Permanent Secretary said: ‘We certainly did feel ourselves to be the inheritors of Beveridge.’ Moreover, unlike most departments, it is also an executive department, delivering services to the public and, thus, has direct contact with its ‘consumers’. The 1980s, therefore, provided something of a culture shock to the department when many of its key perceptions

Departmental Cultures 87

about welfare generally, and its role specifically, were challenged. For example, Patrick Jenkin faced direct opposition from officials when he tried to break the link between pensions and earnings. He claimed: ‘When we said can we have legislation to unlink from earnings there were long faces and people said, “That’s very difficult legislation”.’ As a DSS official admitted: ‘there was a culture shock around 1979/80; previously people had been roughly bipartisan and believed that resources permitting, you ought to expand social security’. During the postwar period, all governments maintained a commitment to the welfare settlement. Despite Conservative criticism of welfare policies, political expediency and the institutional entrenchment ensured that any reform of the welfare settlement in the 1980s was only incremental (see Bradshaw 1992). However, within this pervasive welfare paradigm, there has been a significant shift in the policy culture of the DSS. Indeed, rising unemployment, social dislocation, rising expenditure on benefits and a desire to reduce state spending created a crisis in the welfare state. The crisis, again combined with the ideological goals of Thatcherism which desired a shift away from the dependency culture, created space for change. However, the nature of social security provision, the fact that many benefits were demand-led, and residual public support for welfare policy, placed major institutional constraints on change. Consequently, significant reform only occurred during Peter Lilley’s period as Secretary of State (1992–7), but the roots of it can be traced back to the Fowler Review of the mid1980s. The Review, from which the 1986 Social Security Act was developed, introduced a variety of new benefits, which again illustrates the cumulative effort that is often required for institutional change. Despite a number of modifications, both Evans et al. (1994) and Glennerster (1995) have concluded that existing constraints ensured that the Act was not radical enough to mark a clear point of departure from the existing welfare settlement. If the Fowler Review was limited, in terms of the tangible effect it had on the delivery of social security benefits, it was crucial in terms of the cultural impact it had on thinking within the department. This is clearly highlighted in the account by a senior DSS official of a meeting to finalise the Review: We had a very traumatic final meeting, which was meant to be no holds barred, but where one senior official, in particular, suffered greatly. He gave Fowler a lecture on the fact that, since 1948, the social security system had been governed by consensus, that this was

88 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

immensely valuable and should not be thrown away. You could hear Fowler, a Thatcherite minister, almost spitting at this, recoiling at any suggestion that the political consensus on, for example, pensions policy should be sustained. Not surprisingly, the official’s speech went down like a lead-balloon. Afterwards, Fowler had a word with me about needing to do something about this particular official and I suggested it had already happened. The effect had been traumatic and from that point on people did start reacting differently. Thus, the effect of the Review, while not tearing up Beveridge more generally, shifted the debate away from the previously accepted emphasis on the universalism of social welfare towards targeted benefits and the reintroduction of the voluntary sector’s contribution to welfare provision. The Beveridge-influenced state persisted, but it had become a shadow of its former self. In 1992, Peter Lilley was appointed Secretary of State and this coincided with the announcement, by the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury Michael Portillo, of a long-term, fundamental review of social policy. Consequently, Lilley was presented with a particular opportunity through which to push for reform. Moreover, unlike previous spending ministers, Lilley was willing to go along with the Treasury’s demand that his department cut its spiralling budget. A combination of exogenous pressure for change from the Treasury and an endogenous shift in attitudes within the department dating back to Fowler created an opportunity for Lilley to alter the department’s policy culture. Due to the highly complex nature of social security, Lilley did not introduce radical, wide-sweeping, reform from the outset. As one official noted: ‘Looking back, I doubt if one could argue Lilley was sent there with a pre-conceived blueprint for social security. It took him time to affect radical change.’ Lilley instigated wholesale change in social security payments, through introducing piecemeal, but largescale, reforms – the introduction of Incapacity Benefits (1995), the Job Seekers Allowance (1996) and the Basic Pension Plus (1997) – while also revamping smaller payments – One Parent Benefits (1996) and War Pensions (1997). The series of reforms introduced by Lilley transformed social security. One official explained why he felt Lilley, unlike his predecessors, was able to leave such a tangible mark: It was undoubtedly the fact that from his background he did not have an interest in social policy. His ministerial career and interests were in trade, industry, macro-economics etc. What that means was

Departmental Cultures 89

that when he came to social policy, he had a different perspective and was extremely interested in examining what social security was and how it interacted with the wider economy. As such he brought a fresh approach to social security. Unlike the ideologues in the Home Office and the DTI, Lilley did not confront the departmental culture directly and, as we will see in Chapter 6, he developed a very strategic approach to policy change. Using a strategic approach, Lilley was able to ameliorate some of the institutional and cultural constraints to reform the department. In addition, he was also greatly advantaged by his long tenure in office which changed the usual imbalance between the permanent officials and the temporary politician. The fact that Lilley was willing to think about policy, prepare his ground, construct alliances in the department and build on the work of the Fowler Review, enabled him to shift the culture and policy preferences of the department. Moreover, he had the structural advantage that there was tremendous external pressure to limit the growth of the social security budget and the department was not in a position to deny the financial constraints. Though he did not immediately produce a blueprint for change, Lilley was successful in changing the department’s mind-set or way of thinking about welfare. This was partly because DSS officials themselves accepted that one of the core principles on which the Welfare State had been founded, universality, was no longer sustainable. In addition, Lilley, unlike Howard in the Home Office, though clearly stating his agenda, still encouraged his officials to work with him rather than alienating them from the process of change. There was a broad consensus among DSS officials that Lilley’s period as Secretary of State did leave a clear mark: Lilley was a strategist who was prepared to think in the long term. Now because of the nature of Social Security, that is a highly unusual approach. However, his approach worked and it got all of us to look at welfare through a different set of glasses. Organisational culture The DSS saw a significant change in its policy culture in the 1980s. In addition, of all the departments in this study it went through the most rapid and radical change in its organisational culture. The DHSS was almost a pure, hierarchical, line bureaucracy from its formation. As a former Permanent Secretary stated:

90 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Something was decided at Headquarters and it would be transmitted down the form of instructions called codes, people just had to apply these codes. It told you what to do. You look it up in the codes what to do in these circumstances and there is a paragraph written about it. Social security, particularly when attached to Health, was an extremely large department. By 1970 it employed 120 000 people and was spending half of all public expenditure. Partly for reasons of size and partly because of tremendous problems in terms of delivering policy goals, the DHSS paid attention to management issues earlier than other departments. Indeed, as one ex-Permanent Secretary pointed out, the initial impetus for reform came from the IMF: ‘the policy of reducing the Civil Service by 25 per cent was effectively IMF policy, although it wasn’t described as such’. The reduction never occurred under Labour, partly because of the imminence of elections, the Lib-Lab pact and the political crisis of the Winter of Discontent in 1978/9. However, plans were developed within the Civil Service Department for such reduction and in the DSS the Principal Establishment Officer started to drive the reductions through after the 1979 election. The same Permanent Secretary said: ‘We drove through what many other departments didn’t … We had 120 Assistant Secretaries in 1970, when we finished we had about 80. We took out proportionately more Assistant Secretaries than we took out clerks … We had 16 Deputy Secretaries and we lost 4, the same proportion of under-secretaries and one third of Assistant Secretaries.’ In the early 1980s, the DSS presaged the Senior Management Review of the 1990s. While reducing numbers the DHSS also introduced greater flexibility and managerialism into the department. With the FMI, the department introduced management accounting across the board and throughout the hierarchy. As a former Permanent Secretary argued: (We required) the under-secretary to submit a management account for his division which set its policy aims, policy objectives in the medium term, programme of activity, targets probably for the next year and the resources both in terms of people and money at his disposal … That was the beginning of the process of introducing management accounting into the DHSS. In addition, the DHSS introduced the first attempts to move from hierarchical models of policy-making to team working in which indi-

Departmental Cultures 91

viduals were chosen for their skills, not their grade, to undertake a policy review. These ideas did have a significant and direct impact on the Next Steps developments. Kenneth Stowe, who was Permanent Secretary of the DHSS, became a member of the Next Steps team and used the lessons drawn from the department to influence the team’s findings. After this process of managerial reform which started in the 1980s, the department went through two major structural changes. First, in 1988 Health and Social Security became separate departments. Second, Social Security embraced the agency concept with more enthusiasm and radicalism than other departments (see Greer 1994). It effectively established in a pure form a core and periphery department by dividing the policy-making headquarters from the service delivery periphery. As one official centrally involved in the changes described: I set up six agencies and split the Department not horizontally but vertically into paying benefits, collecting contributions, running youth hostels, IT etc., and I have a chief executive in charge of each. I also scrapped all the regions and just had these big local offices with quite senior people and then myself. So we totally changed the structure. By scrapping the regions we got rid of 250 middle management posts. This change impacted directly on the culture of the department. Management took on a much more important role. A Permanent Secretary said: ‘There is much more emphasis on management … the whole way in which the management of the Department has developed is much more complex now.’ As another official said, the changes have been an attempt ‘to introduce less traditional ways of working, more readiness to translate private sector-commercial management techniques. We have business plans, we have chief executives, the language is all the language of business.’ However, another senior civil servant who had come from outside Whitehall maintained: I detected much less of a management focus within the Civil Service. There was a lot of talk about management, but really the Civil Service was still, and some would argue still is, dominated by policy mandarins. You got promotion, you were valued, if you were good at policy. If you were not very good at policy, then they gave you a management job as a kind of second division.

92 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Although this official questioned the degree of cultural change, he did admit that things were beginning to change. This introduction of management language combined with the Senior Management Review has seen a shift away from hierarchical policy-making. As one senior official pointed out: The arrangement is that I have got a Grade 2 as head of policy and then he has four Grade 3s who are what we call Policy Directors who are responsible for the strategic direction of policy and who will have responsibility for seeing that some of the big policies are carried through … The benefit based responsibility comes in at the Policy Manager level, Grade 5. There are 20 to 25 Grade 5s, each of them responsible for a particular benefit area, and their responsibility is to see to everything surrounding that benefit … Now a lot of the day-to-day work on the detail will be done right the way down. We have submissions going to ministers from HCOs, SCOs, Grade 7s. We push that kind of thing further down the Department than almost anywhere else. Whereas even in the early 1980s ministerial briefings were carried out by Grades 1, 2 and 3, now: ‘you rarely have somebody above grade 5; it would usually be a grade 5 or a grade 7’. With the introduction of ‘policy stewardship’, whereby an individual is responsible for the developing and management of particular policy, it may be a Grade 7 who ‘takes responsibility for the whole of the spend on their benefit’. In addition: ‘it is generally a Grade 7 doing the oral briefing to the minister, using the briefing that they have produced’ (interview with a Grade 7). The other change in the DSS is that with only 2 per cent of staff in headquarters and 98 per cent in agencies, much of the work of the department is about managing departmental–agency relations. This has again had a cultural impact because, by making operations distinct and in a sense giving it a separate voice, it means, first, that the notion of the DSS as a line bureaucracy has been undermined and, second, that operational issues can be put on the agenda. As one senior official said: It has made the distinction between policy and operations sharper, so it makes it much more difficult for the policy people to ignore the operational end because we have got a more powerful operational end. You can turn round and say: ‘No you can’t make me do that. I am telling you how this is, how it is going to be done.’

Departmental Cultures 93

Whereas I think when they were all merged together without a separate chief executive, it was easier for the operational side to get leaned on … However, a former Chief Executive of an agency said: I don’t remember it as being a period of comfortable blanket-like support from the centre of the Department. I think it was a fairly rough ride on many occasions … All the pressure is on you to conform. You showed that you were capable of doing this job by not rocking the boat too much. Nevertheless, even this more cynical voice admitted: ‘there was a better sense of partnership between operations and policy. You see I think that previously one of the problems was that the operation side of the Department was largely ignored.’ Certainly, the agency is involved very closely with the department in the development of policy. As a number of Grade 7s pointed out: ‘there is a lot of day-to-day contact with agencies’. Indeed, a Grade 5 commented: ‘We have tried to involve them in the earliest possible stage (of policy development) … there is a manager with a small number of staff and who is now out first point of call.’ So whilst the department is formally responsible for policy-making, it is, in fact, interactive and, thus, the traditional hierarchical and insular culture of the department is being challenged. In addition, the agencies have also been concerned to create their own culture, or at least a distinct identity. As one former Chief Executive said: ‘I was trying to create a greater sense of identity within the Agency and also a greater sense of identity among people who you couldn’t expect to identify with the whole Civil Services.’ The DSS certainly underwent dramatic changes in its policy and organisational culture in the 1980s. It shifted from a department which still contained the imprint of Beveridge to a department concerned with managing the move away from universalism. Both the Conservative and Labour governments have been concerned with targeting benefits and, thus, the policy agenda of the department has shifted significantly. In addition, the departmental culture has shifted from one based upon hierarchy to one which actively embraces delegated management both within its agencies and its policy-making in the department. The department has also gone through some of the greatest structural changes and in most cases the relationships with

94 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

agencies (notwithstanding the CSA) have worked relatively well (see Gains 2000 for details).

The Department of Energy Policy culture It is extremely difficult to characterise the culture of the Department of Energy (DEn). It was in existence for only a relatively short period between 1974 and 1992 (see Chapter 2 for details). Perhaps more than any other department, it was defined by its function and its relationship with the energy industry, rather than in terms of a particular philosophical or ideological tradition. In this sense, it has often been perceived as a department made up of specific divisions captured by their respective producer interests. This impression was reinforced by an interchange of personnel between the industries and the department.4 Some commentators and participants have gone further, suggesting that the dominant interest in the department has been the nuclear industry section and that this has defined the direction of energy policy (see Benn, 1990; for a more balanced view see Watt 1998). In an interview, Benn suggested that nuclear energy was dominant in the department for a number of complex reasons: Well nuclear was very serious … I finally realised that the whole civil nuclear programme was an absolute fraud; it was about nuclear weapons. And I discovered it because (one person) who had worked in the CEGB wrote to me and said during the whole period you’ve been Secretary of State for Energy plutonium for our civil nuclear power stations has been sent to America for their nuclear weapons programme … I discovered then that every nuclear power station was a bomb factory. My view changed because I began as a huge enthusiast for nuclear power. I made marvellous speeches about nuclear power. I then went in and learnt it wasn’t safe, wasn’t cheap, wasn’t peaceful. Everything that had been said about it was a lie. They didn’t tell ministers the truth, they didn’t publish the truth, they didn’t tell you the economics of it and they didn’t tell you what it was about.

4

One interviewee pointed out that many of the people who joined the department in its early days were direct entrant principals who had been working in the energy industry.

Departmental Cultures 95

As one very senior official who had worked in Energy recalled, much of the information provided by the CEGB on costings was inaccurate. However, a Grade 5 in Energy rejected the idea of nuclear dominance: ‘There has only been one nuclear power station built, Sizewell, since 1985. 1985 was a watershed. I would have said that we were held hostage by the NUM until 1984.’ Nevertheless, any understanding of the Department of Energy has to be within the context of its relationships within the industry and the dominant role played by nuclear power. These factors produced a contradiction within the heart of the department. On one side, responding to the crisis situation that led to its formation, it was concerned with producing a coherent energy policy. On the other, the coherence was undermined by functional cleavages that led each division to argue a special case for its industry. In the view of the former Energy Minister, Peter Walker: In terms of the Department I went into in 1983 the sections were very much different sections and there was no co-ordinated department as such. Oil and Gas had one team of people, Coal had another and they were both of different calibre and attitudes. There was no strong sense of a great Department of Energy. A contemporary official reinforced this view in a slightly more positive way: The culture in Energy was a very deep knowledge of your particular sector … It’s different from the DTI because we in Energy kept very strong sectional connections. This sectionalism produced some spectacular anomalies and contradictions. For instance, whilst overall policy was shifting towards privatising electricity, reducing the dependence on coal and diminishing the size of the coal industry, investment in coal mines was continuing to increase during the 1980s (Chapman 1999). In a sense, the culture of the department was defined by three interrelated elements: its functionality; its relationships with the producers; and, deriving from these two, its concern to produce some sort of coherent energy policy, or at least to ensure the supply of energy. In this sense, the culture of the department in the early 1980s was very close to that of Industry. As Peter Walker said: ‘In fact Energy is so interrelated with Industry in every possible way, it’s lunatic to have it as a

96 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

separate department.’ Therefore, it too was concerned with intervention and planning and as one interviewee (a former Grade 2) indicated: Well if you had the coal people saying we must produce more coal, and make Central Electricity Generating buy the bloody stuff, you then had CEGB and people from the electricity division saying quantify the cost because there is a lot of oil capacity which isn’t used and we would like to use oil. These views came together at the Deputy Secretary level and the Deputy Secretary then had to produce a department view, if he was able to do so. Nigel Lawson provides a useful summary of the culture from his perspective: First of all they believed strongly, although they were not quite clear what it was, in a thing called energy policy and that energy was somehow special, rather than a part of the economy which should be subject to the same policies as the rest of the economy … I think they saw energy policy in two ways. One was making grandiose projections of the likely demand for energy some way into the future and then saying how much would be satisfied by coal, how much by oil, etc., and then consequently asking what decisions needed to be made to meet these targets … It was a modified form of central planning. They were greatly encouraged by the fact that the Energy Secretary had the highest proportion of state owned industries. However, the energy officials were in the poor position of being middle men crushed between the Treasury on the one hand and the barons of the state owned electricity, gas, coal and to some extent oil. They had a very unhappy relationship with most of these baronies who treated the official with a greater or lesser degree of contempt. They kept officials in the dark about a lot of fundamental aspects of the industry, because knowledge is power and they liked to keep it to themselves. They often did not know themselves. The classic case was the true cost of nuclear power which was certainly concealed from my officials in the Department. Peter Walker, from a different ideological perspective, agrees that, despite the desire for a co-ordinated energy policy, there was ‘no lovely thing called an energy policy’. Nevertheless, the twin principles of Energy were the desire to plan energy and the close and complex relationships with producers (see Chapter 6).

Departmental Cultures 97

The surprising thing about the DEn is the rapidity with which it transformed itself from an interventionist, producer oriented, department into, in the words of one senior official, ‘something rather like a fringe merchant bank. It had to develop lots of expertise in floatations, the structuring of industries for floatations.’ It switched from a department of nationalised industries to a department of privatisation and the logic of this policy led to its reincorporation into the DTI. The suggestion from ministers was that there was very little resistance to change. Lawson provides an explanation: If you take, for example, a very old and strong and on the whole self-confident department like the Home Office, then it is very much harder to change that culture than it is in a new department like the Department of Energy. It was a Department which was new and very low in the Whitehall pecking order with no history and it had been demoralised for various reasons. So I did not have as nearly as great a task as I would have had in a Home Office type of department. Similarly, John Wakeham recalled that on his first day: The under-secretary responsible for privatisation said to me, ‘Are you serious about wanting to privatise the electricity industry’ and I said, ‘For Christ’s sake I thought that was what I had come here to do!’ and they said, ‘Well if you are going to do that then you are going to have to make some very difficult decisions in quick time.’ But, as Wakeham discovered: ‘I had some officials who were pretty well wedded to the policy and who were determined to make it work and they had certainly in me a man who had some idea about how to execute it.’ However, it is important to recognise that even in this weak and uncertain department cultural change was slow. As one official recounts: The government were quite sensible about the way in which it approached privatisation. It started with the things which were small and clearly almost already conducting a commercial private sector business and moved on to things that were large utilities.

98 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

It was once officials realised that the privatisation strategy placed them at the forefront of the government’s economic policy and therefore increased, temporarily, the status of the department, that they become enthused and the policy developed more rapidly. The consequence of the privatisation policy, and Lawson’s shift to a market-based energy policy, was that the department lost its raison d’être. Consequently it merged and therefore became inculcated with the organisational culture of the DTI. One official now in the Energy division of the DTI suggested that being a larger culture, there was much less personal interaction and it was more difficult to know what was going on in the department. Other parts of the department (energy efficiency) were absorbed into the Department of the Environment and this made a significant difference because the coherence of the Energy culture was lost in a ‘large sort of federal organisation which has strong fiefdoms … so it is more like a federal organisation with local cultures than the Department of Energy’.

Conclusion Culture has defined both the policy agenda and operations of departments and, despite the strength of the Whitehall culture, departments have distinct sub-cultures which affect both how they operate and how they frame policy objectives. In all four departments, the Conservative administration was successful in changing, to varying degrees, the policy culture. The DTI became less interventionist, the DSS abandoned the precepts of Beveridge, Energy shifted from a policy based on planning to one based on privatisation and marketisation. In the Home Office whilst there was some shift from social liberalism to an emphasis on law and order, the extent to which this has been accepted by officials is still open to question. There has also been important change in the organisational culture of departments (see Fig 4.1). The impact of managerialism has changed the way departments operate and the relationships that exist within the departments. The DSS and the Home Office have become less hierarchical, advice is being provided by wider sources and senior officials are increasingly developing roles as managers. Consequently, the autonomy and impact of ministers are increasing, as we will see in a later chapter. However, it is still open to question whether this is indicative of a shift to a differentiated polity. Many traditional patterns of policy-making and ministerial/civil servant relations remain, as we will see in later chapters.

Departmental Cultures 99 Figure 4.1

Summary of cultural change in departments

Degree of change

Nature of old culture

Nature of ministers

External pressures

DTI

Changed from interventionist to laissez-faire culture.

Division between trade and industry. Uncertain in 1980s.

Strong economic pressure for new policies and prime ministerial pressure for change of direction.

Home Office

Shift in policy from socially liberal to socially conservative. Shift in culture still unclear. Shift from interventionist and planning to department of privatisation.

Deeply embedded and relatively uniformly accepted.

Number of New Right ministers concerned to impose laissez-faire policies. Until 1989 most ministers agreed with departmental agenda. From 1989 socially conservative. With Wakeham and Lawson ministers committed to privatisation.

Shift from universalism to selective welfare.

Deeply embedded.

Energy

DSS

Relatively new department and culture not embedded.

Relatively ideological ministers concerned with reducing costs of welfare.

Increasing pressure to deal with rising crime but generally relatively isolated.

Tremendous changes in energy market as result of miners’ strike, oil market, nuclear issues. High demographic, social and economic pressure for change in welfare provision. Government commitment to reduce expenditure.

The comparative case-studies are useful in illuminating why the cultures changed in the way they did in the different departments. The departments where there was the most rapid and dramatic change, DTI and Energy, were the departments which had the least embedded culture, greatest external pressure and ministers with alternative ideological frameworks to draw on in developing policy. The department with the least and slowest change, the Home Office, had a strongly embedded culture, relatively limited external pressure and, until the late 1980s, an absence of ideological ministers. The Home Office had a strong commitment to running its own divisions and Thatcher was relatively willing to allow the department to be isolated from prime ministerial and Cabinet oversight (see Chapter 6). Perhaps, crucially, no ministers really tried to change the department. The most difficult case is the DSS. Here, the department had a deeply embedded culture, but it changed significantly. However, the change was slow. Two factors

100 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

seem to be important in explaining that change. One is the strength of the external constraints; there was great pressure on the DSS to control costs and this provided a strong incentive for both organisational and policy change. Second, both Fowler and Lilley worked with the department to change policy rather than attempt to impose a new direction on an unwilling Civil Service. This chapter raises some important points about relationships between structures and agents. The behaviour of agents is affected by the nature of departmental cultures, but they react to, and may attempt to change, those cultures. Cultures operate on two levels: they frame the policy decisions and shape the rules of the games in terms of how organisations operate and who is involved in decision-making. Because cultures are contested and open there is space for interpretation which allows cultures to change. Significant changes in culture, however, require a combination of action and structure. Cultures will change most easily if an agent has an alternative cultural or ideological framework on which to draw. However, change can also be facilitated by the structural situation within which the agent is located. In this way, a culture may be inherently weak or there may be strong external pressures for change. Change is perhaps most likely where both factors contribute to produce a significant space for the action of an agent.

5 Departments and the Core Executive

In the past, discussions of the power of the Prime Minister normally counterposed her/his power to that of the Cabinet and saw it very much as a zero-sum game. Indeed, even today, some authors focus almost exclusively upon the Prime Minister and see British government as becoming increasingly presidential or even ‘Bonapartist’ (Foley 1992; Pryce 1998, Hennessy 1998; Kavanagh and Seldon 1999). However, we follow Rhodes (1997), Smith (1999a) and others in arguing that we should conceptualise power in British central government in terms of a series of exchange relations between different elements of the core executive. Of course, there are different definitions of the core executive and we do not intend to add to this debate (see Smith 1999a). Rather, we shall focus upon our departments’ relations with other key elements of the core executive: the Prime Minister and his or her territory, notably the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office; the Cabinet; the Treasury; and other departments. Obviously, the role of the core executive is crucial to contemporary debates about government. Rhodes’ differentiated polity model downplays the power of the Prime Minister, emphasising that the core executive is segmented and that the relationships between the various parts of that core executive, or rather between the people who fulfil particular roles within it, involve an exchange of resources. In this chapter, we shall assess Rhodes’ contentions by examining departmental relations with other parts of the core executive. However, the longest section of this chapter deals with the departments’ relations with the Prime Minister for two reasons. First, we need to assess the extent and degree of Prime Ministerial influence, an issue that is crucial to the debates on governance. Second, our study covers the entire tenure of Margaret Thatcher, a Prime Minister who seemed to obsess both academics and 101

102 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

journalists. As such, an analysis of her role throws a great deal of light on how far Prime Ministers are constrained by the resource dependencies with which they are faced; certainly the picture painted in much of the literature is that Thatcher restructured the pattern of resource dependencies so as to impose her ideas and policies.

Departments and the Prime Minister As indicated, a great deal of literature emphasises Prime Ministerial dominance and sees the Prime Minister as bypassing Cabinet and using ministers as agents to implement policy. As such, the view is that the degree of Prime Ministerial intervention in, and influence over, departments reflects the wishes of the Prime Minister (for a summary of these arguments, see Thomas 1998; for a critique, see Smith 1999a). To be fair, this literature, in large part, reflects a broader literature arguing that Thatcher dominated her government and, consequently, was the centre of the policy-making process, of the core executive. In this vein, Hennessy argues that she created a ‘conviction Cabinet’ and reports one Permanent Secretary’s view of her as ‘(the) most commanding Prime Minister of recent times’ (Hennessy 1986: 95). We must be wary of this type of analysis. In the terms discussed in the introduction to this book, these analyses privilege intentional and political explanation (see Marsh 1996). Thatcher may have had a particular, perhaps dominant, style, but all Prime Ministers have significant resources that they can use to affect outcomes. We need to acknowledge the importance of those structural resources, rather than merely focusing on how particular Prime Ministers use them. As such, any analysis of the role of the Prime Minister in relation to departments needs to acknowledge that, while the Prime Minister has resources, so does the department. As such, there are organisational constraints on a Prime Minister. We also need to recognise that outcomes will be influenced by the effectiveness with which Prime Ministers, ministers and departments utilise their resources. At the same time, the outcome will be shaped by the broader economic, social and political context within which the agents are operating. Of course, a Prime Minister has considerable resources and thus, potentially, enormous power. The key resource a Prime Minister has is legitimacy/authority. The legitimacy of the British political system is rooted in the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty (Judge 1993). However, the Prime Minister is conventionally the leader of the largest

Departments and the Core Executive 103

political party and the electoral system, which usually produces a majority government and tight party discipline, ensuring that the executive dominates the legislature and the Prime Minister exercises authority/leadership over the party, Parliament, government and Cabinet. As such, there are at least two bases of the Prime Minister’s legitimacy; s/he is Prime Minister and party leader. This dual legitimacy creates considerable scope for Prime Ministerial autonomy and action. At the same time, a modern Prime Minister also has considerable administrative support, particularly the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office; largely because of decisions taken by past Prime Ministers. These administrative structures help him or her exercise authority. Thus, the paradox inherent in the position of British Prime Ministers is that a number of institutional/structural factors means that the post is highly personalised; the Prime Minister as an individual can have a considerable impact. This is not to say that the impact of the Prime Minister depends solely or evenly mainly on personality. The Prime Minister’s authority and this personalism is reflected in his/her powers. Perhaps most significantly, s/he can change the structures and relationships within Whitehall by, for example, creating or abolishing departments or pushing through fundamental changes to the Civil Service. Almost as important, s/he makes ministerial appointments, decides the membership and role of Cabinet committees and plays a significant role in the appointment process for senior civil servants. In addition, her/his support for policy proposals is crucial; s/he can almost definitely veto policy proposals and his/her support is essential if any minister wants to steer a controversial issue through Cabinet. As such, the Prime Minister has powers which gives him/her the potential autonomy, or agency, to change the structures within which government occurs, to change the agents who operate within departments and to affect ministers’ and departments’ strategic judgements on whether and how to bring forward a policy proposal. The initial part of this section will focus on the first, second and fourth of those powers; the Prime Minister’s role in the appointment of civil servants is dealt with in Chapter 7. In each case we shall pay some attention to how different Prime Ministers have used this power, an issue we return to later. The Prime Minister’s power will be constrained by other features of the organisational, political, economic and social environment within which s/he operates (Rose 2000). Indeed, the sheer volume of government business means that even a hyperactive Prime Minister like

104 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Thatcher cannot intervene in more than a limited number of policy areas. For this reason, the impact of a Prime Minister will depend on factors such as: the issue under discussion; the standing of the department involved; and a Prime Minister’s perception of the abilities of the minister concerned. These may be viewed as departmental resources and we shall focus on them, and how they are used by ministers, in the second part of this section. As indicated earlier, we must also recognise that both the Prime Minister and other ministers operate within a broader political and economic environment that constrains or facilitates their actions and, thus, affects outcomes. So, for example, a Prime Minister, and his/her ministers, will always be concerned about electoral considerations, considering how particular policy decisions will play with the electorate. At the same time, both will be concerned about public opinion and, as we shall see below, particularly when considering the position of Home Secretary, ministers, and the Prime Minister, may, on occasions respond directly to public opinion (see Chapter 8). Economic factors or events can equally shape what policy is introduced and how ministers and the Prime Minister interact. The whole saga of Black Wednesday and Britain’s ignominious withdrawal from the ERM in 1992 presents ample evidence here. We shall deal with these constraints in the third part of this section. Finally, we need to acknowledge that different Prime Ministers may view their role and exercise their powers in different ways. So, different agents operating in the same structural context will not necessarily take the same decisions or produce the same outcomes. We shall look at this issue in the final part of this section. Overall, our argument is that the relationship between the Prime Minister and a department should not be viewed as one of dominance and subservience, but is rather based upon an exchange of resources, within a broader economic, social and political context. Consequently, it is not a zero-sum game. Despite the Prime Minister’s Office accruing more institutional resources since 1997, the relationship between the Prime Minister and the centre is still one of interdependence.

The Prime Minister’s powers Changing the structure of government The Prime Minister has considerable power over organisational changes in government. As we saw in Chapters 2 and 4, many Prime

Departments and the Core Executive 105

Ministers have changed the structure of government. Thatcher, for instance, was mainly responsible for initiating the drive towards government efficiency in the 1980s, which led to significant changes in the Civil Service (see Chapters 4 and 7). In 1979, she appointed Sir Derek Rayner to promote efficiency and value for money in government and this led to the creation of the Efficiency Unit which worked directly to the Prime Minister. As a member of the Next Steps team acknowledged: She gave us political backing and that was very important. She essentially was our minister and we worked with the other ministers and with officials in departments and it wasn’t particularly easy for them because we could come in and ask what I think most people regarded as rather tiresome questions. They were very good about it but everyone knew that we had Mrs Thatcher’s backing and that was very important. Likewise, Major built upon the reforms initiated by Thatcher and made institutional reform a distinctive element of his administration. Many elements of the Next Steps programme, such as increased accountability, better service delivery and greater responsiveness to the consumer, became central aspects of Major’s programme, the Citizen’s Charter. Once again, the Citizen’s Charter only had an impact because the Prime Minister placed his authority behind it. The idea for it came from the policy unit and it was opposed by the Treasury and by departments. This time it was a minister, Francis Maude, who used the Prime Minister’s authority to force departments into submission (Hogg and Hill 1995). Subsequently, Major used the newly created Office of Public Service, which gave him and his Deputy Prime Minister the administrative machinery necessary for imposing reform on departments, to push through the Senior Management Review.

The power of appointment The Prime Minister appoints ministers and creates, and appoints members to, Cabinet committees. In doing so s/he is able to shape the composition and deliberations of the Cabinet. Certainly, one way that a Prime Minister can attempt to limit the autonomy of a department is to place a minister who is close to or highly dependent on him/her in

106 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

office. This tactic has been used on a number of occasions. One former Deputy Secretary said: I suppose Merlyn Rees was very much Jim Callaghan’s man. Callaghan had been Home Secretary and Jim had quite traditional views about policy in the Home Office sphere. Merlyn was not politically strong enough nor intellectually inclined to strike out on a different path to Jim. And Jim’s concerns were to keep the kettle from boiling over. Thatcher took a similar approach with David Waddington who was the first Conservative Home Secretary to enter the department in the 1980s with any commitment to change and clearly had the support of the Prime Minister. Waddington believed that: ‘She obviously thought that she was appointing “one of us” and she knew that I was slightly more robust on issues of crime and punishment than Douglas (Hurd) had been.’ However, he recalls that Thatcher did not intervene in what he did: There was no question of sitting around the table and deciding how I would approach the job. She just said: ‘I think you are the man for the job, now get on and do it.’ I cannot remember a single word that night about how I should approach the job. Although neither Prime Ministers told Rees or Waddington what to do in policy terms, each Prime Minister believed that the minister concerned could be trusted to follow Prime Minister-approved policies. In this vein, Waddington indicates that he felt that the key issues of Home Office policy had already been determined before he started the job. He was merely left with the job of piloting the Broadcasting Bill through Parliament: I was drafted on to the Broadcasting Cabinet Committee which was chaired by Margaret and I felt really as if I was lobby fodder and only there to give the Prime Minister support. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher used her control of the Cabinet committee system to get her way. As an example, Nigel Lawson admits that ministers were well aware of the Prime Minister’s favoured policies. She would communicate her views to the Chair of the relevant Cabinet committee and, in Lawson’s view, ‘the Chair would then know the Prime Minister’s view and try very hard to push it through’. As such, the Prime Minister

Departments and the Core Executive 107

could have considerable impact by her control of the Cabinet committees. Of course, this is a tactic used by all Prime Ministers. So, for example, one of our interviewees, Edmund Dell, a former Minister of Trade, argued that Callaghan structured the Cabinet committee which considered the Bullock Committee’s Report on Industrial Democracy, a committee established under the terms of the Social Contract, to ensure that any legislation which emerged was not radical. The power of veto or support The greatest and most consistent impact that a Prime Minister can have on a department is actually negative. The Prime Minister can stop, or refuse to support, a policy development and it is probably easier to do this than to impose a policy on a minister or a department. Nigel Lawson argued: The Prime Minister’s main power is the veto and that was the main way in which the Prime Minister exercised her power. The Prime Minister cannot force his/her proposals on a minister who is not prepared to go along with it but they have a very effective power of veto. No other individual has the power of veto, maybe a majority in Cabinet can do so, but not any individual. If you cannot convince the Prime Minister the best you can do is ask them to restrain from casting the veto and allow the proposal to be discussed in committee. Second, the existence of Prime Ministerial veto power requires ministers to attempt to win his/her support. As Norman Tebbit suggested: You did not want to get into the position where she had publicly come down against what you wanted to do as that would have made things difficult. If you thought you might have trouble with the Prime Minister, you would have to start working early on and think about how to change her mind. One might talk to Willie Whitelaw. Certainly, the Prime Minister often has influence without intervening directly, because departments and ministers anticipate his or her preferences. As a former Cabinet Secretary argues, this process of ‘anticipated reactions’: tends to involve a shift within policy rather than a shift between policies. There’s nothing sinister about it, you still have the policy,

108 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

the broad lines of policy established reasonably rationally, as it were, in inter-ministerial discussions. But … a minister in charge of a department really quite likes to know if the Prime Minister takes a different view on a particular thing. However, as another official pointed out, if the minister is strong and confident, the Prime Minister may be less influential: Kenneth Baker picked up, if you like, some random dropping from Mrs T. about education which she felt was not something with which he was comfortable. He would then talk it though with her and she didn’t always win in those discussions. The same official suggested, ‘She was quite prepared to listen and change her view, I think perhaps less so towards the end of her reign.’ It is perhaps worth noting the use of ‘reign’ here. Clearly then, the Prime Minister has considerable power at his/her disposal. However, as we emphasised earlier, government is complex and no Prime Minister can oversee everything. In the past it was often argued that the Prime Minister was in a weak position in relation to Cabinet ministers because s/he lacked administrative support. However, in the last three decades the creation of the Prime Minister’s Office and the growth of the Cabinet Office have given the Prime Minister not only much stronger administrative support but also a much-enhanced policy-making capacity. The Prime Minister’s Office is a relatively recent innovation; its existence was first acknowledged in the Civil Service Yearbook, 1977. Initially, it merely provided administrative support to the Prime Minister, but now it has assumed a more proactive policy role which means it has become an increasingly important mechanism for enabling a Prime Minister to intervene in departments. The number of staff in the office increased from 62 in 1972 to 100 in 1995 (Lee et al. 1998: 31; Kavanagh and Seldon 1999). In addition, the Prime Minister has the support of the Cabinet Office. For example, Robert Armstrong, Cabinet Secretary between 1980 and 1997, played a significant role in developing policy and the unfolding events during the Thatcher administration (see Thatcher 1993: 395). While the growth of the Prime Minister’s Office has provided the Prime Minister with a real policy-making capability, it has not ended his/her dependence on departments. Departments are still the core units within which policy is developed and drafted and in which implementation is scrutinised.

Departments and the Core Executive 109

Departmental resources and Prime Ministerial intervention As emphasised earlier, it is crucial not to see Prime Ministerial power in purely personal terms. Although Prime Ministers have authority and resources, they are constrained. The Prime Minister has a crucial impact on the development of policy; departments have autonomy and are difficult to control. All departments have considerable autonomy because of the scale of government, but this autonomy varies over both time and space because Prime Ministers have the authority to intervene. Hence, British government is based on the paradox of Prime Ministerial authority and departmental autonomy. Despite Prime Ministerial wishes, departments control the policy process. The Prime Minister has tremendous authority but lacks sufficient institutional mechanisms for detailed intervention in departmental policy-making. At the same time, while the Prime Minister can affect policy, s/he is unable to monitor policy development within departments, despite the growing roles of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office. The Cabinet Office’s role is largely administrative, the Prime Minister’s Office is small and Prime Ministers are still dependent on departments and their senior ministers. So, Thatcher’s interventionism was not really based on any administrative machinery but on her personal drive and, thus, the degree of co-ordination depended to a great extent on the hyperactivity of the Prime Minister. In effect, the position of the Prime Minister is still too personalised to provide any systematic process of co-ordination or central direction. There is no single co-ordinating agency, with co-ordination divided between the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Office. This weakness at the centre is strongly reflected in Tony Blair’s drive to establish greater co-ordination (Smith, Marsh and Richards 2000). Blair has taken a number of measures, for example, increasing the size of his political office and creating the role of a ‘Cabinet enforcer’, in order to increase the ability of the Prime Minister to coordinate the activities of the departments. Nevertheless, even at present the Prime Minister lacks an effective mechanism for intervening in departments. The problem has been made even greater by the decline of the Cabinet. The Cabinet was always the institution that had responsibility for the co-ordination of departments at the political level. However, whilst under Callaghan, for instance, the Cabinet played a central role in crucial economic decisions such as the response to the IMF condition, from Thatcher onwards Cabinet has generally been a rubber stamp. Indeed there was no discussion of economic policy in the first

110 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

year of the Thatcher government (Gilmour 1992). Increasingly, the key decisions are made in Cabinet committees (which are in essence part of the Cabinet system), informal ministerial committees and in bilateral meetings between ministers, or more likely, between the Prime Minister and a particular minister (see Foster 1997). Consequently, the way that Prime Ministers intervene in departments is of crucial importance.

Patterns of Prime Ministerial intervention As the Prime Minister cannot be omnipotent or omnicompetent given the scale of modern government, then s/he makes decisions about where and when to intervene. Obviously, the autonomy of departments varies across time and space, but there are some patterns. While some departments, like the Treasury, the Home Office and the Foreign Office always have status, they do not always have autonomy. The lower profile, and perhaps more technical, a department is, the more autonomy it will have; although of course this autonomy is likely to be over less important decisions. In addition, if a departmental policy becomes the centre of broader political debate, then its autonomy is likely to be reduced. If a department has a strong minister its autonomy is likely to be greater. Rhodes (1995: 22–3) argues that: ‘Prime Ministerial control is strong in strategic defence, foreign affairs and major economic decisions, but genuine cabinet or ministerial decision making predominates over all aspects of domestic policy’ (see also Dunleavy and Rhodes 1990). This is a common analysis of British government, based on a distinction between high and low politics, what Bulpitt (1983) calls a ‘dual polity’ model, in which the core executive is concerned with the heroic areas of politics leaving other issues to less important ministers and subcentral government. As a generalisation this may have some validity, but it needs to be treated sceptically. Certainly, our evidence suggests that Prime Ministers have not always been concerned about all areas of high politics, neither have they been unconcerned about other areas. This point again leads back to the issue of personalism and may explain why so many commentators have been concerned with the issue of personality. For, whilst the Prime Minister is institutionally constrained, it is extremely difficult to establish a generalisable model of patterns of intervention. What is clear is that whether a Prime Minister intervenes depends on a range of variables including salience, external context, the status of colleagues, personal interest, the critical nature of issues and the nature of the department and policy.

