What Ministers Do

Having been a minister in three different departments for a period of over nine years (1999–2008), during the Blair and, briefly, the Brown governments, I thought it might be useful to reflect on what ministers actually do, their functions and how they spend their days. In thinking about what I did as a minister, I have avoided going back to some of the classic constitutional texts on what ministers supposedly do, how they are accountable and such like. I am sure there is good literature on this from political scientists and constitutionalists, but I have avoided influencing my own views and approach by consulting these texts.     

After Number Ten: What Do Former Prime Ministers Do?

The article reviews the experience of former British prime ministers in the twentieth century. There is no fixed or predetermined role for former prime ministers. What they do after they leave office depends on personal choices and on circumstances. Some have largely disappeared from the political stage. Others have become active international 'elder statesmen'. A couple-Heath and Thatcher-were embittered 'models to avoid'. A quarter of the former prime ministers since 1900 have served in other government posts in their successors' Cabinets, while a handful have turned down such appointments. Most have gone to the Lords, which offers a political platform, but sometimes they do not think much of the quality of the second chamber. The retirements of some former prime ministers have been clouded by money worries, but they nowadays get substantial pensions and can make money from business directorships, international lectures and writing memoirs. The article concludes with speculation about what Tony Blair's post-premiership might hold.     

Fact Checking is About What we Change not Just Who we Reach

This article explores how the UK’s fact-checking organisation Full Fact has sought to tackle misinformation since its inception in 2010. Full Fact describes itself as a ‘second generation’ fact-checking organisation with dual aims of seeking to stop the spread of specific pieces of inaccurate information and using the evidence base from fact checking to secure systemic changes that help make misinformation rarer and less harmful. Ultimately, we are pursuing culture change. We are trying to create institutions in societies that can help anchor public debate to reality and to challenge the casual acceptance of deceptive and misleading behaviour.     

Affirmative action: What do we know?

An Erratum for this article has been published in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,26(1), 215.     

Managing Networks: Propositions on What Managers Do and Why They Do It

Measuring management in networks is difficult because the allocation of managerial resources in network structures is fluid—that is, the utilization of management behaviors varies across time and space within a given program or project. As a means of focusing the network management research agenda, propositions based in contingency logic are suggested to test ideas regarding when, why, and how network managers undertake these behaviors. The propositions are intended to identify the vast inventory of network management behaviors and, most importantly, determine how the manager strategically matches behaviors with the governing context. Suggestions are also offered to help us understand how and why managerial resources are re allocated over time and space. The proposed research agenda is offered as a guide to help us determine which choices are most likely to be effective.     

Do Ministers Do What They Say? Ministerial Unreliability, Collegial and Hierarchical Governments

This paper is concerned with the extent to which individual members of governments reliably implement the decisions of the governments to which they belong, a matter which is rarely discussed, if ever, and yet can be critical for the operation of national executives. After a general presentation of the problem, the paper examines the reasons why members of collegial governments are more likely to be reliable than members of hierarchical governments. As 'cabinet' governments tend to be more collegial while 'presidential' governments tend to be more hierarchical, unreliability seems also more likely to take place in presidential governments, to the extent that these are indeed hierarchical. Progress in this area has been hampered so far by the absence of a tight operational definition of collegial and hierarchical governments: such a definition is presented here, opening the way for the empirical testing of the impact which the distinction may have on the reliability of members of governments.     

What can we actually get from program evaluation?

This paper assesses the role program evaluation can play in assisting decisions on public programs. The author looks at evaluation from the standpoint of decisionmakers interested in finding out the right answers about their programs. The discussion focuses on the assistance that various types of evaluation can give to program managers and to policymakers concerned with legislative changes and budget levels. The paper includes recent examples of relevant evaluation work. The concluding section analyzes some of the problems decisionmakers face in trying to get reliable, useful evaluation.     

Public management: What do we know? what should we know? and how will we know it?

The field of public management draws on a rich and varied trove of intellectual resources. Applying scholarship and imagination, its students can recognize, interpret, and predict the reality of managing governmental organizations with considerable acuity. If the field is to advance, however, researchers must do more than reverently assemble and digest practice wisdom. More emphasis must be placed on disciplined, theory-based inquiry.