THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REGULATION: INTERESTS, IDEOLOGY, VOTERS, AND THE UK REGULATION OF RAILWAYS ACT 1844

Government regulation of the railways in the United Kingdom dates back to the 1840s. Between 1840 and 1844 three regulatory Acts were passed, and a system of government inspection set up which has remained substantially unaltered to the present day. The principal Act, that of 1844, contained controversial powers of rate-capping, state purchase of railways, and detailed price and quantity regulation. It is still frequently held that the Victorian era marked the triumph of laissez-faire and that W. E. Gladstone, the promoter of the 1844 Act, was one of its leading spokesmen. The article therefore explores why regulation occurred at all and why it took the forms it did. Gladstone's actions are evaluated in relation to the standard hypotheses about the origins of regulation. Hypotheses on the motives of MPS voting for and against regulation are tested using the Aydelotte dataset which contains very full personal and ideological data on the Mps of the Parliament of 1841–7.     

THE ROLE OF BOUNDARY‐SPANNING MANAGERS IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PUBLIC‐PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

This article presents the findings of a study examining the roles and behaviours of boundary‐spanning managers during the establishment of voluntary public‐private partnerships (PPPs). It responds to recent calls in the literature to pursue research that incorporates the pivotal contribution of individual actors in the collaborative process, and to set this research within the stage specific context of partnerships. The analysis is located within the theoretical framework of organizational sensemaking. Using a grounded methodology of data collection, coding and analysis within ten Australian and UK PPPs, the study demarcates a four‐stage evolutionary establishment process of PPPs. Within each stage there exists a specific managerial focus in conjunction with one or two main managerial challenges. Boundary‐spanning managers employ various strategies to overcome such challenges within each specific stage, thus ensuring the progressive evolution of the PPP. These foci, challenges and strategies are identified and analysed in the article.     

THE ENABLING STATE: THE ROLE OF MARKETS AND CONTRACTS

Contracts have been a key element in the recent reform of British public services. Their introduction has formed part of a broader process of change in which the market structures and values have featured prominently. In practice, contracts have both brought benefits and presented problems. More particularly, greater organizational formality has raised some important issues – the role of trust and the form and practice of accountability prominent among them. Evidence from a recent esrc -supported study shows that some services (the simpler ones) have generally gained from the reforms; but the evidence for more complex ones is equivocal at best.     

THE ROLE OF POLITICIANS AND ADMINISTRATORS IN DEPARTMENTAL REORGANIZATION: THE CASE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT

This article examines the history of the Department of the Environment from its creation in 1970 to the formation of the Department of Transport in 1976. Its main approach is an analysis of the roles of the Permanent Secretary and the Secretary of State in the development of the organization. The strong organizational relationship between these senior members of the department is an important factor in structural change both at the time of the initial reforms and throughout this period.
The influence of different personalities and their approaches to policy and management is considered as a determining factor in the evolution of the department. Additionally, the attempts at reorganization and reform are to be seen as largely developing within a traditional Whitehall framework, based on this relationship, which restricted its effectiveness.     

POLITICAL PRESSURES,ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY,AND ATTENTION TO TASKS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PRE‐CRISIS FINANCIAL REGULATION

Regulatory agencies, like most public organizations, typically operate with multiple tasks and goals, which requires them to prioritize some tasks over others. Such prioritization, while essential, engenders a risk of bureaucratic oversight of significant material problems. Despite the ubiquity and importance of these concerns, our understanding of agencies' allocation of attention across tasks is limited. This article develops a model of agencies' allocation of attention across tasks, which involves an interaction between external public and political pressures and agencies' distinct organizational identities. A brief comparison between two cases of pre‐crisis financial regulation illustrates the proposed model. The two cases suggest that the British Financial Services Authority's and the Israeli Supervisor of Banks' distinct identities conditioned their responses to similarly vigorous pressures to devote more attention to firms' alleged mistreatment of their customers, with important implications for these regulators' attention to firms' capitalization and liquidity.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: THE ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION IN THE MODERN PUBLIC SECTOR

As the public sector has modernized and sought to become more efficient and cost‐effective, the effective and strategic management of people has received increasing prominence and there have been calls for the Human Resource (HR) function to play a more strategic role. However, not much is known about whether the role of the HR function has changed substantively. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from six matched‐pair public sector organizations in the UK to assess whether HR functional roles have changed, as envisaged, into a model more akin to the private sector. The findings highlight the complex and often contradictory nature of HR functional roles, and suggest that new and more strategic roles have not replaced traditional approaches but, rather, have been grafted on, giving rise to a variety of hybrid HR forms.     