Departments and the Core Executive 111

Thatcher is generally perceived as an interventionist Prime Minister. However, her policy involvement was highly erratic. Thatcher’s role in relation to the Foreign Office provides an interesting example. During the Falklands War, Thatcher effectively took over the daily conduct of the war. In her final years at least, she became obsessed with Europe; falling out publicly with her ex-Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe on the issue. However, Lord Carrington, Foreign Secretary between 1979 and 1981, argued in an interview that generally Thatcher: ‘did not pay much attention to foreign affairs’. Similarly, the Home Office, whilst accepting some elements of the Thatcherite agenda, managed to retain a considerable degree of autonomy. In the words of one official, Thatcher had ‘basic instincts about crime and punishment which were very different from Willy Whitelaw’s, but they never came through, as far as I can see, in his time.’ In this vein, Douglas Hurd recounts: It was remarkable and surprising to me as she had passionate views about broadcasting, but, if you leave that aside, on the other Home Office matters she had views but she did not believe that it was prudent for her to seek to impose them. This was not characteristic of her in all departments; it certainly was not in the FCO later. From time to time I would try to find out what her view was on something I was going to do. A message would come back on to my desk saying that the Home Secretary should take a decision and, if he thought it important enough, should take it to the Cabinet. She had views on penal issues but knew these issues were very difficult and did not therefore impose her views at all. She really kept clear to an extent that surprised me. This independence was partly related to the nature of the department and partly related to the status and views of the various Home Secretaries. As we saw in Chapter 4, there was little to distinguish the policy of the Home Office under different governments in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Home Office is an insular and closed department with a strong culture that, through its status and professional knowledge, has been able to exclude outsiders and, to some extent, resist Prime Ministerial intervention. This independence is increased because Prime Ministers have been wary of the potential for Home Office matters to rapidly become highly politically salient and difficult to control. As such, it is interesting that, whilst Thatcher had a personal economic adviser and a foreign affairs adviser, she never

112 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

had a home affairs adviser, although there was a member of the policy unit who had responsibility for home affairs amongst other things (Lee et al. 1998). Of course, departmental autonomy is even greater for some ministers. Thatcher was highly dependent on Whitelaw in the early 1980s because she was in an ideological minority in the Cabinet and needed the support of Whitelaw, the Deputy Prime Minister. His loyalty was important in ensuring Thatcher retained the support of the Cabinet. As Thatcher put it (1993: 27): Willie is a big man in character as well as physically. He wanted the success of the government which from the first he accepted would be guided by my general philosophy. Once he had pledged his loyalty, he never withdrew it. He supported me steadfastly when I was right and, more important, when I wasn’t. Thatcher’s dependence on Whitelaw gave him considerable autonomy as Home Secretary. As a former Permanent Secretary in the Home Office observed: Willy Whitelaw was the most powerful minister in the government after the Prime Minister, that gave the department a great deal of autonomy and the scope to use that high degree of autonomy … Thatcher had to pay a price in terms of refraining from an attempt to mould, influence and shape Home Office policy-making for as long as Whitelaw was there. However, even Whitelaw made concessions to her on issues about which she felt very strongly. As a former Deputy Secretary observed, although Whitelaw opposed an emphasis on the ‘short, sharp, shock’ in relation to penal policy, he went along with it, arguing: ‘we must put through this popular policy because it is politically necessary, but show that we warned them.’ The relationship between Thatcher and the DEn is also interesting. One former Energy official, who later worked closely with Thatcher, made an important, if slightly disingenuous, point: ‘I don’t think she was any more interested in energy than in other subjects that were going to be important.’ As far as it goes this seems accurate, but it neglects the fact that, particularly in her first two terms, Thatcher was very concerned with what she saw as the dangerous power of the NUM and she chaired the committee created to deal with the 1983 miners’

Departments and the Core Executive 113

strike (Thatcher 1993: 346). Almost without exception, all the DEn civil servants we interviewed commented upon the extent of Thatcher’s involvement, many describing it as an obsession. In addition, after the 1983 election, privatisation became the flagship policy and the DEn was the key department, with the Treasury piloting this policy. Once again, this meant that Thatcher was crucially interested in discussions within, and policy produced by, the department. So, throughout her term in office, the DEn, which most observers might class as a small and relatively unimportant department, was crucially involved in ‘high politics’. However, even in the area of energy, Thatcher allowed some ministers more autonomy than others. A comparison between the DEn relationship with the Prime Minister under David Howell (1979–81) and Nigel Lawson (1981–3) is illuminating. David Howell emphasised that there was ‘constant interference’ from Number 10. Indeed, he suggested that he had little influence over policy because his civil servants were talking directly to Thatcher’s office: You could find your position sold out already because a Permanent Secretary or Under Secretary had had a meeting and had done a deal, not so much behind your back but under your feet. By the time it got to ministerial level, sometimes the policy had been sold out and sometimes it hadn’t. To an extent, Howell’s view was reflected in the fact that most of the civil servants who worked with him saw him as a less than effective minister. Nigel Lawson’s status both in the department and with the Prime Minister was much higher. We shall see in the next chapter that he was highly regarded by DEn civil servants as both an intellect and a powerful force in Cabinet. Consequently, Lawson pointed out that at Energy: ‘I had complete autonomy to work out proposals.’ If the Prime Minister has faith in a Cabinet minister, that minister has considerable autonomy to develop policy and the Prime Minister, unless it is an area of particular interest or salience, will have very little input. So, under John Major, Peter Lilley conducted a thorough overhaul of social security policy almost completely away from the eyes of the Prime Minister and almost solely in-house. Thatcher probably was exceptional in that she intervened in more policy areas than most Prime Ministers, but even she was greatly constrained by the scale of government and thus left trusted ministers alone.

114 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

It is also important to emphasise, as Lawson astutely notes in his memoirs (1992: 129), that strong bilateral relationships between a minister and the Prime Minister can benefit both: Most Cabinet ministers, particularly after a longish period in government, tend to be preoccupied with fighting their own battles and pursuing the issues that matter within their own bailiwick, and lose interest in the wider picture. Most of the time it is comforting for them to feel that all they need to do is strike a deal with the Prime Minister, and not have to bother overmuch about persuading their other colleagues. As such, he understood, and was good at, the politics of Cabinet. Thatcher felt she could rely on him to do a good job and, in return, was willing to support him in Cabinet. Rhodes is surely right that Prime Ministers are less likely to be concerned about departments which are less politically visible and where complex technical issues predominate. This is clearly true of much policy in both the DTI and the DSS. As one DSS official, with a fairly jaundiced view of Thatcher, explained: The danger with Margaret Thatcher was she did think she knew everything. And she did believe she was right; so that on social security she would dredge back to her knowledge when she was in the Department and she would make announcements or pronouncements, on something or other, and usually get it wrong. But it didn’t bother us much. In this official’s view, in the early 1980s the department had little contact with the Prime Minister and she had little impact on the department. But there were areas where she would have an input. Patrick Jenkin, Secretary of State between 1979 and 1981, revealed how Thatcher forced through a particular policy change to withdraw social security benefits from strikers: I found myself saying that, until we get the negotiations going through, then I’m afraid (we have to pay) and she just said, ‘I don’t care. We are not having benefits paid out to strikers.’

Departments and the Core Executive 115

Sometimes, autonomy is not a result of status but reflects the fact that a minister has his/her own power base in the party. Peter Walker represents an interesting case from the Thatcher years. Although his views were at odds with Thatcher on many policy issues, he had a high degree of autonomy because he was not dependent on her. Consequently, despite Thatcher’s dislike of his views, Walker was left alone. He claimed: She and I had a rather strange relationship but she knew that I was safer in than out and I knew that and so I basically did what I wanted in my departments. If she had said to me: ‘I want to privatise this or that industry’, I would have gladly left because I was not pining for office. She knew that. The fact is that I was in a stronger position with her than others because she wanted me to stay in the Cabinet and she knew I was not someone who would plead for office and would have happily left. I was independent of her and, therefore, I had a stronger position than somebody who was a keen supporter of all she was standing for who was hoping to please her. Walker suggested that, when he went to the Welsh Office, Thatcher agreed to give him ‘enthusiastic backing’ and, consequently, he could do ‘whatever I wanted in Wales’. Subsequently, when the Treasury said he could not: ‘I said “fair enough I’ll go to No. 10” and she kept her part of the deal.’ Of course, relations between individual ministers and the Prime Minister can change in part because the pattern of dependence changes. Roy Jenkins offers an example: In the first term I was very pleased to be the Home Secretary, in the second term I was very reluctant to be in that government at all. On the other hand, in the second government the Prime Minister was more eager to keep me in the government than I was to stay in. So, vis-à-vis the Prime Minister, my power was enormously greater in the second government. I was really very doubtful the second time and as a result I had absolutely nil Downing Street interference. Key ministers may not only have more autonomy, but they may also act more broadly as brokers. So, Willy Whitelaw, and later John Wakeham,

116 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

were very important conduits between departmental ministers and the Prime Minister. According to Norman Tebbit: People would come into Willy for help with dealing with number 10 and equally number 10, faced with wanting to carry something controversial through, would entrust it to Willy to take it through. Similarly, Patrick Jenkin pointed out that Whitelaw was in a position in which he could say to Thatcher: ‘“Prime Minister I think you have to accept that your colleagues are not with you on this.” She didn’t like it but she had to accept it.’ However, he might also say to ministers on other occasions: ‘Look, I realise that most of us do not agree with her but on an issue like this she is entitled to have her way, so belt up.’ For Jenkin: ‘He was an enormous strength to her but often he would wait and be the last to sum up before the Prime Minister and he would say, “Prime Minister there is a considerable majority in the Cabinet who are not happy with this’’ and she accepted that.’

The affect of the political, economic and social context In our view, any debate about the relative powers of the Prime Minister and his/her ministers needs to acknowledge that both, as agents, are constrained by past policy decisions, existing institutional structures and the political and economic context within which they operate. Both the Prime Minister and ministers are constrained by the institutional and cultural setting in which they operate. Consequently, the factors leading to Prime Ministerial intervention are many and complex. Nevertheless, the three key variables we need to consider are the authority of ministers and the Prime Minister, the institutions of government and the structural context resulting from exogenous political, social and economic factors. Thus, the Falklands War and the miners’ strike demonstrate how the Prime Minister is likely to intervene in a time of crisis. But Prime Ministers will be constrained by the existing institutional structure provided by departments, existing programmes and the capabilities of the core (see Rose 1990; Rose and Davies 1994). The Prime Minister is also likely to become involved when conflicts between departments spin out of control. The Westland Affair provides an excellent example. Here, the conflicts between the Ministry of Defence and the DTI dragged the Prime Minister into detailed control of the issue to the extent that all statements concerning the affair had to be cleared by Number 10;

Departments and the Core Executive 117

thus providing Michael Heseltine with a reason to resign (see Dunleavy 1995). A more usual example concerns the argument between the Department of Employment and the DSS over who should have responsibility for the Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA). As Seldon (1997: 409) acknowledges, the announcement of this policy by Peter Lilley ‘led to a long and acrimonious battle between Lilley and Shepard’s Employment Department over which department should oversee it’. As an official in the DSS pointed out, the aim of the policy was to unify a complex process of paying and delivering benefits and the aim was to have a ‘single benefit’. However, neither of the two departments responsible for the delivery of the benefit could agree on who should take the lead. In the end, only the Prime Minister had the authority to resolve the dispute as neither department would defer to the other. As the official stated: There is no one like the Prime Minister to do that sometimes; resolving areas where you simply reach an impasse. The Prime Minister is uniquely placed to impose a solution and this is what John Major did with the JSA. Whether it was the best solution is not really the point. Once it had been made everyone worked and made it succeed. Whether or not it is the right decision, it is one that everyone will accept. Again this illustrates how the particular authority of the Prime Minister impacts on the operation of departments. The Prime Minister’s use of resources The personalism of British central government means that the intervention of the Prime Minister is not structured or systematic; it depends on the choices that the Prime Minister makes, as well as the nature of the department and the relationships that exist between the Prime Minister and the minister. According to Merlyn Rees, Callaghan was content to leave decisions to Cabinet and Cabinet committee. However, Callaghan himself argued that he kept a clear oversight of departmental ministers: I invited (….) ministers to come and see me individually and without their officials, to tell me about their work. We sat informally in the study at No. 10 and I put to all of them two basic questions. What were they aiming to do in the Department? What was

118 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

stopping them? I prepared for these chats by asking Bernard Donoughue and his Policy Unit, in conjunction with my Private Office, to prepare an overview of each Department’s activities before I saw the minister … (Callaghan 1987: 408) Callaghan’s aim was to find out what was going on in departments, rather than imposing his views. However, he did initiate a debate on the direction of educational policy and persuaded Shirley Williams, the Education Secretary, to include the idea of a core curriculum in her Green Paper (Callaghan 1987). Similarly, at the time of the IMF crisis, Callaghan also dominated the discussion and direction of economic policy. According to Donoughue (1987: 8): The Chancellor wanted the approval of his Prime Minister and colleagues in order to spread the responsibility collectively. He also needed the Prime Minister to lead and deliver the support of other ministers … Therefore, in these crises, the Chancellor needed the Prime Minister to rally such colleagues behind him and this in turn gave the Prime Minister an enhanced opportunity to intervene. A comparison between Thatcher and Major is also revealing. Thatcher was reasonably well-briefed on policy developments in departments. Indeed, in Norman Tebbit’s view, ‘(Thatcher) had an alarming amount of knowledge. It was not that she did not know the facts but that she would come to different conclusions about the facts.’ As such, Lord Young argued that Thatcher had an ‘enormous’ impact: ‘I used to be in fear and trembling when I went to see her as she somehow knew more about my Department than I did! She worked incredibly hard and had an incredible capacity for detail. It was very difficult to get anything over her, very difficult.’ Similarly, Patrick Jenkin argued that, compared to Heath, Thatcher had ‘a much larger impact’ on policy development within the DHSS. In contrast, Major’s approach was much more collegial and, compared to Thatcher, he was much less willing to impose himself on his colleagues (Seldon 1997: 207–10). Obviously, this owed something to his less assertive personality, but we must beware of an explanation that focuses exclusively on agency. His leadership style also reflected his weaker position in a Conservative Party that was increasingly divided on Europe and other issues. As McAnulla argues (1999), part of the legacy Mrs Thatcher bequeathed John Major was a level of discontent that significantly constrained his room for manoeuvre. However,

Departments and the Core Executive 119

we must also be wary of portraying Major as indecisive and non-interventionist. As a former Cabinet Secretary emphasised: Any Prime Minister, if she or he wishes to exert influence, can do so. You can either do it publicly like Mr Major has been doing with Mrs Shepard just recently or you can do it behind the scenes. The key point is that all Prime Ministers can, on occasions, by-pass departments. Thatcher may have been notorious for making public statements, without consultation, which would then have to be adopted by departments, but such practices also occurred during the Major administration. A DSS official offered one example: It has happened in this [the Major] government with relation to the poorer pensioners package. You get an announcement in the budget that pensioners will get an extra £20. That was just announced before we were consulted. So, different Prime Ministers may operate with different conceptions of their roles. However, all intervene on occasions and none can intervene all the time. Even Thatcher, viewed by some as the supreme interventionist was often so preoccupied with a limited set of issues that elsewhere the extent and depth of her reach was limited. One civil servant who spent three years in her Private Office summed up this point very well: If I think back to my time in her office, in the first year, 1981, we mainly dealt with the rampant recession and the management of the economy; managing the political debate on all that. And, of course, there was the ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ problem. The second year was dominated by the Falklands War and, during the several months in which the war was fought, she didn’t do any domestic business at all. The third year was mainly about winning the election.

The departments and the Treasury Obviously, the Treasury looms very heavily upon a department’s horizon; although much more on some than others. Most departmental policy initiatives involve expenditure and the Treasury’s major concern remains effective control over public expenditure. Consequently, it is the Treasury that has the most consistent and

120 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

systematic impact on departments. All departments are effectively constrained by the Treasury. To a great extent, the impact has often been negative – stopping new initiatives. Nevertheless, it is clear that, in recent years, and in relation to some departments, the Treasury has become more involved in the policy-making process. As we observed in the introduction, the Treasury is the one department that has been well researched. In particular, the work of Deakin and Parry (2000), which was also funded under the ESRC Whitehall Programme, looks at the changes that have occurred in the Treasury’s relations with departments in the 1990s. Their focus is upon social policy, so they examine the Treasury–department relationships in social security, health, housing, education and the territories (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). As such, they only focus on one of our departments, Social Security, but their results are both interesting and confirm our own impressions, although in a more systematic way than we could achieve in our multi-purpose study. One of Deakin and Parry’s (2001: 181) conclusions is particularly relevant to our concerns: The main theme we encountered was the centrality of social security, because of its scale (£100bn a year) and the recent history of rather poor relations between the Treasury and the Department of Social Security. At the heart of these relations were problems about estimating the cost of social security benefits, a demand-led item not subject to cash limits. In the mid-1990s overspends were of a large enough magnitude (hundreds of millions of pounds) to knock a hole in public expenditure aggregates. The Treasury’s response was to turn on the main cash-limited item, running costs, and demand that it be cut unless agreed policy savings were found. The DSS felt hurt by the way that this linkage was made and by the generally combative style of Treasury ministers and officials. This observation is interesting for two reasons. First, it emphasises the point that we need to disaggregate the relationship between the Treasury and different departments. Obviously, the Treasury is more involved with a high-spending department; so its links with the DSS are very different in scale and importance than those with a low spending department like the Home Office. Second, there is inevitably a competitive element in the relationship; it is not always a zero-sum game, but there are occasions on which it is so.

Departments and the Core Executive 121

The most interesting aspect of Deakin and Parry’s work is the way they show how the significant reorganisation in the public expenditure process that has occurred since 1993 has affected Treasury–department relations. They argue that two changes have proved particularly important. First, a new top-down budgeting approach was introduced in 1993. Now, the Public Expenditure Committee of the Cabinet, chaired by the Chancellor, is responsible for deciding departmental expenditure plans. Deakin and Parry argue that this has given the Treasury more control over aggregate patterns of expenditure and has enabled them to be more relaxed about detail: Our research emphasises the way this has worked in the Treasury’s favour by concentrating information in their hands: spending ministers appear before the Committee, but the only officials present are the Treasury’s and they also brief the members playing an umpire role. The Committee gave the Treasury a greater assurance that aggregate expenditure would not slip out of control through cumulative pressure from spending ministers, and so allowed them to be more relaxed about letting go of detail. (Deakin and Parry 2000: 162) Second, the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary, Sir Terry Burns, in 1991, together with the Fundamental Expenditure Review (FER), which the Treasury, like all Whitehall departments, had to undertake in 1993, led to important changes in the way the Treasury worked (on the FER see Chapman 1997, Ch. 3). The result of the Treasury’s FER was that a quarter of its senior management posts were removed and responsibility for expenditure control was shifted down the hierarchy. As such, the Treasury followed the pattern we have seen in our departments; there was delayering and Grades 5 and 7 became much more important in the policy process. Third, and more recently, the Treasury has increased its control of department expenditure through the new regime for public expenditure. Now the main aggregate indicator of expenditure is the Total Managed Expenditure within which departmental expenditure limits are set for three years. Consequently, the Treasury has longer-term control over the spending patterns of departments and their policy developments. As Deakin and Parry argue, given its increased control over the process of setting aggregate expenditure patterns, the intention is that the Treasury ‘(renounces) detailed controls in order to free up space for

122 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

strategic thought’. However, this change hasn’t been universally welcomed by departments who are concerned that the Treasury will become too involved in policy-making. Again, Deakin and Parry make the point: ‘there was, for instance, reluctance among many of our respondents to concede that the Treasury could play the role of proactive advocate on certain types of social spending in order to improve economic performance, as recommended by the Treasury (FER)’. The Treasury now has spending teams, headed by a Grade 5, responsible for each expenditure area. In each department, the key contact is still the Principal Finance Officer. Of course, the main responsibility of these teams is for expenditure. However, inevitably their brief involves policy, given the focus that the Treasury has upon improving economic performance. Once again, the DSS offers an excellent example of how this works. As Deakin and Parry argue (2000: 143) ‘After the 1997 election the Treasury and the DSS formed something of an axis within government because of a shared ministerial agenda of targeting and means-testing.’ The Treasury’s involvement in this policy area thus resulted from at least two factors. First, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and his close associate Harriet Harman, Labour’s first Secretary of State for Social Security, were both committed to a policy change which was at the core of the Labour government’s pledge to reform the welfare state. In the Treasury’s view, the New Deal, which was the flagship policy in this area, would contribute to a more skilled and flexible workforce and, thus, to improving economic efficiency. Second, this policy was funded from the public utilities windfall tax and that also gave the Treasury a key concern in this policy area. There is little doubt then that the Treasury is now crucially involved in labour market policy, most specifically in the welfare to work programme. Indeed, it has established a Work Incentives and Policy Analysis Unit and there are regular meetings between the teams responsible for this policy area in the Treasury, the DSS and the Department for Education and Employment. Of course, this in part reflects the Labour government’s emphasis on joined-up government, but it also shows that when that policy area impacts upon its concern, the Treasury is much more pro-active in policy terms than it use to be (Smith, Marsh and Richards 2000) However, the Treasury has not been as involved in other areas of social policy, let alone in other areas of policy. Deakin and Parry (2000: 162) make the crucial point:

Departments and the Core Executive 123

In social policy areas delivering services rather than cash, there was much less of a Treasury wish to go beyond financial frameworks into the detail of policy. In health, the Treasury sought to apply a general pressure on costs through efficiency savings and the use of private finance. In education, the approach of the Treasury team seemed to be based on defining priority areas within which the Treasury’s supply side brief could be promoted-vocationally-relevant training, the education infrastructure. In housing, spending ministers were seen as having an old-fashioned attachment to housing provision as a social service which the Treasury sought to question. The main point is that the role of the Treasury has changed over the 1990s and this change has probably been accelerated by the change in government. The Treasury is more involved in some areas of policymaking than in the past, but in social policy and beyond it has been increasingly involved in those areas that impinge on its central role in promoting the government’s economic policies. Nevertheless, what comes out of a lot of interviews is the limited way that the Treasury impinges in the day-to-day working of the majority of officials (in other words those that are not Principal Finance Officers). The degree of this isolation from the Treasury is indicated by an official in the DSS: The PES round generates policy development and that clearly is an area where you have contact with the Treasury. Our contact with the Treasury is usually through our finance department and we rarely have direct contact with the Treasury in connection with the PES because there are handling tactics and the rest of it which are developed centrally by our finance department However, as the same official pointed out: ‘I am currently taking forward a review of child support as part of the department’s CSR. The Treasury are represented on the steering committee of that study.’ So whilst on a day-to-day basis the involvement of the Treasury may be minimal, when it comes to major policy change with financial implications the Treasury will be involved. This in a sense fits the findings of Deakin and Parry (2000: 203) who stress: We have been struck by the impact of personalities on the attitudes held by the Treasury and the way it relates to other departments. What we detected were a linked series of micro-social networks,

124 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

based upon the Treasury team leader and departmental Principal Finance Officers.

Relations between departments Departments are key actors in the core executive territory. As such, it would be wrong to concentrate upon the relationships between the department and other parts of the core executive and ignore the relations between departments. Of course, each department has relations with most others and we could not, for reasons of both space and knowledge, analyse all these relationships. Rather, we want to focus on what seems to us to be a major issue: in large part because of the increased complexity and interconnectedness of government, departments interact with one another more than in the past. This process has come more into focus recently with the Labour government’s strictures upon the need for joined-up government, but, in our view, this is a response to a significant, long-term problem. A number of important points emerge from our research concerning inter-departmentalism. The picture derived from many insider accounts is of a Whitehall in a continual process of interdepartmental battles and turf wars (see Crossman 1975; Castle 1980; Ponting 1986). Whilst the Westland Affair and the Scott Report demonstrate that this is clearly the case, it provides only a partial view based on the exceptional rather than the day-to-day. One DTI official pointed out how, for instance, on most issues concerning trade policy, the DTI and FCO were in agreement. However, he continued: difficulties arise when the Foreign Office have a particular political or strategic objective and they see trade policy as a useful instrument or lever to use to achieve it. This occurred over debates about a North Atlantic Free Trade Area where the Foreign Office were more inclined to promote the idea of bilateral trade arrangements, preferential trade arrangements, discriminatory trade arrangements than we were. In fact we weren’t inclined to do anything of the kind but they were keen on it because they could see political games and deals with Mexico or South Africa … There was real tension there and we had long and protracted debates about free and free-er trade … For most senior civil servants their work is generally isolated from other departments except where there are very clear overlaps or where

Departments and the Core Executive 125

a new policy development is likely to impact on another department. So the DTI being an economic department has close contact with the Treasury and as regards to export licences there are formal contacts with Defence and the Foreign Office. There is also an interdepartmental committee on trade policy ‘which is open to any other department which is interested (but) it doesn’t meet at fixed times, it meets ad hoc when required to’. But apart from this, contact between departments tended to be specific rather than general and informal rather than institutionalised. According to one retired Grade 2: ‘One knew people in other departments, and one used to ring them up or go to see them, or have an informal meeting.’ However, another former Deputy Secretary said she had little contact with other departments: ‘because most of what I had been doing was rather self-contained with the DTI competition policy, I don’t remember much interchange with other departments.’ A contemporary Grade 2 said: ‘I don’t have much experience of operating outside my own field.’ One former Grade 2 in the DTI summarised the situation well: It would depend on the nature of the policy. If it is a policy which doesn’t cut across the interests and aims of other parts of Whitehall significantly then you can afford to do it internally and not trouble others. But if it is going to have a major impact in another area, well it behoves you to build them into the process. A DSS official told a similar story of erratic interdepartmental relations: There are increasing links with the DFEE due to the introduction of the JSA. When I was on housing benefit I had links with Environment but the links were pretty tenuous … We have some links with the Lord Chancellor’s Department but they are fairly tenuous. We have links with Health over things like the child’s name on the birth certificate so we have some links but they are not really day-to-day links. Perhaps surprisingly, even within departments there can be a lack of communication. Many officials talk of policy chimneys where policy is developed within a particular section without regard to wider policy issues or other parts of the department. Particularly within the Home Office there could be a very rigid distinction between the divisions. We saw in Chapter 4 that there was little integration of the various

126 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

divisions within Energy. Even in more integrated departments such as the DTI, there could be problems as one Grade 2 intimated: The lousy thing that David Young did which we tried to persuade him not to do was to abolish any cross departmental committee at senior level to talk about strategy. We were allowed to talk about money and resources and we have recently as part of a senior management review created a senior management group but we lost that as I think a number of junior ministers, Francis Maude, in particular, were worried about officials going around and sewing things up and screwing him up by deciding what the strategy should be and then presenting the minister with a fait acompli. I think that was more the way the mind worked than reality. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to paint a picture of isolation and completely enclosed silos. One Grade 2 in the DTI spoke of continual informal networks within departments, saying that on EU issues in particular ‘everybody knows everybody’. A former DTI Permanent Secretary pointed to fortnightly meetings of all deputy secretaries and gave an example of how the division concerned with trade policy and the section concerned with trade promotion would work closely on issues concerned with South East Asia, say, but it was informal, rather than organisational contact. Indeed in all departments formal contact was only Grade 2 level through weekly or fortnightly meetings. There was little formal, day-to-day contact within departments, illustrating that contact was on the basis of personal networks which are necessarily haphazard. So according to one Grade 7: It’s largely informal networks, I mean the horizontal linkages are pretty poor. It’s not helped by the buildings. We in this building are in the Department of Trade effectively, the people in 1 Victoria Street are an amalgam of the old Department of Energy, Regional Policy, Regulation and Insurance. The Department of Industry are in Buckingham Palace Road. So we can live in isolation, we can develop our isolation, because we have no real contact with our colleagues. A very senior DTI official summed up the ad hoc and inchoate nature of intra-departmental co-operation:

Departments and the Core Executive 127

There are informal networks, you get meetings of people who have been selected for the fast stream … or you get people who are parttimers who band together. They talk about their common experiences and interests. This is very informal … No doubt there are networks that are even more informal, just groups of people who joined at the same time or met on a course or used to work together in a division, that sort of thing. There are formal groups as well that are put together for dealing with particular issues, the computerisation of the department and the computer user group or we have sports and social organisations which lay on a series of events and run facilities. There are things of various kinds and there are business committees starting with my meetings with the director generals and meetings in other configurations. We have the departmental management group and a thing called the departmental strategy group which meets regularly and has director generals in it. What is striking is the absence of formal structures of integration below the DG/Grade 2 level. Networks are informal and by-products of other relationships rather than institutions. This highlights both the importance of personalism throughout the structure of the core executive – policy-making relationships often depend on individual decisions – and the difficulty of applying network theory to inter- and intradepartmental relationships. The networks within Whitehall are not structured in the sense outlined by Marsh and Rhodes (1992a) because they are fluid and unstable, depending to some extent on personal relationships and often formed quickly and temporarily around particular relationships. However, they are structured by culture and rules of the game; in a sense everyone is an insider and therefore there are important elements of trust in place which allow the rapid creation of networks when necessary. Networks may be needed for political (i.e. gaining support of other colleagues or departments) or practical (i.e. needing the legitimacy, knowledge or administrative machinery or another department) reasons, but nonetheless, they are relationships of dependence. Finally, the generally accepted picture of Whitehall derived from half-readings of the Fulton Report is of an amateurish, generalists’ Civil Service, unable to develop any specialisms because people are continually moving around. The reality is that apart from a few ‘high-flyers’ most civil servants spend their careers in one department and sometimes even in one section of a department. This can be true even of

128 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Permanent Secretaries. One Principal Establishment Officer illustrated the lack of mobility: The theory is that (with changes dues to the SMR) there will be a lot more interchange between departments. In reality there was never much anyway. As you differentiate departments by their cultures, management structures, IT, networking and all the rest, actually you are not making barriers but you are making it more difficult and it is still true that people build their careers within departments. Now one of the problems is that you just about have zero movement in the department and therefore you are not creating the vacancies which allow you to advertise for outside people or people from other departments … Just about every move in this department is closely engineered. Departments do interact with one another in a number of ways. We have already dealt briefly with the Cabinet as a forum within which issues that cross-cut departmental interests can be discussed and resolved. However, in most cases, departments have a vested interest in resolving issues earlier in the policy-making process. For that reason, each department will have some informal contacts with most other departments when it appears that a policy may impact on another department (it is an important rule of the game). Often, these will essentially involve a series of telephone conversations between the civil servants in two departments who are most involved in some issue which cross-cuts departmental responsibilities. At other times the issue will be of sufficient, and most likely recurrent, importance to warrant the creation of a committee which draws upon officials from all the departments involved. It is in this context that many, if not most, issues are resolved. Nevertheless, the present Labour government has emphasised the problems that occur from the absence of adequate machinery to deal with issues which cross-cut departmental responsibilities. The argument which underpins this view is that departments operate as ‘chimneys’; that informal processes of the type sketched out above are insufficient to overcome such departmentalism and, thus, produce more effective policy-making. This commitment to joined-up government has led to creation of co-ordinating units within government, notably the Social Exclusion Unit and the Women’s Unit, both now located in the Cabinet Office, with which departments have to interact (for detail see

Departments and the Core Executive 129

Smith, Marsh and Richards 2000). There is certainly no doubt that the administrative framework with which departments are faced is more complex than in the past. The emphasis upon joined-up government has also encouraged departments to co-operate more on issues of common concern. To be fair, this trend has also been accentuated by the change in the role of the Treasury identified in the last section. So, in a number of social and labour market policy areas the Treasury has become a key actor in a policy-making process which has brought departments together to develop and agree a workable policy. One example of departmental co-operation is the relationship between the DSS (previously DHSS) and the DFEE (formerly Department of Employment). Obviously, this relationship has always existed, given that the level of benefits will affect the level of employment, and viceversa. However, the extent of contacts fluctuated depending on the particular policies being pursued by government. So, one of our respondents who worked in the DHSS in the 1960s and 1970s argued that a significant increase in contacts and consultation resulted from the introduction of the Earnings Related Supplement in 1978. Nevertheless, the current civil servants we interviewed in both the DSS and the DFEE agreed that more recently it was the introduction of the JSA in 1996 that encouraged the two departments to work more closely together. As we saw earlier, there was initial conflict between the two departments about who should lead on the policy that was only resolved in Cabinet. However, once the legislation was introduced it was clear that it could not be implemented without close contact and co-operation between the two departments. As such, an interdepartmental committee was established and a number of our interest group respondents emphasised that it is now commonplace to see civil servants from the two departments sitting next to one another at a meeting. Indeed, at least two respondents emphasised that ‘it is difficult now to spot which civil servants are from what department’. On our evidence, such interdepartmental consultation, in this area as in many others, has been growing in large part because the increased complexity of legislation means that more issues cross-cut departmental responsibilities. However, this process has also been reinforced by the increased role of the Treasury in policy-making in some fields and the Labour government’s commitment to joined-up government. So, in the welfare-to-work area we identified a fairly tight triad

130 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

based on co-operation between the Treasury, the DSS and the DFEE. The civil servants involved, mainly Grades 5 and 7, met regularly, discussed a broad variety of issues and shared a general commitment to a common policy. There appeared little evidence of inter-departmental tension and all were signed up to the government’s labour market policy. Indeed, the major concern of the civil servants involved seemed to be with devising and perfecting ways of measuring effective policy delivery.

Conclusions The key concern of this chapter has been the role of departments in the core executive of British politics. In part, our aim has been to argue that departments are and will remain an important part of the core executive. Clearly, the Prime Minister has significant powers and an increased capacity, given the role of both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office, to co-ordinate government policy. However, we must also acknowledge that departments control most of the policy process and officials within departments have the time, expertise and networks to develop and, to some extent, implement policy. In addition, the Prime Minister is unable to intervene throughout Whitehall because of the scale of government. So whilst Prime Ministers may intervene more now than in the past, on the whole that intervention is not systematic, but depends on where the Prime Minister chooses to invest energy and resources. Paradoxically, the Prime Minister has the ability to intervene almost where she/he chooses but does not have the ability to control everything that goes on in government. Consequently, it is difficult to make generalisations about patterns of Prime Ministerial intervention. The second important conclusion of this chapter is that despite the popular vision of interdepartmental movement, conflict and co-operation, officials below Grades 1 and 2 are often relatively isolated. Again, the process of inter- and intradepartmental relations is based on the strange combination of personalism and structural failure. Networks exist to some extent because of personal interactions; they are not facilitated by institutions. However, there are clear rules concerning the creation of formal interdepartmental networks. Third, whilst departments are to some degree isolated and operating within their own cultural worlds, the department that does to some degree co-ordinate and affect them all is the Treasury. The structures of dependence feeding to the Treasury mean that the Treasury can have a

Departments and the Core Executive 131

significant impact on what departments do. Whilst, in the past, this effect has largely been negative, the work of Deakin and Parry highlights how it is increasingly becoming positive, with the Treasury developing distinct policy preferences that are wider than their economic remit. However, given our position on the structure/agency problem outlined in the introduction, we would argue that any actor, whether the Prime Minister or another minister, has autonomy. The actions of a particular Prime Minister cannot be read off from knowledge of the resources he or she has and of the structural context within which s/he operates. Various Prime Ministers and ministers have different conceptions of their roles and different abilities. So, individuals clearly affect outcomes. Indeed, as we have seen, Thatcher was generally viewed as an interventionist Prime Minister who shaped a great deal of government policy. Nevertheless, even Thatcher could only shape a limited amount of policy and we must beware of being carried away by the rhetoric of ‘Thatcherism’. In the next chapter we examine the impact of ministers on departments.

6 Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers

The centrality of departments to the policy process means that departmental ministers also have considerable importance. As we saw in Chapter 4, ministers can have an impact on departments and therefore the way their role changes and develops is significant in understanding the operation of the core executive. In this chapter, we examine the role of Cabinet ministers and how it has changed in the last 25 years. The chapter examines the multiple roles and varying impacts of ministers. One of our key aims in this chapter is to address some of the broader questions raised in the introduction about the nature of contemporary governance, the extent to which individual ministers make a difference in policy terms and the effect of ideas on any changes which occur in the role of ministers. First, however, we need to establish whether there has been a change in the roles that ministers perform in the last 25 years. Consequently, we begin by presenting a classification of ministerial roles before using this classification to examine these changes. Subsequently, we assess the extent to which any changes represent a significant change in the pattern of governance. Finally, we attempt to explain the changes, drawing on the theoretical discussions in the introductory chapter.

A changing role for ministers? Classifying ministerial roles In our view, there are four generic roles that ministers perform, with each complementing the others: a policy role; a political role; a managerial or executive role; and a public relations role. Each of these categories can be further subdivided (see Figure 6.1). These generic roles are 132

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 133 Figure 6.1

Ministers’ roles

Policy

Political

Executive or managerial

Public relations

Agenda setting

Advocacy of department’s position in Cabinet Parliament

Departmental management

Overseeing department’s relations with:

Executive decision maker

1. interest groups 2. public 3. media

Policy initiation

Policy selection Policy legitimation

European Union Party

interrelated and not mutually exclusive. So, if a minister is to be proactive in his or her policy-making role, s/he will need to perform managerial or executive functions; for example, deciding on the extent of intradepartmental and interdepartmental discussions and interest group consultation. Subsequently, the minister needs to steer the policy through Cabinet and Parliament, perhaps, at the same time, playing a public relations role, convincing the electorate of the benefits of a particular policy. The policy role Headey (1974: 71) identifies three types of policy roles: the policy initiator, the policy selector and the policy legitimator or minimalist. In contrast, Norton (2000) distinguishes between commanders, managers, agents and team players, although such an approach conflates the policy and the managerial roles. We suggest that it is useful to subdivide Headey’s policy initiator role because, while many ministers attempt to initiate in narrow policy areas, there are some, although very few, who try to change a department’s broader policy agenda; the latter we term agenda setters. We look at each of these categories in turn, although paying most attention to agenda setters. Agenda setters. In our four departments there were a number of ministers who intended to change the broad agenda or policy line of the departments. Two of these were Labour ministers: Roy Jenkins who instigated change in the Home Office and Tony Benn who failed in attempts to change the policy agenda in the DTI and DEn. We identify

134 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

a number of ministers who, during the Conservative years, were committed to fairly fundamental change: Michael Howard, who had significant influence on the Home Office; Nigel Lawson, who had a crucial effect on the DEn; David Young, who changed the DTI; Peter Lilley, who influenced the DSS; and Keith Joseph, who failed to have much effect on the DTI. A comparison between those who were successful and those who failed is particularly instructive. As we saw in Chapter 4, Roy Jenkins effectively shifted the Home Office away from an agenda of social conservatism to one of social liberalism. As he explained in an interview: I had a very clear programme and saw my role as opening up a number of windows in the stuffy atmosphere of the Home Office. This was not overly difficult to do. A lot of Home Office officials were very eager to respond to a new liberal wind blowing in. I felt it was time for a change … and I did not find it that difficult to shift Home Office opinion. (See also Jenkins 1991: 179–85) A now retired Permanent Secretary from the Home Office witnessed, first-hand, the effect Jenkins had on the Home Office: In 1966, Jenkins had a very large, very immediate, profound and lasting impact on the selection of people in the Home Office and the ability to convey and permanently register his view and aims in philosophical as well as purely policy terms. His influence went both deep and wide. Chapter 4 highlighted how most ministers accepted the established Home Office agenda until Michael Howard. He explicitly wished to remove the department’s liberal bias. He outlined his agenda: The Home Office clearly thought that the problems they faced were intractable and there was nothing to be done about such issues as rising crime. I thought you could do something about crime. I deliberately set out to change the system so that it gave the police a fairer chance of bringing criminals to book and also by encouraging the courts to imprison those criminals responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. I was trying to change things and therefore had quite strongly developed views on the direction in which I wished to go.

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 135

Many, if not most, of the Home Office civil servants did not like Howard; indeed only Tony Benn provoked similar responses from our interviewees. However, they recognised that he influenced the department’s agenda. A senior civil servant, no longer in the department, argued: Michael Howard wanted a department that provided a good service, was responsive and had the right people in post who would do what he wanted. He picked up the criminal justice system and moved it from here to there; he was proactive. Instead of saying to the public ‘We are ahead of you, we know what the right values are, we know the beliefs you should have’, he said ‘We know you are frightened of crime, we know you want us to act’. He made it very political. This shocked the officials and they found it a break with the past when a Home Secretary treated law and order in a political way. Howard’s colleagues also saw him as an agenda setter. So, Kenneth Baker argues that, although David Waddington, Home Secretary between 1988 and 1990, made some strong speeches on law and order, they ‘were never followed through in terms of policy (because) he was overwhelmed by the Strangeways prison riots’. As such, he contends that Howard’s illiberal, perhaps populist, law and order policy ‘(did) not accord with the policy of previous Home Secretaries’. Nigel Lawson effected wholesale change in the Department of Energy’s agenda. In his view, the free market should determine Britain’s energy policy and he used his earlier experience as Treasury Secretary to help force an agenda change in the department. The success of Lawson’s approach, with its emphasis on privatisation and the gradual erosion of the department’s commitments in the energy field, eventually led to the department’s demise in 1992. He argued: My belief was that what was needed in the energy field was to apply economic principles, which included privatisation, and the market approach. It wasn’t difficult because the Energy officials lacked the Treasury’s self-confidence and were not really capable of the same degree of sustained argument and really a meeting with them would be very much shorter. They would put forward a proposal and you would shoot it down. They would be sullen but well mannered and then they would rather ruefully accept what you were trying to do. (See also Lawson 1992: 162–70) Lawson was almost universally admired by the DEn civil servants we interviewed. One ex-Grade 2 argued: ‘the most formidable Secretary of

136 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

State was Lawson. He was formidable and influential; part of it was intellectual and part stemmed from his political skill.’ Similarly, an exPermanent Secretary argued that Nigel Lawson was the crucial driving force behind the privatisations introduced by the DEn. His civil servants produce briefs and then met Lawson to discuss them. As the same civil servant said: ‘these policy meetings were the highest point of my time in the Department. They were great fun and everyone enjoyed them.’ The civil servants liked the period because Lawson had weight in Cabinet and the department became much more important within Whitehall. Many of the privatisations occurred after Lawson’s time, but our civil servants were agreed that it was he who set the agenda. The change in the DTI agenda only occurred with Lord Young in 1988. Indeed, the DTI had a range of ministers in the 1980s who were free marketeers, but they did little to undermine the essentially interventionist ethos on the Industry side of the department. Young, who had been a special adviser in the department between 1980 and 1982, argued: I think there was resistance. Officials would come to me and say, ‘David, this is all very well but after the next election all this is going to get changed back so we can’t let things get changed too much’, because we had this period of trying to go one way and then the other. It was only after the 1983 victory with a majority of 140 and the disintegration of Labour that officials began to realise that this was a way of life and things started to accelerate. In addition, Young was a determined ideologue. As he put it: I’m an ideologue and I came in with a clear idea. Now it would be wrong to say I had it all wrapped up and I knew what I wanted to do but I did have general principles. Peter Carrington, and a number of subsequent ministers, particularly in the last six years of government just liked the job and carried on. I went into politics, not because I wanted to be in politics but because we wanted to institute change. (See also Young 1990: 249–50) The civil servants shared the view that Young had significantly changed the department’s agenda. As one Permanent Secretary argued in 1998: ‘It wasn’t until Lord Young that the overall direction of policy changed. In public and overt terms we still use the logo that he invented, we still have his ideas.’

