WHAT’S MEASURED IS WHAT MATTERS: TARGETS AND GAMING IN THE ENGLISH PUBLIC HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

In the 2000s, governments in the UK, particularly in England, developed a system of governance of public services that combined targets with an element of terror. This has obvious parallels with the Soviet regime, which was initially successful but then collapsed. Assumptions underlying governance by targets represent synecdoche (taking a part to stand for a whole); and that problems of measurement and gaming do not matter. We examine the robustness of the regime of targets and terror to these assumptions using evidence from the English public health service on reported successes, problems of measurement, and gaming. Given this account, we consider the adequacy of current audit arrangements and ways of developing governance by targets in order to counter the problems we have identified.     

SCALE ECONOMIES AND IRON LAWS: MERGERS AND DEMERGERS IN WHITEHALL 1971–1984

Between 1971 and 1984 there were ten cases of merger or demerger in British central government departments, ranging in importance from the massive DTI demerger into four distinct departments (1973) to the absorption by the Lord Chancellor's Department of the Office of the Public Trustee (1982). By analysis of changes in aggregate indices of 'top staff', 'middle staff', ratio of administrative grades to total staff, salary costs relative to total budget, budget relative to total Government budget, and staff relative to total Civil Service staff, some common hypotheses about the rationale and effects of such bureau-shuffling are explored. It is found that, if anything, like attracts unlike (in terms of these indices); that change in scale creates neither economies nor diseconomies; that reorganization does not inevitably produce cost escalation (the 'Iron Law of Prodigality'); but that the 'Iron Law of Inertia' (reorganization in practice has little observable effect on bureaucratic structure and working) is supported by the observed results.     

DETERRING CORPORATE CRIME*

Using event history analysis, we examine the recidivism patterns of a sample of 38 corporations charged with one or more serious antitrust violations between 1928 and 1981 to see whether sanction experience decreases the likelihood of a firm's reoffending. Specifically, we analyze the effects of procedure type (e.g., civil, criminal, and administrative redress) and proxy measures of corporate deterrence while controlling for changes in antitrust law and the economic conditions of the firm, industry, and general economy. Though not robust, there is some evidence that past guilty verdicts and changes in penalties for lawbreaking from misdemeanors to felonies inhibit recidivism. We note, however, that industry characteristics are stronger by far in their effects on future illegality than formal sanction risk or consequence. The implications of these findings for organizational deterrence and corporate crime control are discussed.     

A PUBLIC MANAGEMENT FOR ALL SEASONS?

This article discusses: the doctrinal content of the group of ideas known as 'new public management'(NPM); the intellectual provenance of those ideas; explanations for their apparent persuasiveness in the 1980 s; and criticisms which have been made of the new doctrines. Particular attention is paid to the claim that NPM offers an all-purpose key to better provision of public services. This article argues that NFM has been most commonly criticized in terms of a claimed contradiction between 'equity' and 'efficiency' values, but that any critique which is to survive NPM's claim to 'infinite reprogrammability' must be couched in terms of possible conflicts between administrative values. The conclusion is that the ESRC'S Management in Government' research initiative has been more valuable in helping to identify rather than to definitively answer, the key conceptual questions raised by NPM.