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Policy Bureaucracy - Government with a Cast of Thousands (Hardcover)
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Policy Bureaucracy - Government with a Cast of Thousands (Hardcover)
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Policy making is not only about the cut and thrust of politics. It
is also a bureaucratic activity. Long before laws are drafted,
policy commitments made, or groups consulted on government
proposals, officials will have been working away to shape the
policy into a form in which it can be presented to ministers and
the outside world. Policy bureaucracies - parts of government
organizations with specific responsibility for maintaining and
developing policy - have to be mobilized before most significant
policy initiatives are launched. This book describes the range of
work policy officials do. The 140 civil servants interviewed for
this study included officials who helped originate policies which
were subsequently taken over as manifesto commitments by the Labour
Party; officials who helped devise the formula by which billions of
pounds are allocated to local government in grants; and also
officials who recommended to the Secretary of State that a
controversial publisher be allowed to take over a national
newspaper. The background and career paths of middle-ranking
officials show them to be a diverse group who do not tend to
develop long-term subject specialisms. The instructions to which
these officials work - whether coming from ministers or senior
officials - are often very broad and leave much to personal
interpretation. Policy Bureaucracy goes on to examine how ministers
and senior officials affect the work of middle ranking officials
and the cues policy bureaucrats use to develop policy. The
analytical approach adopted in the book is derived from Alvin
Gouldner's Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy and his elaboration
of Max Weber's notion that hierarchy and expertise place a
fundamental tension at the heart of modern bureaucracies. In the UK
this tension is handled by combining 'invited authority' with
'improvised expertise'. The book also explores other models of
handling this tension in political systems in Europe and the USA.
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