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 137

Not all agenda-setting ministers have an agenda when they take office. So, although Peter Lilley changed the agenda of the Department of Social Security, he admitted: I certainly didn’t have a conscious agenda before I started. I never devoted much of my ambition to becoming Secretary of State for Social Security or anticipated becoming that. So I had never worked out my thoughts in detail. I had my prejudices and principles, which I applied, but only gradually, as I got to know the form. And certainly I assumed that my instincts were different than those of the Department or of the direction in which it had gone for the previous 50 years. For Peter Lilley, the new agenda change was worked out over a fiveyear period and was not opposed by his civil servants; indeed, it was a collaborative effort. He spent an unusually long time as Secretary of State and was therefore able to work through his own agenda for change. One ex-Permanent Secretary acknowledged that, during his 35 years in the department, there had been 18 Secretaries of State, each serving on average for less than two years. In this context, Lilley was unusual and the same civil servant claimed: ‘He was in the Department for a long time and became very expert and influential.’ This was a common theme in our interviews. A serving Grade 2 claimed: ‘I would say Peter Lilley was very much in charge of the agenda here.’ As we argued earlier, it is also instructive to look at ministers who tried to change a departmental agenda but failed. The example of Keith Joseph, like that of Tony Benn discussed in Chapter 2, indicates some of the factors which strongly affect a minister’s chances of achieving such change. In 1979, Keith Joseph was appointed Secretary of State for Industry. He was confronted by a highly interventionist Whitehall department. His intention was to introduce a new laissez-faire agenda and he even distributed the works of Hayek and Friedman to his officials in order to demonstrate his commitment to a new approach. However, despite the opportunity provided by the perceived failure of the interventionist policies of the Wilson and Callaghan administrations and the election victory, Joseph had little success in changing the department’s prevailing world-view. In the words of one official: ‘Keith Joseph didn’t throw (interventionist policies) out of the door straightaway, he was willing to examine with us, very carefully, what we were doing, why we were spending this money and what effect it was likely to have.’ Despite his ideological preferences, he was unable or unwill-

138 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

ing radically to change the policy direction of the department. As Kenneth Baker argued: Keith Joseph had a much greater intellect than either David Young or myself. But that made him indecisive. He could see both sides of the problem and could be seduced intellectually, as was the case when he was in Education as well. (See also Baker 1993: 161–2) It is interesting to contrast the fortunes of Joseph and Young. Both joined a department in which the industry section had a bias towards industrial intervention; both were operating under similar ideological and economic pressures for change and both consciously desired a new direction in industrial policy. Yet Joseph was frustrated. He became Secretary of State at a time when there was economic pressure to change the direction of the department, there was clear ideological pressure from the Prime Minister and Joseph desired change. However, partly because of his personality, and partly because of the external pressures he faced, in terms of rising unemployment, recession and the demands of interest groups, he failed radically to change the department. Of course, it must be acknowledged that Joseph was the first to attempt to change the department and, consequently, was more constrained by its institutional and cultural structures. Indeed, one former senior Industry official, perhaps unwittingly, indicated the importance of the departmental line to civil servants when he revealed: Keith Joseph had very strong views about industry … but he would listen to the briefing on a particular issue, which was painful and difficult for him, and he would go through it and have a thorough discussion with officials, and let us say he was persuaded in the end by the official argument. Lord Young was able to oversee a change in the policy orientation of the department. However, this change cannot simply be read off from his ideological preferences. It was partly the result of a long process of change that was initiated by Joseph but also a result of demoralised and an outof-sync department having to adjust to a new set of economic ideas. By changing its focus the department was better able to survive. It is also important to note that in three of our four departments successful, agenda-setting post-1979 did not occur instantly but rather over a number of years (see Figure 6.2). Moreover, the successful agenda setters often built upon initiatives introduced by others. So, for example, in the case of the DSS, Norman Fowler’s welfare review (1986)

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 139 Figure 6.2

Agenda setting

Department Stage 1

Agenda setter Stage 2

Agenda change

Department of (Health and) Social Security

Norman Fowler (1981–7)

Peter Lilley (1992–7)

Questioning the Beveridge settlement and universalism

Department of Trade and Industry

Keith Joseph (1979–81)

David Young (1987–9)

Shift from interventionism

Home Office

David Waddington (1988–99)

Michael Howard (1993–7)

Move to social conservatism

attempted to change the department’s attachment to Beveridge, but it was the piecemeal approach of Lilley in the 1990s that altered the way the department viewed welfare. Similarly, in the Home Office, David Waddington tried to shift the department towards a more socially conservative outlook, but events overwhelmed him and it was Michael Howard’s period in office that altered the mind-set of the department. Finally, in the DTI, Keith Joseph tried, but failed, to alter the department’s interventionist orientation. It was David Young who instituted change, reducing intervention and stressing enterprise. In all these cases it could be argued that there were two stages in the agendasetting process. One other issue deserves comment before we move on. Our evidence illustrates that the Thatcherite project affected various areas of policy at different times. In Industry, the impact occurred early on, although more generally for the whole of the DTI the policy change occurred in the mid-1980s. In the DSS and the Home Office, it was the Major administration that fully implemented the policy changes initiated during the Thatcher era (Ludlam and Smith 1996). As such, any attempt to assess a Thatcher or Major effect needs to be disaggregated across policy areas (Marsh and Rhodes 1992b; Dolowitz et al. 1996). Policy initiators. Some ministers do not aim to change the overall direction of the department, but attempt particular policy initiatives. For example, Patrick Jenkin admitted: I was a mandarin’s minister. I remember that, when I first went into the Department of Energy … I met a group of civil servants. They

140 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

said: ‘Patrick we can’t tell you how encouraging it is that, for the first time, we have a minister who takes the papers away, reads them, comes in the next morning, discusses them and makes a decision.’ I said, ‘But that is what you are supposed to do isn’t it?’ And they said ‘Yes, but you’re the first we’ve had for a long time.’ Jenkin was not concerned with challenging the agenda of the DHSS. The dominant view of most of his officials was, as one official put it: ‘there was continuity there, although the parties changed, the policy didn’t’. Nevertheless, although Jenkin was generally a mandarin’s minister, he was also prepared to initiate policy against the advice of his civil servants, as he did when he abolished the earnings limit for pensioners. Policy selectors. A number of ministers in our departments were content to play the role of policy selectors: choosing from the alternatives set out by officials. Merlyn Rees said he had ‘not a word’ of an agenda when he became Home Secretary in 1976. Douglas Hurd admitted: Despite having experience of the Home Office as a junior minister in the early 1980s, when I was appointed Home Secretary I saw my role much more as managing the Department and keeping an eye open for any potential crisis looming on the horizon, rather than introducing my own social agenda on law and order. In my time, I ensured the Home Office was a fairly transparent Department in which to work, as I was most concerned to consult widely and heed the views of my senior officials. Similarly, Kenneth Baker, whilst suggesting that he did have an agenda when he went into departments, admitted: ‘Any Home Secretary is bound to have less of an agenda as he soon realises that there is not a great deal you can change.’ He also suggested that one area where he did have a particular agenda involved prison reform: ‘which was fully supported by the Woolf Report which the Prison Department in the Home Office also favoured’ (see also Baker 1993: 458). Effectively, Baker’s main policy concern was one that dovetailed with the Home Office’s existing view. Policy legitimators/minimalists. Headey (1974) argues that some ministers can be minimalists, who, at most, merely legitimise departmental policy; unfortunately, he provides no examples in that category. In our four departments there were a number of ministers who had almost no

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 141

impact. However, in most cases this was because they were in office only briefly or were overwhelmed by events. For example, whilst Peter Lilley significantly changed the agenda of the DSS, his short tenure at the DTI left no discernible legacy. John Moore, despite a rhetoric promising ‘big ideas’ on the reform of welfare policy, was overwhelmed by the task and quickly removed. Lord Carrington and Patrick Jenkin admitted that when they were put into the new Department of Energy, they were so overwhelmed by an energy crisis that there was little, if anything, they could do (see Carrington 1988: 262–3). As Jenkin recalls: We never had a remote chance because we were fighting a fourfold rise in the cost of oil and a national coal strike. We hoped at one point it might have been a three-day week and I had to go down to the House and explain why it couldn’t be. I mean one was just absolutely up to one’s ears. Carrington’s recollection was graphic: ‘We were living in a war.’ Similarly, David Waddington argued that he was constrained by both the lack of time and the impact of the Strangeways riots on the department in his time at the Home Office. Consequently, he made little impact on the direction of the department: I wasn’t really there long enough to bring about major change and, particularly, with all the problems we had in prisons and the Strangeways affair, one did tend to be absolutely overwhelmed by events as they unfolded. There wasn’t really a lot of chance to bring about radical change even if one had wanted to do so. But then again, we did just begin … it was when I was at the Home Office that we were shaping up to big decisions about introducing the private sector in to the running of prisons but the actual decisions were not being made. Political roles The vast majority of senior civil servants will claim that the two key characteristics they want in a minister are decisiveness and political judgement. In our view, there are four aspects of a minister’s political role, involving dealing with the Cabinet, Parliament, Europe, and the Party. The minister and the Cabinet. As one senior civil servant said to us: ‘Yes Minister, while very funny, has a lot to answer for.’ Its caricature of the minister/civil servant relationship suggests that it is a zero-sum game; as with all caricatures this representation is tendentious. The two need

142 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

one another. Civil servants provide information and advice, ministers provide political judgement and political skills to ensure departmental policy initiatives are approved by Cabinet and legitimated by Parliament. Political judgement is crucial in a minister. As one Permanent Secretary argued: ‘a good political sense is what we need in a minister because we don’t have it’. Another past Home Office Permanent Secretary put it more graphically: A minister needs an ability to see trouble coming … he also needs the ability to perceive that there are considerations other than those that appeal to the readers of the Sun. Capital punishment and corporal punishment are two cases in point; there is not the slightest evidence at all that either acts as a deterrent, but the ordinary man on the Clapham bus believes that there is. At the same time, a department can draft policy, but it cannot ensure it will become law; it needs a strong minister to gain approval for its initiatives. A minister who cannot win in Cabinet is a liability. So, as a recent example, the DTI was glad to get Peter Mandelson as the Secretary of State, if only briefly, and a number of civil servants referred to him as their first ‘heavy hitter’ in Cabinet since David Young and Michael Heseltine. Ministers in Parliament. Civil servants often link performance in Cabinet with performance in Parliament. Of course, a great deal of Civil Service time is spent writing briefs for ministers for their performances upon the floor of the House of Commons (debates and particularly question time) or before Select Committees. To civil servants, outstanding performances in the House of Commons strengthen the minister, and thus the department, in Cabinet. As one retired Permanent Secretary argued: ‘we wanted to win in Cabinet … and (needed) a minister who was good in the House of Commons’. Not surprisingly, our interviews with senior civil servants are littered with judgements of ministers based upon this criterion; a few illustrate the point: • ‘Patrick Jenkin was marvellous in Cabinet and was very good in the House of Commons.’ • ‘Mrs Castle was a very good minister … She was a very effective speaker, a very effective Cabinet person and very good in Parliament.’ • ‘Paul Channon really didn’t have the weight in Cabinet to follow his two predecessors and his performance in the House was poor.’

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 143

Ministers and Europe. As we shall see in more detail in Chapter 9, Europe looms larger in the life of all Cabinet ministers than it did two decades ago, but much more in the life of some than others. So, the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Customs and Excise have been intimately involved since Britain first joined. Other departments, including the Home Office, and particularly the DTI, have gradually increased their involvement over time. As such, Europe is very important for some departments. As one senior official in the DTI put it: There is no division in the DTI which is not, in some way or another, involved with Europe … Even the personnel side deals with secondments… Probably I think we have the biggest involvement with Europe of any department because we are much bigger than MAFF. A higher proportion of MAFF policy is subject to the EU but they are a small department. A minister’s performance in the European arena has become an increasingly important aspect of the job and one by which s/he is judged by the department. Ministers and the Party. The Party looms large in the vision of ministers, but less so in that of the department. So, the minister is concerned about his/her standing within the Party, because that may be crucial for future job prospects. For that reason, a proportion of a minister’s time is taken up on Party business: attending the Party Conference, addressing other Party gatherings and dealing with the Party in the constituency. For most ministers this takes up a limited amount of time, although it is, to an extent, concentrated at particular times of the year and periods of the electoral cycle. Nevertheless, the department often begrudges this time, even if they understand that politics is likely to be at least as high on a minister’s agenda as government. However, increasingly, the major way in which Party impinges on a department is through the role of special advisers. The number of special advisers has fluctuated but there is no doubt that it has increased significantly over the last two decades; perhaps most significantly since the election of the Labour government in 1997 (see Kavanagh and Seldon 1999). Advisers tend to be of two types: policy advisers or public relations experts; in the current jargon ‘policy-

144 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

wonks’ or ‘spin-doctors’. Both types of advisers can cause tension within departments, but the pattern is not uniform. So, one Treasury civil servant argued: There is quite a lot of resistance (to special advisers). Certainly for the first 6–9 months (of the Labour government) officials were heard to say: ‘this will soon settle down and go back to normal’. But of course it never has. I think officials have increasingly understood that this is how it is going to be. In contrast, a DSS Grade 5 claimed: I’ve never seen the current special adviser, which is some indication. I think the current adviser is a detail man, more than a spin-doctor. The first lot of ministers had two advisers who were both into spinning rather than anything else. We had a fair degree of contact with them, which was fine. However, I think one of the advisers stirred up a lot of mistrust with the minister. Of course, not all ministers have, or like, special advisers. So, one DTI minister asserted: I’m not all that keen on special advisers if I’m honest. I’m all for peer review but I don’t think we make enough of our officials. They are very bright people and they certainly want to help and be part of transforming public administration … but in a sense they are being sidelined … they are now really there to (assess) radical suggestions coming from outside the Department. A current special adviser in the DTI offers a more critical view from the ‘other side’: I remember when I was a civil servant I hated special advisers… I think that the officials don’t like advisers attending meetings with ministers and contributing, but what they hate most is advisers getting involved in the Department lower down. That is exactly what we have done to try to shape the way that policies are coming up by talking to more junior officials in order to see who is working on areas in which the minister is interested. The pattern is complex and evolving, but clearly a minister with (a) special adviser(s) has to ensure that the relationship between the

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 145

adviser(s) and the department is co-operative rather than competitive; this is an important new role for ministers. Executive and public relations roles Headey saw executive and ambassadorial ministers as distinct types. However, ministers have little choice but to combine the executive and public relations roles with the policy role. Indeed, both Lawson and Young saw managerial decisions as being crucial for the wider policy goals. Lawson believed personnel management was crucial to achieving policy goals: In the Treasury, I tried to promote the right people. That is very important as you must get the right people into the key posts, people who at least understand what you are driving at … Promoting the ablest of the younger civil servants is an indispensable part of getting the changes which are necessary. Young focused on the structure of the department. He established a unit to review the work of the department and he curtailed regional aid and ended sponsorship. He replaced the traditional goals of the department with a new set of principles based on advising rather than directing industry. However, as Hennessy (1989: 608) points out, most ministers do not see their primary role as chief executives of departments (that is the Permanent Secretary’s function). Heseltine was a rare exception as a minister with a strong interest in management: Heseltine was, in both senses of the word, a Whitehall freak. He was fascinated by the machine, avid to trim it and supercharge it. I can think of no other politician who would devote, as Heseltine did, the first two chapters of his political testament to the subject. (Hennessy 1989: 607) Moreover, one very senior ex-civil servant compared the contrasting approaches of Michael Heseltine, William Whitelaw and John Nott: Michael Heseltine was undoubtedly very interested in management reform and very keen on it. Other ministers at the Home Office, such as Whitelaw, regarded it as their duty to be the political manager of policy. Whitelaw saw his duty as to be sensitive to the

146 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

political dimensions of policy and to concentrate on that. He did not want to consult about the management of the job. He did not feel he would have anything by way of experience to offer. When John Nott was at the MoD he took very much the same view as Whitelaw. He was not against management change, but he thought he had many other things to do. Young and Heseltine also saw public relations as central to their wider policy goals. Heseltine focused, to some extent, on relations inside and outside the department. He wanted officials to feel part of the department and, therefore, was concerned with informing all levels of the department about changes he was introducing. Indeed, he even made an internal video explaining the changes he wished to introduce and the whole department took one afternoon to watch the video, which was followed by a question and answer feed-back session. However, this initiative did not have the impact Heseltine hoped. The broad consensus among DTI officials was that the video format, in which Heseltine (a mild sufferer of dyslexia) rather stiffly read from an autocue, was a trifle embarrassing. Similarly, Young paid a great deal of attention to publicising the role of the department to the general public. He used intensive television advertising, in which the DTI was portrayed as the Department of Enterprise. As we shall see at more length in Chapter 8, most ministers are also crucially concerned with their media and public image. Of course, some ministers are more conscious and responsive to the media and, as we shall see below, the extent to which departments are in the public eye varies enormously, with the Home Office being the department which receives most attention. However, the key point here is that the impact that the media has on ministers today, compared to 25 years ago, is much greater. If we take Headey as our benchmark it seems that the role of ministers has changed in four main ways: • Ministers have a much more important role in policy-making than that claimed for them by Headey. • The public relations role of ministers has become increasingly central. • The political role of ministers has become more complex because of the increase of special advisers, whose relationship with the departments is often difficult.

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 147

• Relations with Europe are of great significance, especially in a department like the DTI. The first of these conclusions needs a little elaboration here; the other conclusions are dealt with at more length elsewhere in the book. For Headey, ministers often lacked policy objectives. He argued: Given that politicians are not qualified and civil servants are not motivated to act as policy initiators, it is not surprising that specialists in different policy areas find evidence of lack of innovation and reluctance on the part of post-war British governments to reorder their priorities. (headey 1974: 271). In contrast, our research suggests that most ministers want and adopt some policy role and that they have a greater policy role now than previously. The latter is a conclusion which reinforces other literature on Whitehall which contends that ministers are increasingly proactive (Campbell and Wilson 1995; Foster and Plowden 1996; Richards 1997). As one Permanent Secretary put it: ‘there has been a major change in Whitehall. Our job now increasingly involves doing what ministers want much more directly.’ Certainly, as we saw, our interviews indicate that a number of ministers in the last Conservative administration attempted to change the agenda of their departments. They were anxious to be pro-active and have a lasting effect on their departments; in our terms they were agenda setters.

A changing pattern of governance? How do these changes in the role of ministers relate to the arguments concerning the changing pattern of governance in Britain? At first sight they seem to cast considerable doubt upon some of the claims of Rhodes’ differentiated polity model. Certainly, they suggest that ministers have assumed a more proactive role and, to this extent, that there is more, rather than less, power concentrated in the core executive. At the same time, on the basis of such findings, some might contend the balance of power between civil servants and ministers has shifted, with ministers becoming increasingly dominant. The main thrust of our interviews confirmed that the relationship between ministers and civil servants/departments is, as Rhodes empha-

148 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

sises, an exchange relationship. Departments want strong ministers, capable of defending their interests within Whitehall and beyond. Ministers need good civil servants, capable of giving sophisticated advice, drafting good policy documents and legislation and implementing policy effectively. However, the terms of the exchange are not equal or constant. Ministers are agents with very significant resources. Only they have the authority to make policy and a department with a weak minister can achieve little or nothing. In addition, as we argue at more length in Chapter 7, civil servants are trained to, and most wish to, carry through government policy; this view of their role is still strongly held by civil servants. As such, they expect ministers to make policy; indeed they admire strong ministers with a policy agenda which they can get through Cabinet. Of course, not all ministers want to adopt, or are capable of adopting, such a pro-active role. We shall return to that issue in the next section. However, here we want to make two points that throw light on the governance debate and reinforce similar points made in other chapters. First, while Rhodes is right to emphasise that the relationships involved in the core executive are exchange relationships, the exact nature of those exchanges are dependent on the skills, values and interpretations of those occupying those roles. The personality of some ministers may push them towards a relatively inactive ministerial role. Others may feel too constrained by a departmental culture to innovate. However, ministers, and to a lesser extent civil servants, clearly do make a difference. Second, the nature of the exchange is also affected by the broader context. So, for example, if a government, like the Thatcher government, is informed by a view that civil servants are too powerful, then this view is likely to affect how ministers conceptualise the nature of the exchange between themselves and civil servants.

Explaining the change Here we return to the two theoretical issues discussed in the introduction and ask two questions: How important were individual ministers in reinterpreting and changing their role? To what extent did ideas drive institutional change? Did ministers make a difference? Clearly, some ministers, but not all, do make a difference, but they are constrained by the structural context in which they operate; we need

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 149

to recognise both points. Two aspects of a minister’s structural position constrains/facilitates him/her: his/her organisational position; and the broader social, economic and political context. However, different ministers in the same structural position do not operate in the same way; rather, agents interpret and attempt to negotiate constraints in the light of their own interests and abilities. What is more, this is an iterative process, given that the behaviour of an agent can change the subsequent structural context in which s/he is located. Ministers as agents Perhaps the first point to recognise is that ministers have multiple roles. They are not totally department-centred, often seeing departments as a resource to be used in other arenas, whether in the Cabinet, the Party or the public arena. As such, we need to know a given minister’s goals and strategies. Of course, these two affect each other, so the strategies that a minister adopts will affect his/her performance of the various ministerial roles, while the roles a minister emphasises will depend to some extent on his or her goals. For example, a crucial, perhaps the most crucial, goal of many ministers is to advance his/her career; most often to survive, to win promotion or, even, to become Prime Minister. In pursuit of this goal a minister may wish to put his/her stamp on a department, following the logic that making such an impact will advance his or her career. However, a minister might equally think that pleasing the Prime Minister, rather than forwarding the interests of the department, is a surer way of promotion. The point here is that we can’t simply assume that all ministers want to shape their department. Probably most ministers want to make some impact on their departments, although this is not always the case. As we saw, some ministers, like Lord Carrington or Douglas Hurd, were content to manage their department; to be reactive, not pro-active. Others, such as Patrick Jenkin, had very limited policy ambitions. However, even if a minister wants to affect policy, it is far from inevitable s/he will do so. S/he needs the ability to do so, a clear agenda and good strategic judgement. Of course, ministers are not blessed with equal ability. As an example, in his time in the DEn, Nigel Lawson used his intellect and political skill to significantly improve the fledgling status of the department and his own influence over energy policy-making generally and privatisation policy particularly. In contrast, Keith Joseph wanted to create a new agenda, but lacked the political will to push it through and spent too long prevaricating over policy issues. Besides commit-

150 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

ment and skill, ministers who want to change departments need a clear agenda, a vision of what they want to do, and an appropriate strategy for achieving that change. Such a strategy implies a sound political judgement about the opportunities and constraints of the context within which policy is made. A comparison between Benn, Howard and Lilley is particularly instructive in relation to these last two points. Both Howard and Benn were prepared to ignore official advice because they believed that it was tailored to the departmental line. In addition, Benn adopted an interventionist agenda that alienated the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. His department did not support him, partly because he consulted political advisers rather than civil servants and partly because they knew he lacked the support of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. In contrast, Howard pursued policies that were compatible with broader government policy and cultivated Prime Ministerial support. In this context, he had no difficulty in getting his department’s support for the policies, even though they represented a break with the departmental view. Peter Lilley recognised that there was a commitment in the DSS to policies of universal welfare and that it would be difficult to change social security policy without the support of the department. He therefore opted to pursue a strategy of incremental change and was assisted by his long tenure in office, which enabled him to build alliances within the department and, in so doing, bring the DSS round to his way of thinking: I took a deliberate decision that you could only get reform if you carried people with you and you can only carry people with you if you raised the profile of welfare reform and made it seem something that we needed to do. Which I thought we did but I thought we could convince people of that and that then once they take that general thesis then individual reforms would become easier. The different approaches adopted by Benn, Howard and Lilley suggest that, although it is important to know how a minister perceives his/her role, in order to understand a minister’s success we also need to look more closely at the context within which he or she operates and, in particular, at his/her relations with the Prime Minister and the department.

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 151

Structural resources It is also clear that ministers have different structural resources when it comes to shaping policy. In part, these structural resources are organisational. In particular, the culture and status of a department and the nature of the relationship between a minister and the Prime Minister are crucial organisational resources. However, at the same time, the structural resources which a department and a minister have are likely to be affected by the broader social, economic and political context. So, at the time of the Falklands War the importance of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence clearly increased, while at the time of the miners’ strike the DEn came to the fore. The organisational context Ministers are constrained by the structural and cultural context within departments. So, many ministers viewed the departmental culture, and the associated policy agenda, as exercising a structural constraint on their autonomy of action. As an example, the culture of the Home Office, and the related consistent liberal agenda it followed between the 1960s and the 1990s, constrained the autonomy of a series of Conservative Home Secretaries in their first decade in office. Of course, such a constraint may inhibit, but it doesn’t prevent, change. So, Michael Howard was able to alter the culture in the Home Office. Similarly, the relatively unified DSS was changed successfully by Peter Lilley, partly because he had the expertise and the time to develop his agenda and foster close relations with his civil servants. He was therefore able to see policy changes through. Certainly, the status of a department also makes a difference. A DSS official confirmed that change is difficult in a department with a long history of pursuing a particular line of policy: ‘You cannot change social security overnight. It just can’t be done. Some changes take years but all changes take a long time.’ This partly involves an assessment of the power of a departmental culture and partly is a reference to an issue mentioned in the introductory chapter; any government in a field like social security inherits a great deal of legislation, and thus expenditure commitments, which are difficult to change in the short, or even medium terms. In the words of Richard Rose, government is about inheritance before choice. Of course, as we saw in the last chapter, ministers operate within a broader organisational context and, as such, they need structural support to achieve agenda change. Most fundamentally of course, a min-

152 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

ister needs time and that resource lies in the gift of the Prime Minister who can appoint or dismiss a minister. Ministers who lack time either because they are in office for a short period or because they are overwhelmed by events while in office are unlikely to make a large impact. At the same time, and this is a point we have already emphasised, ministers need the backing of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to achieve change. Without it, as Tony Benn found out, it is impossible to achieve change; with it, as Michael Howard showed, it is possible to achieve change without the wholehearted support of a department. The broader structural context Ministers were also constrained by the broader social, economic and political context in which they were operating. They may be constrained by political events, as was the case, for example, with Waddington in the Home Office, or by changing economic pressures, as, for example, those which faced Carrington in DEn. In other cases, and perhaps most often, these two factors interact. So, during the miners’ strike the status of the DEn was heightened by the fact that the ‘confrontation’ between the government and the NUM had both economic and political importance. Actually, the fluctuating position of the DEn illustrates another significant point. As Hoopes (1996) shows, the status of the DEn also considerably increased as a result of both the changes in the international oil markets and the move towards privatisation. So, changes in the broader economic and political context contribute to changes in organisational structure – in the case of DEn an increase in the importance of the department. However, ironically, as we saw in Chapter 4, ultimately the ‘success’ of the privatisation process also contributed to the demise of the DEn.

The interactive effects The point here is hopefully clear given the previous discussion. We cannot analyse change without recognising the interactive relationship between structure and agency. We have seen in this chapter that individual ministers have been crucial in changing the culture and policy agenda of departments, but they do so within the context of an existing organisational structure and culture, within the department and more broadly throughout Whitehall, which constrains their actions. They are also constrained or facilitated in achieving their ends by the broader economic and social context. Even so, ministers can, and do,

Reassessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers 153

change the culture and structure and that changed culture and structure provides the context within which subsequent ministers operate. In that sense, the process is interactive and iterative.

Did ideas drive institutional change? In our view, there are two main reasons for the increase in the number of agenda-setting ministers during the Conservative administrations and these both illustrate the influence of ideas in shaping institutional change. Firstly, all of the ministers concerned were ideologues drawn from the right of the Conservative Party, so they had an alternative ideological position from which to develop policy proposals. As such, the ideological commitments of some ministers, especially Howard, Young and Lawson, drove their attempts to redirect their departments. Of course, not all Conservative ministers were drawn from the right of the Party, so not all, probably not most, ministers favoured a radical, often ‘New Right’, agenda; thus many ministers didn’t want to refocus their departments. Second, most Conservative ministers in this period also had a different view of what the relationship should be between themselves and officials than that enshrined in the traditional, Haldane model. The Haldane model saw officials and ministers as partners; civil servants could be trusted to exercise considerable discretion (Foster and Plowden 1996; Richards 1997; Richards and Smith 2000). In contrast, the Thatcher governments were more critical of civil servants whom they viewed as a cause of, rather than a solution to, what they regarded as the core of the governance problem; weak, ineffective, government pursuing consensual policies because it was in thrall to particular interests. To break out of this stultifying embrace government and ministers needed to exercise executive autonomy. As such, to the Conservatives the chief role of the Civil Service was not to advise on policy but to assist the ministers in carrying out government policy. At the same time, the Conservatives were more willing to use special advisers, although not to consult interest groups, as alternative sources of information. All this meant that Conservative ministers were encouraged to lead their department, to change departmental thinking and, in Bulpitt’s (1986) term, to project an image of governing competence. Once again, however, we need to acknowledge that the relationship between ideas and institutions is not a unidirectional relationship. Ideas do shape institutions and inform institutional change. However, it is within the context of institutions that ideas develop and are subse-

154 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

quently mediated. While the Conservative, ‘New Right’ view of the Civil Service did inform Conservative ministers’ attitudes to the Civil Service and their commitment to Civil Service reform, the outcome, in terms of the effect on Civil Service attitudes, was restricted because of the persistence of an alternative Civil Service view of the past, present and proper future role of civil servants. Furthermore, the current government’s view of the Civil Service, which we shall consider in a future book, is itself shaped by the current sets of institutional relations, which themselves were shaped by the Conservatives’ ideas. Again, it is crucial to recognise this is an interactive and iterative process.

Conclusion Our research suggests there has been a change in the role of ministers. Partly because of their ideological commitments, and partly because of the Conservative government’s negative view of the role of the Civil Service as a bastion of consensus, ministers have become more proactive in policy-making. Twenty-five years ago, Whitehall was more insulated from outside pressures and most ministers’ advice came from officials. In such an environment, most ministers’ ambitions to change policy were limited. In the 1980s, some ministers had grander plans to introduce permanent change in the general directions of their department and they often looked outside the department for policy advice. All ministers, except those who lacked time or were overwhelmed by crisis, had some policy role. However, this is not to suggest ministers are omnipotent actors, able to bring about significant political and cultural changes inside and outside departments. Rather, their actions need to be considered within the structural and cultural context within which they operate. Both the organisational structure within a department and beyond, and the broader economic and political context beyond the department constrain ministers. However, ministers are important. Civil servants cannot act alone; they lack the legitimacy to do anything without ministerial authority, which explains their preference for decisive ministers. Consequently, ministers are potential agents of change. Of course, as we saw, many ministers do not want to introduce a new agenda into their department and some who wish to do so fail.

7 The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants

We have seen in previous chapters that much has changed within departments. In this chapter, we examine the impact of these changes on the relationship between ministers and civil servants. As we saw in Chapter 2, the Whitehall culture is crucial in constructing the roles and values of officials. As such, we would expect changes in culture to produce changes in the power relationships between ministers and officials. There are two sets of literature which argue that such changes have occurred. Dunleavy’s (1991) bureau-shaping model suggests that senior civil servants have shaped change in their interests. In contrast, Campbell and Wilson (1995) and Foster and Plowden (1996) argue that the traditional symbiotic relationship between ministers and civil servants has been undermined as officials have increasingly become bearers of ministers’ wishes. This chapter is critical of these both positions, arguing that the continued influence of the values of the Westminster model means that the relationship remains one of interdependency and that, whilst the relationships have changed, officials retain a key role in policy-making. The chapter is divided into three substantive sections. The first section assesses the utility of the bureau-shaping model. Subsequently, the second section critically examines the view that Conservative changes in the 1980s and 1990s mean that ministers now dominate civil servants. The last substantive section then argues for a power-dependency model of that relationship and suggests why ministers and civil servants share similar views about the nature of that relationship.

155

156 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Assessing the bureau-shaping model Outlining the bureau-shaping model The most contemporary sophisticated model which analyses Civil Service power is Dunleavy’s (1991) bureau-shaping model which has justifiably received a great deal of attention both at a theoretical level and as an explanation of recent changes in the public sector in Britain and elsewhere. Dunleavy rejects the traditional public choice budget maximisation models of bureaucratic behaviour (see Dowding 1995 for discussion). In contrast, Dunleavy argues that senior bureaucrats are concerned to maximise the status and quality of their work. In particular, he contends that senior civil servants are most interested in their policy advice functions. Consequently, when high-ranking officials are faced with institution-wide cuts, they reshape their bureaux into small staff agencies in order to protect themselves and their agencies and allow them to concentrate on the policy advisory role that they prefer. We shall only briefly outline the bureau-shaping model here (but see Dunleavy 1989, 1991; Dowding 1995; Marsh, Smith and Richards 2000). However, the model’s key theme is that, when faced with the prospect of losing time for policy-advice work, high-ranking officials will become keen advocates of separating out policy from management functions in order to allow them to maintain, or even increase, the proportion of time they spend on policy-related work. The bureaushaping model thus generates three propositions: • Senior civil servants have less interest in the management of their departments and more interest in their role as policy advisers. • The development of Next Steps agencies in Britain was encouraged by senior civil servants. • The outcome of the Conservative reforms has been to take managerial responsibilities away from senior civil servants and allow them to concentrate on policy advice. As such, to a significant extent, the model is premised on the notion that senior civil servants, not politicians, have the power to control the reform process. A critique of the bureau-shaping model Here, we use our interview evidence to examine each of the three propositions derived from the bureau-shaping model.

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 157

Proposition 1: senior civil servants prefer policy to management work Our interviews suggest two clear conclusions. First, it is not easy for senior bureaucrats to maximise the policy function for two reasons. The simple distinction between the policy advice function and the management function on which much of Dunleavy’s model is based is in practice problematic. At the same time, the job of senior officials, in particular the Permanent Secretaries, inevitably involves major managerial responsibilities. Second, not every senior civil servant attaches such a high value to policy work and such a low value to management as the bureau-shaping model assumes. Obviously, most senior civil servants in both agencies and core departments are involved in policy and management. This point is evident if we consider the job remit of Permanent Secretaries. There are three, broad, elements to their work: administering the department; managing the policy process; and specific policy work. The first is exclusively managerial; the second combines management and policy, although perhaps with the main emphasis on management; only the third involves a focus on policy. Two points are crucial here. First, Permanent Secretaries have always had a crucial management role and, since the Next Steps reforms, they appear more, rather than less, involved in management than was previously the case. Second, those most involved in policy work are not Permanent Secretaries or Deputy Secretaries, but much lower level civil servants, those located at what, in the pre-Senior Management Review days, was Grade 5. Indeed, the further up the Whitehall hierarchy a civil servant progresses, the less policy-orientated he or she becomes. As such, it seems to us that it is not as easy as the bureau-shaping model suggests for senior civil servants to maximise their policy advisory functions and hive-off their management functions. At the same time, the assumption that high-ranking officials have a strong preference for policy work over management functions lies at the centre of the bureau-shaping model. However, this is not supported by evidence from our interviews. It is clear that some senior civil servants enjoy management, if not as the most important strand of their work, then as one of their core functions. As a member of the original Efficiency Unit said: Some of them were interested in management and couldn’t get to do it, others just weren’t interested at all, but I think what was happening by the mid-80s was the financial structures were improving,

158 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

the FMI was producing management information. People were beginning to have regular annual reviews of management … So, even then, there were people who were interested in all aspects of management. To the extent that a simple dichotomy between the policy advice and the management function is possible, some civil servants appear to prefer policy work, others management work and yet others a balance between the two. It is also apparent that preferences can change over time. One Permanent Secretary commented that the establishment of agencies in his department transformed his working day: Prior to Next Steps, I was still doing, or would have been doing, a lot of policy; probably 50 per cent or so. I would have done about 20 per cent on management, about 20 per cent with the accounting officer and 10 per cent on senior personnel. From 1988 on, I was spending less than 30 per cent of my time on policy, 30 per cent on management, 20 per cent with the accounting officer, 10 per cent senior personnel and 10 per cent visiting agency offices. This made the running of the Department more efficient and was something I welcomed. Similarly, another Permanent Secretary argued that the reforms had led to a marked reduction in his day-to-day involvement in policy: After the introduction of Next Steps, I spent about a third of my time on policy. However, most of my time was spent on long-term strategy with my board discussing where we were going to be in five years time. I was not sorting out today’s policy problem, unless it was a really catastrophic one and they wanted my help. My junior officials prided themselves on being able to sort out most problems. They liked to come to me and tell me they’ve found a problem and they’ve solved it and I needn’t worry. So, I would only be bothered by policy that was either pretty insoluble or needed some outside help, the help of other departments where ministers needed to be talked to, or where I could actually use my experience and ability. The problem for the bureau-shaping model lies in the centrality of the assumption of homogeneity to the claims being made. If the model is to ‘explain’ the Conservative Whitehall reforms, it is a necessary condition that top civil servants shared a preference for policy-making. Our

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 159

evidence indicates that not all share this preference, or at least not to the same extent, and this in turn limits the utility of the model. Proposition 2: senior civil servants were the force behind the Next Steps programme What role did senior civil servants play in the origins of Next Steps and how did they react to the proposals? Our interviews suggest three clear conclusions: • The impetus for these changes was political; it did not come from civil servants. • Many senior civil servants possessed far from perfect information about the changes; they underestimated both the political will that was behind them and their potential impact. • Although many senior civil servants opposed the changes, there was little, if any, organised opposition. The bureau-shaping model seems to assume that senior civil servants are relatively that they have significant autonomy. In our view, they are constrained by the political and cultural context in which they operate and, in particular, by the wishes of ministers, by the broader Civil Service culture and by their construction of each of these two things. Certainly, evidence from our interviews indicated the role of politicians was crucial in the evolution and development of Next Steps. This, of course, contradicts the argument that the process was driven by bureaucrats and, more broadly, it fundamentally questions the thesis that it is civil servants who are able to shape events or issues in their, as opposed to the minister’s, favour. In the late 1980s, the extent and the speed of the reform were a result of direct political pressure from the Cabinet. This pressure had enormous influence because it emanated from the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (see Chapters 3 and 6). Thus, the process should be understood as one in which the politicians were dictating and civil servants were then responding. This suggests that bureau-shaping may often be driven by ministers, not senior bureaucrats. In this case, it is well-documented that the impetus for change came from Peter Kemp, Second Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office between 1988 and 1992 and Project Manager for the Next Steps programme, who had strong support from the Prime Minister. More broadly, it is widely accepted that the

160 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Conservatives’ reforms of central government were driven by politicians and not by bureaucrats. Certainly senior ex-Conservative ministers’ memoirs (Heseltine 1987; Thatcher 1993, Lawson 1992) and the academic texts (Foster and Plowden 1996) substantiate this view. The weight of evidence does not support any suggestion that the reform process was bureaucratically driven, rather it suggests that, even if they had wanted to, senior officials were not in a position to forward their own preferences at the expense of their political masters. The political context was absolutely crucial. We did not find any senior official who felt the initiative had come from the Civil Service, although all acknowledged the crucial role of Peter Kemp in the process. Many civil servants underestimated the likely impact of these reforms and perhaps also the political will behind them. Of those who reacted, some were enthusiastic, some were agnostic and some were obstructive. Perhaps more interestingly, the initial reaction within particular departments appeared driven at the political, not the bureaucratic, level. Thus, for example, a senior Home Office official observed that: Douglas Hurd (Home Secretary between 1985 and 1989) was simply not interested in transferring the Prison Service to agency status. However, after Waddington (Home Secretary 1989–90) got his fingers burnt with Strangeways, Kenneth Baker saw agencification as a political opportunity to distance himself from this monstrous organisation which had the potential to ruin his political career. Similarly, a senior official at the DTI argued: ‘Initially we didn’t react to the Next Steps Report. However, David Young (then Secretary of State) was very keen on setting up agencies and this ensured our department was at the forefront of the process.’ The department responded to the will of the minister. A DSS official also noted the sluggish manner in which his department reacted to Next Steps and again emphasised that the department made calculations about the political will behind the reform: At the outset, we adopted the usual Whitehall reaction that was to ask the question: ‘do we respond to this in token fashion to get both the centre and the minister off our back or do we react with something big?’ Expediency suggested the latter option. In contrast, officials in the Home Office were opposed to the Prison Service becoming an agency. In this vein, a senior employee in the

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 161

Prison Agency maintained that senior officials in the Home Office did not see agency status for the Prison Service as being in their interests: To the career civil servants, the Prison Service is absolutely core and the idea that they won’t be able to rotate through here, that they won’t have jobs here and they are not in a position to know better than anybody else what should happen in the agency they find really worrying … they have a strong set of beliefs about how the Prison Service and Home Office ought to be run. As these comments show, one needs to disaggregate the experiences of different Whitehall departments in order to understand the dynamics involved in the Next Steps reforms. Various departments responded to the Next Steps initiative in different ways. Yet, at a general level, the process was driven by ministerial initiative and it dramatically altered the structural and organisational character of Whitehall. By 1997, 135 agencies were in existence, accounting for over 78 per cent of the Civil Service. Proposition 3: Conservative reforms led to senior civil servants becoming more policy-orientated The bureau-shaping model predicts that, after the Next Step reforms, the balance between the management and the policy advisory functions of senior civil servants changed, with senior bureaucrats able to concentrate more upon policy work while the new agencies dealt with the more mundane administrative tasks. It is generally accepted by both practitioners and commentators that managerialism became firmly ingrained in the discourse and the operating procedures of the machinery of government throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In this context, a sizeable shift occurred in the time Permanent Secretaries and other senior officials allocated to each of the three roles identified above. In fact, it appears that the reforms during the Conservative years have meant that the work of most, if not all, senior civil servants has become more, rather than less, managerial. Indeed, none of our interviewees, whether retired or serving, thought that the policy role of Permanent Secretaries had increased since the Next Steps reforms, while the majority thought that the management role had increased. So, one serving Permanent Secretary argued: I would guess that in the 1970s, the management of a department was a small part of a Permanent Secretary’s job, significantly behind

162 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

policy work or departmental representation. When I became a Deputy Secretary in 1984, I would have said the balance between the various functions of a senior official were of about equal proportions. But from then on, management, including personnel management, but also systematic management, was to become the real thing. Another official appointed as a Permanent Secretary in the 1980s argued: As a Permanent Secretary, I’m surprised at the amount of time which needs to be spent on management given that many Permanent Secretaries over the years have not given the impression that was a key part of the role. It’s very difficult to avoid pure management responsibilities; I mean I wouldn’t want to avoid them anyway, but I was surprised at how often they just hit my desk. While another senior official claimed that the move to agencies had, in some senses, given him more managerial responsibilities: One of my big jobs is actually to see that the agencies all work together because they are part of the Department, not units simply left on the periphery. The agency chief executives all sit on my departmental board. A lot of my time is taken up by making sure we all agree about how things are going and how we are going to approach the corporate issues needing to be dealt with. Nowhere in our interviews did we come across evidence from the senior officials suggesting that the reforms of the Conservative administration increased their own policy function. Thus, the irony of the reforms, from a bureau-shaping perspective at least, is that there has been an increase in the management of the machinery of Whitehall, at the expense of the policy process. Of course, Permanent Secretaries have always had management roles, but we would argue that they were not as prominent or, perhaps, they were not taken as seriously in the past. As a very senior civil servant noted: ‘I think (the Permanent Secretary’s) role was always managerial and I think it ought to have been, but I don’t think they took much interest in it.’ A number of our interviewees, particularly those with experience of more than one department, did point out that the level of management responsibilities involved in the Permanent Secretary’s job varied considerably between departments. However, the consensual view was

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 163

that following both the Next Steps reforms and the Senior Management Review (see Chapter 3), officials at Grades 1 and 2 have become increasingly marginal to the policy process, being ever more concerned with managerial responsibilities. So, as regards the third proposition, the evidence from our interviews indicates that the Conservative reforms of Whitehall actually reduced both the time and numbers of senior mandarins involved in policy work; at present, they are more involved in the management function than in previous eras in Whitehall.

