REVIEWS

THE ART OF JUDGEMENT: A STUDY OF POLICY MAKING

Sir Geoffrey Vickers.
Centenary Edition. Advances in Public Administration series.
Sage Publications, 1995. xxiv + 284pp. 16.50 (paper)
RETHINKING PUBLIC POLICY-MAKING: QUESTIONING
ASSUMPTIONS, CHALLENGING BELIEFS. ESSAYS IN HONOUR
OF SIR GEOFFREY VICKERS ON HIS CENTENARY
Margaret Blunden and Malcolm Dando (eds.)
Sage Publications, London, 1995. 233pp. 28.50 (cloth)
Geoffrey Vickers has become a non-religious Western guru and prophet, attracting a small
and loyal following to his message that the whole Western world took a wrong turning at
the time of the Enlightenment (ironic term), and is on a path which will lead to its destruction.
The mind-set it learned then focusing on individual autonomy rather than the responsibilities
of membership of one another, on the pursuit of private satisfactions rather than the mainte-
nance of social relations spells disaster in an increasingly complex and interdependent
global village.
Doomsday messages were then in the air (J.K. Galbraith, Donald Schon, Gordon Rattray
Taylor, Theodore Roszak), and now reactions to Reaganism and Thatcherism, such as the
communitarian movement, or the social responsibilities of business campaign, arrive at similar
prescriptions without necessarily knowing about Geoffrey Vickers work. Vickers distinction,
for the readers of this journal, is his interest in the processes of public policy making.
He was no academic: he called himself a professional, and began writing in his retirement,
after a remarkable career: highly decorated soldier, classics undergraduate, solicitor, top civil
servant, nationalized industry executive. In his spare time, as chairman of the Research Com-
mittee of the Mental Health Research Fund, he read himself into familiarity with psychology,
anthropology and social science, and like many keen minds of the time, was captivated by
systems thinking. This came, he said, as a liberation; it gave him a language in which to
make sense of his varied and perplexing experience.
The rst book under review is a reissue of Vickers 1965 classic, with a Foreword by three
American devotees, and a biography by Margaret Blunden. The heart of Vickers thought is
the rejection of analytic reductionism and of billiard ball causality in human relations, and
an insistence on the synthesizing, holistic, moral, and subjective character of all choice about
anything at all. The key word is judgement, based on an appreciation. An appreciation
has three facets: a reality judgement, about what the facts are; a value judgement, compar-
ing those with what could or should be the case; and an instrumental judgement, about what
might be done. But these facets are not all separate or sequential: each is loaded with the
others, like the weft and woof of a net.
Value judgements incorporate the entire life-history, and also the dreams and ideals, of the
Public Administration Vol. 75 Autumn 1997 (587600)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
588 REVIEWS
appreciators their appreciative system; the more closely woven and coherent the net, the
greater the disturbance wrought by change. We are social animals, and learn to appreciate
the appreciative systems of others; we develop expectations of how they will respond, as they
do about us. The interplay of these expectations produces norms, settings of these relations
which we would prefer to see maintained. Maintaining relations over time in changing con-
texts is what Vickers calls regulation the use of instrumental judgement to bring reality
into line with preferences. All decision makers are regulators of their social environment.
Appreciative systems and settings can be discerned not only at the level of the individual
person, but also in the ethos of an organization and the tenets of a culture. No two appreciative
systems are identical; but a degree of commonality is what creates and keeps together a group,
a family, a community, a profession, an organization, a country.
These denitions are then applied in the analysis of a number of case studies. Some of the
second half of the book is dated, as one would expect; but the analysis (as for example in a
chapter called Political Choice and Market Choice) predicted the now-emerging effects. As in
all Vickers writing, the texture is rich with intellectual ornament and metaphor, derived from
his own varied experience and reading (for example, expectations, like walls, are improbable
structures, ultimately self-supporting and much more easily levelled than raised; and policies
depend upon expectations (p. 242)). These magic cross-disciplinary parallels and homologies
are wholesale in the Yearbooks of the Society for General Systems Research, of which Vickers
was an early member, and president in 1970.
The book ends with a chapter on The Human-Ecological System. This, says Vickers, is self-
regulating. War, famine, and disease have adjusted populations to their living space many
times before, and they can be relied on to do so again. If humans were to succeed in making
the planet uninhabitable by man, other species (the cockroach is favoured) would colonize
the vacant space, and the earth, relieved of its most destabilizing element, would soon assume
a new ecological balance (p. 255). Vickers later developed this theme in Freedom in a Rocking
Boat and other publications. Needed in a rocking boat is not freedom but shared responsibility.
That is the main preoccupation of the second volume under review.
