THE WHITEHALL PROGRAMME AND AFTER: RESEARCHING GOVERNMENT IN TIME OF GOVERNANCE |
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| Authors: | CHRISTINE BELLAMY |
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| Affiliation: | Christine Bellamy is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration in the Graduate School, College of Business, Law and Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, UK. |
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| Abstract: | This article revisits the Whitehall Programme and Rod Rhodes' crucial role in setting it up. It examines the research commissioned for the Programme and how research in this field has changed since the mid 1990s. It confirms that research on Whitehall has become more diverse and specialist – reflecting its apparent hollowing‐out – but that research employing a longer historical perspective does not support an interpretation that government in the UK was ever strongly filled‐in. It also suggests that the study of Whitehall now demonstrates more theoretical ambition than hitherto, and, in the light of the dominance of qualitative research in this field, calls for a more sophisticated methodological debate about qualitative approaches to the study of government and especially their potential contribution to theory‐building. |
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