The bureau-shaping model: a flawed analysis? In our view, the bureau-shaping model represents a significant advance on previous public choice models of bureaucratic behaviour which stress budget maximisation. However, it is flawed. First, we would argue that the model pays insufficient attention to the broader political context within which civil servants operate. This is one of the ways in which the model is mis-specified. The broader political context constrains the options available to civil servants and significantly affects their ability independently to determine the shape of their bureaux. Second, the consequence of the reforms has not been to increase the involvement of senior civil servants in policy-making. At present, they are primarily managers. Indeed, if anything, their managerial role has increased since the creation of Next Step agencies and this was a common theme in our interviews. Of course, senior civil servants may have expected a greater policy role after the reforms, but if they did so it was a strategic miscalculation. In our view, many of the weaknesses of Dunleavy’s model reflect the broader weaknesses of rational choice theory. The emphasis is on intentional explanation and preferences are assumed, not explained. No role is given to structure or culture in explaining outcomes. Indeed, what is assumed, or ignored, is much of the legitimate subject matter of political science and sociology. In essence, the key problem is that rational choice theory cannot explain the dynamics of change. To do so requires a dialectical approach to the relationship between structure and agency and a recognition that the meaning individuals ascribe to structure, culture and action affects their behaviour. At a broader level, our analysis of the bureau-shaping model provides a useful critique of the view that civil servants dominate ministers in a zero-sum game. Clearly, what our analysis emphasises is that such an analysis often misunderstands the structured setting within which civil

164 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

servants operate and the political constraints which ministers can impose on even the most senior civil servants. As such, we contend that those who continue to advocate the Yes Minister model of Whitehall misunderstand the true dynamics involved in minister–civil servant relations.

The reassertion of executive dominance We saw in Chapter 3 that much of the reform of central government is concerned with re-establishing executive government. This has led a number of authors to suggest that the traditional constitutional model of minister–civil servant relations has broken down. As we saw in Chapter 4, this conception of the relationship is based on the notion that ministers and civil servants trust each other and, consequently, officials have a central role in the policy-making process. To some extent, they have a monopoly of policy advice and almost a total monopoly of political advice (political in the sense of how to play politics in the arenas of Whitehall and Westminster). Campbell and Wilson (1995) and Foster and Plowden (1996) argue that the reforms of the Thatcher years destroyed the traditional role of officials. According to Campbell and Wilson (1995: 60), the Whitehall model has been undermined, with: civil servants increasingly defining their role as policy implementers rather than policy analysts, people who gave ministers what they said they wanted, rather than functioning as what they disparagingly call ‘quasi-academics’ who tried to show politicans the full consequences, adverse as well as positive, of their policy proposals. In some ways, this is an accurate representation of changes that have occurred. As we have seen, there has been an attempt to assert a managerial culture over the public service culture and this has affected the nature of the relationship between ministers and officials. To some extent, the presumption of the traditional values was that officials had the facts and by informing ministers of the real world situation, sensible policy would overcome ideological whim. However, Chapter 6 outlined the increased policy activism of ministers who have been less prepared to accept departmental advice. In our interviews, a number of officials did believe that ministers were

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 165

less likely to accept advice than had been the case in the past. One DTI official said that there was a lack of trust between officials and ministers from the day Thatcher arrived in office. He continued: ‘and now it is ineradicable, there is a whole generation of politicians on one side and civil servants on the other who don’t trust each other’. A more considered illustration is provided by a former Permanent Secretary: Just because a thing is recommended doesn’t mean to say that the minister is bound to do it, the minister has other sources and other values and he will say, ‘No, I don’t think that it is right’, for x, y, z … An example is if you said to Kenneth Clarke, no smoking in the office, research has suggested that smoke coming through air conditioning ducts will in fact involve people in involuntary smoking. He might say, ‘Where’s the evidence for that? Those scientists, I don’t believe them and I know them anyway and that’s got no foundation whatsoever, you can’t base policy on that.’ A very senior official put it succinctly: ‘Some ministers want to have a debate, others want to tell you what to do and they want a service. And more ministers tend to be in the latter vein than before.’ A DTI official believed that the change did not begin with the election of Thatcher but was a gradual process: My clear impression is that civil servants had much more weight in 1947; the then Permanant Secretaries were powerful. Donald Ferguson obviously had a major influence on the promulgation of policy and there was one minister and one Parliamentary Secretary. It was very clearly established that in the minister’s absence the Permanent Secretary was in charge of the Department and I think that they had very great weight in the promulgation of policy. That probably continued through to the 1970s, but perhaps it was linked to the rather sharper, or much sharper, division between political parties from the 1970s onwards. The influence of civil servants did become less and there were more junior ministers around and they were given areas of responsibility and wanted to be consulted on those areas of responsibility and take decisions in them.

166 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

But the picture that emerges is complex; there has not been a simple shift from a ‘Whitehall model’ to a ‘ministerial dominance’ model. As one senior DSS official outlined: Things actually work best when ministers and their staff have got a mutual understanding which was the kind of Civil Service I joined back in the 1950s … it never struck me then that there would be any serious conflict between my minister and my bosses up in the office. They would all be in cahoots. This official then suggested that, when the Conservatives came in, they wanted to put the bureaucracy in its place and put ministers in change. In his words: ‘“Yes Minister” was painting a picture of something which I think had actually passed.’ Yet, he still pointed out that: Most ministers don’t have long enough tenure to be able to really get a total grip on their subject. And they, to that degree, tend to be a bit in the hands of their Departments … Fowler … worked extremely closely with civil servants. He wasn’t into any of this nonsense of putting them in their place. Of course, Michael Howard insisted that, despite the various press reports, he listened carefully to his officials: I always wanted to have my views tested. I was trying to change things and had quite strong views on the direction in which I wanted things to change but I also knew there might be things that I had never thought of. So, I never claimed in any of my jobs in government, ‘Is this really the right thing to do for reasons A B C D E?’, and I would argue it out with them. There were occasions when I was convinced I had a good idea when it wasn’t. Very often we would have the argument and I wasn’t convinced that what I wanted to do was wrong so we did it. Indeed, a senior official who worked in the Home Office supported the Howard version: Michael Howard had a good relationship with officials in the sense that he expected them to produce the fullest and best possible advice. He welcomed that, he welcomed debate with them and very often he did not agree with what they said but the debate was

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 167

there, conducted quite openly and in a civilised way … These stories gathered weight probably because I guess there were more disagreements between Howard and officials over criminal justice polices than was the case, for example, with Douglas Hurd. But that’s because Michael Howard was working to one agenda and Douglas Hurd to another. Many other officials rejected the notion that relationships had broken down in the 1980s and 1990s. According to one, talking towards the end of the Major administration: ‘I think certainly the senior Treasury officials all get on very well with the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary.’ It is also the case that, as in other areas, the personalism of the system and the degree of ministerial autonomy mean that the nature of the relationship depends on the department and the minister. As one official pointed out: Your experience around Whitehall depends very much on who your minister is and what his/her attitude is. Some ministers think they are there to run the Department and others think that the Permanent Secretary is there to do that and they are only there to give broad instructions. I think that will continue to vary depending on the personality and predilection of ministers. The problem of interpretation is partly theoretical and methodological. If you talk to lots of civil servants, some will have found the changes of the Conservative period difficult, whilst others will have no interest in saying that their relationships are problematic. It is also true that, if officials want to have any influence, they have to make their relationship with the minister work; that is the constitutional imperative. Therefore, to avoid quote and counter-quote, it is important to develop some means of analysing the relationship. We are not arguing that the relationship between officials and ministers has not changed, but to argue that ministers have become powerful as a result of changes is to oversimplify the relationship. Whilst wider structural changes may have changed the balance of resources between ministers and officials so that ministers have more and officials have less, the relationship is still one of interdependence. Therefore, we avoid the question of who is more powerful, ministers or officials? Moreover, as recent debates over secrecy and constitutional reform indicate (see Richards and

168 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Smith 2001b), many of the assumptions of the Westminster model are still retained in the discourse of officials and ministers and, as such, there continues to be an important self-perception that the traditional relationships are still in place. This perception, of course, influences how officials and ministers interact. So, although the patterns of dependency have changed, resource dependency continues to provide the most appropriate framework for analysing the relationship. Thus, we advocate a power-dependency model in order to understand minister–civil servant relations.

Advocating a power-dependency model Outlining the model As we saw in Chapter 3, the power-dependency model contends that, in order to understand the nature of the state, it is important to examine the core executive, not only as a formal set of institutions, but also as a number of overlapping and interconnecting networks in which actors exchange resources (Rhodes 1997; Smith 1998, 1999a). Within the core executive a range of institutions can be identified which are connected by their mutual dependence on each other. For example, departments need the Prime Minister’s authority in Cabinet, while the Prime Minister needs departments to develop and implement policy. Hence, a network of mutual dependency is established. Extending this theme, the impact that the Prime Minister, a Cabinet Minister or a civil servant has on a policy depends upon these structures of dependency. Thus, all actors in the core executive are located within a particular structured setting that is, in part, shaped by the resources they command (see Figure 7.1). In order to understand civil servant–minister relations, we need to take account of structure, resources and agency. Power concerns the exchange of

Figure 7.1

Resources of Prime Ministers, ministers and officials

Prime Minister

Ministers

Officials

Patronage Authority Political support/ Party political support/ electorate Prime Minister’s Office Bilateral policy-making

Policy support Authority Department Knowledge Policy networks Policy success

Permanence Knowledge Time Whitehall network Control over information Keepers of the constitution

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 169

resources within a structured setting, but is dependent on the choices of actors. So, whilst resources may have shifted towards ministers, they continue to be dependent on exchanging resources with officials, who, through their tactics, can have a high degree of influence. There are a number of aspects of the structural context within which civil servants and ministers act which constrain or enable their actions. • Civil servants are constrained by rules governing their behaviour, authority and sphere of influence. • Ministers are constrained by their status and functional responsibility. • Both may be constrained by financial markets, international agreements, history and culture etc. So, the structure shapes the environment in which agents operate and defines the range of potential strategies they might deploy. This leads to the observation that structures can constrain or enable the actions of agents, but they do not determine policy outcomes (see Chapter 1; Hay 1995; Marsh et al. 1999). Structure impacts on the core executive in three ways: • It limits the actions of the state. So, for example, Britain’s position in the world economy constrains the policy options of government. • It is reflected in the institutions of central government. As such, it limits what departments do, how they perceive problems and the actions that they take. • It influences the distribution of resources within the state. So, who can do what and who has particular authority are structurally constrained. What this means is that central government cannot be simply understood in terms of the personality and the abilities of office holders. All actors in the core executive have resources and, therefore, all have something with which they can bargain in core executive interactions. The strength of their bargaining position will depend on the resources they hold and the extent to which other actors need their resources. Resources are partly structural because they are related to the formal status of actors, be it the Chancellor, Home Secretary or Head of the Civil Service, but they may also be personally derived. To an extent, it is possible to specify some of the resources held by various actors within the core executive (see Figure 7.1). Of course, all actors in the same structural position or with the same resources do not act in the same way. In addition, actors may attempt

170 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

to change the constraints or maximise their autonomy within those constraints. Relations between ministers and civil servants under the Conservatives It is undoubtedly the case that the nature of the constitution – which places ultimate authority in the hands of ministers – and the structural context of managerial reforms, ideological ministers and the creation of new sources of advice increased the resources of ministers vis-à-vis officials. As we have seen in a number of chapters, the postwar period was, to some extent, a mandarin’s paradise. Whilst rarely being directly disloyal to ministers, their monopoly of advice, their control of the detail of policy and institutional machinery and their presumption that they had access to the truth or ‘the facts’ gave officials substantial influence over policy. A government that was distrustful of the public sector, had ideological policy goals and alternative sources of advice, in think-tanks, personal advisers and consultancies, could challenge the cosy Civil Service world; especially because officials were upholders of the Constitution which venerated loyalty to ministers and the government. However, despite a change in the balance of resources, the relationship between ministers and officials remained one of dependency and, because of the personalism of British government, in some cases, traditional patterns of relationships continued. Civil servants remain in control of much of the policy process with, as we saw earlier, officials further down the hierarchy becoming the key policy-makers. A Grade 2 in the DTI gives a good indication of how the policy process has changed from the 1960s through to the present Labour government: I remember back in 1969 in the Ministry of Power, what would happen was the principal would write two or three pages closely argued and put it up to his assistant secretary, who that night would add another two pages and would then pass it up to his under secretary who would add his own page and, if it was terribly important, it would then go through the deputy secretary and the permanent secretary and it would land on the minister’s desk as a great thick thing which had contributions all the way from the top down. That was nonsensical but very typical of the way the Civil Service operated thirty years ago … I think now what tends to happen is I have a meeting with two of my people about devolution and how we are going to handle assistance to industry in devolution. We’ve been working on this topic for some time and devolution has added some

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 171

immediacy to it. We’ve had an exchange with our ministers on it about a fortnight ago and I’ve kept a very close eye on what’s been going on, but have contributed very little directly … I went to the ministers quite recently and they said yes they agreed with what we wanted to do. So, the Director went off and talked to the Scots, Welsh and Treasury … At an earlier stage, I’d have a meeting with my opposite numbers to get the process going, but, since, the process has been conducted at Grade 5 level, not at mine. This long quote is illustrative of some important points. First, as we have seen in Chapter 4, policy-making has become less hierarchical. Detailed policy-making rarely involves Grades 1 and 2 these days. It is made by 5s and 7s with superiors overseeing the process. To quote one Grade 2 in the DTI: There are no fixed rules, but I would expect the basic leg work to be done at EO (Executive Officer) or HEO (Higher Executive Officer) level, under the supervision of a Grade 7. Then, probably, if it was someone a bit new it would be looked at by one person above that. The way I try to operate is to let the system carry on without intervening too much. Of course, the process will vary from department to department and even from division to division. Second, despite this crucial change in the policy process, officials continue to be centrally involved in the making of policy. In an era of ‘conviction’ politics, when ministers are policy activists, there may be more direction of their policy efforts but officials continue to be central to the process. Officials at Grade 5, and increasingly below, draft policy proposals, to some extent in line with their broad understanding of the minister’s desire but also within the context of departmental culture. A former Grade 2 described the process. Initially, in the DTI a Grade 5 would: start developing ideas, then we will discuss these together, do you think this is right, and it would be a pooling of ideas and experience of the whole team and somebody will enshrine it in a document which will contain it all … If it is a sufficiently major policy area the permanent secretary may want to check through with the officials to see that they had thought of everything. Another DTI Grade 2 made an important point: We have a set of objectives now which ministers have agreed to and I can therefore guide the rest of us. But that does not mean we will

172 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

all turn over and say whatever you want to do you can do. Bugger that – that’s not my job. Yet, it is also true that traditional patterns of policy-making continue. As one Grade 2 in the DTI said: Currently on my desk at the moment is what sort of trade penalties we should support in the EU against Burma for the denial of human rights … That is not an easy issue to decide. Here, the process of decision involved: A rather traditional way of assembling all the relevant facts, making sure that we know what views are taken by other departments if the issue is going to be political enough to require cross-Whitehall ministerial decisions, finding out what the views of the other member states are likely to be and ultimately try to come to a judgement – a classic, almost timeless, way of proceeding. This official reveals that, even in the 1990s, officials were still framing, in an influential way, relatively important decisions. A senior official in the Home Office gave the perfect summary of the dependency relationship: It seems to me that the essence of (the minister–civil service relationship) is dynamic interaction. It is not that there is one set of values/positions/needs that the politicians have and another set that the official system has and they have to produce a compromise. Rather, the people, and the ideas, interact … There wasn’t (before 1979) a lot of active policy which was coming out of the political system, quite a lot was coming up out of the official system. But the moment you get a really strong ideological drive coming out to the political system which a new government will tend to have, the official system accommodates to that. Similarly, a DSS official emphasised: It’s an iterative process of providing information and advice up to ministers and into policy about the outcomes that are being achieved, through analysis and working with policy. A good example of the interaction between an ideological minister who wants to achieve specific goals, and the official system is a case

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 173

touched upon in Chapter 6, Peter Lilley’s reforms of social security. Lilley essentially reformed social security by recognising his dependence on officials. The social security reform programme that Lilley introduced has already been outlined in Chapter 4. Here, it is important to highlight his dependency on other elements in the core executive in order to secure change. First, as Lilley observed: After I had given the Mais Lecture a year into my office, which spelt out in detail the direction in which I wanted to go, the Department then knew what I wanted and then over 90 per cent of them backed me. I have nothing but praise really, apart from one or two subsets who were resistant. I think there were very high calibre people there. Lilley was also aware that his predecessor, John Moore, had failed in his attempt to reform the welfare agenda because he had alienated the department: I did take a strategic view in year one because I really did not want to start off doing a John Moore, coming in and telling officials that they were a lot of bad people, that they had been spending too much money and that their budgets were going to be instantly slashed. Lilley was tactically adept in the pragmatic way he went about trying to coax officials round to his way of thinking. In particular, he waited over a year before spelling out his reform agenda in the Mais lecture. He was certainly more successful than Moore in ensuring that his officials worked with him to effect change. As one senior Social Security official noted: Moore got off on the wrong foot to start with and after that he lost the goodwill of the Department to support him. Lilley was different. We all realised that the then current welfare climate was unsustainable and that change was needed. Lilley chose the right way of going about bringing us on board. Furthermore, Lilley was aware of the fragmented nature of the Department of Social Security; a department which, as we saw, had embraced the Next Steps agency model more rapidly than other Whitehall departments. Thus, he recognised the need to gain support from the chief executives of the various agencies attached to the department. To do this he established a new management board on

174 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

which all the agency chief executives were invited to sit. As one retired senior Social Security official observed: When the six executive agencies were being established we had the idea of setting up a small, central unit. Rather than split the Department horizontally, we did it vertically based on paying benefits, collecting contributions, IT etc. and we had a chief executive in charge of each. These all sat on this new board, which was no longer a traditional Civil Service board, containing for example deputy secretaries. Instead, we had on it all the chief executives, who collectively amounted to non-executive directors. Clearly, the establishment of the board not only maintained some form of identity for a department which had undergone dramatic reorganisation in the early 1990s, but it also created a powerful, institutional body within the department. As another official noted: What we did was keep the running of the Department by sitting on the board. And they were there to run it in the interests of the whole Department, so they had at times to sacrifice the interests of their own agencies in the greater collective interest of others. Lilley recognised the importance of, and the power wielded by, this new institutional structure. The board had the potential to act either as an institutional break on his reform agenda or as a powerful tool driving through the reform package. Aware of this, Lilley chose to work with, not against, the board: In the final phase, I embarked on what was called the ‘Change Programme’; that was changing the bulk of the administration which of course was located in the agencies, which in turn implied changing the whole structure of the agencies. Well, Michael Partridge [then Permanent Secretary] had established the board system with all the agency heads on the board to try to retain a corporate identity. I managed to get them to work with me and that made things an awful lot easier in terms of delivering my agenda. As the differentiated policy model would suggest, policy-making has become more decentralised and the approach is ‘leaner and flatter’ especially following the SMR (see Chapters 3 and 4). Nevertheless,

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 175

fairly senior officials are still involved in the process which to a large extent is conducted within a relatively closed and homogeneous arena. So far we have argued that to treat relations between ministers and civil servants as a zero-sum game is to misunderstand the dynamics involved in core executive relations. Rather, our interviews indicate that the power-dependency model is the most appropriate model of minister–civil servant relations. However, there is one notable trend in the 1980s and 1990s which still needs to be explained. It is claimed that, while in power, the Conservatives pursued a successful strategy of reimposing ministerial power over the bureaucratic machine. This, in turn, raises an issue that is central to an understanding of departments: the nature of Civil Service power within the power-dependency model. Our interviews suggest that ministers have no problem in controlling their officials. With a few exceptions, generally Labour politicians from the 1970s, the ministers we interviewed always rejected the view that it was the officials who held the whip hand. Of course, such a view may seem counterintuitive for a number of reasons: • Officials are permanent while ministers are temporary. • Officials have expertise, knowledge and access to information that ministers lack. • Officials control the bureaucratic machinery. • Ministers have a limited capacity to deal with issues in departments and, therefore, the majority of decisions are made by officials. In certain areas, officials are making relatively high level decisions, for example in trade on tariff negotiations. Many officials have the luxury of concentrating their energies upon only one policy area. For a minister, time is scarce and often s/he has to deal not with a specific policy, but with the totality of the development of departmental policy, as well as devoting time to other functions, such as Cabinet, Parliament, Party work and media/PR relations. However, what is important to remember is that ministers essentially want to achieve their own goals, whether they are political, electoral or policy, and, in that sense, officials are useful to the degree that they help with those goals and irrelevant to the degree they do not. For most ministers, the power of officials is a question of little meaning; officials are there to support the work of the minister. Ministers have become more directive but this has not undermined in a critical sense the old ‘Whitehall paradigm’. How can we explain, within the context of the power-dependency model, the fact that power under the

176 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Conservatives shifted from the Civil Service towards ministers? In our view, it is crucial to reconceptualise Civil Service power in the last 20 years. Under the Conservatives, both the context within which the core executive operated and the resources which its constituent parts possessed altered. Once again, this highlights the fluid nature of the power relations between these actors. Reconceptualising Civil Service power In our view, there are three key features of the relationship between civil servants and ministers: • Both officials and ministers have a strong interest in maintaining the view that officials advise and ministers decide. • To admit otherwise would be to suggest that ministers were not decisive politicians and that officials were neither neutral nor acting with integrity. Moreover, it would expose both officials and ministers to important questions about accountability. If officials were making decisions, they would have to be directly accountable. • Except in very exceptional circumstances, officials are loyal to ministers. This loyalty is crucial for two reasons: (a) The officials’ interests lie in the success of the department. For the department to do well, ministers have to do well. Therefore, officials want their minister to be successful. The role of the official is highly political because it is concerned with protecting the minister from political flak, both in the context of Whitehall power games and also the wider political arena. (b) Officials cannot act without ministerial cover and therefore they give loyalty to ministers, in return for ministers providing the trust to allow them to act without continual ministerial direction. Civil Service power is not identified as a problem by ministers because, in their view, it does not challenge their ascendancy. The minister’s own understanding of the relationship therefore remains one based upon the constitutional model. The case of BSE demonstrated that officials acted on their own but often their aim was to protect the minister. Officials operate on a different level to ministers Ministers are concerned with particular policy decisions and officials are concerned with making decisions within a constitutionally informed framework. As long as they have ministerial (and therefore constitutional) cover, they

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 177

have considerable autonomy. Officials do not oppose ministers, but, through their reproduction of the Whitehall game and by providing ‘facts’ for the minister, they determine the terrain on which ministers operate. In so doing, they are then empowered to undertake decisions within an accepted (i.e. constitutionally proper) framework, reflecting the general goals of the ministers. During the Conservative administration, the structure, context, resources and tactics of the core executive altered and this, in turn, affected the nature of dependencies involved. This is clear if one compares and contrasts the observations of retired senior officials about their involvement in the policy process during the 1950s and 1960s, with the views of contemporary colleagues. So, as one former Permanent Secretary at the Home Office suggested, in the 1950s and 1960s, a minister’s basic function was to ‘carry out the will of officials’. One Permanent Secretary, who retired in the late 1980s, observed that: During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s policy was generated from within the machine at a high level. Whereas nowadays ministers appear to be the generators in the policy process. Now … ministers, more and more, come to look on their top civil servants as managers running a department, rather than acting as policy advisers. Clearly, the structural reforms introduced by the Conservatives, and dealt with in Chapter 3, changed the nature of the job for senior civil servants, pushing policy down the bureaucratic hierarchy, so affecting the nature of dependency between senior officials and ministers. As one contemporary Grade 2 DSS official observed in 1997: The main difference with people like Ann Bowtell [the then Permanent Secretary] is how they spend their day. The majority of her time is taken up with management and delivery issues. The people at my level would be much more involved in being the personal adviser to ministers and we would be asking typically the old Grade 5s to really take up ownership and responsibility for policy. So, we have become a much more delegated and delayered organisation. However, two other trends have also had an impact on the powerdependency relationship of the core executive. The first, outlined in Chapter 3, was the change in the type of senior official appointed to

178 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

the highest grades in Whitehall. This is what Richards (1997) refers to as the ‘personalisation’ of the senior Civil Service during the Thatcher years in which ‘managerially oriented can-doers’ were appointed to the most senior grades. The other notable trend to affect the nature of the dependencies was the decision, taken early on by the Thatcher Cabinet, to use outside consultants. This made the government less dependent on the Civil Service as a source of knowledge and information. One contemporary senior official in the Cabinet Office observed the shift under the Conservatives to the use of consultancy firms in the policy process: There was undoubtedly, in the early 1980s, a drive to bring in private sector consultancy firms, reflecting the view of the government that the public sector was inefficient and did not know how to do things. A retired Permanent Secretary explained what he thought was the raison d’être behind this change in the policy process. It was quite clear that the Thatcher government was generally hostile towards the public sector and, more specifically, the Civil Service. She wanted change and she wanted it fast. Her view was that these grey men in Whitehall would not be willing to deliver her agenda for change, so why don’t we get someone else to. That was when we saw the rise and rise in the use of consultancy firms by government. The use of consultants was a practice that continued throughout much of the 1980s, but in the Major years their use came under scrutiny and was subsequently reduced on grounds of cost-efficiency. As one contemporary official observed: Consultancy was the thing in the 1980s, but it was then rather criticised by Ken Clarke [Chancellor of the Exchequer 1993–7] in the 1990s due to the amount of money which was being spent on consultants. In particular, because he recognised he could get similar advice, at much cheaper cost to the tax-payers, from his own civil servants. Thus, at the start of the Thatcher administration, the use of consultants became an additional component of the policy-making process

The Changing Relations between Ministers and Civil Servants 179

and one that altered the balance of resources within the core executive. Their use was cut back during the 1990s, but they still remain a key alternative resource which ministers can utilise.

Conclusion: democracy, power, elitism and the core executive Both the differentiated policy model and the ‘end of the Whitehall paradigm’ model have identified some important changes. The role of officials has changed, there are more sources of policy advice, ministers are more policy active and the closed world of civil servants gently directing ministers has gone. However, this does not mean that the old relationships have disappeared. The influence of officials on policy remains vital, despite the changing nature of resource-dependency within the core executive during the Conservative years. Furthermore, it is crucial to recognise that minister–civil servant relations also vary from one department to another. Nevertheless, civil servants still play a significant role in defining the nature of problems, the ‘facts’ and the viability of solutions. Interestingly, much of the advice that officials do provide is political advice rather than policy advice. Officials are very good at advising ministers how to obfuscate issues to disarm the Opposition, but the quality of their policy advice is often variable (see Chapter 6). Nevertheless, both ministers and civil servants continue to pay formal lip service to the constitutional model because it is in their selfinterest to do so. As we have argued, the power-dependency model provides a more convincing description of the relations within the core executive than the constitutional model. However, we are, in part, critical of Rhodes’ broader differentiated polity model, largely because of its inherent pluralism. Unlike many pluralists, Rhodes recognises the importance of structural constraints on the actions of agents. Nevertheless, his differentiated polity model is underpinned by the core tenet of pluralism: that power in the British political system is diffused. It is the implicit pluralistic logic of the differentiated polity model with which we wish to take issue. In our view, the interviews we conducted suggest that, despite the structural changes in the policy process over the last two decades – for example, the introduction of Next Steps agencies and the greater use of outside consultants and special advisers – the crucial actors in the policy process remain those located within departments, i.e. ministers and civil servants. These

180 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

two sets of actors continue to act as the guardians of the policy process which, in turn, continues to be predominantly top-down, closed, secretive and elitist. This then leads to the interesting question as to why ministers and civil servants continue to subscribe to this particular narrow model of policy-making. Ministers and civil servants have continued to protect their dominant position in the policy process because it is in their mutual interest to do so. This is mainly a reflection of a particular view of democracy that both sets of actors hold. This position can only be understood in its historical context, as part of what we referred to in the introductory chapter as the British political tradition. This tradition advocates a limited conception of popular representation and a conservative notion of responsibility. It is informed by a top-down view of democracy that downplays the importance of participation. Thus, there is virtually no emphasis within the British system on the notion that the government should be responsive to the population. Instead, ministers and civil servants believe in responsible, strong, government; with its emphasis on the idea that the governing elite should be capable of taking strong, decisive and necessary, even if unpopular, action. It is a top-down view of democracy that asserts that government knows best. Both ministers and civil servants subscribe to this elitist, leadership, view of democracy and, therefore, have a shared interest in protecting it. So, despite the extent to which the structure, organisation and culture of government departments have changed in the last two decades, in our view power still remains predominantlycentrally concentrated and justified by a continuing strong British political tradition.

8 The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive

In this chapter, we look at relations between the departments and the world outside Whitehall and Westminster. Of course, the ‘political’ world outside the core executive is extensive and therefore we cannot deal with all aspects of departmental relations. Consequently, we focus on those aspects of that broader world that are most important to us given our theoretical concerns. So, we do not examine the relations between our departments and sub-central government in its many guises, an issue which others have covered (Rhodes 1988). Rather, we concentrate upon the departments’ relations with interest groups and, to a much lesser extent, with the media and the public. There are two reasons for the focus on interest groups which take us back to key issues raised in the introductory chapter. First, interest groups, and more specifically policy networks, are crucial in contemporary discussions of governance. To Rhodes, policy networks are an important feature of the differentiated polity and their role represents a significant aspect of the hollowing out of the British state. Second, interest group relations with government are also fundamentally important for a critical examination of the pluralist model of power. After all, to pluralists, civil society is characterised by divisions between interest groups, not more fundamental differences based upon gender, class or race. As such, politics is conceptualised in terms of competition between interest groups for influence over government. While the chapter concentrates upon interest groups it also considers the departments’ relations with the media and the public. In large part, this is also because the role of both is important for a pluralist conception of power, given that both are seen as crucial in ensuring the accountability of government, a key notion to a pluralist. 181

182 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

So, the main questions raised in this chapter concern the changing role of interest groups and policy networks in the last 25 years and the extent to which the media and the public have a significant role in checking the power of government. Once again, in attempting to explain the changes in interest group/government relations, we shall return to the two meta-theoretical issues raised in the introductory chapter and ask what role agents and structures, and institutions and ideas played in these changes.

Departments and interest groups This section is organised around a consideration of a much used, if contested, model of interest group/government relations: the policy network model (for a sympathetic view, see Marsh and Rhodes 1992a; Marsh, 1998; Marsh and Smith 2000; for a critical view, see Dowding 1995). The idea of policy networks is crucial to Rhodes’ notion that Britain is a differentiated polity. Essentially power is exercised through a series of overlapping networks rather than a hierarchy. As such, in this section we need to examine the nature and extent of policy networks in the policy areas covered by our departments and, in particular, the role that government plays in relation to these networks. However, before we can progress, we need briefly to review the policy network literature. The policy network approach The basic idea of the network’s literature is simple. It is argued that much, some enthusiasts might even say most, policy-making in Britain occurs as a result of discussions between departments and representatives of interest groups in fairly closed networks. This policy network literature has been extensively reviewed elsewhere and we do not intend to offer another review here (see Marsh and Smith 2000). Suffice it to say, that for Marsh and Rhodes (1992a): • networks exist on a continuum from closed policy communities to open and flexible issue networks; • networks are structures of resource dependencies with policymaking occurring through resource exchange between network members; • the types of networks affect policy outcomes through the ability to control entrants and issues within the network (see Marsh and Rhodes 1992a).

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 183

We shall use our material to throw light on a series of questions highlighted in the network literature which are crucially important to broader discussions of power and governance. These questions are: • • • •

Are policy networks a key feature of British policy-making? Which interest(s) dominate(s) the policy networks? To what extent do policy networks affect outcomes? How and why do networks change?

These questions raise issues concerning both the pattern of governance and the distribution of power in Britain. If Rhodes’ differentiated polity is accurate we would expect policy networks to be common; to involve exchange relationships between government and interest groups); to reflect the segmented nature of the executive (so different sections of the executive will be involved in different interest groups); and not to be dominated by government interests. If pluralism is an accurate description of the British power structure, we would expect no single group or set of interests to be dominant in a series of the policy networks (i.e. for there to be plurality over space) and the nature of the networks to be subject to a great deal of change which would be largely political driven (i.e. for there to be plurality over time). We shall initially address these questions through a consideration of the nature of, and changes in, the relationships between interest groups and government in each of our four departments. The pattern of interest group/government relations in the four departments Obviously, we cannot present a full picture of the relations between interest groups and government across our four departments. We do not have the information or the space to do so. Rather, we begin by outlining a broad picture of the links, before identifying how they have changed over time and, more specifically, the effect of the change of government in 1997. In the next section, we first assess what these results mean for our broader concerns with the pattern of governance and distribution of power within Britain, before examining explanations of the changes. The overall picture. Our data suggests three broad conclusions. First, there are a significant number of policy networks within the four departments that are rooted in resource exchanges; some are, or were, very tight, although there are probably fewer of those than the most enthusiastic proponents of the model might suggest. Second, it is

184 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

crucial to disaggregate. In this sense there is plurality. There are different patterns both between and within departments. At the same time, these networks are not unchanging and there has been considerable change over time. Third, tight networks, at least, have an influence over policy outcomes; indeed that is a crucial aspect of the exchange. Some relationships between government and interests have been very close. Perhaps the best example in the four departments is the Home Office and policing policy. Here, as McLeay (1998: 130) shows, there is a very tight network, well towards the policy community end of the Marsh and Rhodes continuum: Policing demonstrated stability in relationships, relationships derived from actors’ structural positions … Policing policy networks had continuity of membership; and they had vertical independence based on shared service delivery and responsibilities. Overall, there has been a high degree of consensus relating to the primary values of policing. The key actors in this network are the politicians and senior civil servants in the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), but two other actors do play significant roles. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary is crucially concerned with issues involving the regulation of the police and the Law Commission provides advice on legislation. However, other interests occupy a limited role. The Police Federation and the Superintendents’ Association are involved in discussions on the conditions of service of police officers, but do not have insider status in relation to policy. As such, they are much more likely to use the media to put pressure on the Home Office than are ACPO; in Grant’s (1978) terms a classic outsider group strategy. Non-state actors are noticeable by their absence from the policy formulation process (for limited exceptions see McLeay 1998: 128–9). There is considerable resource exchange between the Home Office and ACPO. The Home Office has resources because it controls the legislative process, which determines both the criminal law within which the police operate and the regulation of the police force. It also controls the purse-strings because: ‘(it) advise(s) on the allocation of finances to all the forces, within the Treasury’s budget allocation’ (McLeay 1998: 116). On the other hand, ACPO have resources. They have considerable expertise on all aspects of policing which the Home Office needs. Perhaps, more importantly, it is the police who deliver

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 185

policing; they are, often literally, street-level bureaucrats who can greatly affect the efficacy of policing policy on the ground. Most broadly, as McLeay (1998: 116) emphasises, the doctrine of operational independence which underpins British policing means that: An activist … Home Secretary, despite the persuasive powers of the Home Office, cannot depend upon corporatist-style adherence by the Chief Constables. Institutionalised decentralisation, police professionalism and the doctrine of constabulary independence have worked together to legitimise the autonomy of individual Chief Constables. This is why the relationship between the Home Office and Chief Officers tends to be co-operative rather than confrontational. Our interviewees confirmed McLeay’s analysis of the nature of the relationship between the Home Office and ACPO. An ex-Permanent Secretary stressed the importance of chief constables as a source of information for senior civil servants: [Chief Constables] know people around the country (and) they can ring you back and tell you all the facts and they’ve got to be right. I mean if the Home Secretary says things, and they aren’t right, you are in a terrible mess. He also stressed their role in policy delivery: We depended entirely on Chief Constables to deliver. The Home Secretary has a policy, how does he get it translated into action? It’s no good just telling the Chief Constables that’s what they’ve got to do, they won’t do it. And they don’t have to. The politicians made similar points. So, Merlyn Rees, Labour Home Secretary in the 1970s, emphasised: I knew [the Police Federation] but I wouldn’t consult them on policy; that didn’t arise. [The superintendents] would write and they would all expect you to go to their conferences and meetings. But the only ones [with] a formal link to officials would be ACPO because of the way its power had built up. Michael Howard, who was Home Secretary when the Conservatives left office in 1997, even went as far as to argue: If I had an idea which I thought was going to reduce crime but ACPO said it was not a realistic idea for these reasons then I would

186 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

listen carefully to that and probably more carefully than I would to the officials in the Home Office. Not surprisingly, this view of the relationship was confirmed by ACPO. One President of ACPO emphasised: Our committees know which sections of the Home Office are working in each area and there are a lot of meetings and exchange of correspondence. That is continuous. The Home Secretary writes to me and keeps me informed and I have meetings with him to which I take the vice-president. I have direct contact with the Home Secretary’s office and with the Permanent Secretary, but most with the police department. We sometimes also form crosscutting task forces to deal with particular issues, as we did with race relations and with corruption. While this relationship was probably the closest, others were similar and, again, all involved clear exchange relations. So, in the Department of Energy, particularly before the privatisations, there were close relations between the fuels and the various sections of the department. This closeness was based on an exchange but was also, in part, a reflection of the fact that the Department of Energy was small. As such, there was less opportunity to move civil servants around the department than in departments like the DTI; so individual civil servants developed particularly close relations with ‘their’ fuels. The closeness of the relationships was borne out in our interviews. As an example, Nigel Lawson, Energy Secretary between 1981 and 1983, argued: The nuclear division within the Department regarded themselves as almost evangelists for nuclear power and they had to make the case for nuclear power within the Department and they hoped that ministers would more widely. But I don’t think this was resented because other sections were doing similar things. Similarly, one Grade 2 who served in the 1980s claimed: The CEGB was very strong; a powerful influence on departmental thinking. And the contact which the Chairmen of the nationalised industries had with the Deputy Secretaries and with the ministers was actually a very powerful force indeed.

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 187

Perhaps most interestingly, a Grade 3 in the department in the 1990s emphasised: The Department of Energy tended obviously to deal with its producer interests and they were very good at maintaining relationships. In the Oil Division you would spend a lot of time talking to the oil companies and they were better organised than the consumer interests. We did see the consumer interest a lot throughout electricity privatisation; we were constantly seeing the major energy user councils or the Consumers’ Association or whatever. But there was a well-organised and fairly well defined group of industries around the Department of Energy with whom we needed to have a relationship and I suppose the only question is whether we did give enough weight to the consumer and the green side of things. There was a similar pattern in the industry sections of the DTI. Here, until 1987, particular sections of the department had responsibility for certain industries. This inevitably meant that there were close relations, with these sections sponsoring the interests of these industries in the department in much the same way as the sections in the Department of Energy sponsored the interests of the various fuels. Once again, the basis of the relationship was an exchange; the industries needed the ear of government, while the department needed information and co-operation from the companies with which they were dealing. As we argue below, even when the Conservative government abolished the sponsoring sections, the close relations persisted because the exchange benefited both sides. The pattern of relations with interests in the trade section of the DTI is similar. Some industries have close contacts, although one or two civil servants on the trade side emphasise an absence, rather than an excess, of lobbying. So, one Grade 2 argued: We get lobbied quite a lot by the textile industry and a bit from others when particular problems arise. If anything I’m always surprised by the lack of interest that industry takes, rather than feeling that I am being excessively badgered. I think they should actually take more interest. Obviously, there was close and continuing contact with those industries, such as textiles or cars, which were constantly concerned with trade issues. However, few contacts were continuous or institutionalised. The department would approach the industry concerned if a particular set of international negotiations were coming up:

188 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

(We would approach the industry) either directly or through the domestic side of the Department. If we had direct lines out already then we would use those, if we didn’t know the industry for some reason we would ask the other side; for instance on telecoms where the home side of the DTI, because it is the regulator, has very close contacts with the industry, we would tend to go through them. Trade has particularly close links with the City. One retired Grade 1 argued: ‘you had lots to do with the City or the main City associations and a certain amount to do with the CBI, but they tended not to be as evident’. Many of these contacts were interpersonal and informal. Indeed, one retired DTI Grade 2 was particularly clear about the nature of the exchange relationship involved: You would know all the major merchant banks in the City; you would be on Christian name terms with all the people who were concerned there. It was essential for us to do that because they would bring business to you and merchant banks were there to oil the wheels for a particular contract and they would come along to us and say ‘Look I’ve this one going, will you give cover?’ because if we gave them a guarantee then they could take that guarantee and use it as collateral for raising money. Most links are with economic interests, although the extent of contacts with non-economic interests varies between the different sections of trade. One contemporary Grade 7 dealing with tariff policy reported little contact: I have very little consultation with lobby groups. Partly because the NGOs [non-governmental organisations] we come across tend not to be much interested in trade policy. They might be interested in the environment, they might be interested in slave labour, but whether you should reduce tariffs on cars doesn’t really have much appeal to them. However, the situation is different in a colleague’s section of the department. Here, a failure to consult with environmental interests on the multilateral agreement on investment led to major problems. These environmental groups were incensed and used the media to publicise their case. As the civil servant indicated, the likely consequence is

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 189

that there will be wider consultation with NGOs in future: ‘not to agree with them but at least to engage them in discussion’. In the four departments studied, the links are closest where an obvious exchange relationship is involved and either economic or professional interests are crucial. This does not mean that other groups have no contacts, but they are not as integrated into the policy-making process. Elsewhere, interest groups were consulted. Consultation lists were almost always extensive and if an interest group wants to talk to a department it will almost always be seen. However, such lists and such consultations are largely cosmetic. Groups that have few resources to exchange have limited access and less influence. As we shall see below, this was particularly the case during the Conservative years, when consultation, particularly formal consultation, decreased. However, those groups with significant influence over the delivery of policy, a key resource, retained their position in networks. The DSS provides a clear example of this pattern. So, in an area like pensions there will be close contacts with the organisation representing the pensions industry and fairly regular contacts with organisations like the National Pensioners’ Convention and Age Concern. These latter type of cause organisations will always be seen by civil servants, if they are viewed as being representative, because departments need to know the consumers’, in this case the pensioners’, view of issues and proposed legislative changes. However, they do not have the privileged access of the pension companies who possess more resources to exchange with government. It is the pension companies who sell and operate private pension provision and this is crucial, particularly if a government is attempting to reduce the cost of state provision. In the DSS, as elsewhere, control of such resources ensures access and influence.