This was originally published as a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist in 1994,
with the addition of a Foreword by R.A.W. Rhodes. There are thirteen contributors, six of
them British, the others American, each bringing us up to date in an area of Vickers thinking
and wide interests. Rod Rhodes excoriates the New Public Management, Nevil Johnson other
recent administrative reforms in Britain. Margaret Blunden expounds the critique of liberalism,
and the difculty of resetting the entire appreciative system of Western society. Guy Adams
and Bernard Catron describe modern communitarian thinking, and suggest that, if the world
is to be saved from itself, greater intrusions upon individual autonomy by authority may be
necessary. John Forester develops Vickers views on the failings of social science, and on plan-
ning as education. Peter Checkland does a Vickers on 1950s systems theory, introducing his
distinction between hard systems (which think of systems as existing in the world), and soft
systems theory, which sees the world as made up of problems, but the process of inquiry as
organizable on a systemic basis.
Nancy Milio and Patrick Pietroni deal with recent reforms in health care, respectively in
the US and British health care systems. It was Vickers who invented the concept of community
medicine, and had the condence, with no medical standing whatsoever, to criticize the
assumptions that in-patient medicine is the only real medicine, and that all doctors are trained
in hospitals. Alvin White takes up Vickers interest in informal education, and describes the
development of humanistic mathematics. Malcolm Dando applies Vickers thinking on con-
ict management and the responsibilities of membership to events in Yugoslavia. Scott Cook
tackles the problem of plural moral systems: how can we stabilize the rocking boat when there
is no shared concept of what responsible conduct would be? Finally, Lynton Caldwell asks
whether an expectation of systemic social responsibility is realistic, and expresses scepticism
that modern society can save itself from itself, except by recourse to iron government.
Each book has a splendid index, the second covering 35 pages.
What is our judgement on Sir Geoffrey Vickers, as a policy theorist, as a philosopher of
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history? As is remarked in these books, he was appreciated more in America than in his native
land, even though or perhaps because the American dream was to him an awful warning.
Among political scientists, however, appreciative system is a term which, like Simons satis-
cing, has not quite passed into the language, and is always cited with a reference unlike,
say, incrementalism or pluralism. On anti-individualismand the need for community (a theme
now heard rather nervously even on the British hustings, as an emphasis on duties as well
as rights), Amitai Etzioni is much more cited than Vickers, and Mary Douglas cultural theory
is probably a more accessible product than Vickers theorem that in human societies all linear
development is eventually self-destabilizing.
It may be that the intellectual basis which attracts many devotees to Vickers his foundation
in systems theory and, to a lesser extent, cybernetics is also that which has hidden his
greatness from other eyes. British political science, on the whole, distrusts systems thinking,
or at least can very well do without it. Of the world-wide membership of the General Systems
Society in 1960, only 2.4 per cent were English (no Scots, Welsh or Irish), and 91 per cent were
North American. Vickers, though he applied systems thinking, did not noticeably develop it;
and he was odd on control theory, in his insistence that the word control should be used to
mean monitor or check only, in the French and German sense (as in frontier controls). He
never attempted to give a systems or cybernetic understanding of his key concept of optimiz-
ing-balancing. So he probably does not earn a place in the systems pantheon either, alongside
(from this country) Ross Ashby and Stafford Beer.
Yet, like Rod Rhodes, I remain a fan, for he was a prophet, and his writing is always an
intellectual delight and stimulation.
Andrew Dunsire
University of York
RE-STATING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE
Colin Hay
Open University Press, 1996. 207pp. 10.99 (paper)
This is an ambitious, sometimes difcult, but always challenging and perceptive book, which
deserves careful reading. Its author sets himself two main tasks. First he aims to show the
importance of state theory to the analysis of contemporary society and politics. The book is
literally an attempt to re-state social and political change. It incorporates the state into its
analysis of social and political change and it sets out to show how changing understandings
of the state have themselves been fundamental to social and political change. Second, and in
that context, the book seeks to present a convincing analysis of British society and politics
since the war. It concludes by setting out an agenda for the future.
The book seeks to show the value of state theory in practice by developing a persuasive
overall analysis of Britains post-war experience. Hay starts by outlining his own understand-
ing of state theory, and concludes with an analysis of Thatcherism and its consensual continu-
ation, which he calls Blaijorism. It is to his credit that the steps between the most abstract
formulations at the start of the book and the analysis of contemporary practice at the end
seem to follow coherently and convincingly. There is no sharp disjunction between the theory
and the discussion of practice.
Each of the core chapters of the book is concerned with a particular moment of Britains
post-war political history. Chapter 2 focuses on the post war settlement. Hay redenes and
claries this settlement in terms which locate its main dening characteristics in the period
of war-time coalition, rather than the Attlee government. It was consolidated by the Attlee
government, not initiated by it. In chapter 3 Hay explores the notion of post-war consensus.
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He distinguishes between governments which set out to transform what he calls the contours
of the state and those which do not seek signicantly to challenge the structures they have
inherited. Periods dominated by governments of the latter sort can be understood as periods
of consensus. In chapter 4 Hay goes on to interrogate the notion of citizenship which underlay
the mythology of the Keynesian welfare state.
