To mark the 2023 death of GK Fry this note focuses attention on the approach to public sector reform in Britain discussed in his many works. Starting with his criticism of the 1968 Fulton Committee Report, his work developed a view of reform that foreshadowed debates that later went under the label of ‘new public management’ by at least 20 years. This note explains how he argued that a ‘positive state’ or Fabian approach dominated thinking about public administration for so long and largely accounted for the failure of most of the reforms of the postwar period until the 1980s. Fry’s background and interests to some degree help explain how he reached this perspective and how he set it out, so this note begins and ends with some outline of his life, career and outlook.

Richard Rose’s Politics in England was not just a textbook. Its origins mark it out from the range of other texts that students of British politics could look to in the mid-1960s, most of which adopted a legal and/or historical approach to the study of British politics. Politics in England was part of a series of books—the ‘Little, Brown’ series—that reflected the vision of comparative politics associated with a ‘structural-functional’ approach that gained greatest popularity after the late 1950s, and above all with the ideas and active promotion of Gabriel Almond who, along with Lucien Pye, edited the series each volume with the simple title Politics in ….

In the United Kingdom, the influence of parliamentary select committees on policy depends substantially on the 'seriousness' with which they approach the task of gathering and evaluating a wide range of evidence and producing reports and recommendations based on it. However, select committees are often charged with being concerned with 'political theatre' and 'grandstanding' rather than producing evidence-based policy recommendations. This study, based on a survey of 919 'discretionary' witnesses, including those submitting written and oral evidence, examines the case for arguing that there is political bias and grandstanding in the way select committees go about selecting witnesses, interrogating them and using their evidence to put reports together. While the research finds some evidence of such 'grandstanding' it does not appear to be strong enough to suggest that the role of select committees is compromised as a crowdsourcer of evidence.

Das von Peter Hupe herausgegebene Research Handbook on Street-Level Bureaucracy zeichnet sich durch einen roten Faden und die Kohärenz der Beiträge aus. Es umfasst mit einer Sammlung von hochwertigen Essays, theoretischen und methodischen Beiträgen in fünf Teilen eine systematische Bestandsaufnahme und Bewertung der Forschung zu street-level bureaucracy sowie einen Ausblick auf aktuelle Forschungsfragen, -ansätze und -methoden. Als Meilenstein im Forschungsfeld wird das Handbuch nicht nur einen Mehrwert für die Forschung bieten, sondern auch zur Pflichtlektüre für zahlreiche Bachelor- und Masterkurse werden. Durch die einleitenden und abschließenden Essays sowie vier Beiträge mit Beteiligung des Herausgebers, die sich wie ein Choral durch das Werk ziehen, ist das Handbuch sehr stringent und fokussiert als Gesamtwerk auf die Entwicklung eines theoretischen Rahmens zur Einordnung und Generalisierung von Forschungsergebnissen. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Frage nach den Bestimmungsfaktoren der Aufgabenerfüllung auf Ebene der street-level bureaucracy, wobei sowohl street-level bureaucracy als Verwaltungsdienstleister als auch über die direkte Bürger*innen-Verwaltung-Interaktion hinausgehende Faktoren und Bedingungen betrachtet werden.

Did the Brexit lead to a decline in interest group influence in British government? This research note reports on a survey of 268 public affairs professionals and examines whether the ‘bandwidth’ taken up by Brexit diminished the areas of domestic policy that groups might seek to influence and whether groups found it harder to engage with government in the 3 years up to 2020. The figures indicate that Brexit significantly displaced other domestic issues but that government did not ‘freeze out’ interest groups in the period. Moreover, the evidence points to a growing role for groups post-Brexit.

Do scientists advising government in scientific advisory committees (SACs) in the UK fit the traditional model of offering substantive scientific advice to improve the quality of policy making, are they forums for policy making and negotiation where the science' is tempered by broader political concerns, or are they simply bodies that legitimise policies already decided upon? The traditional on tap' model and its alternatives imply differences in how the agendas of SACs are put together, how committees deliberate and how they influence policy, and these implied differences are explored on the basis of a 2015 survey covering the experiences and attitudes of 338 members from 46 scientific committees. The traditional model holds up rather well against models that see SACs filling broader political roles such as policy deliberation and legitimation. The findings suggest that the organization and procedures of SACs indeed allow scientists to offer advice largely without having to engage with or anticipate wider policy considerations and constraints, and that government steering' or otherwise leading SAC deliberations toward politically desired conclusions is rare.