Changes over time in policy networks The nature of relations within networks clearly changes over time. In this section, we shall concentrate on the changes that occurred after 1979 and, subsequently, those that have been taking place since the election of the Blair government in 1997, because they are particularly interesting. However, it is worth emphasising that network change does not only occur with a change of government. Individuals can make a difference; so a new minister, senior civil servant or interest group leader can change the operation of the network.

190 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

The Conservatives and the end of consultation Many argued that one of the key characteristics of the Thatcherite governing style was its attitude to consultation. To many, the postwar consensus had been based upon consultation and compromise with key interests. Indeed, some went as far as to suggest that Britain’s relative economic decline was, in large part, a result of over-governance; that in responding to pressure from particular interests, British governments had intervened too widely and at too great a cost (King 1975). Of course, much of this literature is focused explicitly, or more often implicitly, on the role of the trade unions. In this vein, the unions were seen to be overwhelmingly powerful before 1979, but cut down to size by the Thatcher government. However, the point has also been made more generally. So, according to Kavanagh (1987: 9), Thatcher produced: ‘a set of policies designed to produce a strong state and a government strong enough to resist the selfish claims of pressure groups’. Consequently, it has been argued that the Thatcher years saw the collapse of existing policy networks. Is this view confirmed in relation to the networks in these four departments? There was certainly a decrease in consultation in the Conservative years. The exclusion of the trade unions was the most prominent change and we picked this up in our interviews. As a civil servant who had worked in the Department of Employment when Norman Tebbit was Secretary of State argued: When I went into the Department of Employment the culture really was that they were the sponsoring department of the trade union movement. If the trade union movement didn’t want anything to happen then it would not happen, even if there was a Conservative government and a Conservative Secretary of State. Now all that changed rapidly with the arrival of Norman Tebbit and it was quite amazing how the civil servants changed. However, the pattern was more general. All the networks changed, but some more than others. It really all depended on the nature of the exchange relationships involved and how they had changed over time. The policy communities were very resistant to, although not immune from, change. So, the policing policy network remained tight (McLeay 1998). The Conservatives were committed to a law and order agenda, which meant that they were sympathetic to many of the interests of ACPO. Michael Howard, as Secretary of State, particularly valued the link, which reinforced his own policy interests. However, even here

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 191

there were changes when the government sought to exercise more control over the direction of policing, in particular, increasing efficiency and holding down costs (McLeay 1998) As we said earlier, individual ministers or interest group leaders can affect the process and extent of consultation. An ACPO official made the general point: [The Home Office/ACPO relationship] is not a constant one simply because there are so many personalities involved. Ministers change and so do ACPO Presidents and the relationship between the Home Secretary and the ACPO President is crucial. An executive from NACRO was more specific: NACRO has always had, to some extent, a structured relation with the Home Office … Overall, we have found that the Home Office over the years has not had much difficulty with being criticised by us; constructive criticism. That was true right until Michael Howard. That was the first time NACRO really had a hard time on the policy campaigning side. The changes in the DTI were also revealing. Here, as we saw earlier, the Conservatives abolished the sponsoring sections system. This had little effect on relations where there was still resources to exchange. So, to the extent that the department still needed information, contacts remained close. As one senior DTI official said: (When the change occurred) I was in the vehicles part of the Department. It was very odd because it did not actually make any difference. It was just that the names were changed. It sounds like the tired old bureaucratic perception that ministers come and go and change little except the labels, but in that particular case there really was a bit of that. We had to move from being called the Vehicle Division to being called the Vehicle Markets Division and all the other sponsorship divisions changed in that way. There was less emphasis on financial assistance and more emphasis on helping industry to help itself but I do not think it was really a big deal because there were always parts of the Department where there were pretty solid things that had to be done by government.

192 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

However, the change in economic and industrial policy had a much clearer effect. As one retired DTI Grade 2 put it: I think that as the 1980s went on the Department became drier and drier and some of the contacts dried up because there was no future in them. What was the point in building a relationship with businessman X if there was nothing he could do for you or you could do for him. Thus, there appears to have been greater change in the industry section of the department, more because of the change in ideology and policy direction, than because of the changes in departmental structure; although, of course, the two are related. In the trade section, most of the exchange imperatives persisted because the government was strongly committed to promoting and defending Britain’s interests within the European Union and GATT. If there were structural changes within the DTI that affected networks, change was much greater in Energy. Here, two factors brought major change: the privatisation process and the subsequent abolition of the department. The privatisations of electricity and gas dominated the Department of Energy in the 1980s. The managers of the nationalised industries were closely involved in the privatisation process. So, for example, Hoopes’ (1996) study of oil privatisation indicates the important role that British Petroleum, the British National Oil Company and the British Gas Corporation played in the evolution of policy in this area. Of course, the change did break up the links that existed prior to privatisation because the exchange relationships changed significantly. The department was no longer responsible for the industries and the key relationships for the industries are now with the regulatory machinery; although, of course, the legislative framework is still set by the government. The privatisation of electricity also had a particular effect on the position of the nuclear industry. It forced more accurate figures on the cost of electricity generated by the nuclear programme into the open for the first time and this contributed to increased scepticism about the future of nuclear power. The privatisations also heralded the end of the department, which, as we saw earlier, was abolished in 1994. Most of the department’s residual work was moved to the DTI, but a limited amount, mainly to do with energy efficiency and related issues, went to the Department of

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 193

the Environment. This change also had an effect on the networks. As one Grade 3, dealing with the energy industry in the DTI, put it: The merger of the Department of Energy into the DTI back in the early 1990s allowed us to move people in who were not as familiar with, that is not as bedded into, a particular technology. As such, they could ask some of the more naive questions and get to grips with the issues. The movement of energy efficiency issues into the Department of the Environment also affected the relationships with interest groups. One senior official who moved from Energy to Environment highlighted how the exchange relationships changed because of the different culture in the DoE and the way in which they perceived the energy efficiency issue: I suppose the main thing that changed was that the Department of the Environment had a much more pro-active political view of the Energy Efficiency Office than the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy came at it very much by asking: ‘what are the market failures and what is it sensible to do?’ In contrast, the Department of the Environment thought: ‘this is a good thing, therefore we must promote it whatever way we can and we must fight for the necessary resources and power’. It felt rather like you had become part of a lobby group, you weren’t giving advice to ministers about the economics of it all, you were saying it was a good thing and it was made clear to you that you should promote the cause. Of course, the Department of the Environment, having large expenditure programmes, had much more ability to put money into the area. You just shaved off the odd ten million, say off the housing programme, and put it into the Energy Efficiency Office. In addition, because the Treasury had made a complete mess of the imposition of VAT on domestic energy, they had a strong interest in putting money into the energy efficiency side … So, that was certainly a culture change. Despite this, perhaps the biggest changes in the process of consultation and the pattern of networks occurred in the DSS. Here, the exchange relationships were always less clear as, on the whole, the department is delivering benefits to the poor and disparate. Consequently, closed policy communities did not develop. The Thatcher, and indeed the

194 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Major, governments were generally unsympathetic to the aims of interest groups in this field; after all, most were campaigning for changes which would involve increased social provision. This point is easily made if we compare the incoming Blair government with its predecessors, which we do in the next section. However, one senior DSS civil servant (Grade 7) expressed a common, if cynical, view among those in the department: I’m not sure that towards the end they were getting much quality advice from anywhere. They seemed driven by the leader page of the Daily Mail … I’m sure that does an injustice to them in that we had some good and thoughtful ministers who did listen quite a lot to welfare groups but policy tended to be what backbenchers would like. Once again, it is worth emphasising that individuals can affect networks. So, one senior DSS official argued: Lilley was a very inward looking character. He was not interested in and did not consult or care about the Department’s relationships with the traditional lobby groups. There were changes in networks in the Conservative years. Consultation was reduced. However, where clear exchange relationships persisted, networks remained, but not unchanged. Overall, the groups who maintained insider status were most likely to be economic interests or professional groups because they retained the resources that ensured an exchange relationship with government. At the same time, there was no simple causal relationship between a change in government and a change in the networks. Ideological change and, particularly, the commitment to New Right economic policies, reduced links, especially in the industry section of the DTI. Structural change also played a role; so the privatisations and the abolition of the Department of Energy had a clear effect on relations between the government and the energy industry. At the same time, the views and actions of individual ministers, like Howard or Lilley, were also important. The Labour government and a return of consultation? There seems little doubt that there was both a major increase in consultation and changes in who was consulted after the Labour government came to power. Almost without exception our interviewees confirmed this

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 195

view. The change was probably most notable in the DSS. One Grade 3 in the DSS stressed the greater consultation: [The current Government] wants to bring [interest groups] in at a much earlier stage. Previously, we’ve generally had more of an idea and presented options, but now we are asking for everyone’s views regardless. Another Grade 5’s response dealt with the changes in who was consulted: One of the main differences between this government and the last is that we now have more contact with (interest groups). I think the last government did not welcome the voluntary organisations and, of course, they were not supportive of what the government was trying to do. This lot has relied on those voluntary organisations because they have been briefing them for the last eighteen years. I think their relationship with the people who used to brief them is difficult because they are now in government and they are going to have to take forward (changes) which do not necessarily tally with what they were doing before. But there is greater emphasis on presentation and selling policy under this government and I think that will involve greater contact with the voluntary associations. A DSS official concurred: There is clearly a fundamental difference between this and the previous administration. The previous one really did not consult at all and so one might say they were more decisive. It was easier to get clear steers from them, but the current administration clearly has a large constituency out there that they are keen to keep on board. The increase in consultation has not been confined to the DSS, although the contrast with the previous administration is most stark there. So, one of the civil servants in the DTI dealing with energy made a similar point: [The difference] is fairly clear-cut. Pre-election we had very little contact with … the unions associated with the nuclear industry … Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace (or) local politicians from areas

196 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

surrounding the nuclear plants … Post-election I’ve been in contact with them all on a one-to-one basis. Not surprisingly, this view was confirmed by the interest groups. So, for example, an executive from Gingerbread claimed: I’ve had two meetings with the Head of Policy and they have phoned up and asked for another one. They want us on board and are prepared to put some effort in. Whereas previously, under the Tories, it was always us pushing at the door. So there is a difference; two years ago we simply wouldn’t have been in this position. These quotes suggest some of the reasons for the change. Clearly, the Labour government has different policy objectives and is more committed to consultation. However, at the same time, it has debts to pay to the groups that serviced it in opposition; so we may expect consultation with such groups to continue for some time. Part of the current exchange relationship involves access in return for services rendered in the past.

Policy networks and policy outcomes Of course, the existence of a close network does not inevitably mean that it influences policy outcomes; that is an empirical question. We have to establish whether, and in what ways, a particular network affects policy outcomes. It is clear that networks can affect outcomes because if a group is a member of a tight policy community that membership gives it a crucial resource: privileged access to the policymaking process. However, this resource has to be used; it does not by definition give the interest group influence over policy. We need to establish the resources that network members have and how they use them, in order to assess how important a group’s membership of the network is in affecting its influence over policy. To answer this question satisfactorily, we would need much more information on the resource exchanges between government and interest groups than we have. Indeed, there must be considerable doubt as to whether sufficiently detailed material would ever be available, given that few details are available about the private negotiations involved in tight networks. As such, all we can do here is briefly illustrate how networks can affect outcomes. We shall do this by returning to the case of policing policy. Obviously, one case cannot be generalised, but it does show us how interest groups affect policy in tight networks.

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 197

As we saw there is a tight network in policing policy based upon a clear exchange relationship between the Home Office and ACPO. ACPO’s role in the network gives them privileged access to the policymaking process. So, McLeay (1998: 118–19) points out that ACPO is represented on over 60 groups chaired by government departments and on a number of Home Office Standing Committees. The Central Conference of Chief Constables also meets in secret twice a year with Home Office civil servants chaired by the Permanent Secretary to ‘discuss issues of common concern to the police service’. McLeay also emphasises that ACPO effectively uses that position to influence policy. So, when the Sheehy Committee recommended major changes in the wages, structure and conditions of the police force in 1993, the government bowed to pressure from ACPO, backed by the Police Federation, and rejected many of the recommendations (Benyon 1993: 53–4). They also had a significant influence on the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which, despite strong opposition from civil liberties groups, gave more public order powers to the police and constrained the ‘right to silence’ (McLeay 1998: 123). The latter had been a particular long-term goal of ACPO. Of course, ACPO’s privileged access doesn’t inevitably give them influence over policy outcomes. As such, there are occasions on which they lose out. So, in the mid-1990s, the government’s attempt to gain greater control in policing resulted in the Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act, which allows the Home Secretary to set annual objectives for police forces. This was opposed by ACPO, but pushed through by the Home Office. The point here is that ultimately the government has the power to pass legislation, but in doing so it must weigh the perceived advantages of such new legislation against the problems which may be caused if ACPO members fail to co-operate. Interest groups, governance and power Here, we first assess what the changing pattern of interest group/government relations in the last 25 years tells us about both the changing patterns of governance and the distribution of power in Britain. Subsequently, we look at explanations of those changing patterns of governance. Changing patterns of governance and the distribution of power Our research suggests a number of conclusions. First, as we emphasised above, policy networks do play a significant role in British politics,

198 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

although it is important not to overemphasise that role and we need to disaggregate. Second, although these networks involve exchange relationships, in most cases, and certainly in those cases where public interest or cause groups are involved, the government actors control the more important resources; so it is an unequal exchange. This is an important point. The existence of networks in most cases is dependent on government (see Smith 1993) and this was highlighted by the Conservative administration which dispensed with a number of networks. However, where groups such as doctors or the police control implementation and have high legitimacy, government is heavily dependent on those networks. Consequently, closed policy communities are dominated by a limited number of powerful interests, have more influence over policy and are more resistant to change. In our view, these findings support a critical view of both the differentiated polity model and the pluralist model. Policy networks exist because an institutionalised relationship between interest groups and government is almost inevitable if each has resources that the other needs. Obviously, when it comes to policymaking, the government always possesses resources; after all they are the legitimate source of policy. They also exercise crucial regulatory functions. In addition, they control economic resources, including grants and subsidies. As such, the crucial question is: do interest groups control resources which government needs and for which they are willing to exchange access and influence? The answer to that question is clearly yes, but disaggregation is crucial. There were, and are, significant differences in the patterns of access both across and within departments. There is also variation over time. We did identify some close networks but they were not common. As such, in so far as the differentiated polity model implies the existence of strong and persistent interest groups, and we are aware that it need not do so, then our study does not confirm that pattern. Perhaps more importantly, our analysis suggests that government was the most important actor in the vast majority of networks. In most cases, the distribution of resources between government and interest groups is an asymmetric one. Government has authority and can make law. It also controls important financial resources which groups need. Of course, this is not to say that interest groups have no resources, but our study shows that in many areas, particularly areas of social policy, government has no desperate need of the resources that these cause or promotional groups possess. This does not mean that they are not con-

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 199

sulted or that they have no influence, but, as we saw in relation to the pattern of consultation in the DSS during the Thatcher years, government controls, and can effectively cut off, access. Here, our point is not that policy networks are unimportant, but rather that Rhodes perhaps gives too much emphasis to them as a feature of policy-making and as a check on the power of the central state. Our next point follows almost inevitably. We accept that there is plurality. Different groups do have access to different networks; no one group is present across a variety of networks. However, in our view there are clear patterns. It is the economic and professional groups who have privileged access and they, plus government, who dominate closed networks. We could find little evidence of consistent trade union presence in key networks, certainly post-1979. Similarly, as we argued above, while ‘cause’ or ‘promotional’ groups were consulted, they were not involved in close relationships. There is a self-perpetuating element here. The groups that are privileged in tight policy networks are, by definition, those who already possess resources, while, of course, policy network membership itself becomes a key resource. Networks and plurality do not confirm pluralism. Power seems concentrated in the hands of a limited number of interests. Explaining change in the role of networks and the pattern of governance It is one thing to identify changes in the role of networks, but another to explain those changes. How far is change driven by actors, whether individuals or governments? To what extent do exogenous changes in the broader economic and political environment lead to changes in the policy networks and in policy outcomes? How far is change shaped by ideas? Agents clearly affected the nature of networks. So, first the election of a Conservative government in 1979 and subsequently Labour’s election in 1997 changed the extent and nature of the DSS’s relations with social policy groups. At the same time, individual ministers also matter to some extent. Certainly, a number of DSS civil servants argued that Peter Lilley was particularly reluctant to consult with the social policy groups. It is also worth emphasising that agents are likely to have most influence in loose networks because in such networks there are not the same imperatives to exchange as in policy communities. Although networks are influenced by agents, the economic and political context in which they are located also plays a role. So, if the context changes, the network changes. Our research provides ample

200 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

examples of this interaction. Both the economic context and the particular economic policies pursued by the Conservative government affected networks. Three examples are illustrative. First, Hoopes (1996) shows how the increased role of market forces within the oil industry from the late 1970s shaped the British government’s oil strategies and led both to the break-up of the policy network and the privatisation of the industry. Second, even the tight policing network was affected by the increased emphasis on managerialism in the public sector. As we saw, McLeay argues that the Conservative government’s managerialism was an important element in its attempt to exercise more control of the policing policy network. Third, their emphasis on cutting public expenditure and the corollary reductions in welfare provision ensured that the DSS’s relations with interest groups concerned with improving welfare provision significantly worsened. The effect of the political context on networks was also evident. We have already seen that a significant change occurred in the networks and patterns of consultation as a result of the change in government in 1997. At the same time, change in the structure of government can also affect networks. In this way, the abolition of the Department of Energy changed the relations between the departments and the fuels, although of course policy change, in the shape of the privatisations, also played a role here. More specifically, the shift of the Energy Efficiency Unit into the Department of the Environment, rather than the DTI, when Energy was abolished, clearly changed relations within that field. The DoE was more sympathetic to energy conservation and links with the interest groups became closer. In the DTI, the Conservative government’s decision to end the system of sponsoring sections did mean that relations between the department and industry became less formal or institutionalised, although the links remained because both sides needed one another; there was still a clear exchange relationship involved. Ideas also clearly affected networks. The Conservative government was committed to much of the rhetoric of the ‘New Right’. In the economic field, this involved an acceptance of neo-classical economics and a belief that trade unions were a massive constraint on the operation of the market. In the social sphere, the emphasis was on responsibilities rather than rights; if there was no such thing as society then individuals must take responsibility for their own lives. These dominant discourses affected networks and policy outcomes. As such, there was little point in consulting unions or social policy interest groups if they were regarded as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 201

However, in each of these cases, we must acknowledge that the relationships are interactive. So, the election of a Labour government may change the political structure, but the effect that this has on networks depends on the attitudes and behaviour of ministers. In turn, that behaviour in changing the network structure provides the context within which future agents act. Similarly, after a set of ideas becomes dominant and helps shape the network structure, that network structure provides the context within which other, competing ideas emerge; perhaps successfully challenging the existing view or perhaps failing because the combination of a tight policy network and a dominant set of ideas is difficult to dislodge. One other point is important here, particularly in the context of recent debates on policy networks. While networks affect policy outcomes, outcomes also affect networks (Marsh and Smith 2000). For example, as we argued earlier, economic policy set a crucial context that reduced consultation in a variety of policy areas. More specifically, in Energy, privatisation changed the nature of the relations between government and the fuel industries. The relationship became less symbiotic as the nature of the exchange relationship changed. Government no longer had direct responsibility for the industries; as such, each side needed the other less. In addition, as far as the industries were concerned, their crucial relationship became the one with the regulator. Similarly, in the DTI, the increased dryness of economic policy meant the Department had little to offer industry, so consultation was superfluous.

Departments, the media and public opinion The idea of pluralist democracy focuses attention upon the role of interest groups, and to a lesser extent parties, in keeping government representative and upon the legislature, interest groups, the media and, to some extent, the public in keeping government accountable. The issues involved in that view are far too broad for us to deal with satisfactorily here. However, we will examine the relationship between departments, the media and public opinion. In particular, we focus upon how departments respond to the media and upon the constraints which public opinion place upon policy-making, especially, although not exclusively, in the Home Office. The role of the media in politics has greatly expanded in the last 30 years. As one Cabinet Office official said: ‘in 1965 there were about

202 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

9 news broadcasts a day, now there are 49 an hour!’ The same official also stressed the extent of the contact departments now have with the media. He pointed out: ‘In a year, the Home Office will handle 175 000 media inquiries, host 200 major media events, give hundreds of interviews and issue at least 800 press notices.’ For that reason, the Home Office has a fully equipped broadcasting studio with fibre-optic links to broadcasters. Among our departments, the Home Office is the one with most contact with the media. As one senior civil servant who had served there said: ‘the business of the Home Office is crisis management. We had to be well prepared. People in the sleepier departments did not have that capacity.’ Nevertheless, all departments are increasingly concerned with their public relations image and the growth of technology, together with the demands of an ever-larger media, has had a significant effect on their work. Perhaps the key change in the 1990s has been that departments are now much more concerned with how a policy will ‘play’ in the media and to the public when they are developing it. As one Grade 3 in the DSS said: The view is that the presentation of policy should form part of the evolution of policy. It should be there right from the start – ‘What is it going to look like?’ This differs from the past when you developed your policy and then you worked out how you would present it. In his view, this was a development which owed a great deal to changes in the media, but which had been significantly speeded up when Labour came to power in 1997; they were much more committed to presenting a coherent, positive image. In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that many ministers in the Labour government have spin-doctors located in their departments whose primary responsibility is the presentation of policy (see Kavanagh and Seldon 1999). During the Conservative administrations, different ministers had different public relations strategies. For example, Tony Newton at the DSS was concerned to keep issues out of the news, believing that media attention could turn relatively mundane matters into potential political time bombs. Similarly, Peter Lilley confided that at the DSS: ‘I was more aware that I had to use the media and that I had to be careful’ because in Social Security ‘quite sensible policies, when they interact with hard cases, can get Social Security Ministers involved in a terrible fuss.’ Lilley would always include his press officer in policy discussions

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 203

because ‘he was very good at advising me on how things would be seen, so I could plan the media coverage.’ Nevertheless, it is in the Home Office where the media and the public have most impact in a number of ways. First, it is rare for a serving Home Secretary not to have his own agenda impacted on in some way by a high-profile media story. As Willie Whitelaw observed (1989: 161): A Home Secretary is particularly exposed to sudden and totally unexpected storms. It is truly said that he can go to bed at night with a clear sky as far as Home Affairs are concerned and wake up the next morning with a major crisis on his hands. Worst of all, many of these particular events permit no simple solution and provide the press with marvellous copy. For example, the last ten years of Conservative government witnessed Douglas Hurd and the Hungerford massacre, David Waddington and the Strangeways riot, Kenneth Baker and dangerous dogs, Jamie Bulger’s murder and Ken Clarke and, finally, the Dunblane tragedy and Michael Howard. Each case reveals the causal relationship between emotive stories surfacing in the media and the pressure Home Secretaries then face to be seen to take quick, decisive and effective action. The Home Secretary, probably more than most Cabinet ministers is at the mercy of events over which he or she can have little or no control. They are often placed in a position in which they are simply reactive. David Waddington was clear about the repercussions of the Strangeways breakout: We were sailing merrily on with the demands of the Broadcasting Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill when Strangeways blew up and this had awful implications for my career and for the future of prisons. We acted in the right way, as the press got bored after the first few weeks, but it was humiliating seeing those pictures in the papers. Although Waddington did not resign over Strangeways, his ministerial career and his Home Office policy initiatives were effectively destroyed by the incident, which also demonstrates the impotence of Home Secretaries in the face of events over which they have little control. At another level the need to respond to media pressure, often with the introduction of swift policy measures, sometimes leads to poorly drafted and ill-conceived legislative packages. One official referred to

204 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

this process as an ‘operational spasm’ which regularly occurred in the Home Office. This was the case with the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, despite Kenneth Baker’s claim in an interview that: ‘This was one of the best pieces of legislation I introduced’ (see also Baker 1993: 436). The majority of his officials who worked on the Bill did not share this view. They were distinctly unhappy with what subsequently proved to be an almost impossible Bill to implement and enforce. As one Home Office official commented: The dangerous dogs issue was interesting, as for ministers it is a difficult department in which to be, as you never know what is going to be thrown at you. Nor do you know what the public reaction is going to be. In my experience, Home Secretaries normally have two choices and the way they go depends on their personality. Something happens and there is a call for a response and you are either the sort of person who will sit tight and let it blow over you, or you reach out and say that something needs to be done immediately. Kenneth Baker was not the sort of person to sit back and say how terrible that it was that these things happened. What followed went down in Whitehall folklore as ‘infamously bad legislation’. Another official involved in drafting the Act was even more scathing: We had a rash of really nasty incidents usually involving children and unpleasant dogs like Rottweilers and, in the end, poor old Baker had to do something. It was that sort of syndrome and the result was that we cooked up a bill at very short notice. It raised all sorts of ghastly administrative problems about how to actually enforce the proposed controls on the dog-owners. It was pretty bad, poor legislation because it was done in such a rush. The Home Office in my time probably had an emergency bill in more sessions than not. Now that’s unusual and something most departments do not have to face. Douglas Hurd, reflecting on the media response to the Hungerford massacre, appreciated the problems which crisis management, followed by hurried policy-making, can produce: I think there is a real problem for Home Secretaries, the example for me being the Firearms Act after the Hungerford massacre. The legis-

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 205

lation was not instant, it took us a while, but it became perfectly clear as it proceeded through Parliament that it was defective and that officials simply did not know enough about guns. Douglas Hogg and I sifted through the policy proposals, but it quickly became obvious that they were factually inadequate and we had to make quite a lot of amendments simply to bring the policy in line with the facts. I learnt something from that and, at the time, I was certainly under pressure. Crises that blow up in society and urgently require the Home Secretary to respond in some way, place the ministers under immense pressure, further exacerbated by the effects of emotive media coverage. Some Home Secretaries have perceived it was important to provide a positive, or at least sympathetic, image/response to the media about their department. As one of Roy Jenkins’ senior officials noted: Jenkins was concerned about presentation, as was clear from the way he used his private office in order to become more informed on what was going on around the Department and on the political agenda. His own political agenda, in terms of style as well as policy, was quite a radical change, and this was illustrated in the way the public relations office and the press officer became much more powerful figures and started to come along to departmental meetings. Thus, during the 1960s, the Department became more conscious of its profile regarding presentation to the outside world. Michael Howard provides an interesting, if perhaps extreme, example of the manner in which a minister can be affected by the media. He claimed that, because he had a clear, ideologically informed agenda, something which was unusual in a Home Secretary, he, unlike his predecessors, was not influenced by the vicissitudes of media-related stories: I was not deterred by unfavourable publicity or potentially mediaunfriendly decisions. I did not respond to that pressure which was one of the ways in which I was different. Of course, one of the things you have to know in the Home Office if you’re going to change things is that it is a high-risk department. But I felt it was essential that things were changed and if that meant doing things that meant I would get a lot of criticism, which of course I did, I decided right from the start that I could not let that deter me.

206 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Because if I did, I would not dare tackle the things I felt needed tackling. In contrast, the majority of senior officials who worked with Michael Howard argued that he was the most media-driven Home Secretary under whom they had served. This view was encapsulated in the comment of one of his officials: All Home Secretaries are more reactive to public opinion and the media than in other Cabinet posts. A Home Secretary cannot but help be reactive to public opinion and, indeed, today there is more public opinion than there ever used to be. However, of the thirty years I spent in the Home Office, Howard was far and away the most media-oriented minister I ever worked under. If he saw a related article in the press, he almost immediately felt the need to respond to it in whatever way. Our analysis indicates that the impact of the media on ministers and departments today, compared to 25 years ago, has significantly escalated. The media is omnipresent and ministers are much more conscious of its role and influence. For this reason, departments are crucially concerned about how issues or policies will ‘play’ in the media and to the public. As such, departments are now much better organised in their dealing with the media and ‘spin-doctoring’ has become an accepted, if not respectable, profession. Of course, there are significant differences between departments in the extent of their contacts with the media and, perhaps more importantly, in the way in which the media shapes issues and affects policy. The Home Office is particularly affected. Certainly, one of the essential prerequisites of a successful Home Secretary is an ability to be sensitised/responsive to the demands presented by the media. Under the New Labour government concern with media presentation and public opinion has developed even further. There has been a much more systematic attempt to co-ordinate media presentation. According to Franklin (2001: 134): Centralizing communications at Number 10 under the control of the Prime Minister’s press secretary has been the key priority in Labour’s communications strategy. The intention is to establish the government as the ‘primary definer’ in media discussion of policy, to ensure the consistency of the government line and to minimize

The Departments’ Relations Outside the Core Executive 207

the profile of any dissenting voices. Central control is certainly strict but effective. Does all this mean that governments are responsive to public opinion, or that public opinion, perhaps through the media, acts as a check on the power of the executive, as the pluralist model would suggest? Certainly, it is clear that public opinion can affect government policy. We emphasised examples taken from the concerns of the Home Office. Yet, even in agricultural policy where there is a closed policy community, environmental groups have managed to harness media and public opinion in opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods, against the interests of agricultural producers. However, in our view it would be a mistake to overestimate such developments. Most departments make policy in an environment marked by secrecy where there is little media interest. Of course, if there is a miners’ strike or a massacre, a great deal of public, or more specifically media, attention is turned on the relevant department and its policy-making. Nevertheless, this is the exception, rather than the rule, and most policy-making takes place within departments insulated from media and public pressure.

Conclusion The concept of policy networks has become an increasingly dominant paradigm for understanding both the nature of state–interest group relationships and the processes of governance. Our research, however, suggests a need for caution and further investigation. In a number of policy areas policy networks were neither important nor stable. This is not to suggest a high degree of pluralism but the continuing closed nature of the British core executive and the fact that officials still tend not to rely on outsiders for policy advice. In highly technical fields like social security for instance, where interest groups are generally weak, the main source of information is the department. Consequently, the DSS is not dependent on interest groups for either the making or delivering of policy. A dependence of this type did occur between the Labour opposition and interest groups because Labour lacked the resources of officials and so developed policy with interest groups. Consequently, in the early years of the Labour administration there was some dependence on interest groups but, as the government became established, it started to distance itself from pressure groups.

208 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Where there are close relationships it tends, as the established literature suggests, to be when the government needs either legitimacy, information or assistance with implementation. Nevertheless, these types of relationships are relatively rare; health, the police and agriculture until the mid-1980s being the most obvious candidates. Consequently, we would suggest that contrary to the differentiated policy model the existence of policy networks is asymmetric and depends foremost on the interests and actions of state actors. Seldom, if ever, is it non-state groups that dictate the nature and policies of policy networks.

9 The Role of Europe

Many authors now argue that the British state has been ‘hollowed out’. In particular, it is suggested that power has moved ‘upwards’ in two senses. Most obviously, it is contended that power is moving from Whitehall and Westminster to Brussels. At the same time, it is argued that this is occurring within the context of a broader process of economic globalisation (see Cerny 1990; Held et al. 1999). In this view, these two processes, political and economic, have significantly reduced the power of British central government, so that the core executive and the departments are increasingly structurally constrained (see Rhodes 2000; Rose 2000). Our main aim in this chapter is to examine the degree to which departments are involved in, and constrained by, the EU. At the same time, we will comment upon the main claims of the globalisation thesis, in so far as it impacts upon our concerns. We shall question the extent to which the British state has been hollowed out upwards, in particular emphasising that British central government departments engage with and are affected by the EU to differing extents. In this chapter, we begin by examining the broader context of globalisation within which British government operates. Subsequently, we will focus upon the impact of the EU on the broader operation of British central government. Finally, we concentrate upon the interaction between our departments and the EU, looking at the extent to which they have been constrained by the EU, how it has affected their operation and the extent to which they can resist EU pressure.

The globalisation of the state There are many varieties of the globalisation thesis. For a few, the autonomy of the nation state has been completely undermined (see 209

210 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Ohmae 1990; Hoogvelt 1997). However, most authors agree that there have been significant economic changes that operate as a constraint upon the autonomy of the nation state. Held et al. offer a clear statement of the basic position (1999: 49): Today virtually all nation-states have gradually become enmeshed in and functionally part of a large pattern of global transformations and global flows. Transnational networks have developed across virtually all areas of human activity. Goods, capital, people, knowledge communications and weapons, as well as crime, pollutants, fashion and beliefs, rapidly move across territorial boundaries. Far from this being a world of ‘discrete civilisations’, or simply an international society of states, it has become a fundamentally interconnected global order, marked by intense patterns of change as well as by clear patterns of power, hierarchy and unevenness. For some, globalisation means there is no alternative to neo-liberalism and the introduction of NPM indicates that a new global form of governance is being imposed on the state and that such state reform is an inevitable response to economic globalisation. In this view, global economic pressures have forced states to become increasingly competitive, to adopt neo-liberal economic policies and, thereby, to reduce the burdens which the state places upon producers and taxpayers. Other authors suggest that Britain is more susceptible to some of these global trends than many other polities. Britain has long had an open economy, a traditional commitment to free trade (see Chapter 4), and complex interconnections with financial markets through its overseas investments, sterling’s role as a reserve currency and the centrality of the City of London. Moreover, long-term economic and political decline has made Britain increasingly vulnerable to external economic pressures (see Gamble 1999; Peterson 1999).1 Baker (1997) for instance, suggests that in the area of economic policy there is significant evidence of the transnationalisation of the British state. He argues that

1

An important criticism of the globalisation literature is that this susceptibility is not new, indeed you could argue that with the decline of indebtedness and the end of sterling’s reserve role Britain is less susceptible to foreign economic pressure than it was in the sterling crisis of 1966 (see Stones 1992), the IMF crisis of 1976 (see Coates 1980) and the ERM crisis of 1992 (see Stephens 1996). For a useful summary of critical arguments see Klymlicka 1999).

The Role of Europe 211

the increased role of international organisations, particularly the G7, WTO and EU, together with a growing commitment to liberalisation policies, have meant that outside influences upon British policymaking have become more important. He contends that, while Britain cannot ban the import of hormone implanted beef or Latin American bananas because of the WTO, it was also unable to export beef because of an EU ruling. The key argument is that both the process of economic globalisation and the role of international organisations constrain the policy options of British governments. Hirst and Thompson (1996) reflect a second strand in the globalisation literature; they question the extent of globalisation. They argue that to talk of globalisation as if it was a simple, inexorable and uniform process is misleading. The process is more accurately understood as one of internationalisation or regionalisation. So, the world is divided into three large regional trading blocs, US/Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, with most trade being conducted within each bloc. In this vein, the British economy is still dominated by British domestic capital and British transnational corporations trade mostly in Britain and Europe and hold the majority of their assets in that region. At the same time, while there has been a significant increase in the flexibility or mobility of capital, this, not surprisingly, is much greater in the case of financial/banking capital than industrial capital. Overall, the conclusion here is that globalisation is not as much a constraint on the autonomy of government as Ohmae and others would have us believe. Hay and Watson (1998) suggest that globalisation is a discursive or rhetorical device which has political goals; most specifically the imposition of neo-liberal policies. In this view, the question then is: how much are British governments constrained by the ‘reality’, and/or the discursive construction of globalisation? We need to recognise that both the ‘reality’ and the discursive construction of globalisation or regionalisation do constrain and facilitate agents including governments. As Milner and Keohane (1996: 4) put it: ‘Internationalisation affects the opportunities and constraints facing social and economic actors, and therefore their policy preferences.’ However, it does not determine their actions. Governments have their own interests and are constrained by other pressures, particularly perhaps electoral ones. In our view, British government may appeal to the inevitability of globalisation, in the manner suggested by Hay and Watson, in order to reduce the demands upon them from within society; ‘we cannot do x or y, because we are constrained by the global pressures’. Far from reducing their autonomy, such a strategy may allow government to

212 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

pursue its own concerns with less pressure from the various interests within society. As such, it is at least possible to argue that an appeal to the discourse of globalisation may increase government autonomy, rather than reducing it. It means less will be expected of government in the economic sphere; this will be particularly useful to a left-ofcentre government that wishes to pursue a neo-liberal strategy. At the same time, more resources could then be devoted to trying to woo the electorate; particularly important if we assume the main interest of a government is in re-election. Milner and Keohane (1996: 4–5) are also right to argue that: ‘Internationalisation affects policies and institutions differently country to country depending on the institutional context.’ It is important not to take a deterministic or teleological approach to the issue of global pressure and state autonomy. State autonomy will continue to vary across time and international changes may create new opportunities rather than constraints. Consequently, when examining the impact of external forces on countries, let alone departments, it is crucial to understand the institutional context and how preferences may be shaped by external factors. This means that the state cannot be treated as a unified institution; the impact of external pressures will vary from government to government and from department to department. Unfortunately, we do not have the empirical evidence to identify these differences, but it is an important area for future research.

Whitehall and Europe At the systemic level, the integration of Britain into the EU has clearly had an important impact on the domestic policy process. Gamble and Payne (1996: 250) suggest that regionalism is a state project which ‘typically seeks to accelerate, to modify, or occasionally reverse the direction of social change which emergent structures like globalisation and regionalisation represent.’ Thus, Britain’s membership of the EU is a project carried out by state actors with the aim of repositioning the state within the context of global pressures (see Grugel and Hout 1999). For Buller (2000: 2), Europeanisation can be seen not necessarily as a constraint on the state but: should be partly understood as a Conservative governing project attempting to recreate some semblance of domestic autonomy and competence by resurrecting a rule based framework for economic management. ‘Tying one’s hands’ to external (European) institu-

The Role of Europe 213

tions became perceived as the best way for the leadership to resist competing demands form societal groups. Thus, the relationship between departments and Europe is complex. There are both general and department-specific reasons for integration, but these may have intended and unintended consequences for autonomy. The changing patterns of relations with Europe It is important to note three things when considering Whitehall’s relations with the EU. First, some departments have a much longer history of involvement with the EU and this affects their relationships and attitudes. Second, Britain’s membership has led to the establishment of a complex co-ordinating machinery which has been effective in socialising departments into the EU, informing departments how to act in Europe, and ensuring that there are not too many contradictions and conflicts in British policy at the European level. Third, EU membership has provided significant opportunities for some departments. Indeed, on some analyses, at least two departments, the DTI and, in particular, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), might not still exist if it was not for EU membership. Disaggregating involvement In assessing the relationship between Whitehall and Europe there are two countervailing tendencies that reflect the nature of the British core executive. On one hand, departments act as strong centripetal forces, having their own separate histories and departmental interests resulting in different relationships with Europe. On the other hand, there are strong centralising tendencies emanating from the Cabinet Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) which attempt to control and standardise responses to Europe. However, in recent years, as departments have become more adept and better resourced in dealing with Europe, they have relied much less on either Cabinet Office or FCO support. As a result, the role of the co-ordinating bodies has become less important. It is clear that the Single European Market and Maastricht mean that an increasing number of departments have become involved in EU business. When Britain originally joined the EEC, membership only had implications for a handful of departments, of which three were the most important. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office gained a new lease of life from Community membership, after the shock of the

214 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

decline of Empire. Another department also immediately affected by membership was MAFF because it dealt with the most comprehensive European policy, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Finally, the DTI was soon dealing with the implication for British industry of the developing common market and the Community’s trade policy vis-à-vis third countries. However, by the mid-1990s every department had been affected by a plethora of decisions taken at the Community level. The EU imposes new burdens of work on the ministers and their civil servants. Often directives passed by Brussels do not correspond precisely with existing British law. This leads to the formulation of new legislation, which has to be passed at Westminster and this can have the effect of reopening policy issues at a domestic level which governments have previously tried to close (Bender 1991; Toonan 1991: 109). Indeed, faced with this Europeanisation of public policy, a number of academics have begun to question whether a useful distinction can still be made between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ policy. In particular, this process received a large boost after the signing of the Single European Act (SEA), which provided for the completion of the single market by 1992. Suddenly, a whole raft of supply-side economic measures were to be decided by qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers. These included the harmonisation of product standards, public procurement practices, professional qualifications and the liberalisation of financial services. The impact has been to Europeanise domestic politics and to speed up the decision-making process in the Commission (Bender 1991). Co-ordinating mechanisms The increased European activity and the ever-increasing directives from Europe mean that all European governments need to develop a means of integrating their national decision-making machinery with EU decision-making. In Britain, this has occurred with limited formal institutional change at the centre. What has emerged is an informal, yet powerful, elite comprising Number 10, the FCO, the Cabinet Office and UKREP. Burch and Holliday (1996) point to the existence of a European network with the task of managing EU policy formation centring on: a Cabinet Committee, the Overseas and Defence Committee (OPD(E)), which is chaired by the Foreign Secretary; the relevant official committee; and the European Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Burch and Holiday (1996: 88) argue: ‘Together these are the elements which form the core of the European network.’