In chapters 5 and 6 Hay explores the political crises of the 1970s. He conducts a careful
debate over denitions of crisis alongside a painstaking exploration of the break up of the
post-war settlement and its stunted legacy in the form of the social contract. In chapter 7 he
turns to the analysis of Thatcherism as a state project, and begins to explore the extent to
which Thatcherism has overseen a profound structural transformation of the state (p. 153).
On balance Hay believes there have been fundamental changes and in chapter 8 he sets out
his vision of a post-Thatcher settlement (with similar status to the post-war settlement) with
a consensus based around what he calls Blaijorism. He concludes by briey outlining the need
for an alternative model, although he is rather pessimistic about the likelihood of its being
taken up.
It would be a great pity if Hays explicit focus on state theory and his ambition to re-state
(or reintroduce the state into discussions of) social and political change were to put off more
mainstream readers. The state theorizing is sometimes heavy going, but it is worthwhile per-
severing, not only because it underpins the argument and analysis, but also because of the
way in which it encourages the reader to reconsider his or her own conceptions of the state
the easy assumptions which put clear boundaries between the state (public) and the private
sphere. Hay, effectively questions many of those divisions, showing what it means to under-
stand the state as a socially constituted set of relations, rather than simply as a set of govern-
ment and judicial institutions.
Allan Cochrane
The Open University
THE WHITEHALL READER. THE UKS ADMINISTRATIVE
MACHINE IN ACTION
Peter Barberis (ed.)
Open University Press, 1996. 294pp. Price not known
The civil service has long since been a hot subject in the study of British government, and,
indeed, of the old trinity around which the academic study of public administration used to
be organized the civil service, local government, and the nationalized industries it seems
the most durable. This is not to say that the pace of change in the civil service has been
other than remarkable in recent years, and certainly the output of material, whether ofcial
or interpretative, has been daunting in scale.
So, we need a guide book and here is one edited by Peter Barberis of the Manchester Metro-
politan University, and very good it is too.
Only the bravest of the brave would attempt an introductory essay on the subject of White-
hall since the Fulton report within the 20 pages, but Barberis brings it off, and then presents
a range of material under six further headings.
The Whitehall Machine: Structure and Process includes synoptic pieces by Peter Hennessy
and Patrick Dunleavy, and analytical work, inevitably that written by Hugo Heclo and Aaron
Wildavsky, and, more recently Colin Thain and Maurice Wright.
Civil Servants and Ministers: Power, Inuence and Public Policy naturally includes
material from both sides of the divide, which means Barbara Castle, Michael Heseltine and
James Callaghan in the case of the politicians. Only Heseltine had much interest in civil ser-
vice reform.
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Callaghans remarks are those that he made to the Treasury and Civil Service Committee
in 1993 about Whitehall under long-run Conservative rule. Mrs Castles ramblings remind us
of the previous situation. Nobody talks about Mandarin power now, surely. From the civil
service side, Sir Patrick Nairne and Sir Kenneth Stowe make contributions, and there is
material too from William Plowden, Anthony King and Richard Rose.
The next section deals with Loyalties, Responsibilities and Ethics and contains the Arm-
strong Memorandum as included in the Civil Service Management Code, and a draft civil
service code as produced by the Treasury and Civil Service Committee. There is material also
by Clive Ponting, Peter Jay, and a thoughtful piece by Barry OToole about T.H. Green, the
Edward Heath of political philosophy.
The section on Reforming Whitehall I: Hopes, Visions, and Landmarks contains two pieces
by Sir Robin Butler, as well as extracts from the Next Steps report, the Citizens Charter and
the Treasury document on Competing for Quality, and an overview from William Waldegrave.
Just to cheer everybody up, there is an extract from Reinventing Government, the Peters and
Waterman of its day.
Then the critics have their say: Richard Chapman, Vernon Bogdanor, Patricia Greer and so
on. It is all good stuff, and an incisive piece by Sir Peter Kemp stirs things up.
The last section deals with Civil Servants, Parliament and the Public, and valuably includes
the Osmotherly Rules, and an interesting contribution from Sir Frank Cooper. In the pretend
radical stakes there is a piece from Tony Benn, which serves as a reminder that things may
be bad but they have been worse.
An admirable bibliography sets the seal on a carefully organized Reader, which provides
an informed guide to a period of rapid change and full value for those studying public admin-
istration.
Geoffrey K. Fry
University of Leeds
CIVIL SERVICE SYSTEMS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Hans Bekke, James Perry and Theo Toonen (eds.)
Indiana University Press (UK distrib. Open University Press), 1996.
346pp. 31.50 (cloth), 15.50 (paper)
Comparative politics is as comparative politics does. While methodologists continue to debate
the ner points of strategy, practitioners get on with the job of comparing political institutions,
adopting whatever approaches seem best suited to their particular task. This is as it should
be; after all methodological innovation is as likely to emerge from engagement with substance
as through formal consideration of research strategy. So one way of looking at this comparative
study of civil services is to ask what it reveals about the use of the comparative method in
contemporary political science.