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES POLICIES AND RACIAL INEQUALITY: THE ROLE OF PUBLIC POLICY

This article examines the seeming contradiction between the publicly stated objective of successive governments to promote greater equality of opportunity for racial minorities and the limited impact of successive policies and programmes on processes of racial discrimination and exclusion in British society. The article begins by outlining the different conceptual approaches used to analyse the development of public policies on racial inequality. It then analyses the main aspects of national policy change in this area over the past two decades, and more recent initiatives which have sought to use local government as a vehicle for promoting racial equality. This analysis offers a critical review of the achievements and limitations of both past and present policies. The concluding section takes up the question of the prospects of change in the future.     

LIBERALIZATION AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR: THE PRE-EMINENT ROLE OF GOVERNMENTS IN THE 'SALE' OF HIGHER EDUCATION ABROAD

Much recent scholarship concerning liberalization has emphasized the role of regulatees, rather than governments, in promoting liberalization. This article examines such scholarship in the light of an important development in the British and French public sectors—the creation of new agencies (the Education Counselling Service and EduFrance) to 'sell' British and French higher education to potential international students. The new agencies attempted to induce two things: competition amongst higher education institutions for the recruitment of international students from developed and emerging economy countries, and the commodification of these students. This article shows that, contrary to existing theories of liberalization, governments were pre-eminent in pushing forward this liberalization, while higher education institutions attempted to hold it back.     

THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT, THE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE, AND THE 'NEW CML SERVICE'

The Thatcher era has been a traumatic one for the career Civil Service, so much so that one leading civil servant has suggested that the order of change is such that a 'new Civil Service' is emerging. This paper examines, first, interpretations of what has happened to the Civil Service under the Thatcher government; next, it reviews the developments relating to the economy programme and the Financial Management Initiative; then it considers the current state of the Civil Service pay and promotion system; finally, it concludes that thus far at least, essentially, the 'old Civil Service' has survived.     

THE GOVERNANCE OF FINANCIAL REGULATORY REFORM: THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

The dominant perspective in the literature linking governance, globalization and public policy argues that globalization undercuts state capacity, weakening a government's ability to effectively regulate its domestic affairs. This paper shows otherwise with special reference to the Australian experience in financial regulation. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the Australian state is weak and cannot adopt anticipatory industrial policies. This paper argues that the adoption of the ‘twin peaks' model of financial regulatory arrangements is an example of the existence of government‐led steering in Australia which can adopt a proactive approach to financial regulation by steering and coordinating policy networks. ‘Governance through hierarchy’ in the financial services industry may be a function of the government's political entrepreneurship; its skill in setting and implementing an agenda; and an ability to create new policy communities and networks.     

THE ROLE OF POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONS IN THE ITALIAN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM TRAJECTORY

This article applies broad conceptual categories of comparative politics to the explanation of administrative reforms in Italy. It takes as its argument some lines of influence on public sector reform of the features of the party system in Italy, the executive‐legislative balance, the politician‐bureaucrat relationship, and the role of administrative law. In the search for explanations for the trajectory of administrative reform, pre‐existing political and institutional factors also have to be interpreted through the lens of negotiated change occurring via processes of conversion and layering involving new and old institutions that has taken place in Italy since the ‘political crisis' began in 1992.     

THE TRADITION OF MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ITS ROLE IN THE BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF CRISES

This article explores the relationship between the United Kingdom's doctrine of ministerial responsibility and bureaucratic efforts to control four contemporary crises. Evidence emerges from a series of interviews with experienced crisis managers, which draws attention to the way in which this convention: (1) tacitly conditioned the thinking and behaviour of bureaucratic crisis actors through their sensitivity to political risk; and (2) was reinterpreted and utilized instrumentally by political and bureaucratic agents in response to the dilemmas posed by each crisis. The analysis of these themes connects governance and crisis literatures together by shedding light on the interaction between governance ‘traditions’, 21st century crisis episodes and the requirements of crisis management.     