The Role of Europe 215

In principle, the role of the European Secretariat is to co-ordinate the responses of Whitehall to the EU. Therefore, it convenes meetings to ensure that: the British government has a response to all new developments at the European level; objectives of departments do not conflict; policy is consistent with the government’s wider objectives; and there is proper implementation of EU decisions (see Spence 1992). One senior Cabinet Office official described its role as: ‘to be the neutral umpire, the dispassionate chairman of meetings and therefore to resolve conflicts between various departmental interests.’ The FCO also has a co-ordinating function. According to Spence (1992: 60): ‘The FCO provides the institutional framework for the day to day co-ordination of EC policy through the Permanent Representative in Brussels.’ The FCO monitors information from Brussels, prepares briefs for the Council of Ministers and has responsibility for political co-operation (Spence 1992). Whilst the co-ordinating role of the FCO is important for all departments, those departments are also aware that, unlike the Cabinet Office, it has its own departmental interests and, as such, they are perhaps more wary of its advice. On the whole, departments are happy with the process of co-ordination at the centre. An official in the Treasury described it as ‘excellent’ and the view from the DTI was that: ‘although to the outsider the structure looks very complicated and to some extent duplicatory … But actually it works quite well because we all know one another … and so a lot of it is done very informally.’ Despite the division of functions between the FCO and the European Secretariat there seems to be little overlap. The departments find FCO and Cabinet Office knowledge of the EU useful and there is a constant process of consultation between the departments and the co-ordinating machinery. Key policy papers have to go through the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office and then on to UKREP. The Cabinet Office co-ordinates within Whitehall, but the FCO co-ordinates instructions to the British ambassador at UKREP. Every Friday there is a meeting involving the FCO, the head of the European division in the Cabinet Office, the ambassador and the relevant departments, and any problems are ironed out here. Usually problems are sorted out, but if they are not, they go up to the Cabinet Committee. As Bulmer and Burch (1998: 606) highlight: ‘a pervasive Europeanisation of British central government has been consistent hitherto with the “Whitehall model” of government … Rather, European integration has been absorbed into the “logic” of the Whitehall machinery.’ This adjustment again emphasises the way in which regional and international pressures are mediated by existing

216 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

state institutions. The impact of the EU on the formal structure, organisation and rules of Whitehall has been surprisingly limited. There has been little reassessment of notions of ministerial responsibility, collective responsibility or even parliamentary sovereignty in the light of EU membership. How, for instance, can collective responsibility be sustained when decisions are taken in arenas that have little or no relationship with the Cabinet? Nevertheless, it is clear that the role of the co-ordinators has changed and, in one sense, this change has been about ensuring the continuation of collective mechanisms. To some extent, the FCO believes that it still controls contact with Brussels: Any input that a UK government department wants to make into the system in Brussels goes through the UK Permanent Representative in Brussels. They are the people who talk to the Commission, talk to other member states and so on. The formal position is that all EU issues are discussed and cleared through the FCO and Cabinet Office machinery. The reality, however, is that, as EU business increases and the process of co-ordinating all departments is more complex (Bulmer and Burch 1998: 14), the FCO and the Cabinet Office are losing control and departments are increasingly conducting business directly with the Commission and other member states. Clearly, departments with regular EU contact, like the DTI and MAFF, are competent at conducting their own negotiations. Similarly, the DoE said that, except for major issues of legislation: The majority of our links are bilateral … There is a continuous process of consultation and communication on a bilateral basis … We also have a lot of direct bilateral contact with officials in DG 11 in the Commission who are dealing with the areas that we are concerned with. We also have a lot of bilateral contact with our opposite numbers in the Environment Ministries in other member states. The preferences of officials in relation to Europe have been influenced by the process of integration. The FCO and the Cabinet Office have adapted well to the need to co-ordinate European policy. According to Bulmer and Burch (1998: 10): ‘The key departments – notably the Cabinet Office, FCO and the Treasury – seem to have reached an understanding quite easily and there were no significant department turf wars.’ Individual departments are increasingly developing close relationships with both the Commission and their opposite numbers in other member states. They

The Role of Europe 217

are aware of the need to build coalitions. History does affect preferences but institutional interests are of greater importance. The institutional interests As Milner and Keohane (1996) and other neo-institutionalists imply, history has a profound effect on the attitudes of departments to Europe but the institutional interests of departments appear even more important. For some departments, Europe provides an opportunity for increasing their role and autonomy whilst for others it is a constraint on their activities. According to a senior official in the Cabinet Office: Departments tend to have a view of Europe which at least in part reflects the nature of the impact of Europe on their work. MAFF, because the impact of Europe has made the department more important and determines its policy, finds itself very closely involved. Whereas the Treasury, because it is such a bloody nuisance for them, tends to find itself rather irritated. Europe has been integrated into the work of some departments for a long period now; it provides new opportunities and enhances their functions. Consequently, they tend to be positive in their approach. As we said earlier, Europe has given two departments, MAFF and, to a lesser extent, the DTI an important raison d’être without which they might have disappeared. MAFF certainly has the closest relationships with Europe; with the greatest institutional interest in the growing role of the EU in British politics. MAFF has little autonomy in terms of agricultural policy. It is a small department in terms of budget, economic importance, political weight and size. Despite the logic of Thatcherism that would have pointed to the end of large subsidies to agriculture and the abolition of the department, it has outlived departments such as Employment and Energy with larger budgets. EU membership has not only saved the Ministry of Agriculture but probably also increased its autonomy (Smith 1993). There is no national agricultural policy and much of the time of many MAFF officials is spent in Brussels. Officials within MAFF, despite their acknowledgement of CAP’s problems, are generally pro-European. The impact of the European agricultural policy has been to save their department and, at a time of economic retrenchment, to ensure that farmers’ subsidies are protected. Effectively, membership of the EU has meant that agricultural expenditure is not subjected to Treasury control and, as long as the Council of Agricultural Ministers remains pro-farmer, it is unlikely that MAFF expenditures will be radically reduced. As such, the department has

218 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

been able, to some extent, to resist Treasury calls for the reform of CAP. Despite several rounds of reform, farmers still receive large subsidies and CAP continues to take 50 per cent of the EU budget (Grant 1995), maintaining a crucial role for MAFF. The EU has increased both the institutional and individual utilities of MAFF officials (see Dunleavy 1991). As a Cabinet Office official pointed out, with EC membership: MAFF suddenly found itself conducting its own foreign policy. MAFF officials at a rather junior level suddenly found they were going off to Brussels to negotiate. Not only that, they were flying all over the world to negotiate in a way that the Foreign Office couldn’t control. So, suddenly there was a small element of foreign policy that was run by MAFF instead of the Foreign Office. Unsurprisingly, MAFF officials really rather liked that. I think that, naturally enough, they really rather enjoy negotiation. They find it fun and the Brussels game is a big game, it’s a fun game. Officials at a far more junior level than before found themselves speaking on behalf of Britain, playing this game for all they were worth. And that partly goes to explain why MAFF has always been more pro-European.

Departments’ relations with Europe How do our departments relate to Europe? Why are there different types of relationships? Here, we shall examine each of our extant departments in turn, before considering some other departments for comparative purposes. The Department of Trade and Industry For the DTI, the relationship with the EU is intense but more complex than is the case for MAFF. One senior official confirmed: ‘Quite a lot of the policy we operate flows from a directive which we have agreed in the past and we have produced legislation here to implement the directive.’ As one former Permanent Secretary argued, if we assess the different relations departments have with Europe in terms of a continuum, then MAFF is at the end of the continuum which represents the closest contact while the DTI would be located somewhere between MAFF and the middle of the continuum: They were nowhere near as close to Europe as MAFF … Although our minister would go, it was nothing like as significant in terms of

The Role of Europe 219

industry policy as going to Brussels on agriculture policy. But there were areas where it was significant and the most important of those I suspect was competition policy and state aid because we got into trouble over the so-called sweeteners given in the privatisation of the Rover Group. One had to be very conscious of the possibility of trouble of that kind. In a sense you couldn’t avoid it in MAFF because of course every decision of any significance was taken in Brussels. In the DTI that was not so, the decisions of significance were taken in London but some of them impinge on areas where the Commission had got competence … We had enormous negotiations with them for instance over the privatisation of Leyland trucks. Another official who worked in Energy emphasised the increasing impact of the EU: [It was] very strong and increasing throughout my period … The pressure was constant, the flow of draft directives was absurd. You can’t cope with that type of thing. There is too much work involved in trying to make sense of it. So I spent a lot of time in Brussels just being I suppose bloody minded and obstructive. Similarly, on the trade side, one official emphasised: ‘No position could be taken except by agreement with Brussels.’ As is the case with agricultural policy, the key decisions in relation to trade policy are now taken in the EU. However, even within the DTI it is difficult to generalise over the impact of the EU. As one official pointed out: ‘in areas like food policy the EU is important but its impact is not particularly constraining (but) come to Competition and we are in a different world because the Commission qua Commission has enormous powers’. Obviously, the impact of the EU is limited by its competence as well as by the resistance and implementation resources of the nation states. Nevertheless, the DTI, like MAFF, faced questions over its existence and, therefore, the EU was important institutionally to it. The logic of Thatcherism was not to have a DTI and, with privatisation and the end of many industrial subsidies, questions were often raised about its existence, or more specifically of the industry side of it (Purnell 1995). Not surprisingly then, the DTI sees significant benefits in EU membership: The DTI has always had positive objectives in Europe. We have had some defensive ones too but there have always been things that we

220 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

have wanted to achieve, and those things on the whole have been less controversial in party political terms. The DTI has had three important reasons for seeing the EU as beneficial. First, it provides the DTI with a significant amount of work. Issues relating to the single European market, regulation, monopolies and mergers, technology, trade and industrial subsidies are key aspects of EU policy which are dealt with by the DTI. Luckily for the DTI, whilst the state has been rolled back at the national level, it has been extended at the EU level and this has led to a new role for the department. Second, throughout its history, the DTI, or more specifically its trade side, has been a strong supporter of free trade. Trade issues are best resolved at the multinational level and therefore the DTI is one of the few departments which actually believes in the need for a strong Commission. As a DTI official commented: I think that the Department has consistently been in favour of a Europe which: is open to the outside world; creates an effective internal market; is tough on state aid and on monopoly practices; has an effective competition policy; and spends money wisely … We have also become one of the departments that has been arguing for deregulation in Europe, or at least better regulation … All of which leads us in institutional terms to favour, on the whole, a strong Commission which is capable of policing single market, policing state aids and which is capable of devising and seeing through an effective liberal trade policy … Third, as that point demonstrates, unlike other departments, EU policies have complemented DTI domestic policy and it has been a way of achieving domestic policy goals (Buller 2000). The view in the DTI is that: ‘in the areas that are core to the DTI, trade policy and single market policy, we are closer to the Commission probably than any other member state’. One official pointed out that in the area of research and technology, the EU was beneficial: ‘It’s actually facilitating.’ Another civil servant in the Trade Division agreed: ‘Oh it’s a facilitator. It’s a constraint in some senses but by and large the EU is a large trading bloc and it should be a means of promulgating a message which you think is beneficial to European Union and to the UK.’ Crucially, the EU has enhanced the autonomy of the DTI. It has created new areas of responsibility and allowed the DTI to make policy at the EU level rather than in Whitehall.

The Role of Europe 221

Of course, one personally important feature of the EU for officials is the freedom of manoeuvre it gives them when they are negotiating away from the direct control of their political masters. One DTI official admitted that they had a degree of freedom in negotiations. Whilst briefs were drawn pretty tightly: … in any international negotiations there comes a point where the pace suddenly changes. Everybody feels that if you keep at it there is a solution, if you go away to seek further instruction it will break down and you have to start all over again. In those circumstances, you have got no choice but to go for the best you can get even it is not actually prescribed in your brief … You must have some freedom of judgement if you are going to reach any agreement at all. It is not the slightest good ministers or Cabinets or whoever thinking that they can keep total control. Another former official indicated that: The officials were pursuing the ministerial brief set for them in London and they found they could not deliver that because of the efforts of different officials with different briefs from Brussels, Paris, and Bonn and so on. They could come back and say well the best we can get is this, will that do. The minister at the end of the day has to defend it in the British Parliament. That is how it works. You are having to operate at several removes from those who actually make the decisions. Officials get to take more decisions and to make more choices because of the extent and intricacies of EU negotiations. From a rational choice perspective, this clearly suits the interests of officials. Although the DTI recognises the advantages to it of the EU this does not mean that it is a Europe-federalist department, although one official said: ‘insofar as it was decent to be so, the Department was a committed European’. However, whilst there were strong institutional reasons for the DTI being committed in this way, the nature of that commitment varied with ministers. In the 1970s when Peter Shore was Secretary of State, the department had to inform him of all contacts with Europe. Likewise, Lord Young insisted that the attitude of the Department towards the EU was neutral and he ensured

222 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

that officials did not foist unwanted policies on ministers behind the shield of Europe. The Department of Social Security Whilst departments like the DTI and MAFF have found crucial aspects of their responsibilities integrated into the EU policy, the impact of Europe has been much less in the area of social policy. As Cram emphasises, the extent of binding legislation in the areas of EU social policy is limited (Cram 1997: 29). As such, the DSS operates without much regard to the impact of the EU. This was particularly so in the early 1980s, as Patrick Jenkin recalled: ‘At the DHSS there was no European Committee at all which I was involved in and I don’t even remember going to Brussels.’ Nevertheless, the DSS finds the EU is adding both legislative and expenditure burdens by increasingly attempting to harmonise social policy despite Britain’s opt-out from the Social Chapter throughout the Conservative years. The DSS has a team of lawyers continually examining and contesting EU regulations. As one serving official stated: ‘We do have regard to implications under European Law but that should be part of the policy-making process and we would particularly rely on lawyers in pointing out the pitfalls.’ A former Permanent Secretary confirmed: We certainly aren’t as heavily involved as a department like MAFF because the EU doesn’t actually have competence in social security as such. So we are not in a position in which every minute of our day-to-day business is affected by European policy. The area where it has had a large impact is with equal treatment directives. I think it took us a little time to realise how significant this was going to be. … Therefore, we had to restructure the system around it. So, we are very alert to the need to make sure we are okay in European terms and quite a lot of our cases would get to the European Court in one way or another. But it is not central, it doesn’t govern our living, breathing lives. Thus, for the DSS, in contrast to the DTI, policy-making is not deeply integrated with the EU but they have to be aware of the ways in which the EU can constrain British policy-making. To the extent that the EU does affect the DSS, it is perceived as a burden rather than an opportunity. As such, the perspective of the department on Europe is often negative. When the DSS develops policy, it considers the possible ways in which policy initiatives might conflict with EU directives. In contrast, it is not really involved in developing integrated EU policies.

The Role of Europe 223

The Home Office For the Home Office, the relationship with Europe is more ambivalent. In certain policy areas, such as drugs, the EU level is seen as a useful level for organising and co-operating on policy. On others, such as immigration, the relationship has been more problematic. In some senses, the Home Office is the least integrated of the departments, coming very late to acknowledging the importance of Europe. It is only in the late 1980s that the EU had any real impact on the department at all. In the words of a former Grade 2: ‘Europe was only seen as encroaching on the corner of several people’s gardens.’ In talking to officials, it is also apparent that, to a large extent, the Home Office is still concerned with limiting EU competence, maintaining sovereignty and protecting national interests. The Home Office does not see it as in its interest to lose control of policy on immigration, law and order or criminal justice issues that have such domestic political importance. The aim of Conservative Home Secretaries in the 1980s and early 1990s was to prevent the EU encroaching on their policy competence. Kenneth Baker admitted that he was impatient with the direction of EU policy. Similarly, David Waddington revealed that: ‘We managed to sideline most of the issues … and of course the Home Office was pretty successful and some might say has remained successfully keeping many of the major issues out of the clutches of Brussels.’ Even Douglas Hurd, who was more emollient in his attitude to Europe, claimed: ‘[it] was not a real problem. I just regard it as common-sense that co-operation is needed in intelligence and police matters, drugs and so on. This was something that interested me and we carried it a stage further. I would not claim it was a huge leap.’ It is important to note that this Home Office ambivalence to the EU is not purely departmental. As one official said in 1998 in the case of direction from the centre: ‘In the Home Office they are being told very much not to play the European game in terms of not having joint immigration law and all that sort of stuff.’ From the point of view of the Home Office, the EU is a problem and, therefore, a constant aim of the department has been to prevent it encroaching on its territory unless there are specific advantages. So, whilst the Home Office would not countenance European-wide rules on immigration, it is happy to involve itself in Trevi if that improves anti-drug capabilities. The Home Office’s aim is to keep decision-making at an intergovernmental level in order to oppose imposition from the EU.

224 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

A comparison with other departments The differential impact of the EU is highlighted by some brief comparisons with other departments. One important point is that a degree of scepticism about the EU does not only exist in newly integrated departments. The Treasury has always been involved in European policy. As a Treasury official admitted: ‘There are no bits of Treasury work now that don’t have some kind of European dimension.’ Nevertheless, the relationship with the EU is somewhat ambivalent. The EU is frustrating for the Treasury because it reduces their autonomy; economic policy is no longer purely a domestic concern. A senior Treasury official emphasised: ‘There are more attempts by Europe to try to dictate the way that financial and monetary policy is run’ and, whilst the Treasury keeps monetary union as a medium-term policy option, it is open to EU economic pressures. As Thain and Wright (1996: 550) point out, the implications of free movement of capital and labour are ‘a convergence of regulations and payments in social security and income maintenance’ which will further constrain Treasury control. Nevertheless, the constraint of the EU is vicarious rather than direct. The extent to which sterling is linked to the Euro impacts on monetary policy. Yet, as Artis (1998: 137) illustrates, there is little in direct EU regulation on monetary and financial policy. Consequently, in the area of economic policy, Treasury superiority remains: I don’t think that membership of the European Union has changed the Treasury much. I think it’s more the other way around, in the sense that the UK thinks that it can try and persuade the Europeans that its approach to economic policy is the sensible one. In the area of public expenditure, the EU is even more of a problem for Treasury officials. From the initial period of membership until the mid1980s, the Treasury had a problem because of the size of the British financial contribution. This was an area of public expenditure that was outside EU control. In addition, in a range of policy areas the EU can force expenditure that the Treasury cannot control and would prefer did not exist. This has become increasingly apparent in the area of regional spending where the EU has provided funds to Britain on the grounds that there would be additionality (i.e. the subsidies would be additional to, not a replacement of, existing expenditure). However, the Treasury has continually sought ways of circumventing the additionality requirement (Bache 1996).

The Role of Europe 225

Therefore, the EU creates problems for the Treasury. As a Cabinet Official explains: Their more sceptical approach derives from their lack of control over allocation of resources, which they find difficult to accept. Together with the fact that there is a budgetary procedure, and an auditing procedure that the Treasury will feel is less effective that domestic equivalents and it must be rather frustrating for them. The Treasury’s domestic instinct is to say no to new legislation on the basis that it will increase public expenditure and this scepticism continues at the EU level. This is confirmed within the Treasury where an official suggested that the Treasury goes to a whole range of meetings covering even issues like home affairs because of potential expenditure increases: ‘I suppose the Treasury is very suspicious and doesn’t think that it can trust anybody.’ Even with a pro-European Chancellor, the Treasury will try to slow up integration measures if they think it will result in increased costs. The attitude of departments and the way they relate to Europe varies greatly. Civil servants do not have a set of endogenously determined preferences. Instead, their preferences are institutionally determined. For some departments, Europe creates new opportunities and may increase autonomy in relation to the Cabinet or the Treasury. For others it clearly indicates a loss of control. In such cases, the tendency is to attempt further to slow integration. The Department of Environment (DoE) increasingly finds much of its work deeply enmeshed in the EU level. The EC Council of Ministers has agreed over 300 items of legislation affecting the environment in the past twenty years. For example, as one senior civil servant argued: ‘the extent to which one can consider what is done in the UK in terms of controlling pollution as being separate from European legislation is very limited’. This development provides opportunities and constraints for the DoE. On the one hand, the EU enables DoE to press environmental legislation on other departments, in particular MAFF and the DTI, which if decided at the domestic level might be opposed. On the other hand, nearly all environmental legislation is decided at the EU level, greatly restricting what DoE can do on its own in this area. There is an explicit awareness in the DoE, expressed in an internal report, that Europe limits what the Department can do:

226 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Building alliances will make it more likely that decisions taken in Brussels are nearer to our policy objectives. But we must not delude ourselves about what is deliverable even by a truly professional approach to Europe. No one member can determine the Community’s agenda, the pace of discussion or the final outcome. What it can do, however, is make sure that its own views are understood by other EU actors. The general feeling in DoE seems to be one that favours EU integration as a means of strengthening environmental legislation. Nevertheless, and this again provides an indication of how the institutional context influences preferences, officials are well aware of the political context: In many ways we are more sceptical than we might wish to be if we were masters of our own house. The stance that we take up generally on European policy, but also on individual issues, is not something that we dream up in isolation in our ivory towers. In fact, the theory of collective cabinet responsibility turns out to work, and this is something we are very conscious of. We do have in Whitehall a very strong commitment to obtaining cross-government clearance for stances we take up in individual policy areas. For the Foreign Office, the EU is important because it is effectively the lead Department on European policy and, as Britain’s world role has declined, the Foreign Office has managed to maintain its status as a central negotiator in key European issues. A Foreign Office official pointed out that the FCO is conscious that: ‘Britain’s involvement in Europe is central to its future as an international power … and I think we may be particularly conscious in the Foreign Office that the UK’s future on the international stage is very much bound up with its being a major player in Europe.’ Departments which have only recently become engaged in Europe tend to be more sceptical about its involvement in domestic policy. A Cabinet Office official suggested: I think it is certainly true that departments like the DSS or the Department of Health or the Department of National Heritage, all of which over the last few years have found European policies intruding on their areas, are still largely operating on the basis of a discreet and hermetically sealed group of people who deal with Europe. As such, they see it as an imposition and a difficulty. At the same time,

The Role of Europe 227

the rest of the Department, which goes on creating domestic policy, thinks that the European aspect is a distraction.

Co-ordination within departments The departments’ relations with Europe have affected co-ordination within departments. In August 1993, John Gummer wrote to John Major saying that the only way the political objective of placing the United Kingdom at the heart of Europe is delivered in practice ‘(is) by seeing to it that Whitehall Departments become, and remain, truly European, professionals in the ways of Brussels.’ However, different departments organise in very different ways. Nevertheless, in the post-Maastricht era, there seems a concerted effort to integrate Europe much more into the everyday operations of departments. The Treasury provides a good example of how intradepartmental coordination has changed. As one Treasury official pointed out: Five years ago all the relations with Europe were handled by the Europe Division in the International Section. Now what happens is that every team that deals with a particular policy domestically also deals with it at an international and European level. So, for example, the team that dealt with MAFF expenditure also deals with CAP. So, rather than there being EU specialists, all officials within the Treasury have some EU competence. In addition, there is a small coordination team – EU Co-ordination and Strategy – that ensures that a unified departmental line is maintained and deals with issues where a domestic section does not have departmental expertise. The division also plays the co-ordinating role at the external level and represents the department in Cabinet Office meetings. Nevertheless, there is still an impression in the Treasury that Europe is not, as yet, that important or central to its work. A Cabinet Office official suggested that there are a number of Treasury officials closely involved in EU work but: There is a culture within the Treasury, there is a smallish cadre of people who have made their careers dealing with EU matters … And perhaps the vast majority of Treasury officials do see European issues as something not to be touched with a barge pole.

228 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Even in the Foreign Office, which has been centrally involved in the EU since 1973, there has been a change in the way that EU business is integrated into the department. As one official emphasised, recent developments, such as the collapse of Eastern Europe, greater European political co-operation and a common security policy: mean that there is virtually nobody in any corner of the Foreign Office not used sometime having to go off to attend a working group in Brussels … There is generally a far greater consciousness of the European dimension of business all through the office. In formal organisational terms the FCO has a European Union command with three departments: a European Union Department External which deals with external economic policy of the European Union; a EU Department Internal which is concerned with EMU, the IGC and all the institutional questions and it deals with shadowing the work of domestic departments; and the Common Foreign and Security Policy Department which deals with briefing the political director and with all the second pillar work. Similarly, the DTI which again has been closely involved in European policy has always had a European division. Now, as one official argued: ‘we have concluded that the only way you can now run EU policy in reality is by letting the individual experts get on with it’. So, whilst there is some central co-ordination on a range of policy areas, such as telecoms or consumer protection, the department does not co-ordinate. At present, the role of the European Division is to: provide a overview of what is going on in the department in relation to Europe; provide advice on the working procedures of the EU; and, in some senses, act as a European secretariat for the department. Much of the department’s contact with the EU is now bilateral, with officials within the department consulting with people in the EU and the governments of other member states. In this field, it is the Department of the Environment that has been the most proactive. The department has undertaken a review of how it handled European business. One of the problems for the DoE is that whilst some of its responsibilities, such as water, have a clear European dimension, others, like housing and local government, are largely domestic. Therefore, there has not been an attempt to force all divisions into adopting similar approaches to the EU. Rather, there is a high-level European Strategy Group that brings together Grade 2 officials from different policy areas every three to six months

The Role of Europe 229

to review the department’s European strategy. In addition, there is a European Division within the Environmental Protection Group for dealing with day-to-day European issues and providing expertise for the whole of the department on Europe. In areas where there is a high European content to policy, contact is bilateral rather than through a co-ordinating body. It is clear that in recent years most departments have made significant organisational changes in order to adapt to the requirements of the EU. It is interesting that, in most cases, departments have attempted to integrate the EU throughout the department rather than concentrating it within a European co-ordination body as used to be the case. However, there are still some departments, notably the Home Office and the DoE, in which large parts of the department have little EU relevance and, in these cases, the European Division takes on a much more central role. There are significant differences in the way that departments deal with the EU, in the sense that some, such as the DTI and DoE, seem to have come to terms with the importance of the EU and see the relevance of intimate and regular contacts. Others, like the FCO and Treasury, still tend to see the EU as external and more of an aspect of foreign, rather than domestic, policy and see their role as protecting national interests. These differences are again strongly related to institutional interests. For the DoE, there is some evidence that EU engagement is a way of obtaining more rigorous environmental regulation than it could achieve in a purely domestic context. For departments like MAFF, the DTI and DoE, Europe increases their roles and they consequently developed trans-governmental links. The impact of ministers Despite the critiques from both the left and the right of the political spectrum that civil servants are a power unto themselves and often pursue policies regardless of the desires of ministers, there is strong evidence that civil servants are very much constrained by ministers’ wishes and their perceived or stated policy preferences. Civil servants are very conscious of constitutional conventions and ministerial preferences clearly limit their actions when they negotiate in Europe. As a result, the attitude of a department to Europe does vary according to who is minister. One civil servant was particularly explicit about the impact of ministers during the Conservative administration: When Mr Portillo was Secretary of State in the Department of Employment, his officials adopted a stunningly Euro-sceptical line

230 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

because that’s what he wanted them to do. Similarly, Home Office officials take a very Euro-sceptical line now because that is what Mr Howard wants them to do and Treasury officials take a much more Euro-phile line because that is what Mr Clarke wants them to do. To some extent the support of Kenneth Clarke for the EU placed Treasury officials, who had long been cautious about Europe, in a difficult position: ‘You have to judge fairly carefully what the Chancellor is likely to think and how he is going to play it.’ Nevertheless, it is also the case that departmental interests can make ministers look at Europe in a different light and in that sense they too are affected by institutional interests: If you look at an issue like qualified majority voting, for example, the experience of the Minister of Agriculture shows on most agricultural issues qmv works in favour of the UK’s position because we have been able to get through decisions against the resistance of one or two projectionist member states. The situation is similar in the DTI. In the DTI, they have had ministers with sharply contrasting views on Europe ranging from Ridley to Heseltine who have changed the emphasis of policy towards Europe, but on the whole there has been some degree of consistency. So, ministers do influence how officials deal with Europe, but ministers’ positions also reflect the department’s institutional interests towards Europe. Despite strong ideological preferences, their positions in office are not just endogenously determined.

Conclusion In terms of the debates on globalisation and regionalisation, this chapter has presented some important findings. New global and regional pressures impact, not only on states but also within states. In certain departments, such as the DTI, external pressures have affected preferences, resources, options, departmental organisation and roles, whilst in the DSS and the Home Office, the impact has been minimal. The EU has provided a further constraint on the operation of these departments, but has not determined how they operate, nor the nature of their policy decisions. In effect, agents within departments, whether ministers or officials, have attempted to draw on the resources of the EU when it can

The Role of Europe 231

further departmental interests. For the DTI in particular, the EU was extremely useful in justifying the department’s existence at a time when laissez-faire economic doctrine was undermining its role. In the case of the Home Office, further EU integration would only remove policy responsibility from the department and, therefore, it has fought against attempts to increase EU control. As such, the impact of the EU is strongly affected, and mediated, by the institutional interests of departments. Nevertheless, the ideologies and views of ministers have not been unimportant in shaping the way that departments have reacted to external demands. The importance of ministers in determining the position of departments in relation to the EU again emphasises the limits of deterministic accounts of the impact of globalisation. It is striking that, despite nearly 30 years of European integration and major developments through the Single European Act and Maastricht, there are still substantial areas of government on which the EU does not impinge. Moreover, for a number of departments, the concern is not how they can develop policy within the context of the EU, but how they can make domestic policy without infringing EU regulations. So, whilst the EU has shaped some of the preferences of actors and the structures of departments, it has had little impact on the culture of Whitehall and, despite increasing exchanges and the development of a European fast-track for British civil servants, few of the norms of continental European bureaucratic culture have been adopted in Britain. Despite growing international pressure, as Baker acknowledges: ‘policy makers still tend to think in terms of national interests’. Indeed, Menon and Hayward (1996: 284) conclude that, even in the area of industrial policy where the degree of EU integration is relatively high: ‘Community influence has been relatively minor. Certainly, the ability of the Community to impose policy solutions on member states has been limited.’ Similarly, as regards British macro-economic policy, the EU has ‘had little impact on national policy’ (Menon and Forder 1998: 182). Moreover, in areas like education, social policy and transport policy the impact of the EU has been even less.

10 Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model

Our aim in this book has been to examine the changes that occurred within British central government departments between 1974 and 1997. In this conclusion we will begin by outlining the main changes that have occurred within departments and then we will return to the general issues raised in the introduction which we have used to organise our analysis. The second section will assess the utility of Rhodes’ differentiated polity as a conceptualisation of the operation of the British polity in the light of our study which focuses upon most of the issues discussed by Rhodes. In the third section we revisit the metatheoretical issues addressed in the introduction; the relationships between structure and agency and ideas and institutions. The penultimate section then considers the broadest question of all, although it is one which clearly relates to the differentiated polity model: does our analysis confirm the utility of the pluralist conceptualisation of the British power structure? Finally, on the basis of our analysis, we shall develop our conceptualisation of the operation of the British polity, which we shall call the asymmetric power model.

Assessing the extent of change As we have seen, much of the existing literature suggests that there have been major changes in central government, the role of the Civil Service and relationships within the core executive. We have a number of findings: • There have been changes in the general Whitehall culture and the structures of central government and this has had an impact on the 232

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 233

•

•

•

• •

•

policy and organisational cultures of departments. However, the degree of impact varies from department to department. The Civil Service maintains many of its traditional elements. Officials are still the dominant policy advisers within the core executive and their advice on political operations within Whitehall remains essential to ministers. However, their role has changed. There are alternative sources of advice, senior officials – Grades 1 and 2 – have become more involved in management – and the key policy-making function has drifted downwards to lower grades of senior civil servants. Despite moves to joined-up government and presumptions about fluidity in the Civil Service, most officials continue to operate within the confines of their departments without much interdepartmental contact. It is not easy to apply the notion of policy networks to intra-Whitehall relationships because networks tend to be ad hoc, temporary, fluid and personal. The role of interest groups in policy-making declined under the Conservative governments except where there were relationships of high dependence. Although the EU has had a big impact on the work of some departments, it impinges little on the day-to-day work of many officials. The resources of ministers have increased yet the relationship between ministers and officials is still one of dependence. The majority of officials and ministers believe that the relationship is still a good one and it tends to be individual ministers who have questioned the traditional role of the Civil Service. The Westminster model still informs the value systems of officials and ministers. Whilst there have been changes in intra- and interWhitehall relationships, they have not undermined many of the traditional assumptions that the practitioners have about the workings of the system. In this sense, there is some dissonance between the language of management and the language of the constitution.

In essence, whilst much has changed, much remains the same and this has important implications for some of the more general questions we have raised.

The differentiated polity model As we saw in the introductory chapter, Rhodes argues that the Westminster model presents a misleading conceptualisation of how

234 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

the British political system works and advocates an alternative model, which he calls the differentiated polity model. This is an important issue because we cannot analyse British politics without using some model as an organising principle for that analysis. How useful is the Rhodes model? Of course, no single study can adjudicate on the utility of such a broad model, but our analysis does focus upon most of its elements. In particular, we have addressed the following issues which are the core of this model: • Has governance replaced government? • How important are policy networks in policy-making and who dominates these networks? • Is the executive segmented? • To what extent are the relations within the core executive and between the core executive and interest groups based upon the exchange of resources and power dependency? • To what extent has the British state been hollowed out? These questions are obviously related, but here we shall deal with them separately while emphasising the interconnections. Governance or government? To an extent this issue is semantic. In talking of governance, Rhodes is concerned to point out that actors from outside the core executive are involved in the policy and administration processes. This is clearly important. Interest groups do play a key role in these processes, although some groups have a larger role than others, as we argued in Chapter 8. In addition, local government and now devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in Rhodes’ term subnational governments, are important political actors, although they have not been a focus of our study. At the same time, quangos played a growing role in politics in the period we have studied, although again we have only touched upon that role (see Flinders and Smith 1998). However, in our view, while we need to acknowledge the role of these actors from outside the core executive, and for that reason it may be better to talk of governance rather than government, we should not overemphasise that development. Our analysis suggests that the key actors in policy-making in Britain are still within, rather than outside, the core executive. As we shall argue below, while interest groups do play a role in policy-making and are involved in exchange relationships with government, often within

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 235

policy networks, in the vast majority of instances it is government which is the dominant partner, largely because they have greater resources. As such, we are happy to talk of governance rather than government as long as that is not taken to mean that the balance between the core executive and other key political actors has changed, inexorably, consistently and finally, in favour of the latter. One other point is important here. We are not saying that the core executive has overwhelming, let alone complete, autonomy. We accept that other actors play an important role. We also acknowledge that there are broader constraints, which Rhodes views as key elements of the hollowing-out process. We shall return to both of these issues below.

Policy networks In our view policy networks do play an important role in the British political system and, as such, Rhodes is right to highlight that role. However, our analysis suggests five important points. First, it is crucial to disaggregate. Relationships between departments and interest groups vary according to the department, the policy area and the time. Second, it appears that there are relatively few very tight policy networks, policy communities in the terminology of Marsh and Rhodes (1999). In our four departments, only the relationship between the Home Office and ACPO appeared to be a policy community which persisted over the 25 years of our study, although, of course, that does not mean there were no tight networks in other departments or that in our departments there were no very close relationships for extended periods. Third, policy networks are based upon exchange relationships. So, the closest relationships are the ones in which the interest groups have significant resources to exchange with departments. These are also the groups which find it easiest to retain their position, even if there is a change of government, a change of ideology or a change of policy. As such, as we saw in Chapter 8, ACPO’s close relationship with the Home Office persisted because it had crucial resources to exchange. Overall, as Marsh and Rhodes (1992a) argued, it is the powerful economic and professional groups which have the greatest resources to exchange with government and, as such, it is those groups which are evident in policy communities. Fourth, and relatedly, the nature of policy networks does change over time. They are particularly subject to a change in the broader, exogenous, context in which they operate. More specifically, in the period we have examined, a number of relationships between interest groups and depart-

236 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

ments changed because the attitude of government to consultation changed. So, while the relationships between all interests groups and the Conservative government did not change immediately it came to power in 1979, in the social policy field in particular they did deteriorate over time. This was partly because the government was ideologically opposed to the concerns of most of the groups and partly because of its broad antipathy towards consultation which it associated with weak government and the postwar consensus. When the Labour government was elected in 1997 the situation quickly changed. They were committed to consultation and had relied on many of these interest groups for policy support when in opposition. As such, consultation between the DSS and social policy interest groups became much more frequent and policy networks were re-established. However, it is worth noting that these are not policy communities because the resources such groups have to exchange are limited. Fifth, our analysis suggests that in most networks, it is the governments, or more specifically the departments, who are the more important actors. We have emphasised that policy networks are based upon exchange relationships, so we are not arguing here that departments totally dominate networks. Rather, we are suggesting that they have greater resources and, as such, tend to have more influence in the networks. Departments possess the key resources because only they, acting on behalf of the government, have the authority to pass legislation. In addition, they decide who is consulted and who is excluded. Of course, some interest groups have key resources; they might provide essential advice during the policy-making process or are crucial to ensure effective and economic implementation of a policy once it is passed. So, government needs them and therefore they are consulted. However, as we saw in Chapter 8, even with a group in a position like ACPO, the extent to which it is consulted and has influence varies, depending to a large extent on the attitude of the Home Office. Other groups with fewer resources are much more susceptible to the changing views of government departments. Overall, while we agree with Rhodes’ view that policy networks are important, we are wary of overemphasising that importance. In particular, our analysis indicates that we need to take the role of government, or rather departments, in policy networks more seriously than the network literature generally, or the differentiated polity model specifically, suggests. However, their use for understanding relationships within or between departments is much less, partly because networks within the core executive are too fluid to analyse and partly

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 237

because it is the wider Whitehall culture which provides the rules of interaction rather than specific networks. A segmented executive? Our analysis is based upon the idea that the core executive is segmented, so clearly here we agree with Rhodes. Some studies downplay the importance of departments focusing upon the role of the Prime Minister; a focus which in the 1980s was exacerbated by an obsession with the putative dominance of Thatcher. In contrast, we have emphasised that departments are important actors in the core executive. As Rhodes argues, relationships within the core executive are also exchange relationships. We have emphasised that the relationships between the Prime Minister and departments, between the Treasury and the departments, among departments and between ministers and civil servants are not zero-sum games; they are all exchange relationships. Of course, this is not to say that the actors involved possess equal resources. So, as we saw in Chapter 5, the Prime Minister can create or abolish a department; move the responsibilities for policy areas between departments; and appoint and dismiss ministers. Similarly, a minister can impose a policy on a department because s/he alone has the authority to make policy and civil servants, even if reluctantly, acknowledge that authority. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister needs the departments and the minister needs the civil servants. As such, it is an exchange relationship, but most often an asymmetric one. Relationships within the core executive are not unchanging and, once again, we need to disaggregate the picture across time and between departments. As we saw in Chapters 4 and 6, different ministers play various roles in their departments. Some are agenda setters, while others are strongly influenced by their departments. Similarly, Prime Ministers interpret their roles differently. So, Thatcher was a particularly interventionist leader; significantly more so than John Major. Overall, our departments’ relations with the Prime Minister, the Treasury and other departments changed differentially over our period of study. Even Margaret Thatcher could not intervene everywhere. So, while she rarely intervened in Home Office affairs, she was heavily involved with the Department of Energy, which was a politically high-profile department in the 1980s as a result of the miners’ strike and the privatisation process. In contrast, her intervention in the DSS or the DTI was limited, and focused on particular issues, largely because these departments dealt mainly with complex, fairly technical, issues.