The answer is clear: comparison has become a suite of techniques rather than a single
method. Just as comparative politics has itself dissolved into numerous subelds, so the com-
parative method has also become a covering term for a range of related research strategies.
Thus, four distinct approaches can be discerned in this book: comparative history, congur-
ation analysis, diffusion research and the case survey. In a postpositivist era, this methodolog-
ical diversity should be considered a strength rather than a weakness.
Comparative history is represented in Raadschelders and Rutgerss impressive chapter on
the evolution of civil services, primarily in Europe. Conguration analysis is adopted by Ferrel
Heady who seeks to distinguish between ruler trustworthy, party controlled, policy receptive
and collaborative civil services. Diffusion research is represented in Halligans examination of
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the mechanisms through which reforms such as the introduction of a Senior Executive Service
were diffused both among the Australian states and between Australia and other countries.
And the case survey, nally, is used by Hood to explore variations between countries in the
extent of public management reform.
The remaining chapters (and there are 15 in all, making the paperback good value) are less
explicit in their methods. They take a particular theme for instance, internal labour markets,
politicization or the representative bureaucracy and explore its signicance in a broadly
comparative way. Nothing wrong with this, of course, and nearly all the chapters are worth
reading. But the overall effect is somewhat disjointed. While methodological pluralism is desir-
able, the best comparative research still needs a tight geographical and thematic focus. As it
stands, this book is an original contribution to the study of civil services which will also attract
political scientists with a general interest in comparative government. But the next volume
(and the editors do hint at more to come) promises to dig deeper into the ground broken by
this initial work.
Martin Harrop
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
DELIVERING CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
The Constitution Unit
University College, London, 1996. 101pp. 10
The reform of Britains semi-modern constitution would be an immense task for even the most
radical and prepossessed administration, never mind a Labour Party with a historical penchant
for playing policy on the hoof. It will take tremendous political will and procedural endur-
ance to complete the task and obstacles will emerge at every turn. It is thus timely that a
project has emerged that deals in specics rather than declamatory statements which merely
extol the virtues of constitutional reform. The Constitution Unit provides a much needed way
forward from the visionary monographs written by David Marquand, Ferdinand Mount,
Anthony Wright and Will Hutton, which all succeeded in exciting but failed to furnish us
with a modus operandi.
The Constitution Unit was set up in April 1995 to conduct an independent inquiry into the
implementation of constitutional reform in the UK. The unit aims to analyse current pro-
posals for constitutional reform; explore the connections between them; and to identify the
practical steps involved in putting constitutional reforms in place. This review deals with the
rst of a series of reports which have been published by the unit during 1996.
Delivering Constitutional Reform is organized into ve chapters. The rst chapter maps out
the case for consitutional reform emphasizing the interlinking nature of reform measures. To
deal with this, the unit proposes the creation of a minister in charge of constitutional reform
to provide, central strategic leadership from a senior Cabinet Minister (p. 5). The minister
would receive administrative and strategic support through a Strategic Policy Committee.
In chapter two the unit reviews the forces which, they argue, will drive and shape the
reform process highlighting the historical and constitutional framework for reform. Chapter
Three moves on to consider whether Whitehall is equipped to deal with wide-ranging consti-
tutional innovation and assesses what changes might be needed to enable the system to deal
more effectively with such a programme. First and foremost the problem of procedural time
is considered. Historically, constitutional bills have been reviewed by Committee of the Whole
House. On average, past bills have taken up between 100 and 200 hours of oor time out of
the 400 hours allocated to each session. This would mean that under existing procedure only
two constitutional bills could be reviewed per session. It is unlikely therefore that a wide-
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ranging programme of constitutional reform could be introduced in the lifetime of one govern-
ment. The unit thus identies procedural reform as a prerequisite for further constitutional
innovation. Three measures are proposed: the partial referral of bills for full debate to a stand-
ing committee hence minimizing time spent on the oor; advance timetabling of bills to ensure
that all parts are subject to scrutiny and debate and thus minimizing incentives for libus-
tering; and thirdly, the selective use of carry over to maximize procedural time.
Chapter four draws further lessons from successful attempts at constitutional change this
century, while chapter ve considers the mechanisms that might be used to build consensus
and ensure consultation around constitutional reform drawing on UK and international experi-
ence.
What can we learn from this rst report that the existing literature doesnt tell us already?
First, that the study of constitutional reform has hitherto tended to focus on the substance of
reform rather than the means of achieving it. In doing so it has failed to formulate an appropri-
ate methodology of constitutional reform. Second, it draws attention to the need for a potential
Labour government to carefully plan the implementation process of constitutional reform. As
Peter Hennessy has argued elsewhere, the Labour Party must not fall prey to its historical
propensity for being ill-prepared for power. Third, it also demonstrates that in order for consti-
tutional reform to be successful the job needs to be seen through to the end. Piecemeal reform
may only serve to entrench the Westminster Model still further. Finally, it is clear from this
report that anybody who is interested in constitutional reform succeeding must pay attention
to the minutia of implementation.
