APPOINTMENTS TO THE HIGHEST GRADES IN THE CIVIL SERVICE – DRAWING THE CURTAIN OPEN

The appointments process to the higher civil service is important but little information about it is in the public domain. This article provides such information, using material gathered from a series of interviews with senior civil servants. Part one offers an authorized account of the procedures for senior appointments. The second part makes use of information I gathered from officials closely involved in the procedures, to piece together what actually occurs, in a still highly secretive area of Whitehall proceedings and highlights the disparity between'official theory'and actual practice. The article concludes by suggesting that a dominant Prime Minister has the potential to use a system, originally fashioned by Whitehall, for Whitehall, for political purposes.     

THE IMPACT OF THE EFFICIENCY STRATEGY: POLITICAL CLOUT OR CULTURAL CHANGE?

The initial impact of the efficiency strategy owed much to the determined backing of the Prime Minister. A lasting change in public management, however, relies on a more fundamental Change in the culture of Whitehall, not only to give more attention to management, but to redefine the concept in terms appropriate to government. One of the obstacles to change is that the civil service operates with an impoverished concept of management which over-emphasizes routine control and understates other dimensions, such as managing change and managing relationships within organizations. A broader concept of public management pushes up against the limits of the existing framework of constitutional myth and ritual.     

QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE SEX DIFFERENCES IN MIDDLE-CLASS DELINQUENCY

The purpose of this investigation was to study relationships between psychological characteristics and type of criminal involvement among four groups of female offenders. The vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Category Test, Trail Making Test, Tactual Performance Test, and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were administered to 63 prostitutes, 64 addict-prostitutes, 69 addicts, and 66 nonaddictt/nonprostitute offenders. No reliable relationships were found between ability structure or personality traits and type of criminal activity. Like male addicts. however, female addicts were found to experience greater sociopathy and psychological discomfort than were nonaddict female offenders.     

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AND THE POLICY PROCESS

Government departments are central organizations in the development of public policy. Yet there is very little literature on the political role of departments, their internal relationships and their relationships with other departments and other government actors and institutions. This article reviews the extant literature on government departments. It argues that much of the existing research has either focused on the role of the Prime Minister or it has been institutional and static, providing an analysis of the administration and organization of departments rather than political interactions. The article therefore provides an alternative research agenda which stresses the need to examine the relationships and networks that exist within and between departments and how departments react to events and interests in the outside world.     

The Emotional Deficit in Political Communication

As a consequence of social changes which have weakened the boundaries between different spheres of life, politics is now interwoven with popular culture. This means that we now seek certain kinds of emotionalized experience from politics. The relationship of people to politics has changed, and has come more fully to resemble a mode of consumption. While this consumerization of politics has been much described (and criticized), its implications for the place of emotion in political communications have not been explored. From a base in the sociology of emotion, this article undertakes such an exploration. It notes how some analysts of political communication have already registered the influence of emotional states, and stresses how contemporary emotionality differs from traditional conceptions of the emotional as a domain separable from rationality and as an optional button for message strategists to press. The complexity and omnipresence of emotional states is emphasised. Political advertising is taken as one area where a sophistication of messages to match the complexity and power of audience emotions might have been expected to develop, but does not appear to have done so yet to a great extent. Making good this "emotional deficit" in political communications is not primarily a way for particular parties or candidates to gain electoral advantage (though it could be that), but is essential for the regeneration of the democratic process and the creation of a more viable settlement between reason and emotion in contemporary society.