238 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

The Treasury’s role appears to have changed significantly over the recent past. It has become less involved in the detailed control of expenditure and more concerned with policy initiatives. This development predates the election of the Labour government, as Deakin and Parry (2000) indicate, but it seems to us that it has accelerated since. In large part, this results from the particular position of Gordon Brown in the Cabinet and his interpretation of his role. At the same time, the Treasury is playing a more active role in relation to some policy areas, and thus some departments, than to others. So, as we saw in Chapter 5, it is especially active in welfare-to-work policy. As such, the Treasury is closely involved with the DSS, together with the DfEE, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Office, in this area. This development results from a series of factors, particularly: the government’s emphasis upon the New Deal as a flagship policy; the fact that the policy is funded from the windfall tax, which gives the Treasury a clear interest; and Gordon Brown’s commitment to the policy and his interest in its outcome. The welfare-to-work area also illustrates another key recent development in the core executive, which, in a sense, is a reaction to one aspect of the existence of a segmented executive: the move towards joined-up government. It has long been a criticism of British central government that the departmental structure creates ‘policy chimneys’; that departments forward their own interests, see relations between departments in terms of a struggle for resources and, as such, are reluctant to co-operate with other departments on issues which cross-cut departmental responsibilities. It is also often argued that this is becoming a greater problem as issues become increasingly complicated and interrelated. All governments over the last 25 years have recognised this problem and attempted to address it, although to differing degrees (see Kavanagh and Richards 2000a). Nevertheless, it seems to us that the current Labour government has taken a qualitatively larger step in that direction; it has even coined a new term, ‘joined-up government’, to identify the process it deems necessary. It is too early to assess the success of this development, but it is an important one because it does address an important question in relation to the core executive which deserves greater attention in the future: to the extent that the core executive is segmented, does this segmentation inhibit effective policymaking and implementation in certain policy areas? In our view then, the core executive is segmented and departments are crucial actors in the exchanges that occur within it. However, it is important not to overemphasise the segmentation, because we need to recognise that the relations involved in the core executive are not zero-

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 239

sum games. In addition, the current government’s obsession with joined-up government suggests that segmentation can lead to fragmentation and ineffective policy-making and implementation. A pattern of exchange relations? For the most part we have already addressed this point, which is perhaps the core of Rhodes’ differentiated polity model. He is surely right to emphasise that all the relationships involved both within the core executive and between parts of the core executive and other actors in the political system are exchange relationships. As we have emphasised throughout, it is misguided to see those relationships as zero-sum games. There are some zero-sum games in politics; so if fox hunting is banned, the anti-hunting lobby will ‘win’ and the pro-hunting lobby will ‘lose’. However, relations within government and between government and interest groups are very rarely of this sort because, in such cases, there are exchange relationships involved. If we take the relationship between a minister and her/his senior civil servants as an example of such a relationship, then a minister is unlikely consistently to push for a line which her/his civil servants oppose because s/he knows that will cause problems in terms of the smooth running of the department. As such, the minister is more likely to proceed slowly, getting the department onside, before initiating significant change; as we saw in Chapter 7, this is exactly what Peter Lilley did in the DSS. So, we need to recognise that politics within and outside the core executive is, for the most part, based upon a series of exchange relations. However, we also need to recognise that these relationships are usually asymmetrical. In general, the Prime Minister has more resources than ministers, ministers have more resources than civil servants and departments more resources than interest groups. Of course, in any given case, we need empirical evidence to demonstrate that asymmetry. Similarly, the existence of asymmetrical resources does not determine outcomes; for example, in our case it depends on whether the minister chooses to use those resources and how effectively s/he does so. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that asymmetric resource and power relations are a feature of politics. A hollowed-out state? This is one of the areas in which we most clearly part company with Rhodes. We are sceptical about the hollowing-out thesis. Of course, our analysis does not address all the issues raised by the thesis; in particularly we have paid little attention to the extent to which there has

240 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

been hollowing-out ‘downwards’, to quangos. However, our evidence suggests that British central government is still very powerful. We have already argued that Rhodes probably overestimates the extent to which the state is hollowed-out ‘outwards’, certainly to the extent that he probably gives too much importance to the role of interest groups and, thus, policy networks. Here, we shall pay most attention to the extent to which the power has shifted ‘upwards’, to transnational corporations and international financial markets, as a result of the process of globalisation, and to Europe, as a consequence of EU membership. Of course, each of these questions is broad and each has been the subject of many monographs. In addition, our evidence is by no means conclusive; indeed, in relation to the issue of globalisation we have little, if any, direct evidence. Nevertheless, we have a clear view substantiated by evidence from our interviews. In our view, the current literature on globalisation pays insufficient attention to domestic politics. Similarly, the literature on the way in which the EU reduces the autonomy of the British government neglects the way in which parts of the British core executive have used the EU to forward their own political ends. In Chapter 9, we briefly reviewed the literature on globalisation. Much of it is poor and it shares with classical Marxism an extreme and indefensible form of economism. The increased globalisation of trade and financial markets gives governments, including Britain of course, no alternative but to pursue neo-liberal economic policies; and to most of such globalisation theorists this is a good thing. This analysis is misguided for a series of reasons. As we argued in Chapter 9, the extent of globalisation is vastly overestimated by such accounts. Trade is regionalised, not globalised, and, while financial markets are increasingly global, they do not impact equally, or in the same way, on different states. Consequently, states have considerable autonomy in how they interpret the constraints placed upon them by so-called global forces. In Britain, for example, it has been argued convincingly by Watson (2000) that the Blair government interprets, or discursively constructs, the globalisation constraint as almost total because it wants to forward neo-liberal policies. If it interprets this constraint in this way, it does not need to justify its pursuit of neo-liberal policies to its traditional supporters who would favour a more social democratic economic policy; rather, it can claim that there is no alternative, although not in these words for obvious reasons. The point is that any analysis of hollowing-out which stresses globalisation needs to be much more aware of: the limits to the economic constraints implied by such an analysis; the way that such constraints are mediated by their discursive con-

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 241

struction by governments; and the fact that these discursive constructions are at least as much a response to the political context with which the government is faced as to the economic constraints themselves. Chapter 9 was most concerned with the way in which Europe constrains British government because this is central to Rhodes’ argument concerning hollowing-out. Again, our argument is more circumspect about the thesis. In our view, while the EU may constrain British government it also offers it opportunities. Most broadly, we would concur with the argument of Buller (2000), that British governments have often used the EU for their own ends. Britain is often seen as an awkward partner in the EU (see George 1998), but, as Buller argues, this is a misleading conceptualisation. The Conservative government’s stance in relation to Europe probably had more to do with domestic politics within Britain than it did with Britain’s relations with Europe. The Conservatives used their opposition to Europe to strengthen their image of governing competence; they argued they could stand up to powerful forces within Britain, such as the trade unions and particularly the NUM, and outside Britain, the bureaucrats in Brussels. In this way, the EU was an asset to the Conservatives. It may have restricted their autonomy to a limited extent, but it gave them an opponent to define themselves against; they could pose as the defender of Britain against the EU and, as such, as the opponents of Britain’s power being transferred to Brussels, or hollowed-out. The impact of Europe on our departments has been different. The EU clearly presented opportunities for the DTI. Indeed, it is not impossible that the DTI would have been abolished, or at the least restructured, but for membership of the EU, given that the growing impact of neoliberalism meant that the industry side of the Department was particularly vulnerable. In contrast, the Home Office has in general resisted efforts to increase EU control in its policy areas. However, even here the picture is not uniform, because the Home Office has been happy to increase EU co-ordination of policy on the control of the movement of drugs, but strongly opposed to attempts to centralise immigration policy. The general point is clear. Any department’s attitude to the EU and the impact the EU has had on the policy-making process in that department is strongly affected and mediated by the institutional interests of that department. Once again, it is not a simple relationship; we cannot see the EU simply as a constraint on departments which restricts their autonomy. One other point needs emphasising: ministers, that is agents, matter. Departments have institutional or structural interests that affect their

242 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

reaction to, and relations with, the EU. However, a department’s attitude to Europe can change when the minister changes. So, as we saw in Chapter 9, the Home Office was more euro-sceptic under Howard and the Department of Employment more euro-sceptic under Portillo, while the Treasury was better disposed to Europe under Clarke. Overall, we remain unconvinced of the hollowing-out argument; certainly we are much more sceptical than Rhodes. In our view, British central government retains considerable autonomy; if it has been hollowed-out, it is only to a limited extent.

The meta-theoretical issues Structure and agency Our analysis confirms the position we outlined in the introductory chapter. Any analysis of British central government which focuses exclusively on structural or intentional explanation is at best partial and at worst misleading. So, for example, the analyses of the role of the Prime Minister in relation to the core executive which concentrate on individual Prime Ministers, and in particular on Margaret Thatcher, tend to stress her personality and views and pay insufficient attention to the structural resources all Prime Ministers possess and the broader political and economic context in which they operate. As we said in the introductory chapter, this is a common problem in studies of British politics and it is one shared by most of our interviewees; undue attention is paid to personalities. Our analysis indicates that actors matter, not only individual Prime Ministers but also individual ministers. They have different abilities and conceptualisations of their roles and they make particular judgements about the structural constraints and capabilities within which they operate. However, these structural constraints also affect outcomes. To give just one example, the position of the DEn changed dramatically in the 1980s as it became central to both the conflict with the NUM and the privatisation process. This potentially gave the Secretary of State a much more important position within the Cabinet. At the same time, it ensured that the Prime Minister took a much closer interest in the concerns of the department. So, the structural resources available to the Secretary of State increased, but only to the extent that he (they were all men) had the ability to use this stronger position and thus, crucially, gain the respect of Margaret Thatcher. As we saw, Nigel Lawson was able to use these resources to exercise con-

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 243

siderable autonomy and increase his personal standing within the Cabinet. In contrast, in the earlier period, Peter Carrington, faced with a different structural situation in the context of an energy crisis, was unable to make any mark on the department or on energy policy. So, any explanation needs to acknowledge the role played by structures and agents. However, we also need to move beyond an additive approach; merely emphasising that an explanation must combine some structural and some intentional elements. Rather, we need to conceptualise the relationship as interactive or dialectical. Agents operate within a structural context which constrains or facilitates their actions. However, these structures do not mechanically constrain or enable the agents; the agents interpret the structural context. In addition, the actions of agents can alter the structures and, sometimes, perhaps often, agents act deliberately to change the constraints. Our study illustrates the utility of such a conceptualisation of the relationship between structure and agency. As we saw above, Nigel Lawson had a significant opportunity to influence DEn policy because of the resources that he could utilise given the enhanced role of the department. However, he would have been unable to use them effectively without his considerable personal ability and, consequently, the backing of the Prime Minister. Lawson then moved the privatisation programme on significantly and, in doing so, both set the parameters for future Energy secretaries and, ultimately, brought about the demise of the DEn. Thus, Lawson, as an agent, changed the structural context which future ministers faced. Our analysis also indicates the role that culture plays in the operation of government departments. However, as we emphasised in the introduction, the structure/agency literature is not good at dealing with culture as a variable. In our view, culture often operates like a structure; it constrains or enables the actions of agents. That being said, it is probably better to examine the role of culture by considering another interactive or dialectical relationship: that between institutions and ideas. It is to that issue which we now turn.

Institutions and ideas In the introductory chapter, we noted that there is a tendency in studies of British politics not to take ideas seriously; to focus on institutions and play down the importance of ideas and culture. We have gone to some length to avoid this problem. Once again, our view is that this is a dialectical relationship. Institutions affect cultures which

244 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

in turn affect institutions. Here, we want to make two key points, the first of which returns to an issue raised in the introductory chapter. In our view, the institutions and process of British government are underpinned by a particular set of ideas about democracy, which we have called the British political tradition. More specifically, British institutions operate on the basis of a leadership conceptualisation of democracy which relies on a conservative notion of responsibility; the core idea is that government knows best. Here, we are not concerned to defend this basic position which was discussed in the introductory chapter. Rather, we want to argue on the basis of our study of departments that, not surprisingly, this conceptualisation of democracy is shared by members of the core executive. The Whitehall culture binds together members of the core executive. Most broadly, the impact of this culture is seen in the shared antipathy of civil servants and ministers to a radical Freedom of Information Act which has been reflected in the way in which, during their first term, the Labour government’s proposals have been deradicalised. More narrowly, we saw it in our analysis of institutional and cultural change in our departments. All the departments are resistant to any move to increase effective scrutiny of their operations; their defence is also a defence of the British political tradition: departments need to be able to take necessary, if unpopular, decisions without worrying about leaks or constantly having to respond to media or public opinion. Of course, this argument also bears upon Rhodes’ differentiated polity model. A key element of the Rhodes model is its emphasis on the view that power is more diffused than the Westminster model suggests. We shall return to that issue in the next section. However, our evidence suggests that members of the core executive think both that power is concentrated mainly in their hands and that this is how it should be. Our analysis of the four departments also indicates the importance of departmental cultures if we are to explain institutional or policy change. All our departments, except Energy which was only established in 1974 (and disbanded in 1992), had departmental cultures, although, to an extent, there were different cultures in the Trade and the Industry sections of the DTI when the Conservatives were elected in 1979. The culture in the Home Office was probably the most embedded, because of its status and the fact that governments, even the Thatcher government, were reluctant to intervene in this area, where policies could quickly become political. These cultures underpinned departmental organisation and clearly affected policy. So, the Home

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 245

Office retained a hierarchical organisational structure long after most other departments and it resisted any move towards neo-conservative policies throughout the 1980s. The key point is not only that cultures affected institutions and policies, but also that such cultures were difficult to change. So, the Home Office remained more liberal than would have been expected until Michael Howard became Home Secretary. Similarly, the key change in the DSS only occurred with the appointment of Peter Lilley. In contrast, there was significantly quicker change in the DEn and the DTI. While such departmental cultures are strong, they do change. Change is obviously likely to be quicker, and probably greater, in departments with the least embedded culture; in our case the DEn provides a good example. Similarly, change is probably more likely in a department where there are conflicting sub-cultures, for example, the DTI where the Trade section of the department was already strongly predisposed to neo-liberalism. The extent and the speed of change also depend on the extent of the determination the minister and the Prime Minister have to achieve change. As such, change in the DTI was more likely because it was more crucial to the Conservative government’s economic policy objectives. Finally, external constraints can lead to change. In the case of the DSS the great pressure upon it to control costs provided a strong constraint which led to both organisational and policy change. Ideas matter then; cultures shape institutions and policies. However, cultures change, partly as a result of changing structural constraints and partly because of the attitudes and actions of agents. When the cultures change they then become the new context within which institutions operate and agents act. It will certainly be interesting to see over the next ten years, given the outcome of the 2001 election, the extent to which these new departmental cultures, that reflect Conservative values, constrain and are changed by the Labour government.

A pluralist system? Perhaps the most fundamental question is to what extent power in Britain is concentrated or diffuse. This is not a question which can be resolved by a single study; particularly a study which has not focused exclusively upon this issue. However, it is a crucial question given our concerns in this book and our research does address it. As we argued above, Rhodes’ differentiated polity model is a pluralist one; power is diffuse, it extends beyond the core executive and, in particular, a wide

246 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

variety of policy networks play a key role in policy-making. Of course, we need to acknowledge that the differentiated polity model implies an elite pluralist, or reformed pluralist, position. It gives no role to the electorate, other than as members of interest groups, and it sees government as significantly constrained by particular interests. Even so, our position is less pluralist than Rhodes’. As we emphasised above, in our view the differentiated polity model does not pay enough attention to the asymmetries of resources and power. The key characteristic of the British social and economic system is structured inequality. Our work here barely touches on this issue, although Marsh (2001) has explored it elsewhere. What we have seen, however, is how that structured inequality is reflected in access to political resources. There is abundant evidence that members of the core executive are drawn from a limited section of society; they are overwhelmingly white, middle class and male (see Marsh 2001; Kavanagh and Richards 2000b). At the same time, the groups which dominate the tightest policy networks are drawn from professional and economic interests which are also white, middle class and male. So, it is individuals drawn from privileged backgrounds who dominate British policy-making. Of course, we cannot assume that such individuals inevitably share common interests which they forward when they make policy. This needs to be investigated empirically and will be the focus of another book. However, we can say that the British system does exhibit clear asymmetries of resources, including access to positions in which key political decisions are taken. In addition, we have argued that the core executive in Britain is less constrained by other actors than many people, including Rhodes, suggest. Overall, we would contend that if the distribution of power in Britain is a pluralist one, this is so only in a very limited sense. Towards an asymmetric power model Our model has six main features which we will briefly discuss here, but which stem clearly from our critique of the differentiated power model based upon our empirical material. In our view, the British polity is characterised by: • a society which is marked by continuing patterns of structured inequality; • A British political tradition which emphasises the view that ‘government knows best’; • asymmetries of power;

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 247

• exchange relationships between actors in the system of governance; • a strong, if segmented, executive; • limited external constraints on executive power.

Structured inequality In our view, too many students of British politics neglect the broader socio-economic structural context within which politics takes place. We are not developing an economistic argument here; one clearly cannot read off political outcomes on the basis of a knowledge of the pattern of structural inequalities in Britain. However, those inequalities are a crucial aspect of the context within which British politics takes place. Moreover, they constrain and facilitate the actions, and the likely success, of individuals and interest groups in the British polity. Far too much work on British politics focuses exclusively on agents and often appears to assume that the playing field on which they compete is level. In contrast, we would argue that to conceptualise British politics more adequately one needs to start with an appreciation that it is not a level playing field and that there are enduring slopes and gullies which favour some interests over others.

The British political tradition The institutions and processes of British politics are underpinned by a view of democracy which stresses a limited liberal notion of representation – here the emphasis is upon the holding of periodic, relatively free and fair elections – and a conservative notion of responsibility – here the emphasis is on the need for strong and decisive, rather than responsive, government. Of course, both the British political tradition and the Westminster model present a false picture of how the British political system works. The key features – parliamentary sovereignty, ministerial responsibility and collective responsibility – do not function as the model suggest. However, unsurprisingly, it is the view of democracy shared by the actors in the core executive; it legitimises their authority and power. As such, it affects how the political system works. It has shaped the process of constitutional and organisational reform and it continues to maintain elite rule. The code that underpins the British political system is still one that emphasises that Whitehall, that is the core executive, ‘knows best’. The Scott affair, the BSE crisis and Labour’s retrenchment on freedom of information all illustrate the continuing strength of self-belief within the system.

248 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

Asymmetric power There are crucial asymmetries of power in the British political system. We would agree with Rhodes that resources have, to an extent, shifted away from the core executive to other actors and that the process of governing has become more complex. Increasingly, the delivery of public goods does involve the creation of networks including government, regulators and private and third-sector actors. However, whilst the government is often dependent on these organisations for the delivery of the service, they continue to depend on the government which has a unique set of resources – force, legitimacy, state bureaucracy, tax-raising powers and legislation – which are unavailable to other actors. Thus, the relationship between the government and most other interests remains asymmetrical. The government effectively sanctions membership of networks and has a number of mechanisms for reasserting control where necessary. Only interests which themselves have crucial resources, and we would argue that these are invariably economic or professional interests, have consistent privileged access to, and influence over, government. A pattern of exchange relationships Like Rhodes, we accept that power is not zero-sum but involves exchange relationship based upon patterns of dependence. Private companies, transnational organisation, voluntary organisations, quangos and agencies are involved in a process of exchange with different levels or sections of government. However, the continued strength of the executive and its control of significant resources means that, whilst the government sometimes fails to get its way, it still continues to win much (we would argue most) of the time. Moreover, whilst external and internal changes have changed the process of the delivery of public goods, the central state, directly and indirectly, still has significant influence on how and what services are delivered. A strong and segmented executive Despite recent changes, Britain retains a strong executive. The core executive is clearly not a unified whole and Rhodes is surely right to emphasise its segmented character. However, power continues to be concentrated within the core executive and the majority of policy decisions are made at departmental level. Indeed, there have been recent moves to (re)assert greater central government authority in policy and organisational terms. So, to cite a policy example, the last Conservative

Assessing the Differentiated Polity Model: towards an Asymmetric Power Model 249

administration attempted to assert central control over education policy and this move has continued under Labour. Following the introduction by the Conservatives of a national curriculum, Labour has increased state control with a growing emphasis on standards and by the creation of procedures to allow direct intervention by central government to improve schools, bypassing the Local Education Authorities (see McCaig 2001). Similarly, in the organisational field, the emphasis on ‘joined-up’ government, which we dealt with in Chapter 8, is, in large part, an attempt to reimpose central executive control on diverse institutions of governance. Despite attempts to ‘join-up’ government, departments continue to segment the operation of the executive. We contend that any analysis of the British political system needs to recognise that departments are both the key actors and institutions at the centre of the policy-making process. They continue to provide the foci in which policy is made. Thus, although we acknowledge that changes brought about by governance have altered both the actors and the distribution of resources in the policy-making arena, most resources remain concentrated within Whitehall departments. So, it is important to recognise that departments continue to provide the key terrain in which power can be located within the British political system.

A limited pattern of external constraints We do not deny that the pattern of external constraints on government is changing. It is clearly the case, for example, that governments can only have limited, if any, impact on international financial markets. However, we must be wary of becoming carried away by such arguments for a number of reasons. First, governments have always been constrained. Second, governments can be strategic whilst markets cannot. Third, markets are dependent on government. Fourth, citizens are still subject to considerable state power. Thus, the relationship between global and national forces is contingent and interactive, not determined, and the British government still has considerable options. For example, whilst the EU, for instance, may be an important constraint, the government continues to play a central role in mediating that constraint. Indeed, Castells (1998: 330) argues that the EU is successful precisely because ‘[it] does not supplant the existing nations states but, on the contrary, is a fundamental instrument for their survival on the condition of conceding shares of sovereignty in exchange for a greater say in world, and domestic affairs’. Like power, state–global

250 Changing Patterns of Governance in the United Kingdom

relations cannot be conceived in zero-sum terms. It is a process which has the potential for a range of outcomes depending on the choices of actors and the nature of existing institutions. As we argued in relation to both globalisation and the EU, such ‘constraints’ also provide opportunities for strategically calculating governments.

Conclusion Rhodes’ differentiated polity model certainly offers a more coherent conceptualisation of British politics than previous views. In particular, Rhodes’ emphasis that politics involves exchange relationships and that power relations are rarely zero-sum marks an important advance on the Westminster model. However, we are less convinced than Rhodes that the power of the core executive in Britain has been significantly weakened; that the British state has been hollowed-out. While we acknowledge that the broader context within which British governments operate is more complex than in the past, it needs to be recognised that this context, and processes such as globalisation and Europeanisation, can provide opportunities as well as acting as constraints. However, our main criticism of the differentiated polity model is with its inherent pluralism. We do not deny that there is a certain plurality in the policy-making process or, as we argued, that power most often involves exchange relations. But, these are rarely exchanges between equals. One of the big problems with most analyses of British politics is that they privilege agents and downplay the effect of structure. Politics does not occur on a level playing field as the pluralists would have us believe. Rather, the field has slopes and gullies that systematically facilitate some interests and constrain others. To put it another way, British politics may be characterised by plurality, but it does not reflect a pluralist power structure. In our view, the power structure is asymmetric and we need to acknowledge and explore that asymmetry.

Appendix on Methods To date there have been two types of studies of government departments. There are a few analyses that attempt to cover all departments. These are either merely descriptive (see Chester and Wilson 1968; McLean et al. 2000) or quantitative (especially Hood and Dunsire 1981). There are more studies of individual departments; although most of these are either descriptive or partial. In contrast, we adopt a comparative case-study approach; comparing and contrasting change in a limited number of departments (on the comparative case study method see Yin 1984). However, before justifying our choice of departments, it is worth a brief consideration of a broader problem. As Hogwood (1992) points out, there is little agreement as to the number of departments. So, Hood and Dunsire (1981: 40) argue that: ‘the question is a deep legal (indeed philosophical) one and there is certainly no single and all-encompassing definition of such a thing’. This is demonstrated by the plethora of definitions of, and schemas for, classifying government departments. Many authors include only the departments which are headed by Cabinet ministers (see Rose 1987; and for similar lists see Madgwick 1991: 20; Clarke 1975: 65; Hennessy 1989). Such lists, however, are partial. In contrast, a number of authors have offered much more comprehensive definitions of government departments (Dewry and Butcher 1988; Dunleavy 1989; Hood et al. 1978; Hood and Dunsire 1981; Pitt and Smith 1981; Pollitt 1984). Dunleavy (1989: 273), for instance, disaggregates departments, recognising that many have departmental agencies attached. Consequently, he identifies 44 ‘ministerial departments (and elements of)’ and lists a further 38 ‘non-ministerial departments, departmental agencies, and other semi-detached agencies etc.’ Hood et al. (1978), when beginning their research into the management of government, soon found that there was ‘no single or self evident definition of “a central government agency” in Britain’. They point out that different government lists offer varying lists of agencies that are attached to departments and, perhaps most ironically, the departments listed in the Treasury’s ‘Memorandum on the Estimates’: ‘are by no means the same Departments which actually appear in the estimates’ (Hood et al. 1978). Consequently, they distinguish between departments which are 5 star, i.e. the departments which appear on all five departmental lists, and departments which are 4 star appearing on four etc. They finally accept a total of 69 departments. In the end this debate can seem arcane so we settled for the most obvious list; that published in the Civil Service Year Book. In 1993, this listed 61 departments of which 19 were headed by Cabinet ministers, with a further two, the Law Officer’s Department and the Lord Advocate’s Department, defined as Departments of the State. Given this list we were still spoilt for choice. We had a clear resource constraint that suggested that we could undertake a study of only four departments. Obviously, no four departments could be regarded as representative. However, we wanted a spread of departments to ensure that any general conclusions we reached weren’t the product of choosing departments 251

252 Appendix that were of the same type. Of course, any choice involves establishing criteria. Our starting point was Richard Rose’s classification (1987) of departments which, in our view, is the most accessible. He categorises departments according to their dates of origin, resource claims and political status. His analysis focuses mainly on the period between 1945 and 1983. Of course, this means that it is dated. Some of the departments he identifies have been amalgamated (e.g. Employment and Education; Transport and Environment) and others disbanded (e.g. Energy). At the same time, the creation of separate Executive Agencies has significantly altered the pattern of resource claims. In addition, the political status of departments clearly fluctuates. So, for example, Hoopes’ (1996) study of oil privatisation gives ample evidence that the political status of the Department of Energy fluctuated significantly between its creation in 1974 and its dismantling in 1993. Nevertheless, Rose’s classification is a useful starting point. Figure A.1 is adapted from Rose (1987) and summarises his classification of those departments that existed in 1983. We wanted a spread of departments that reflected Rose’s criteria but, given that a key focus of our research was structural and cultural change, we also wanted most of our departments to be ones which had experienced significant structural change. Consequently, we decided upon the following departments: the Home Office; the Department of Trade and Industry; the Department of Social Security; and the, now dismantled, Department of Energy. As such, we had one of the main departments of state, the Home Office, which ranks high in relation to all Rose’s criteria, but that has experienced relatively few structural changes. In contrast, the DTI, according to Rose (1987: 49, Table 2.5) is a department characterised by almost constant change; it had twice as many transfers of function between 1946 and 1983 as

Figure A.1

Classifying government departments

Department

Date of origin (1)

Resource claims (2)

Political status (3)

Treasury Defence Trade in Industry Foreign Home Office Health/Social Security Education Environment Scotland Agriculture Employment Transport Energy Wales Northern Ireland

Old Old Old Old Old Middle-aged/New (4) Middle-aged Middle-aged Middle-aged Middle-aged Middle-aged New New New New

High High Medium Medium High High Medium Medium Medium Low Low Medium Low Low Low

High Medium High High High Medium Low Medium Medium Low Medium Medium Medium Low Medium

Appendix 253 any other department. It was split into three in 1974 with the creation of a Department of Industry, a Department of Trade and a Department of Consumer Affairs. Subsequently, it was recreated in 1983. In Rose’s classification, the DTI is an old ministry with medium resource claims and high political status, although it is probably fairer to claim that its political status has fluctuated. The Department of Social Security has also experienced significant changes. It was split from Health in 1988 and was very affected by the move to Executive Agencies. In Rose’s terms, it is young, with high resource claims and a medium political status. The Department of Energy was a very small department that was created in 1974 and amalgamated with the DTI in 1993. In Rose’s classification it was new with low resource claims and medium political status. However, the miners’ strike in 1984 and the privatisations in the 1980s subsequently gave it a very high political profile. Overall, the four departments upon which we focus give us a good spread of government departments and particularly of those which have experienced structural change. We initially collected quantitative data on the size, functions, budgets and organisation of the four departments. This was mainly taken from official publications, although we also had limited access to a number of internal, unpublished government documents. However, the main source of material used in this book is drawn from 191 semi-structured interviews we conducted with ministers, civil servants and interest group representatives (see Figure A.2) who between 1974 and 1997 had an association with our four departments. The interviews were conducted between October 1995 and August 1998.

Figure A.2

The interviewees

Civil servants Grade 1/1A 2 3 5 7/HEO Cabinet ministers 22 Total interviewed

Retired 20 27 16 12

Contemporary 5 13 27 26 8 Interest group reps 25 191

Bibliography Adonis, A. and Hames, T. (1994) The Thatcher-Reagan Revolution, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Alveson, M. (1995) Cultural Perspectives on Organizations, Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press. Artis, M. J. (1998) ‘The United Kingdom’, in J. Forder and A. Menon (eds), The European Union and National Macroeconomic Policy, London: Routledge. Auction, P. (1990) ‘Adminstrative Reforms in Public Managment: Paradigms, Principles, Paradoxes and Pendulums’, Governance, 3(2), 115–37. Bache, I. (1996) ‘EU Regional Policy: Has the UK Government Succeeded in Playing the Gatekeeper Role Over the Domestic Impact of the European Regional Fund?’ PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield. Baker, A. (1997) ‘The Transnationalisation of the Core Executive in the UK: the Case of HM Treasury’s International Finance Directorate’, paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Bern, 27 March–4 April. Baker, K. (1993) The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics, London: Faber and Faber. Bale, T. (1999) Sacred Cows and Common Sense, Aldershot: Ashgate. Balogh, T. (1959) ‘The Apotheosis of the Dilettante: the Establishment of Mandarins’, in H. Thomas (ed.), The Establishment: a Symposium, London: Anthony Blond. Barberis, P. (1996) The Elite of the Elite: Permanent Secretaries in the British Higher Civil Service Aldershot: Dartmouth. Barker, A. and Wilson, G. (1997) ‘Whitehall’s Disobedient Servants? Senior Officials’ Potential Resistance to Ministers in British Government Departments’, British Journal of Political Science, 27, 223–46. Beer, S. (1982) Britain Against Itself, London: Faber. Bender, B. (1991) ‘Governmental Processes: Whitehall, Central Government and 1992’, Public Policy and Administration, 6, 13–21. Benn, T. (1980) Arguments for Socialism, London: Jonathan Cape. Benn, T. (1990), Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80, London: Arrow. Benson, J. K. (1977) ‘Organizations: a Dialetical View’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 22, 1–21. Benyon, J. (1993) Law and Order Review 1993: an Audit of Crime, Policing and Criminal Justice Issues, Leicester: Centre for the Study of Public Order. Berger P. and Luckman, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R. A. W. (2001) Interpreting British Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Birch, A. (1964) Representative and Responsible Government, London: Allen and Unwin. Birch, M. and Holliday, I. (1996) The British Cabinet System, Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. Blackstone, T. and Plowden, W. (1988) Inside the Think-tanks: Advising the British Cabinet 1971–83, London: William Heinemann.

254

Bibliography 255 Bradshaw, J. (1992), ‘Social Security’, in D. Marsh and R. Rhodes (eds), Implementing Thatcherite Policies: Audit of an Era, Buckingham: Open University Press. Breton, A. and Wintrobe, R. (1974) The Logic of Bureaucratic Control: an Economic Analysis of Competition, Exchange and Efficiency in Private and Public Organisations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Breton, A. and Wintrobe, R. (1982) The Logic of Bureaucratic Control: an Economic Analysis of Competition, Exchange and Efficiency in Private and Public Organisations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bridges, Lord (1964) The Treasury, London: George Allen and Unwin. Brittan, S. (1964) The Treasury Under the Tories, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Brittan, S. (1971) Steering the Economy, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Brittan, S. (1975), ‘The Economic Contradictions of Democracy’, British Journal of Political Science, 5(2), 129–59. Brittan, S. (1979) Participation without Politics, London: Institute for Economic Affairs. Bruce-Gardyne, J. and Lawson, N. (1976) The Power Game, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Buller, J. (2000) ‘The Advantage of “Tying One’s Hands”: Rules, Autonomy and the Europeanisation of British Economic Policy’, paper presented at PSA annual conference, LSE, 10–13 April. Buller, J. and Smith, M. J. (1998) ‘Civil Service Attitudes to the European Union’, in D. Baker and D. Seawright (eds), Britain: For and Against Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bulmer, S. and Burch, M. (1998) ‘Organizing for Europe: Whitehall, the British State and the European Union’, Public Administration, 76, 601–28. Bulpitt, J. (1983) Territory and Power in the United Kingdom, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bulpitt, J, (1986) ‘The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft’, Political Studies, 34, 19–39. Bulpitt, J. (1988) ‘Rational Politicians and Conservative Statecraft in an Open Politiy’, in P. Byrd (ed.), British Foreign Policy Under Thatcher, Deddington: Philip Allen. Burrell, G. (1998) ‘Modernism, Postmodernism and Organizational Analysis: the Contribution of Michel Foucault’, in A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory, London: Sage. Burrell, G. and Morgan, G. (1979) Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, London: Heinemann. Burt, R. S., Gabbay, S. M., Holt, G. and Moran, P. (1994) ‘Contingent Organization as a Network Theory: the Culture-Performance Contingency Function’, Acta Sociologica, 37, 345–70. Butcher, T. (1995) Delivering Welfare: the Governance of the Social Services in the 1990s, Buckingham: Open University Press. Cabinet Office (1996), The Civil Service Yearbook 1996, London: HMSO. Callaghan, J. (1982), ‘Cumber and Variables’, in The Home Office: Perspectives on Policy and Administration Bicentenary Lectures 1982, London: RIPA. Callaghan, J. (1987) Time and Chance, London: Collins. Campbell, C. and Wilson, G. (1995) The End of Whitehall: Death of a Paradigm, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

256 Bibliography Carrington, P. (1988) Reflect on Things Past, London: Collins. Carruthers, B. G. (1994) ‘When is the State Autonomous? Culture, Organization Theory and the Political Sociology of the State’, Sociological Theory, 12, 19–44. Castells, M. (1998) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol III: End of Millennium, Oxford: Blackwell. Castle, B. (1984) The Castle Diaries 1964–70, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Cerny, P. (1990) The Changing Architecture of the State, London: Sage. Chapman, J. (1999) ‘The Policy Process and the Decline of the Deep Mine Coal Industry, 1965–95’, Unpublished PhD, University of Sheffield. Chapman, R. A. (1988) Ethics in the British Civil Service, London: Routledge. Chapman, R. A. (1997) The Treasury in Public Policy Making, London: Routledge. Chester, D. N. and Wilson, F. M. G. (1968) The Organisation of British Central Government, 1914–1964, London: Allen and Unwin. Child, J. (1972) ‘Organizational Structure, Environment and Performance: the Role of Strategic Choice’, Sociology, 6, 1–22. Clarke, R. (1975) ‘The Machinery of Government’, in W. Thornhill (ed.), The Modernization of British Government, London: Pitman. Clegg, S. (1990) Modern Organisations: Organisation Studies in the Postmodern World, London: Sage. Clegg, S. (1998) ‘Foucault, Power and Organizations’ in A. McKinlay and K. Starkey (eds), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory, London: Sage. Clifford, J. (1983) ‘On Ethnographic Authority’, Representations, 1, 118–46. Cm 2627 (1992) Continuity and Change in the Civil Service, London: HMSO. Cmnd 4506 (1970), The Reorganisation of Central Government, London: HMSO. Cmnd 9517 (1985), Reform of Social Security, Department of Health and Social Security, London: HMSO. Cmnd 9691 (1985), Reform of Social Security: Programme for Action, Department of Health and Social Security, London: HMSO. Coates, D. (1980) Labour in Power?, London: Longman. Coates, D. (1989), The Crisis of Labour: Industrial Relations and the State in Contemporary Britain, London: Longman. Cockett, R. (1995) Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-tanks and the Economic Counter-revolution, London: Fontana. Cortell, A. P. and Peterson, S. (1997) ‘Altered States: Explaining Domestic Institutional Change’, mimeo. Cram, L. (1997) Policy-Making in the European Union, London: Routledge. Cronin, J. (1991) The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain, London: Routledge. Cross, J. A. (1970) British Public Administration, London: University Tutorial Press. Crossman, R. (1972a) Inside View, London: Jonathan Cape. Crossman, R. (1972b) The Myths of Cabinet Government, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Crossman, R. (1975) The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Volume 1, Minister of Housing, London: Hamilton and Cape. Daintith, T. and Page, E. (1999) The Executive in the Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bibliography 257 Dale, H. E. (1941) The Higher Civil Service of Great Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deakin, N. and Parry, R. (2000) The Treasury and Social Policy, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Department of Trade and Industry (1983) ‘History and Composition of the Board of Trade’, mimeo, London: DTI. Devine, F. (1995) ‘Qualitative Methods’, in D. Marsh, and G. Stoker (eds), Theories and Methods in Political Science, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. DiMaggio, P. J. and Powell, W. W. (1991) ‘Introduction’, in W. W. Powell and P. J. DiMaggio (eds), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dolowitz, W. and Marsh, D. (1996) ‘Who Learns What From Whom: a Review of the Policy Transfer Literature’, Political Studies, 44, 343–57. Dolowitz, W. and Marsh, D. (2000) ‘Learning from Abroad: the Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy- Making’, Governance 13 (1), 5–23. Dolowitz, D., Marsh, D., O’Neil, F. and Richards, D. (1996) ‘Thatcherism and the 3 “Rs”: Radicalism, Realism and Rhetoric in the Third Term of the Thatcher Government’, Parliamentary Affairs, 49(3), 455–79. Donaldson, L. (1996) For Positivist Organization Theory, London: Sage. Donoughue, P. (1987) Prime Minister: the Conduct of Policy Under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Douglas, M. (1982) In the Active Voice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dowding, K. (1995) The Civil Service, London: Routledge. Drewry, G. and Butcher, T. (1988) The Civil Service Today, Oxford: Blackwell. DTI (1995) Implementing the Civil Service White Papers in the Department of Trade and Industry, London: DTI. Dudley, G. and Richardson, J. (1996) ‘Promiscuous and Celibate Ministerial Styles: Policy Changes, Policy Network, and UK Roads Policy’, Essex Papers in Politics and Government No. 107, Colchester: University of Essex. Dunleavy, P. (1989) ‘The Architecture of the British Central State, Part I: Framework for Analysis’, Public Administration, 67, 3, 391–417. Dunleavy, P. (1991) Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Dunleavy, P. (1995) ‘Estimating the Distribution of Positional Influence in Cabinet Committees under Major’, in R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Dyrberg, T. B. (1997) The Circular Structure of Power, London: Verso. Emmerson, H. (1956) The Ministry of Works, London: George Allen and Unwin. English R. and Kenny, M. (2000) Rethinking British Decline, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Evans, M., Piachaud, D. and Sutherland, H. (1994), ‘Designed for the Poor – Poorer by Design? The Effects of the 1986 Social Security Act on Family Incomes’, STICERD Welfare State Programme Discussion Paper, WSP/105, London: London School of Economics. Fitzgerald, T. H. (1988) ‘Can Change in Organizational Culture Really be Managed?’ Organizational Dynamics, 18, 4–16. Flinders, M. (2000) ‘The Politics of Accountablity’, PhD, University of Sheffield.

258 Bibliography Flinders, M. and Smith, M. J. (1998) Quangos, Accountablity and Reform, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Foley, M. (1992) The Rise of the British Presidency, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Foster, C. D. (1997) A Stronger Centre of Government, London: Constitutional Unit. Foster, C. and Plowden, F. (1996) The State Under Stress, Buckingham: Open University Press. Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House. Fowler, N. (1991) Ministers Decide, London: Chapman. Franklin, B. (2001) ‘The Hand of History: New Labour, News Management and Governance’, in S. Ludlam and M. J. Smith (eds), New Labour in Government Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Frost, P. J., Moore, L. F., Louis, M. R., Lundberg, C. C. and Martin, J. (1983) ‘An Allegorical View of Organizational Culture’, in P. J. Frost (ed.), Organizational Culture, California: Sage. Fry, G. (1984) ‘The Development of the Government’s Grand Strategy for Civil Service Reform’, Public Administration, 62. Fry, G. (1993) Reforming the Civil Service: the Fulton Committee in the British Home Civil Service 1966–68, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fry, G. (1995) Policy and Management in the British Civil Service, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf Furlong, P. and Marsh, D. (2001) ‘A Skin not a Pullover: Ontology and Epistemology in Political Science’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds), Theory and Methods in Polotical Science, 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Gains, F. (2000) ‘Understanding Department-Next Steps Relationships’, PhD, University of Sheffield. Gamble, A. (1994), The Free Economy and the Strong State, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Gamble A. (1999) ‘State, Economy and Society’, in I. Holliday, A. Gamble and G. Parry (eds), Fundamentals in British Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Gamble, A. and Payne, A. (1996) Regionalism and World Order, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Oxford: Polity. George, S. (1998) An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giddens, A. (1986) The Consitution of Society, Oxford: Polity Press. Gilmour, I. (1992) Whatever Happened to the Conservative Party?, London: Fourth Estate. Glennerster, H. (1995) British Social Policy since 1945, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Goffman, E. (1969) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Grant, W. (1978) ‘Insider Groups, Outsider Groups and Interest Group Strategies in Britain’, University of Warwick, Department of Politics Working Paper No. 32. Grant, W. (1995) Business and Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave.

Bibliography 259 Green, D. and Shapiro, I. (1994) Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, New Haven, Yale Univeristy Press. Greer, P. (1994) Transforming Central Government: the Next Steps Initiative, Buckingham: Open University Press. Grugel, J. and Hout, W. (1999) ‘Regions, Regionalism and the South’, in J. Grugel and W. Hout (eds), Regionalism Across the North-South Divide, London: Routledge. Haines, J. (1977) The Politics & Power, London: Cape. Hall, P. and Taylor, R. (1996) ‘Political Science and the Three Institutionalisms’, Political Studies, 44, 936–57. Hall, S. (1985), ‘Authoritarian Populism: a Reply’, New Left Review, 151, 112–24. Hay, C. (1995) ‘Structure and Agency’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds), Theories and Methods in Political Science, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Hay, C. (1996), Restating Social and Political Change, Buckingham: Open University Press. Hay, C. (1997a), ‘Political Time and the Temporality of Crisis’, Paper presented at Institute of Western Europe, Columbia University, New York, 25 January. Hay, C. (1997b), ‘Anticipating Accommodations: the Appeasement of Capital in the “Modernisation” of the British Labour Party, 1987–92’, Politics and Society, 25(2), 234–56. Hay, C. and Richards, D. (2000) ‘The Tangled Webs of Westminster and Whitehall: the Discourse, Strategy and Practice of Networking within the British Core Executive’, Public Administration, 78, 1, 1–28. Hay, C. and Watson, M. (1998) ‘Rendering the Contingent Necessary: New Labour’s Neo-liberal Conversion and the Discourse of Globalisation’, Center for European Studies Working Paper 8.4, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Headey, B. (1974) British Cabinet Ministers, London: George Allen and Unwin. Heath, E. (1998) The Course of my Life: the Autobiography of Edward Heath, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Heclo, H. and Wildavsky, A. (1974) The Private Government of Public Money, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Heclo, H. and Wildavsky, A. (1981) 2nd edition, The Private Government of Public Money, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global Transformations, Oxford: Polity. Hennessy, P. (1986) Cabinet, Oxford: Blackwell. Hennessy, P. (1989) Whitehall, London: Fontana Press. Hennessy, P. (1998) ‘The Blair Style of Government: an Historical Perspective and an Interim Audit’, Government and Opposition, 33, pp. 3–20. Hennessy, P., Hughes, R. and Seaton, J. (1997) Ready, Steady, Go! New Labour and Whitehall, London: Fabian Society. Heseltine, M. (1987) Where There’s a Will, London: Hutchinson. Hindmoor, A. (1998) ‘The Importance of Being Trusted: Transaction Costs and Policy Networks’, Public Administration, 76, 25–43. Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1996) Globalisation in Question, Cambridge: Polity. Hogg, S. and Hill, J. (1995) Too Close to Call, London: Little, Brown.