MANAGING EUROPE FROM AN IRISH PERSPECTIVE: CRITICAL JUNCTURES AND THE INCREASING FORMALIZATION OF THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN IRELAND

This article analyses the management of European Union (EU) business by the Irish core executive. More specifically, it investigates the demands placed by EU membership on the Irish system of public administration and how the system has responded to these demands. Employing an institutionalist analytical framework, the article maps the formal and informal organizational and procedural devices or structures used to manage EU affairs in Ireland, as well as dissecting the key relationships that govern this management process and the role of the domestic agents actively involved in the EU’s governance structure, the cadre or boundary managers. The article also explores in a dynamic way the development of the capacity for the management of EU affairs in Ireland over time. Using the concepts of path dependence and critical junctures, we illuminate how key system‐management decisions became locked‐in over time and we isolate the triggers for significant adaptational change, be they domestic or external. Adaptation to EU business in Ireland was path‐dependent and consisted of gradual incremental adjustment. This system of flexible adaptation generally served Ireland well as the EU’s policy regime expanded and evolved, but in response to the shock rejection of the Nice Treaty by the electorate in 2001, significant formalization of the Irish system occurred with the establishment of new processes and rules for managing relations between the core executive and the EU.     

POWER, STRATEGY AND GAMES: ECONOMIC REGULATION OF A PRIVATIZED UTILITY

This article rejects conventional 'rational actor' models of economic regulation in favour of a focus on processes of resource exchange and dependence. Using a case-study of Yorkshire Water it identifies the membership and structure of the regulatory arena, the resources available to regulatory actors, the 'rules of the game', and the strategies adopted by regulator and regulated. It highlights the structurally privileged position of investors in water regulation and concludes that decision-making excludes customer interests; decisions are made by professional actors on the basis of co-operation and consensus; the regulator is relatively weak and depends on companies compliance to maintain its own legitimacy; and large companies have a great range of strategic options in pursuit of regulatory advantage.     

MANAGING GOVERNMENT-THIRD SECTOR COLLABORATION: ACCOUNTABILITY,AMBIGUITY, AND POLITICS

Recent years have witnessed increased revelations by watchdog agents of mismanagement and abuse in third sector organizations that collaborate with government resulting in a decline in public trust and signs of a portending legitimacy crisis. Strengthening accountability mechanisms seems an obvious response to this trend. Yet, Israeli attempts to improve accountability of government-third sector collaborations have largely failed. Politics of accountability theory provides an explanation as to why. The findings demonstrate that political, bureaucratic and third sector stakeholders have a mutual interest in maintaining a cloak of ambiguity over government-third sector collaborations. The effects of four alternative accountability types on accountability, ambiguity, flexibility and politics are examined in an attempt to identify feasible and effective accountability strategies. There is no one ideal accountability type for all situations. Attention to the pitfalls of each accountability type may alert accountability decision-makers to appropriate combinations of accountability types for particular circumstances. However, the actual choice of accountability types has more to do with the politics of accountability than with scientific analysis of what is most appropriate.     

THE PRACTICE OF CONTRACTING IN PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: TRANSACTION COSTS AND RELATIONAL CONTRACTING IN THE IRISH SCHOOLS SECTOR

This paper explores the practice of contracting in public private partnerships (PPP). Focusing on the first Irish PPP to provide secondary schools, it draws on perspectives from transaction cost economics and socio‐legal theory. It finds that the ex ante contractual setting was undermined by pushing forward with the PPP before conducting an adequate level of project appraisal. It explores the experiences of key stakeholders in the ex post contracting stage and concludes that the conduct of contracting practice was not characterized by the shift to relational contracting expected under PPP. Whereas this approach to contractual governance did not hinder the development of broadly trusting relations between the client and contractor, this was not manifest in terms of relations between the contractor and schools. A significant degree of conflict was evident in some schools‐contractor relations, something which can be attributed to sources of transaction costs, including incomplete information, bounded rationality and uncertainty.