Public AdministrationVolume 95, Issue 4 p. 1113-1114 REVIEW Distributing status: The evolution of state honours in Western Europe Edward C. Page, Edward C. Page London School of Economics and Political ScienceSearch for more papers by this author Edward C. Page, Edward C. Page London School of Economics and Political ScienceSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 October 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12372Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume95, Issue4Special Issue: Symposium: Behavioural and Experimental Public AdministrationDecember 2017Pages 1113-1114 RelatedInformation

This Handbook brings together a collection of leading international authors to reflect on the influence of central contributions, or classics, that have shaped the development of the field of public policy and administration. The Handbook reflects on a wide range of key contributions to the field, selected on the basis of their international and wider disciplinary impact. Focusing on classics that contributed significantly to the field over the second half of the 20th century, it offers insights into works that have explored aspects of the policy process, of particular features of bureaucracy, and of administrative and policy reforms. Each classic is discussed by a leading international scholars. They offer unique insights into the ways in which individual classics have been received in scholarly debates and disciplines, how classics have shaped evolving research agendas, and how the individual classics continue to shape contemporary scholarly debates. In doing so, this volume offers a novel approach towards considering the various central contributions to the field. The Handbook offers students of public policy and administration state-of-the-art insights into the enduring impact of key contributions to the field.

Do governments lean on researchers who evaluate their policies to try to get them to produce politically useful results? Do researchers buckle under such pressure? This article, based on a survey of 205 academics who have recently completed commissioned research for government, looks at the degree to which British government departments seek to produce research that is designed to provide ‘political ammunition’, above all making them ‘look good’ or minimizing criticism of their policies. Looking at different stages in the research process – from deciding which policies to evaluate, shaping the nature and conduct of inquiry, and writing the results – the article finds evidence of government sponsors making significant efforts to produce politically congenial results. For the most part, researchers appear to resist these efforts, though the evidence base (researchers' own accounts of their work) suggests that this conclusion be treated with some caution.

While the position of special advisers (SpAds) in British government has become routinised, above all since 1997, we still know little about how they affect everyday life at the top of Whitehall departments. This paper, based on the first ever survey of SpAds, explores what they do and how they interact with policy-makers. SpAds fill a mix of ocommissar' and ofixer' roles, and there is no evidence of a sharp division of labour between different types of SpAds. The commissar role they fill might be expected to bring SpAds into conflict with civil servants, yet there is surprisingly little evidence of conflict or rivalry. A variety of features of the special advisers job appear to create incentives among both SpAds and civil servants to avoid conflict with each other. Since the influence of SpAds appears to depend on their relationship with the minister, claims that SpAds are a new, powerful group that shapes policy, are likely to be highly misleading.

Set-piece consultations, through which government invites groups and individuals to comment on proposed legislation, codes of practice, guidance or some other measures, are a common feature of British policy-making, yet we know remarkably little about them. Above all, we do not know why anyone should respond to them when the chances of changing policy appear remote. This research note reports a survey of over 300 individuals in organisations that responded to government consultation requests and explores a range of hypotheses seeking to explain participation in set-piece consultations, including those relating to the role of membership, the outsider status of the organisation and the role of the set-piece consultation in wider lobbying campaigns. The evidence suggests that set-piece consultations are more fruitfully viewed as distinctive forms of consultation in which respondents believe they have a chance of shaping some kinds of issues but not the policy itself.

'Bureaucracy' has been a term of abuse in popular language for a long time (Albrow, 1970; Kaufman, 1981) and its pathologies – red tape, delays, inflexibility (see Merton, 1957) – have been a popular target for politicians too. However, over the last 40 years there has been a sustained attack on bureaucracy on a broader front: as the basis of state organisation, not just on its obvious perceived pathologies. 'Everywhere its demise is reported, demanded and, more often than not, celebrated' (du Gay, 2000, p. 1). A growing volume of academic literature shares the disdain for bureaucracy (see also Goodsell, 2004). Moreover, traditional patterns of bureaucracy are also being undermined by a range of social processes. Citizen expectations of government (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992), the growing reach of party organisation in democratic states (Katz and Mair, 1995) and the growth of university education (Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman, 1981), for example, all have implications for traditional conceptions of the role of bureaucracy and bureaucrats.