What are the reports shortcomings? First, it demonstrates a certain imbalance in its treat-
ment of other reform options. In particular, it is too quick to dismiss the possibilities that the
proposals for a constituent assembly (pp. 579) and a constitutional commission (p. 63) might
bring to the process. Second, while the units commitment to developing a methodology of
constitutional reform should be praised, they do not provide one in this report. Perhaps this
will come later. A consideration of the structure of power and authority in the British state
will clearly be required here, since a constitutional blueprint must provide an adequate power
map of the political system. British citizens must be aware once and for all of the boundaries
of legitimate and illegitimate statecraft. Third, the unit presents a choice between the Big
Bang approach associated with the Liberal Democrats and the Charter 88 folk, and a gradual-
ist approach akin to Ferdinand Mounts evolutionary perspective on constitutional reform.
The unit uses the problem of procedural time to bolster its support for the latter. Logical but
ahistorical advice. The momentum behind even a great reforming administration is always
short lived and rarely survives into a second administration.
The report is at its weakest when dealing with issues of political culture and tradition. In
the penultimate section on Consultation, Consensus and Inquiry the unit falls into the trap
of advocating the same top-down implementation processes which have failed conspicuously
in recent British political history. The reform process should not purely be the preserve of
political elites. Mechanisms for opening up the process to public debate, of extending the
boundaries of the political, must be sought for beyond the formulaic treatments deployed
through referenda. The unit could learn much from Chapter 88s Citizens Enquiry in this
respect. This brings me to my nal criticism. While reference to historical and comparative
perspective is very important, the unit relies too much on secondary materials. This is a unique
opportunity to be imaginative, to craft new and distinctive working practices within the heart
of the British parliamentary system. It is an opportunity that should not be missed.
Mark Evans
University of York
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RESEARCH IN PUBLIC POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT,
VOLUME 7
Stuart S. Nagel (ed.)
JAI Press, Greenwich, CT., London 1995. 292pp. $72.35
This is the seventh volume in a series edited by Stuart Nagel. The series aims to present
research papers on topics which range from theory and methodology, research in the policy
sciences, as well as applied research on public management and policy analysis. Contributors
are a mix of both academics and practitioners from a range of disciplines in the social, behav-
ioural, and management sciences. As a series it is orientated towards operations and design
issues. This present volume is to be welcomed as making an important contribution to what
is an important set of books.
Volume 7 covers a good deal of territory. The various contributors provide excellent biblio-
graphies and each section constitutes a formidable guide to recent research. Part one is con-
cerned with the analysis of goal-achieving means and focuses on incentives and privatization.
Elaine Sharp examines the theoretical dimensions of using incentives as policy tool, whilst
Richard Hula and Elizabeth Lyons discuss the use of privatization as a policy strategy. In part
two the contributors are concerned with policy formation, implementation and the question
of accountability. Ralph Bledsoe gives a fascinating account of the management of presidential
policy and this is followed by an immensely valuable piece by Lester, Bowman, Goggin and
OToole on implementation. If I had to give a student one article to sum up the state of play
on this subject, and what the future of the eld is all about, it would have to be this one.
Equally useful on the issue of accountability is the article by Percy on the theme of the politics
of governmental rule making. The following section (part three) is concerned with methods
of policy analysis. Thomas Stanton gives an informative assessment of using p/ g% decision
aiding software to examine the issue of evaluating energy options in the state of Michigan, and
Golembiewski addresses the topic of cutback management in relation to two super-optimum
solutions. In the same section, however, is a piece on professionalizing policy analysis by
Aguirre which nicely balances the technical orientation of the two other articles. This looks
at the profession of policy analysis in the US and presents the ndings of a survey on the
issue, as well as making recommendations as to how policy analysts can arrest their declining
inuence. The penultimate section (four) contains two pieces on the theme of the ethics of
policy analysis. This is an issue which is growing in importance all the time in public adminis-
tration and Bluhm and Edwards make signal contributions to this debate from the point of
view of policy analysis. In the nal part of the volume Nagel sets out a powerful framework
for thinking about and researching super-optimal solutions by exploring the various options
available to policy makers.
All in all, this is a collection which is an absolutely invaluable guide to current thinking in
policy analysis and management. Research in Public Policy Analysis and Management deserves
to be in every institution which is concerned with the theory and practice of public policy.
Wayne Parsons
Queen Mary and West eld College
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THE POLITICS OF QUALITY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
Ian Kirkpatrick and Miguel Martinez Lucio (eds.)
Routledge, 1995. 280pp. 16.99
Abraham Lincoln is purported to have commented when asked his opinion of a particular
book those who like this sort of thing will nd it the sort of thing they like.
I nd The Politics of Quality in the Public Sector falls into Lincolns categorization. The articles
are both well-researched and well-written and there is a pleasing breadth as well as depth in
the offerings with regard to their appreciation of the public sector. However, what is disturbing
is a general lack of clarity with regard to quality management in the public sector in these stud-
ies.