260 Bibliography Hogwood, B. (1988), ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Department of Trade and Industry’, in C. Campbell and B. G. Peters (eds), Organizing Governance: Governing Organisation, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Hogwood, B. (1992) ‘Government Departments’, mimeo, University of Strathclyde. Hogwood, B. (1997) ‘The Machinery of Government’, Political Studies, 45(4), 704–15. Hood, C. (1990) ‘Control Over Bureaucracy: Cultural Theory and Institutional Variety’, Journal of Public Policy, 15, 207–30. Hood, C. (1991) ‘A New Public Management for all Seasons’, Public Administration, 69, 3–19. Hood, C. (1998) The Art of the State, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hood, C. and Dunsire, A. (1981) Bureaumetrics, Farnborough: Gower. Hood, C., Dunsire, A. and Thompson, S. (1978) ‘So You Think You Know What Government Departments Are?’, Public Administration Bulletin, 27, 20–32. Hoogvelt, A. (1997) Globalisation and the Postcolonial World, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Hoopes, S. (1996) Oil Privatization, Public Choice and International Force, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Horn, M. (1995) The Political Economy of Public Administration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoskyns, J. (1983) ‘Whitehall and Westminster’, Parliamentary Affairs, 36. Howard, A. (1987), RAB: the Life of R. A. Butler, London: Jonathan Cape. Howell, D. (1970) A New Style of Government, London: Conservative Political Centre. James, S. (1992) British Cabinet Government, London: Routledge. Jay, P. (1977) ‘Englanditis’, in R. E. Tyrell (ed.), The Future That Doesn’t Work, New York: Doubleday. Jenkins, G. (1959) The Ministery of Transport and Civil Aviation, London: George Allen and Unwin. Jenkins, R. (1991) A Life at the Centre, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Jennings, R. F. (1977) Education and Politics, London: Batsford. Jensen, L. (1998) ‘Cultural Theory and Democratizing Functional Domains: the Case of Danish Housing’, Public Administration, 76, 117–39. Jessop, B. (1974) Traditionalism, Conservatism and British Political Culture, London: Allen and Unwin. Jessop, B., Bonnett, K., Bromley, S. and Ling, T. (1988), Thatcherism: a Tale of Two Nations, Cambridge: Polity Press. Judge, D. (1993) The Parliamentary State, London: Sage. Judge, D. (1999) Representation, London: Routledge. Kandiah, M. and Seldon, A. (1996) Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain Volumes 1 & 2, London: Frank Cass. Kaufman, G. (1997) How to be a Minister, London: Faber and Faber. Kavanagh, D. (1987) Thatcherism and British Politics: the End of Consensus?, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kavanagh, D. (1997) The Reordering of British Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bibliography 261 Kavanagh, D. and Richards, D. (2000a) ‘Departmentalism and Joined-Up Government: Back to the Future?’, Parliamentary Affairs, September, 53(4). Kavanagh, D. and Richards, D. (2000b) ‘Prime Ministers, Ministers and Civil Servants in Britain’, paper presented at the World Congress of IPSA, Quebec City, Canada, 1–5 August. Kavanagh, D. and Seldon, A. (1999) The Powers behind the Prime Minister, London: Harper Collins. Kellner, P. and Crowther Hunt, N. (1980) The Civil Service: an Enquiry into Britain’s Ruling Class, London: Macdonald. Kenny, M. (1999) ‘Ideas, Ideologies and the British Political Tradition’, in I. Holliday, A. Gamble and G. Parry (eds), Fundamentals in British Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. King, A. (1975) ‘Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, 23 (2/3), 284–96. King A. (1985) The British Prime Minister, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Kingdom, J. (1999) Government and Politics in Britain, Oxford: Polity. Klein, R. (1989) The Politics of the NHS, London: Longman. Klymlicka, W. (1999) ‘Citizenship in an Era of Globalization’, in I. Shapiro and C. Hacker-Cordon (eds), Democracy’s Edges, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kogan, M. (1971) Educational Policy Making, London: Allen and Unwin. Lawson, N. (1992) The View from No. 11, London: Bantam Press. Lee, J., Jones, G. and Burnham, J. (1998) Government at the Centre, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Legg, T. and Ibbs, R. (1998) Report of the Sierra Leone Arms Investigation, London: HMSO. Ling, T. (1998) The British State Since 1945, London: Polity Press. Louis, M. R. (1985) ‘An Investigator’s Guide to Workplace Culture’ in P. J. Frost (ed.), Organizational Culture, California: Sage. Lowndes, V. (1996) ‘Varieties of the New Institutionalism: a Critical Appraisal’, Public Administration, 74: 181–97. Ludlam, S. and Smith, M. J. (1996) Contemporary British Conservatism, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Madgwick, P. (1991) British Government: the Central Executive Territory, London: Philip Allen. March J. and Olsen, J. (1984) ‘The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life’, American Political Science Review, 78, 734–49. Marquand, D. (1988) The Unprincipled Society: New Demands and Old Politics, London: Fontana. Marr, A. (1995) Ruling Britannia: the Failure of British Democracy, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Marsh, D. (1980) The British Political Tradition, University of Essex, Mimeo. Marsh, D. (1996) ‘Explaining “Thatcherite” Policies: Beyond Uni-dimensional Explanation’, Political Studies, 43(1). Marsh, D. (1998) Comparing Policy Networks, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Marsh, D. (2001) ‘It’s Always the Happy Hour for Men with Money, Knowledge and Power: Beyond Pluralism as the Approach to the Study of British Politics’, in C. Hay (ed.), British Politics Today, Oxford: Polity.

262 Bibliography Marsh, D. and Rhodes, R. A. W. (1992a) Policy Networks in British Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marsh, D. and Rhodes, R. (1992b), Implementing Thatcherite Policies: Audit of an Era, Buckingham: Open Univeristy Press. Marsh, D., Richards, D. and Smith, M. J. (2001) ‘Unequal Plurality: Towards an Asymmetic Power Model of the British Polity’, unpublished paper, University of Birmingham. Marsh, D. and Smith M. (2000) ‘Understanding Policy Networks: Towards a Dialectical Approach’, Political Studies, 48, 4–21. Marsh, D., Smith, M. J. and Richards, D. (2000) ‘Bureaucrats, Politicians and Reform in Whitehall: Analysing the Bureau-Shaping Model’, British Journal of Political Science, 30, 461–82. Marsh, D. et al. (1999) Postwar British Politics in Perspective, Cambridge: Polity. Mather, G. (1994) ‘The Market, Accountability and the Civil service’, paper presented at Public administration conference, University of York, 5–7 September 1994. McAnnula, S. (2001) ‘Structure and Agency’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds), Theory and Methods in Political Science, Basingstoke: Palgrave. McCaig, C. (2001) ‘New Labour and Education, Education, Education’, in S. Ludlam and M. J. Smith (eds), New Labour in Government, B asingstoke: Palgrave. McFarland, A. (1987) ‘Interest Groups and Theories of Power in America’, British Journal of Political Science, 17, 129–47. McKinlay, A. and Starkey, K. (1998) ‘Managing Foucault: Foucault, Management and Organization Theory’, in A. McKinlay, and K. Starkey (eds), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory, London: Sage. McLean, I. Clifford, C. and McMillan, A. (2000) ‘The Organisation of Central Government Departments: a History 1964–92’, in R. A. W. Rhodes (ed.), Transforming British Government, Vol. 1, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. McLeay, E. (1998) ‘Policing Policy and Policy Networks in Britain and New Zealand’ in D. Marsh (ed.), Comparing Policy Networks, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Menon, A. and Forder, J. (1998) ‘Conclusion: States, the European Union and Macroeconomic Policy’, in J. Forder, and A. Menon (eds), The European Union and Macroeconomic Policy, London; Routledge. Menon, A. and Hayward J. (1996) ‘States, Industrial Policy and the European Union’ in H. Kassim, and A. Menon (eds) The European Union and National Industrial Policy, London: Routledge. Metcalfe, L. (1993) ‘Conviction Politics and Dynamic Conservatism: Mrs Thatcher’s Managerial Revolution’, International Political Science Review, 14(4). Meyerson, D. (1991) ‘“Normal” Ambiguity? A Glimpse of an Occupational Culture’, in P. Frost, L. Moore, M. Louis, C. Lundberg, and J. Martin (eds), Reframing Organizational Culture, London: Sage. Middlemas, K. (1979) Politics in Industrial Society, London: André Deutsch. Middlemas, K. (1991), Power, Competition and the State, Vol 3: the End of the PostWar Era, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave.

Bibliography 263 Migue, J. and Berlanger, G. (1974) ‘Towards a General Theory of Managerial Discretion’, Public Choice 17. Milner, H. and Keohane, R. (1996) ‘Internationalization and Domestic Politics’, in R. Keohane and H. Milner (eds), Internationalisation and Domestic Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Minogue, K. and Biddiss, M. (eds) (1988) Thatcherism: Personality and Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Moran, M. (1984) The Politics of Banking, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Mountfield, R. (1997) ‘The New Senior Civil Service: Managing the Paradox’, Public Administration, 75, 307–12. Newton, S. and Porter, D. (1988), Modernisation Frustrated: the Politics of Industrial Decline in Britain since 1990, London: Unwin Hyman. Niskanen, W. (1971) Bureaucracy and Representative Government, New York: Aldine Atherton. Niskanen, W. (1973) Bureucracy: Servant or Master?, London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Niskanen, W. (1978) ‘Competition among Government Bureaus’, in J. M. Buchanan (ed.), The Economics of Politics, London: Institute for Economic Affairs. Noll, R. G. and Fiorina, M. P. (1979) ‘Voters, Bureaucrats and Legislators: a Rational Perspective on the Growth of Bureaucracy’, Journal of Public Economics, 9, 239–54. Norton, P. (2000) ‘Barons in a Shrinking Kingdom: Senior Ministers in British Government’, in R. A. W. Rhodes (ed.), Transforming British Government, Vol 2: Changing Roles and Relationships, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Ohmae, K. (1990) The Borderless World, London: Collins. Parsons, W. (1998) ‘Fuzzy in Theory and Getting Fuzzier in Practice: PostModern Reflections on Responsibility in Public Administration and Management’, in A. Hondeghem (ed.), Ethics and Accountability in a Context of Governance and New Public Management: EGPA Year Book, Amsterdam: IOS Press. Part, A. (1990) The Making of a Modern Mandarin, London: André Deutsch. Perrow, C. (1970) Organizational Analysis, London: Tavistock. Peters, B. G. (1999) Institutional Theory in Political Science, London: Pinter. Peters, T. and Waterman, R. (1982) In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies, New York: Harper and Row. Peterson, J. (1999) ‘Sovereignty and Interdependence’, in I. Holliday, A. Gamble, and G. Parry (eds), Fundamentals in British Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Phillips, Lord (2000) The BSE Inquiry, London: HMSO. Pierson, P. (1994) Dismantling the Welfare State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pile, W. (1979) The Department of Education and Science, London: George Allen and Unwin. Pitt, D. C. and Smith, B. C. (1981) Government Departments, London: Routledge. Plowden, W. (1994) Ministers and Mandarins, London: IPPR. Pollitt, C. (1984) Manipulating the Machine: Changing the Pattern of Government Departments, London: Allen and Unwin.

264 Bibliography Pollitt, C. (1990) Managerialism and the Public Services: the Anglo-American Experience, London: Basil Blackwell. Ponting, C. (1986) Whitehall: Tragedy and Farce, London: Hamish Hamilton. Powell, W. W. and DiMaggio, P. J. (1991) The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pryce, S. (1998) Presidentializing the Premiership, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Purnell, S. (1995) ‘An Empire Falls Back’, Financial Times, 16 October. Pyper, R. (1991) Political Realities: the Evolving Civil Service, London: Longman. Radcliffe, J. (1991) The Reorganisation of British Central Government, Aldershot: Dartmouth. Rhodes, R. A. W. (1981) Control and Power in Central-Local Government Relations, Farnborough: Gower Rhodes, R. A. W. (1988) Beyond Westminster and Whitehall, London: Allen & Unwin. Rhodes, R. A. W. (1992) ‘Local Government Finance’, in D. Marsh, and R. A. W. Rhodes (eds) Implementing Thatcherite Policies: Audit Of An Era, Buckingham: Open University Press. Rhodes, R. A. W. (1995) ‘From Prime Ministerial Power to Core Executive’, in R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Rhodes, R. A. W. (2000) ‘The Governance Narrative: Key Findings and Lessons from the ESRC’s Whitehall Programme’, Public Administration, 78, 345–63. Rhodes, R. A. W. (1997) Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountabilty, Buckingham: Open University Press,. Rhodes, R. A. W and Dunleavy, P. (1995) Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Richards, D. 1996 ‘Elite Interviewing: Approaches and Pitfalls’ Politics 16(3). Richards, D. (1997) The Civil Service Under the Conservatives 1979–97: Whitehall’s Politcal Poodles?, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Richards, D and Smith, M. J. (1997) ‘How Departments Change: Windows of Opportunity and Critical Junctures in Three Departments’, Public Policy and Adminstration, 12/2. Richards, D. and Smith, M. J. (1998) ‘The Gatekeepers of the Common Good–Power and the Public Service Ethos’, in. A Hondeghem (ed.), Ethics and Accountability in a Context of Governance and New Public Management, Amsterdam: IOS Press. Richards, D. and Smith, M. J. (2000) ‘Power, Knowledge and the Civil Service: the Living Chimera of the Public Service Ethos and the Role of the Civil Service’, West European Politics, 23. Richards, D. and M. J. Smith (2001a) ‘Breaking the Policy Bias: Windows of Opportunity and the Realignment of Structural Constraints in Three Government Departments’, in A. Cortell and S. Peterson (eds), Transforming Political Institutions: a Comparative Study of the Sources and Consequences of Domestic Change, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Richards, D. and Smith, M. J. (2001b) ‘New Labour, the State and the Consitution’, in S. Ludlam, and M. J. Smith (eds), New Labour in Government, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave.

Bibliography 265 Richards, D., Smith, M. J. and Marsh, D. (forthcoming) ‘Conviction Ministers and the Whitehall Paradigm: the Case of Tony Benn’. Riddell, P. (1998) Parliament under Pressure, London: Victor Gollancz. Ridley, N. (1991) My Style of Government, London: Hutcheson. Riley, P. (1983) ‘A Structurationist Account of Political Culture’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 414–37. Roll, E. (1966) ‘The Machinery for Economic Planning: 1. The Department of Economic Affairs’, Public Administration, 44 (1), 1–11. Rose, R. (1987) Ministers and Ministries: a Functional Analysis, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rose, R. (1990) ‘Inheritance before Choice in Public Policy’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2 (3), 263–91. Rose, R. (1993) Lesson-Drawing in Public Policy: a Guide to Learning across Time and Space, Chatham, NJ: Chatham House. Rose, R. (2000) ‘When and Why Does a Prime Minister Change?’, in R. Rhode, (ed.), Transforming British Government, vol. 2: Changing Roles and Relationships, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Rose, R. and Davies, P. (1994), Inheritance in Public Policy: Change without Choice in Britain, New Haven: Yale University Press. Rosevere, H. (1969) The Treasury: the Evolution of a British Institution, London: Allen Lane. Salter, B. and Tapper, T. (1981) Education, Politics and the State, London: Grant McIntyre. Sampson, A. (1962) Anatomy of Britain, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Saran, R. (1973) Policy Making in Secondary Education, Oxford: Clarendon. Saward, M. (1997) ‘In Search of the Hollow Crown’, in P. Weller, H. Bakvis and R. A. W. Rhodes (eds), The Hollow Crown: Countervailing Trends in Core Executives, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Schein, E. (1989) ‘Organizational Culture: What it is and How to Change it’, in P. Evans, Y. Doz, and A. Laurent (eds), Resource Management in International Firms, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Scott, R. (1996) Report of the Inquiry into the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual Use Goods to Iraq and Related Prosecution, London: HMSO. Seldon, A. (1994), ‘Consensus: a Debate too Long?’, Parliamentary Affairs, 47 (4), 501–14. Seldon, A. (1997) Major, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Self, P. (1993) Government by the Market? The Politics of Public Choice, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Sharp, E. (1969) The Ministry of Housing and Local Government, London: George Allen and Unwin. Smircich, L. (1983) ‘Is the Concept of Culture a Paradigm for Understanding Organizations and Ourselves’, in P. J. Frost (ed.), Organizational Culture, California: Sage. Smith, B. and Stanyer, J. (1976) Administering Britain, London: Fontana. Smith, M. J. (1991) ‘From Policy Community to Issue Network: Salmonella in Eggs and the New Politics of Food’, Public Administration, 69: 235–55. Smith, M. J. (1993) Pressure, Power and Policy, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

266 Bibliography Smith, M. J. (1995) ‘Pluralism’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds), Theories and Methods in Political Science, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Smith, M. J. (1998) ‘Reconceptualising the State: Theoretical and Empirical Challenges to British Central Government’, Public Administration, 76, 45–72. Smith, M. J. (1999a) The Core Executive in Britain, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Smith, M.J. (1999b) ‘The Institutions of Central Government’, in I. Holliday, A. Gamble, and G. Parry (eds), Fundamentals in British Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Smith, M. J., Marsh, D. and Richards, D. (1995) ‘Central Government Departments and the Policy Process’, in R. A. W. Rhodes and P. Dunleavy (eds), Prime Minister, Cabinet and Core Executive, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Smith, M. J., Marsh, D. and Richards, D. (2000) ‘Departmentalism, the Core Executive and Joined-Up Government’, paper presented at the annual conference of the PSA, London School of Economic, 10–13 April. Smith, M. J., Richards, D., Marsh, D. and Chapman, J. (1998) ‘Bureaucrats, Politicians and the Reform of Whitehall’ (mimeo). Spence, J. (1992) ‘The Role of Civil Servants in European Lobbying: the British Case’, in S. Mazey and J. Richardson (eds), Lobbying in the European Community, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stephens, P. (1996) Politics and the Pound: the Conservatives’ Struggle with Sterling, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Stones, R. (1990) ‘Government–Finance Relations in Britain 1964–7’, Economy and Society, 19, 32–55. Stones, R. (1992) ‘Labour and International Finance, 1964–67’, in D. Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes (eds), Policy Networks in British Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Street, J. and Weale, A. (1992) ‘Aids Policy in the UK’, in D. Kirp and R. Bayer (eds), AIDS in the Industrialized Democracies: Passions, Politics, and Policies, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Tant, T. (1993) British Government: the Triumph of Elitism, Aldershot: Dartmouth. Taylor, A. (2000) ‘Hollowing Out or Filling In? Taskforces and the Management of Crosscutting Issues in British Government’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2, 46–71. Taylor, P. (1990), Britain and the Cold War: 1945 and Geopolitical Transformation, London: Pinter. Tebbit, N. (1988) Upwardly Mobile, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Thain, C. and Wright, M. (1995) The Treasury, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thain, C. and Wright, M. (1996) The Treasury and Whitehall, Oxford: Clarendon. Thatcher, M. (1993) The Downing Street Years, London: Harper Collins. Theakston, K. (1995) The Civil Service since 1945, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Theakston, K. (1996) ‘Whitehall, Westminster and Industrial Policy’, in D. Coates (ed.), Industrial Policy in Britain, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Theakston, K. (1999) Leadership in Whitehall, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. The editors (1999) ‘Editorial: Studying British Politics’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1(1) pp. 1–11. Thomas, G. (1998) Prime Minister and Cabinet Today, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Bibliography 267 Thompson, M., Ellis, R. and Wildavsky, A. (1990) Cultural Theory, Oxford: Westview. Toonan, A. J. (1991) ‘Europe of the Administrations: the Challenge of 1992’, Public Administation Review, 52, 108–15. Van Maanen, B. and Barley, S. (1984) ‘Occupational Communities: Culture and Control in Organizations’, Research in Organizational Behaviour, 6, 287–365. Walker, D. (1999) ‘A Thoroughly Modern Mandarin’, Public Finance, 21–27 May. Walsh, K. (1995) Public Services and Market Mechanism, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Watson, M. (2000) ‘The Political Discourse of Globalization’, PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham. Watt, R. (1998) ‘Towards a Synthesised Network Approach: an Analysis of UK Nuclear and Renewable (Ware) Energy Programme, 1939–1985’, PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham. Weir, S. and Beetham, D. (1999) Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain, London: Routledge. Weller, P., Bakvis, H. and Rhodes, R. A. W. (eds.) (1997) The Hollow Crown: Countervailing Trends in Core Executives, London: Macmillan – now Palgrave. Whitelaw, W. (1989) The Whitelaw Memoirs, London: Aurum Press. Willson, F. M. G. (1955) ‘Ministries and Boards: Some Aspects of Administrative Development since 1832’, Public Administration, 33, 43–58. Wilson, H. (1976) The Governance of Britain, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Wilson, R. (1999) ‘The Civil Service in the New Millenium’, http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/1999/senior/re_speech.htm. Winninfrith, J. (1962) The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, London: George Allen and Unwin. Yin, R. K. (1984) Case Study Research, London: Sage. Young, E. (1991) ‘On the Naming of the Rose: Understanding Multiple Meanings as Elements of Organizational Culture’, in P. Frost, L. Moore, M. Louis, C. Lundberg and J. Martin (eds), Reframing Organizational Culture, London: Sage. Young, H. (1982), ‘The Department of Civil Liberties’, in The Home Office: Perspectives on Policy and Administration Bicentenary Lectures 1982 London: RIPA. Young, H. and Sloman, A. (1982) No, Minister, London: BBC. Young, Lord (1990), The Enterprise Years, London: Headline. Zey, M. (1998) Rational Choice Theory and Organizational Theory: a Critique, London: Sage.

Index References in italic indicate figures or tables ACPO see Association of Chief Police Officers ‘action’ element of culture, 22–3, 24, 38, 38 ‘actors’ in society, 22–3 administrative support, Prime Minister’s, 103 Adonis, A., 45, 55 advisers, special, 143–4 agency–departmental relations, DSS, 92–3 agency development see Next Steps programme agency/structure issue, 3–4, 10–11, 242–3 culture, 19–20, 100 interest group relations, 199–200 ministerial roles, 148–53 structural change, 43 agenda-setting role of ministers, 133, 133–9, 139, 153 ‘anticipated actions’ process, 107–8 appointment powers, Prime Minister’s, 54, 105–7 Armstrong, William, 39, 108 ‘arrogant’ features of Home Office, 78–80 Artis, M., 224 Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), 184–6, 190–1, 197 asymmetric power model, 246–50 Bache, I., 224 Baker, Ken, 2, 138, 210–11, 223 dangerous dogs issue, 203, 204 Home Secretary role, 73–4, 76–7, 108, 140, 160 Bakvis, H., 7 Bale, T., 16 Balogh, T., 39 Barker, A., 29

Barley, S., 20 Beer, S., 39 Bender, B., 214 Benefits Agency, 20 Benn, Tony, 7, 39, 94, 60–2, 150 agenda-setting aims, 133–4 Civil Service relationship, 31–6 Benson, J. K., 24 Benyon, J., 197 Berger, P., 19 Berlanger, G., 45 Beveridge Report, 86, 88 Bevir, M., 5 Biddis, M., 2 Blair, Tony, 109 Bradshaw, J., 87 Breton, A., 45 British political tradition, 28–9, 180, 244, 247 Brittan, S., 45 Buller, J., 86, 212, 220, 241 Bulmer, S., 215, 216 Bulpitt, J., 51, 110, 153 Burch, M., 214, 215, 216 bureau-shaping model, 155, 156–64 Burns, Terry, 121 Burrell, G., 25, 26 Butcher, T., 48, 64, 251 Butler, Robin, 28 Cabinet, 105–6, 109–10, 141–2, 128 ‘Cabinet enforcer’, 109 Cabinet ministers see ministerial roles Cabinet Office, 109, 213, 215, 216 Callaghan, J., 71, 117–18 Campbell, C., 41, 43, 44, 45, 52, 68, 147, 155, 164 Carrington, Peter, 46–7, 141, 243 Carruthers, B. G., 25 Castells, M., 249 Castle, B., 39, 124 268

Index 269 Cerny, P., 209 Chapman, J., 95 Chapman, R. A., 1, 29, 30, 121 Chester, D. N., 251 Citizen’s Charter, 105 civil servant–minister relationships see minister–civil servant relationships Civil Service: Taking Forward Continuity and Change, 55 Clarke, Ken, 73, 230 Clarke, R., 251 Clegg, S., 26, 27, 48 Clifford, J., 18 Coates, D., 210 Cockett, R., 45 codes of conduct, 29, 30–1 Conservative structural reforms, 2, 52–9, 67 managerial, 55–6 personnel, 52–4 consultants, Conservatives’ use of, 178–9 consultation Conservatives’ use of, 190–4 Labour’s use of, 194–6 Continuity and Change, 55 co-ordinating mechanisms, European, 214–17 co-ordination within departments, European, 227–9 core executive role, 101–31, 248–9 power dependency model, 168–70, 168 Prime Minister, 102–19 relations between departments, 124–30 segmentation, 237–9 Treasury, 119–24 Cram, I., 222 ‘critical realist’ perspective, 3–4 Cronin, J., 64 Crossman, R., 39, 124 Crowther Hunt, N., 7, 39, 46 cultural change, 14–42, 69–100, 232–3, 244–5 change within Whitehall, 37–41, 38 concept of culture, 16–27, 17, 24 DEn, 94–8

DSS, 86–94 DTI, 80–6 Home Office, 70–80 Whitehall, 27–37 cultural theory, 16–18, 17 ‘culture’ concept, 16–27, 17, 24 dependent or independent variable, 15 importance, 14–15 Daintith, T., 1 dangerous dogs issue, 204 Dale, H. E., 27 Davies, P., 70, 116 Deakin, N., 1, 120–4, 238 Dell, Edmund, 107 DEn see Energy, Department of department–agency relations, DSS, 92–3 departmental ministers see ministerial roles departments centrality of, 1 choice of, 3, 251–3, 252 cultures, 36, 69–70, 98–100, 99 lack of research on, 1–2 Prime Ministerial intervention, 109–10, 110–16 relations between, 124–30 relations with Europe, 212–18, 218–30, 241 Treasury interventions, 116–24 see also under names of individual departments, e.g., Trade and Industry, Department of dependency model see power dependency model Devine, F., 3 DHSS see Health and Social Security, Department of differentiated polity model, 6–8, 181, 233–42, 244, 246, 250 ministerial roles, 147–8 power issues, 8–9 DiMaggio, P. J., 19, 23, 42 DoE see Environment, Department of the Dolowitz, D., 139 Donaldson, L., 16

270 Index Donoughue, P., 118 Douglas, M., 16 Dowding, K., 7, 11, 43, 44, 56, 156, 182 Drewry, G., 48, 251 DSS see Social Security, Department of DTI see Trade and Industry, Department of ‘dual polity’ model, 110 Dunleavy, P., 10, 11, 43, 110, 117, 155, 156, 218, 251 Dunsire, A., 251 Dyrberg, T. B., 25, 26 Eagle, Angela, 29 economic context effect on policy networks’ roles, 200 effect on Prime Minister’s role, 116–17 globalisation, 210–11 Education and Employment, Department for, 129 education policy, 248–9 ‘egalitarian’ way of life, 17, 17 ‘elitist political tradition’, 28–9, 180, 244 Ellis, R., 16 Employment Department, 117, 129 Energy, Department of, 59–60, 62–3, 242–3 cultural change, 94–8, 98–100, 99 interest group relations, 186–7, 192–3, 200, 201 ministerial agenda-setting, 135–6 ministerial minimalist role, 141 Prime Ministerial intervention, 112–14 Environment, Department of the (DoE), 193, 225–6 EU co-ordination changes, 228–9 ethical position of civil servants, 28, 29–30 ethnomethodological approach, 23 European Secretariat, 215 European Union (EU), 209–31, 233 departments’ relations with, 218–30 globalisation of the state, 209–12 ‘hollowing out’ thesis, 240–2 ministers’ role in, 143 Whitehall’s relations with, 212–18

Evans, M., 87 exchange relations patterns, 239, 248 ‘executive dominance reassertion’ view, 155, 164–8, 175 executive role of ministers, 133, 145–7 external constraints, pattern of, 249–50 external consultants, Conservatives’ use of, 178–9 Falklands War, 111, 116 ‘fatalistic’ way of life, 17, 17 FCO see Foreign and Commonwealth Office FER see Fundamental Expenditure Review Financial Management Initiative, 2 Flinders, M., 28, 53, 234 Florina, M. P., 45 Foley, M., 101 Forder, J., 231 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), 20–1 EU co-ordination changes, 228 inter-departmental relations, 124–5 Prime Ministerial intervention, 111 relations with Europe, 213, 215, 216, 226 Foster, C., 41, 44, 52, 68, 110, 147, 153, 155, 160, 164 Foucault, M., 26 Fowler, Norman, 87–8, 138–9, 139, 166 Franklin, B., 206 free trade vs interventionism, 80–4 Frost, P. J., 19 Fry, G., 2, 39, 40, 43, 44 Fulton Report, 39, 46, 48 Fundamental Expenditure Review (FER), 121 Furlong, P., 3 Gains, F., 94 Gamble, A., 45, 46, 210, 212 Garfinkel, H., 19, 23 George, S., 241 Giddens, A., 19 Gilmour, Ian, 40, 46, 110

Index 271 Glennerster, H., 87 globalisation issues, 209–12, 230, 240 Goffman, E., 22–3 ‘governance’ vs ‘government’ debate, 6, 234–5 ‘grand strategy’, lack of, 44–7 Grant, W., 184, 218 Greer, P., 43, 91 grid concept, 16, 17 group concept, 16, 17 Grugel, J., 212 Haines, J., 20 Haldane model, 153 Hames, T., 45, 55 Hay, C., 10, 45, 46, 64, 169, 211 Hayward, J., 231 Headey, B., 70, 133, 140, 147 Health and Social Security, Department of (DHSS), 64–5, 89–91, 129 Heath, E., 46 Heclo, H., 1, 27 Held, D., 209, 210 Hennessy, P., 2, 39, 43, 48, 101, 102, 145, 251 Heseltine, Michael, 145–6, 160 hierarchical nature of Home Office, 78 ‘hierarchical’ way of life, 17, 17 Hill, J., 105 Hirst, P., 211 Hogg, S., 105 Hogwood, B., 49, 50, 251 Holliday, I., 214 ‘hollowing out’ thesis, 7–8, 209, 239–42 Home Office, 12 cultural change, 70–88, 98–100, 99, 245 interest group relations, 184–6, 190–1 intra-departmental relations, 125–6 media relations, 202, 203–6 ministerial agenda-setting, 134–5, 139, 139 ministerial minimalist role, 141 ministerial policy selectors, 140 Prime Ministerial intervention, 111–12, 115

relations with Europe, 223, 241 structural change analysis, 59, 65–7 Hood, C., 16, 17, 48, 251 Hoogvelt, A., 210 Hoopes, S., 152, 192, 200 Hoskyns, J., 47 Hout, W., 212 Howard, Michael, 74–5, 76, 166–7, 230 agenda-setting role, 134–5, 139, 139 Benn and Lilley compared, 150 interest group relations, 185–6 media relations, 205–6 Howell, David, 44–5, 113 Hungerford massacre, 204–5 Hurd, Douglas, 111, 140, 160, 203, 204–5, 223 Ibbs, R., 27 ideas/institutions relationship, 11–12, 153–4, 243–5 IMF crisis 118 ‘individualistic’ way of life, 17, 17 Industry, Department of, 60, 80–1, 82 ministerial agenda-setting, 137–8 ‘institutions’ element of culture, 23–4, 24, 38, 38 inter-departmental relations, 124–30, 233 interest group relations, 181, 182–201, 233 explanation of changes, 199–200 policy network approach, 182–97 power distribution, 197–9 internationalisation perspective, 211, 212 interventionism vs free trade, 80–4 interventions by prime ministers, 109–10, 110–16 interview methods/interpretation, 3–4, 253, 253 isolation of Home Office, 78–80 James, S., 2 Jay, P., 45 Jenkin, Patrick, 87, 114–15, 116, 141 policy initiator role, 139–40 Jenkins, Roy, 71–2, 115 agenda-setting role, 133, 134 media relations, 205

272 Index Jensen, L., 16, 17 Jessop, B., 39 Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA), 117, 129 joined-up government, 128–9, 249 Joseph, Keith, 82, 149 agenda-setting role, 134, 137–8, 139 JSA see Jobseekers’ Allowance Judge, D., 36, 102 Kavanagh, D., 2, 45, 46, 101, 108, 143, 190, 202, 238, 246 Kellner, P., 7, 39, 46 Kemp, Peter, 49–50, 159, 160 Kenny, M., 28 Keohane, R., 211, 212, 217 King, A., 2, 39, 45, 190 Kingdom, J., 10 knowledge and power, 25–6 Kogan, M., 20 Klymlicka, W., 210 Labour government, 122, 128–9 approach to consultation, 194–6 media relations, 206–7 Lawson, Nigel, 106, 107, 145, 149, 160 agenda-setting role, 134, 135–6 energy policy, 62–3, 96, 97, 242–3 interest group relations, 186–7 Prime Ministerial interference, 113, 114 Lee, J., 108, 112 Legg, T., 27 legitimacy resource of Prime Minister, 102–3 liberty vs order perspectives, 70, 71–7 Lilley, Peter, 87, 88–9, 113, 141, 194 agenda-setting role, 134, 137, 139 Benn and Howard compared, 150 social security reforms, 173–4 Ling, T., 49 Louis, M. R., 21, 25 Lowndes, V., 19 ‘loyalty’ aspect of Whitehall culture, 33–6, 176 Luckman, T., 19 Ludlam, S., 46, 139

Madgwick, P., 2, 251 MAFF (Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), 214, 217–18 Major, John, 55, 56, 105, 118–19 managerial reforms, 55–9 managerial role of civil servants, 156, 157–9, 161–3 managerial role of ministers, 133, 145–7 ‘managerialism’ culture, 38, 48–9 DSS, 90–1 DTI, 84–6 Home Office, 78–9 Mandelson, Peter, 142 March, J., 19 Marsh, M. J., 3, 8, 9, 28, 102, 169, 182, 201, 246 D. Richards, M. J. Smith and, 1, 5, 28, 53, 109, 122, 129, 156 R. Rhodes and, 7, 127, 139, 182, 235 McAnulla, S., 10, 118 McCaig, C., 249 McFarland, A., 9 McKinlay, A., 26 McLean, I., 251 McLeay, E., 184, 185, 190, 191, 197 media, departments’ relations with, 181, 201–7 Menon, A., 231 Metcalfe, L., 58–9 Meyerson, D., 18 Migue, J., 45 Milner, H., 211, 212, 217 Miners’ Strike, 112–13, 116 ‘minimalist’ role of ministers, 140–1 minister–civil servant relationships, 6–7, 8, 36–7, 53–5, 155–80, 233 bureau-shaping model, 156–64 power dependency model, 168–79, 168 reassertion of executive dominance, 164–8 Tony Benn, 31–6 ministerial roles, 132–54 changing pattern of governance, 147–8 changing roles, 132–47, 133, 139 European roles, 229–30

Index 273 explaining change, 148–54 Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), 214, 217–18 Minogue, K., 2 mission statement, Home Office, 67 Moore, John, 65, 141, 173 Mountfield, R., 14 NACRO, Home Office relations with, 191 neo-liberal policies, 46, 47 globalisation, 210, 211, 240 networks see policy networks New Deal, 122 ‘new institutionalism’, 19 New Public Management (NPM), 43–4, 48–51 and globalisation, 210 New Right ideology, 45–6, 200 Next Steps programme, 2, 55–9 civil servants’ role in, 156, 159–61 effect on work balances, 158 Niskanen, W., 45 Noll, R. G., 45 Norton, P., 133 Nott, John, 145–6 NPM see New Public Management nuclear energy policy, 94–5 Office of Public Service, 105 Ohmae, K., 210 Olsen, J., 19 order vs liberty perspectives, 70, 71–7 organisation/culture relationship, 23–4 organisational change, Prime Minister’s powers, 104–5 organisational context of ministerial roles, 151–2 organisational culture, 70, 98–100, 99 DEn, 98 DSS, 89–94 DTI, 84–6 Home Office, 77–80 Page, E., 1 Parliament, ministers in, 142 Parry, R., 1, 120–4, 238 Parsons, W., 48

‘party leader’ basis of Prime Minister’s legitimacy, 103 ‘party’ role of ministers, 143–5 Payne, A., 212 ‘performances’ in society, 22–3 Permanent Secretaries, work preferences/balances, 157–8, 161–3 personnel reform, 53–5 Peters, B. G., 10 Peterson, J., 210 Phillips, Lord, 30 Pitt, D. C., 251 Plowden, F., 43, 48 C. Foster and, 41, 44, 52, 68, 147, 153, 155, 160, 164 pluralist model of power, 8–9, 181, 199, 207, 245–6 policing policy network, 184–6, 190–1, 196–7 policy advisers, 143–4 Home Office officials as, 77–8, 79 policy chimneys, 125–6, 128–9, 238 policy culture, 70, 98–100, 99 DEn, 94–8 DSS, 86–9 DTI, 80–4 Home Office, 70–7 ‘policy initiatives’ role of ministers, 139–40 ‘policy legitimators’ role of ministers, 140–1 policy-making preferences of civil servants, 156, 157–9 policy networks, 7, 181, 182–201, 235–7 changes over time, 189–96 changing role, 199–201 policy outcomes, 196–7 power distribution, 197–9 policy outcomes, influence of policy networks, 196–7 policy role of civil servants, 156, 161–3, 170–4 policy role of ministers, 133, 133–41, 139 ‘policy selectors’ role of ministers, 140 political advisers, Benn’s use of, 32–3

274 Index political context effect on policy networks’ roles, 200 effect on Prime Minister’s role, 116–17 globalisation, 211–12 political role of ministers, 133, 141–5 Pollitt, C., 2, 251 Ponting, C., 48, 124 Portillo, Michael, 229–30 Powell, W. W., 19, 23, 42 power dependency model, 51–2, 68, 155, 168–79, 168 core executive, 101–2 Home Office, 80 power distribution of policy networks, 197–9 power issues, 8–9 culture and, 18–19, 24–7 structural change, 44 Whitehall culture, 28–9 powers of Prime Minister, 103–4, 104–19 Prices and Consumer Protection, Department of, 60, 62 Prime Minister role, 101, 102–19, 130, 237 and departments, 102–4 power dependency model, 168–70, 168 powers, 104–19 Prime Minister’s Office, 108 Prison Service, 160–1 ‘Prison Works’, 74 privatisation policy, DEn, 97–8, 192, 201 Pryce, S., 101 Public Expenditure Committee, 121 public opinion, departments’ relationship with, 181, 201–7 public relations advisers, 143–4 public relations role of ministers, 133, 145–7 public service ethos, 31, 36, 38–41 Purnell, S., 219 Pyper, R., 48 Radcliffe, J., 14, 60 rational choice theory, 163

Rees, Merlyn, 106, 185 regionalisation perspective, 211, 230 Reorganisation of Central Government, The, 44, 45 research, lack of, 1–2 research methods, 3, 251–3, 252, 253 researcher status, 4 resource use, Prime Minister’s, 117–19, 168–70, 168 Rhodes, R. A. W., 5, 6–7, 44, 52, 101, 110, 181, 209 1997, 5, 7, 43, 48, 168 D. Marsh and, 127, 139, 182, 235 Richards, D., 3, 49, 58, 153, 167–8, 238, 246 1997, 2, 14, 39, 46, 48, 54, 147, 153, 178 D. Marsh, M. J. Smith and, 1, 5, 28, 53, 109, 122, 129, 156 Riley, P., 19, 21, 25 Rose, R., 64, 70, 103, 116, 209, 251, 252–3 Sampson, A., 39 Saward, M., 53 Scott, R., 27, 30 sectionalism in DEn, 95 segmentation of core executive, 237–9, 248–9 Seldon, A., 2, 101, 108, 117, 118, 143, 202 Senior Management Review (SMR), 2, 55, 86, 92, 105 Sloman, A., 20 Smircich, L., 21 Smith, B. C., 251 Smith, M. J., 7, 9, 23, 29, 86, 198, 217, 234 1999a, 2, 44, 49, 52, 53, 101, 102, 168 D. Marsh and, 182, 201 D. Marsh, D. Richards and, 1, 5, 28, 53, 109, 122, 129, 156 D. Richards and, 49, 58, 153, 167–8 S. Ludlam and, 46, 139 SMR see Senior Management Review social conservatism views, Home Office, 71–2

Index 275 social context, and Prime Minister’s role, 116–17 social liberalism views. Home Office, 71–7 Social Security, Department of, 59, 64–5 cultural change, 86–94, 98–100, 99, 245 inter-departmental relations, 129 interest group relations, 189, 193–4, 195 Jobseekers’ Allowance dispute, 117 media relations, 202–3 ministerial agenda-setting, 137, 138–9, 139 ministerial policy initiatives, 140 power dependency example, 173–4 Prime Ministerial intervention, 114–15 relations with Europe, 222 relations with Treasury, 120–3 social security payments reform, 88–9 social welfare principles, 64, 86–7 special advisers, 143–4 Spence, J., 215 Starkey, K., 26 Stephens, P., 210 Stones, R., 210 Strangeways breakout, 203 Straw, Jack, 75 structural change, 43–69 departmental changes, 59–67 lack of ‘grand strategy’, 44–7 post-1979, 48–51, 52–9 power dependency perspective, 51–2, 177 Prime Minister’s powers, 104–5 structural context of ministerial roles, 148–9, 151–2 structure/agency issue see agency/structure issue structured inequality perspective, 9, 247 sub-cultures and sub-systems, 20–1 Whitehall, 30, 36–7 ‘support’ powers, Prime Minister’s, 107–8

Tebbitt, Norman, 82–3, 107, 116, 118 Thain, C., 1, 27, 224 Thatcher, Margaret, 10, 101–2, 106, 108, 160 interventions, 111–15, 118–19, 237 view of Civil Service, 40, 47 Thatcherism, 39–40, 45–6 Theakston, K., 48 theoretical framework development, 4–5 Thomas, G., 102 Thompson, G., 211 Thompson, M., 16 timing of research, 2 Toonan, A. J., 214 top-down budgeting approach, 121 Total Managed Expenditure, 121 Trade, Department of, 60, 81 Trade and Industry, Department of (DTI), 3, 12 cultural change, 80–6, 98–100, 99, 245 EU co-ordination changes, 228 European role, 143, 230 inter-departmental relations, 124–5 interest group relations, 187–9, 191–2, 195–6, 200, 201 intra-departmental relations, 126–7 ministerial agenda-setting, 136, 137–8, 139, 139 relations with Europe, 218–22, 241 structural change, 59, 60–2 transnationalisation, 210–11 Treasury, 1, 17, 20 EU co-ordination changes, 227 opposition to Next Steps, 56–7 relations with departments, 119–24, 130–1, 238 relations with Europe, 224–5 ‘trust’ aspect of Whitehall culture, 32–33, 163 universality principle, social welfare, 88, 89 value element of culture, 21–22, 24, 38, 38 Van Maanen, B., 20 veto powers, Prime Minister’s, 107–8

276 Index Waddington, David, 73, 106, 141, 160, 203, 223 agenda-setting role, 135, 139 Wakeham, John, 97, 115–16 Walker, D., 20 Walker, Peter, 95–6, 115 Watson, M., 211, 240 Watt, R., 94 ‘webs of meaning’, 21–2 welfare principles, 64, 86–7 welfare to work programme, 122, 238 Weller, P., 7, 48 Westminster model, 5–6, 164–8, 179, 233, 247 Whitehall culture, 27–41, 164–8, 232–3 changes within, 37–41, 38 competing frameworks, 36–7, 38 relationship with Europe, 212–18 Tony Benn, 31–6

Whitelaw, Willie, 112, 115–16, 145–6, 203 Wildavsky, A., 1, 16, 27 Williams, Shirley, 60 Wilson, F. M. G., 251 Wilson, G., 29, 41, 43, 44, 45, 52, 68, 147, 155, 164 Wilson, R., 14, 38 Wintrobe, R., 45 Wright, M., 1, 27, 224 Young, David, 83–4, 154, 160 agenda-setting role, 134, 136, 138, 139, 139 Young, E., 20 Young, H., 20 ‘zero sum game’, 7, 68, 101, 239 Zey, M., 16