The bureaucracy of the European Union is an unlikely success story; it has managed to develop a level of activism and an ability to shape policies in member states that appears improbable in the light of its composition, mode of operation and constitutional limitations. The bureaucratic setup of European integration was conceived by Monnet as essentially based on sovereignty – an impermanent core European administration drawing in officials from member states developing frameworks for common policies that member state bureaucracies apply and implement (see Hooghe 2005:37ff). While a more permanent and routinised form of European bureaucracy actually emerged from the Treaty of Rome, it was hardly one based on a centralisation of authority. Moreover, the fragmentation of authority in the European Union (EU) as a whole might at first glance appear to be exacerbated by basic features of the design of the Commission (see Kassim 2003). It is a non-executant bureaucracy reliant on member states for the execution of policies and on member states and others for its technical expertise. Its main power is the power to propose and its recommendations can be turned down or substantially modified by inter-institutional bargaining between the Commission, Council and member states in the shadow of the authority of the European Court of Justice (see Héritier and Lehmkuhl 2011). It is a multi-national bureaucracy in which the principle of merit promotion is at least tempered if not undermined by the principle of securing fair shares among plum jobs for all its member states. The working processes of the Commission appear to be riddled with opportunities for member states to shape what it does.

It is frequently assumed that the expertise of bureaucrats gives them policy-making power. This paper examines critically this proposition on the basis of a study of 52 regulations passed in six jurisdictions. The paper presents the material from this study in the form of three tableaux: the bureaucrat as expert, the bureaucrat as mobiliser of expertise and the bureaucrat as servant of experts. Expertise is primarily understood as either scientific expertise or policy expertise –knowledge or experience of a specific policy area. In each tableau the significance of expertise as a source of influence can be questioned. Where "experts" have influence, it is because of their status rather than the content of their expertise. Max Weber himself was ambivalent about the importance of expertise and its role in strengthening bureaucratic power in policy-making is likely to have been exaggerated.

The large and growing literature on accountability highlights a variety of mechanisms by which bureaucrats may be held accountable as regards their role in the policy-making process. This paper looks at accountability mechanisms from the bureaucrat's perspective using material gathered for a study of bureaucratic roles in rulemaking in Sweden, Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It asks to which of the mechanisms for securing public accountability for executive decisions do bureaucrats pay particular attention when helping develop policy: where are the minefields they feel they have to negotiate? The most important of the minefields is political executive approval. It shapes the way the other mechanisms (group opinion, the legislative and judicial branches of government) are negotiated. Thus ‘ministerial responsibility’ and its equivalents in the other countries remain crucial features of systems of administrative accountability.

Résumé L’expression « modèle de Whitehall » présente une certaine valeur heuristique pour décrire quatre caractéristiques essentielles de la fonction publique britannique, à savoir la neutralité politique, le généralisme, les schémas de carrière à vie et une forte fonction de conseil en politiques. Ce modèle a été remis en question sous l’effet de la politisation, des évolutions dans la gestion de carrière et le recrutement, ainsi que de la concurrence grandissante d’autres sources de conseils stratégiques. Le rôle de la fonction publique britannique à l’égard des ministres semble être de plus en plus défini en des termes managériaux et de moins en moins en tant que conseillers stratégiques, surtout parce qu’une série d’autres individus et organes (conseillers, consultants, think tanks , services de recherche des partis) partagent à présent cette fonction. Si elle semble jouer un rôle stratégique moins important, la haute fonction publique n’est, du moins pour l’instant, pas parvenue à sortir de la mêlée dans sa fonction managériale. Le principal changement dans le modèle concerne la chute de la confiance dans la fonction publique, non seulement parmi les citoyens, mais aussi parmi les politiciens et les agents de l’État eux-mêmes. Résumé à l’intention des praticiens À de nombreux égards, le modèle de Whitehall, qui décrit la fonction publique britannique et son rôle politique, se montre extrêmement résilient malgré les grands changements intervenus dans le système politico-administratif britannique. La haute fonction publique a toujours évité d’être associée à la gestion de la formulation détaillée des politiques. Face à la baisse de l’influence politique de la fonction publique – l’évolution la plus évidente dans le modèle de Whitehall -, on pourrait améliorer la qualité du processus décisionnel en accordant une plus grande priorité à cette fonction de formulation des politiques.