The tone is set in the Introduction where Deming universally known as W. Edwards Deming
is referred to as William Deming and qf d or Quality Function Deployment is said to be
Quality Function Development.
Acknowledged leaders of the quality movement world wide such as Deming, Juran and
Crosby each receive one citation, while other quality gurus such as Feigenbaum, Taguchi,
Ishikawa, Imai, etc. receive no mention in either the text or bibliography. All of which bears
testimony to the essential insularity of this book.
I felt much more afnity with the arguments being presented when I examined the back
cover which was headed Howhas Quality Management affected Change in the Public Sector?
which appeared to get much closer to the target at which the book was aimed.
One interesting area which was touched upon in the Introduction but not really nailed
down, was the ever-present debate between Quality Assurance and Total Quality Manage-
ment. The proponents of t qm argue that qa has little or nothing to do with quality because
all the standards are internally set and the customer is not involved, whereas in t qm the
customer is king. It is not, therefore, surprising that the British public sector chose the route
of qa , via for example its Citizens Charter initiatives which consciously excluded the partici-
pation of its citizens in the framing of those charters as the one which was least threatening
to government and the management of its public services.
One aspect of the worldwide quality revolution, is the emphasis that it places upon manage-
ment. Indeed, Deming and Juran have independently suggested that as 85 per cent to 95 per
cent of all organizational problems may be laid at the door of management. It is not surprising,
therefore, that some 80 per cent of all quality initiatives in the UK fail in the rst twelve
months of their introduction.
Several of the articles stress the potential of t qm to be an instrument of control placed in
the hands of management. However, it is more generally accepted that in terms of how the
pursuit of t qm affects Human Resources Management, t qms role is that of persuading and
convincing management to trust, value and ultimately utilize the creativity, innovation and
initiative of their workforce, while managements twin roles remain those of leading and plan-
ning.
What I feel we have here is a major difference of opinion with regard to the role of quality
in the public sector. If quality is seen as a major means of management control, it can equally
be seen as a means to greater job enrichment, worker empowerment and process improvement;
with the client/customer being the beneciary of public services which exhibit enhanced
efciency, effectiveness and economy. I view the generally acknowledged use of the pursuit
of quality as being positive, as opposed to a negative means of management control.
This book will undoubtedly arouse much interest and debate among public sector special-
ists, not least because many of the arguments presented are challenging and thought-provok-
ing. I would particularly recommend those of Harris, Morgan and Potter and Kitchener and
Whipp. The major constraint is the use of quality in the title and the need for most articles
to attempt to include it in their narrative. That the concept of quality is causing problems to
the contributors to this book is evidenced by the fact that more often than not the word is
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596 REVIEWS
ring-fenced by quotation marks; as though the authors needed to hedge their bets, and seek
acceptance by ghting shy of a rm denition such as that offered by Juran who denes
quality as tness for customer use.
There is a vast literature on the management of quality. Britain is by no means the rst
country to try and embrace its tenets including the delivery of public sector services and there
are countless examples of both good and bad practice from which we could learn; but we
appear ever unwilling to do so by resisting the temptation to enforce quality management
upon inappropriate and unresponsive public sector structures.
Bob Haigh
Shef eld Hallam University
AGENDA FOR EXCELLENCE 2: ADMINISTERING THE STATE
B. Guy Peters and Bert A. Rockman (eds.)
Chatham House Publishers, 1996. 192pp. 24.95
A frequent criticism of edited volumes is that they lack a co-ordinating theme. This cannot
be said for this book written as a celebration of the intellectual thoughts and personal inu-
ences of the late Charles H. Levine. For the last decade and a half (and more) Levine was a
powerful force in the American and international public administration communities. This
book sets out to celebrate both his academic contributions and his wider inuences both on
the thinking and work of others and as an inuential bridge between the academic and prac-
titioner communities in US public administration especially in times when many of the values
of the public service have been stressed and possibly placed under threat. Levines interests
and published work covered a wide range of areas and included pathbreaking articles on
themes such as cutback management (1979), agenda setting (1985) and the inuences of polit-
ical sub-systems on the policy process (1986). He was also an intellectual catalyst who stimu-
lated others to think through and comment critically on recent changes in public adminis-
tration and the consequences of these for systems of governance.
Here Levines friends and colleagues set out to celebrate his ideas. Leading off with an
introduction by Guy Peters and nishing with a thoughtful conclusion by Bert Rockman, the
remainder of the contributions to the volume are drawn together under three separate themes:
rst, the links between public administration and policy formation (chs. 3, 4); second the
dilemmas posed by the rise of public management (chs. 5, 6) and nally the values of public
administration and the possible need to invigorate these (chs. 2, 7). More specically drawing
on Levines work on policy agendas, Milward and Ward (ch. 3) offer a critical review of the
literature in this area, examine a number of specic case studies (ranging from the rise of
supply side economics to child abuse) and use these to develop a model to explain agenda
success. Policy making is also a key focus of Thurbers essay (ch. 4) on policy sub-systems in
US government where he seeks to develop earlier arguments put forward by himself and
Levine into a theory of policy sub-systems that grapples with the dynamics of public policy
making in changing and evolving circumstances.
One of Levines seminal contributions was his 1978 article on cutback management in times
of scal stress. Here, Rubin and Ross (ch. 5) seek to step aside from deterministic models of
budgeting and resource allocation to explore Levines ideas in an historical context. To do this
they offer a carefully researched essay on the growth and contraction of municipal service in
US cities. This leads them to the conclusion that simple explanations linking the expansion of
services to the growth of government should be rejected, being replaced with a model that
ties the growth (and contraction) of urban services to a range of political and technical factors,
not least the continued (if changing interests) of business elites.
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Levines interests also embraced what he saw as inherent tensions and dangers (especially
with the rise of ideas of the new right and the expansion of public management) relating to
the politicization of the public service and threats to accountability. These themes are dealt
with in different ways by Derlien (ch. 7) who compares the degrees of politicization in US
and European bureaucracies, Moe (ch. 6) who explores the paradoxes of privatization and
contracting and the rise of third-party government and Rockman (ch. 8) who examines cur-
rent tensions in public services such as those between neutrality and responsiveness and offers
thoughts on what might be required to modernize public administration theory in a chang-
ing world.
The majority of the articles in this collection are well organized, thoughtful and well written.
Many of them also succeed in raising pertinent questions on both the organization and practice
of modern public administration. By design, however, this is also a specialized volume focus-
ing as it does almost exclusively on the practice and operation of government and public
administration in the USA although this is not to deny the relevance and possible comparative
utility of some of the concepts and theoretical frameworks used. Yet, since the books major
objective is to celebrate the work of Charles Levine, it should be noted that it achieves this
with distinction. Time and again the warmth and affection felt for Levine shine out from these
articles that reect him as an intellectual innovator, stimulus to and often friend of the writers.
As Guy Peters notes, this book aims both to honour Levines memory and to provide some
commentary on the breadth and impact of his work. In this it memorably succeeds.
W.I. Jenkins
University of Kent
YEARBOOK OF EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY,
VOLUME 5: BUREAUCRATISATION ET PROFESSIONALISATION
DE LA POLITIQUE SOCIALE EN EUROPE (18701918)
E.V. Heyen (ed.)
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993. 394pp. DM98.
The thirteen major essays in this collection focus on the crucial formative years of collectivist
welfare provision, designed to offset the social problems and political tensions resulting from
the urbanization, industrialization and democratization of Western Europe. The case studies
include the history of local service delivery and labour market regulation in Germany and
Britain; public health in France; broader developments in the Netherlands and Denmark; and,
most welcome given the general neglect of Southern European welfare states, three chapters
on Italy covering old age pensions, accident insurance and compulsory education. Most of
the chapters are in German or French but an English summary of each is provided.
The organizing theme of the volume is the application of rational scientic answers to the
social problem and their varying degree of success as a result of differences within each
country of institutional capacity, social traditions and vested interest. Despite the apparent
convergence of national responses to common problems, it is shown that these years saw the
reinforcement and further development of the national divergences which continue to make
a genuine harmonization of policy under, for example, the Social Contract so difcult.
Like so many similar volumes, an overarching introduction would have been benecial
either to provide a framework from the outset for all the papers or to draw together their
common conclusions. This could, with advantage, have discussed the transmission of ideas
(most notably from Bismarckian Germany) and provided a weighted analysis of the national
reasons for resistance to rational administrative solutions. Here an examination of the varying
scal capacity of each country, recently and expertly analysed by Martin Daunton in Past and
Present 150 (1996) could have been usefully added.
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The volume, nevertheless, provides valuable empirical evidence which will inform, and
correct, the more generalized theories of comparative welfare systems devised by sociologists
and political scientists. Indeed the nal chapter bemoans the lack of constructive collaboration
between historians and students of public administration. To resolve this problem there is
clearly a need for a further well-funded European initiative, preferably during the summer,
towards the south and near the sea.
Rodney Lowe
University of Bristol
POWER AND POLITICS IN THE CITY: BRISBANE IN TRANSITION
Janice Caul eld and John Wanna (eds.)
Macmillan 1995. 308pp. Price not known
With barely concealed excitement the two editors of this interesting collection announce: Bris-
bane has experienced an important transformation over the last decade. The major city in
Queensland not only hosted the 1982 Commonwealth Games and the 1988 World Expo, but
experienced rapid population growth and party political change. To the sceptical outsider,
who might view such developments as inherently parochial and only of interest to citizens
of Brisbane, Cauleld and Wanna counter that this city is, in fact, an ideal one for addressing
the core question of community studies: who holds power and how is it exercised?
Power and Politics in the City is a collection of case studies on aspects of these questions in
which the volumes contributors marshal evidence from Brisbanes politics and policy. Caul-
eld and Wanna contribute several chapters, including a useful history of the city, a discussion
of the growth in the local economy, economic development strategies and planning policy.
Other contributors discuss mayoral power (Doug Tucker), sand and gravel dredging in the
Brisbane River (Ciaran OFaircheallaigh), community care policy (Emma Craswell and Patrick
Weller), environmental politics (Robyn Davies), and community powerlessness (Glyn Davis).
The chapters are of a high standard and collectively form a worthwhile volume.
The empirical material reported in the book is related by the editors to extant theories of
urban politics (though both regime and state-centred theory receive scanty consideration).
They stress the need for a richer theory of local autonomy which can be accommodated with
an appreciation of external pressures upon Brisbane. In concluding the volume, Glyn Davis
identies a range of factors as determinative of politics and community power in Brisbane.
These include: the role of global capital; federalism; the state government; the city council;
and the community. Putting this set of variables together produces, in Daviss view, a predict-
able hybrid, though not atypical of Australian cities:
the city turns out to be a crossroads, a point at which the economic, political and geographic meet.
The divisions of a federal nation are found within the city walls, along with the imperatives of local
economic growth and the inuence, real or hoped for, of international capital. Interest groups, policy
communities, party, business and personal networks intersect, sometimes binding together the vari-
ous public and private spheres, more often reproducing their separateness (p. 279).
The question of community power may not be settled but this volume may prove helpful to
other urban scholars interested in comparative trends.
Desmond King
St Johns College, Oxford
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REVIEWS 599
PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION SCIENCES IN THE
NETHERLANDS
W. Kickert and F. Van Vught (eds.)
Prentice Hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995. 350pp. Price not known
This book starts with an observation. Public policy and public administration sciences is taught
at 10 of the existing 13 universities in the Netherlands, and a substantial research output has
been produced (p. 9). Yet, Dutch contributions to this eld of study appear to be relatively
unknown in other parts of the world. Indeed, quality control of university research in the
Netherlands by the Association of Universities of the Netherlands assesses their research pro-
grammes in political sciences, public administration and communication sciences as good from
the point of view of passive internationalization but less so from the point of view of active
internationalization. Dutch researchers are generally speaking better receivers than senders
(vn su 1996, p. 29). Therefore, the ambitions of the editors are to inform foreign scholars and
to stimulate international co-operation.
Assuming that there is a relationship between on the one hand, the state, its public adminis-
tration, and their evolution, and on the other hand, public policy and public administration
research (topics and methodology), it is necessary to describe context and history of govern-
ance in the Netherlands at the general and central level (chs. 1 and 2), and at the local level
(ch. 3). The second part discusses Dutch practices and theories used in the eld of policy
sciences following the policy cycle: policy making and planning (chs. 4 and 5), implementation
(ch. 6), evaluation (ch. 7), and contingencies and networks (chs. 8 and 9). Part four focuses on
particular elds of policies: education (ch. 13), health care (ch. 14), environment (ch. 15), and
welfare systems (ch. 16).
The size of the third part on public management contrasts sharply with the size of the policy-
related parts. This third part focuses on nancial management (ch. 11) and human resources
management (ch. 12). This lack of attention surprises also the authors of chapter 11 on public
management and governance: one would expect to nd a distinct public management and
organisation school in the Netherlands in addition to the policy science school. So far, this
does not exist (pp. 21213).
Overviews are dangerous, since comprehensiveness is almost impossible. Therefore it is a
pity, and the editors recognize this, that important international research in the Netherlands
on informatization in the public sector and on crisis management is missing in this book. A
concluding chapter with lessons for a future research agenda (elds: public management;
areas: European Union; theories (comparative methods and techniques) could have given the
book also a national relevance.
The assessment of the quality of research in the Netherlands is that the work is strikingly
non-comparative in the cross-national sense of the word. But in judging the internationaliz-
ation of research one should be aware that research in political science, public administration
and communication sciences is rooted in national society and also has a task in that society
(vn su 1996, p. 2).
Yet this book is useful and interesting for foreign scholars in general and Anglo-American
scholars in particular, for several reasons. First, a lot of research in national languages which
are not accessible for many scholars. This book corrects one way trafc into tempered two
way trafc. Second, the Dutch practice of pillarization, corporatism, and consensus democracy
provides new contents for concepts and theories on governance, public management, and
public policies. Third, interesting theoretical and empirical research has been done on methods
and techniques on policy instruments which becomes more widely available for a broader
research community. Fourth, this book should make us think about more basic meta-theoreti-
cal questions: is our research more generic or more contingent; is it possible to structure an
accumulation of research knowledge; how should we facilitate learning from other (national)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997
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practices and (culturally determined) theories. Therefore, it would be useful to have additional
country studies to compare with this one.
REFERENCE
Association of Universities in the Netherlands (vn su). 1996. Quality Assessment of Research: Research in
Political Sciences, Public Administration and Communication Sciences in the Netherlands 19901994.
Utrecht: vn su.
Geert Bouckaert
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997