Download or read book The Core Executive in Britain written by Martin J. Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1999-01-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of central government has been dominated by the recurring questions of Prime Ministerial versus Cabinet government and civil service versus ministerial power. Using the idea of 'power dependence' this book challenges these simplicities to provide a definitive assessment of - and introduction to - power and policy at the core of British political life. It undermines traditional approaches by demonstrating that power in the core executive is complex, and flows between actors and institutions. The Prime Minister can only exercise power with the support of the Cabinet, and ministers and officials are often partners rather than competitors.
Download or read book How to Be a Civil Servant written by Martin Stanley and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although it is seldom recognised as such by the public, the civil service is a profession like any other. The UK civil service employs 400,000 people across the country, with over 20,000 students and graduates applying to enter every year through its fast-stream competition alone. Martin Stanley's seminal How to Be a Civil Servant was the first guidebook to the British civil service ever published. It remains the only comprehensive guide on how civil servants should effectively carry out their duties, hone their communication skills and respond to professional, ethical and technical issues relevant to the job. It addresses such questions as: How do you establish yourself with your minister as a trusted adviser? How should you feed the media so they don’t feed on you? What’s the best way to deal with potential conflicts of interest? This fully updated new edition provides the latest advice, and is a must-read for newly appointed civil servants and for those looking to enter the profession – not to mention students, academics, journalists, politicians and anyone with an interest in the inner workings of the British government.
Download or read book Breaking the Bargain written by Donald Savoie and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2003-12-15 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada's machinery of government is out of joint. In Breaking the Bargain, Donald J. Savoie reveals how the traditional deal struck between politicians and career officials that underpins the workings of our national political and administrative process is today being challenged. He argues that the role of bureaucracy within the Canadian political machine has never been properly defined, that the relationship between elected and permanent government officials is increasingly problematic, and that the public service cannot function if it is expected to be both independent of, and subordinate to, elected officials. While the public service attempts to define its own political sphere, the House of Commons is also in flux: the prime minister and his close advisors wield ever more power, and cabinet no longer occupies the policy ground to which it is entitled. Ministers, who have traditionally been able to develop their own roles, have increasingly lost their autonomy. Federal departmental structures are crumbling, giving way to a new model that eschews boundaries in favour of sharing policy and program space with outsiders. The implications of this functional shift are profound, having a deep impact on how public policies are struck, how government operates, and, ultimately, the capacity for accountability.
Download or read book The Blunders of Our Governments written by Anthony King and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes.
Download or read book The Power of Civil Servants written by Peter Hennessy and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout Britain, Civil Servants are exposed to public scrutiny today in unprecedented ways. What does it mean that the political neutrality of the Civil Service has only been enshrined in law since 2010, nearly 150 years after it was first proposed? Why is it so important for politicians to trust Civil Servants (and what difficulties arise when they do not)? Coauthored by former First Civil Service Commissioner David Normington and historian Peter Hennessy, The Power of Whitehall provides answers through rich observations about the nature of the British Civil Service, its values and effectiveness, and how it should continue to adapt to a changing world.
Download or read book Working with Ministers written by Christopher Jary and published by Fastprint Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book British Government in Crisis written by Christopher Foster and published by Hart Publishing. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the development of government over 25 years and argues that it's defects are not attributable to one political party.
Download or read book New Labour and the Civil Service written by David Richards and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2008 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first serious study analysing Labour's impact on Whitehall. It offers a theoretical engaged, but empirically rich account drawing from an extensive set of primary interview material to examine a 'New Labour' effect on the Civil Service, including its reforms to improve policy delivery and whether it has politicised Whitehall. It concludes by arguing that New Labour's approach to Whitehall have been part of a broader strategy to reconstitute the power of the Westminster Model.
Download or read book Civil Servants and Politics written by C. Neuhold and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative study focuses on the changing relations between civil servants and politicians in the European Union in the last two decades. As well as national case studies this book also looks into politico-administrative relations in supranational institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Download or read book Profession of Government Minister in Western Europe written by Jean Blondel and published by Springer. This book was released on 1991-06-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the apparent political similarities in Western Europe, the models of cabinet government employed by different nations vary. In exploring the ministerial profession, this text reveals the political traditions and the different needs and expectations of citizen and politician alike.
Download or read book How to be a Minister written by Gerald Kaufman and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When How To Be A Minister was first published in 1980, it received rave reviews. When it was out of print, copies became as prized as gold-dust and were known to disappear from the House of Commons Library. Recommended to incoming ministers in the Thatcher and Major governments by the Cabinet Office, it is also used as a primer by overseas governments. Gerald Kaufman, former Minister and Shadow Cabinet member, brought the book up-to-date in this revised edition. It remains the most authoritative guide to the processes of government ever published as well as being uproariously funny, with an almost never-ending stream of witty one-liners and joyous and/or scurrilous anecdotes.
Download or read book Ministers Minders and Mandarins written by Richard Shaw and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ministers, Minders and Mandarins collects the leading academics in the field to rigorously assess the impact and consequences of political advisers in parliamentary democracies. The 10 contemporary and original case studies focus on issues of tension, trust and tradition, and are written in an accessible and engaging style.
Download or read book Who Governs Britain written by Anthony King and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British system has been radically transformed in recent decades, far more than most of us realise. As acclaimed political scientist and bestselling author Anthony King shows, this transformation lies at the heart of British politics today. Imagining - or pretending - that the British political system and Britain's place in the world have not greatly changed, our political leaders consistently promise more than they can perform. Political and economic power is now widely dispersed both inside and outside the UK, but Westminster politicians still talk the language of Attlee and Churchill. How exactly has the British system changed? Where does power now lie? In Who Governs Britain?, King offers the first assessment in many years of Britain's governing arrangements as a whole, providing much needed context for the 2015 general election.
Download or read book Bluffocracy written by James Ball and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain is run by bluffers. At the top of our government, our media and the civil service sit men – it's usually men – whose core skills are talking fast, writing well and endeavouring to imbue the purest wind with substance. They know a little bit about everything, and an awful lot about nothing. We live in a country where George Osborne can become a newspaper editor despite having no experience in journalism, squeezing it in alongside five other jobs; where a newspaper columnist can go from calling a foreign head of state a 'wanker' to being Foreign Secretary in six months; where the minister who holds on to his job for eighteen months has more expertise than the supposedly permanent senior civil servants. The UK establishment has signed up to the cult of winging it, of pretending to hold all the aces when you actually hold a pair of twos. It prizes 'transferable skills', rewarding the general over the specific – and yet across the country we struggle to hire doctors, engineers, coders and more. Written by two self-confessed bluffers, this incisive book chronicles how the UK became hooked on bluffing – and why we have to stop it.
Download or read book Ministers of the Crown written by Rodney Brazier and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ministers of the Crown provides a detailed and concise description of the legal and political position of Ministers, and of their work within the contemporary British governmental system. It covers the daily work of Ministers in their departments and collectively in government; their benefits and pay; as well as how politicians prepare themselves for office and the legal and other qualifications which are required for appointment. Detailed coverage is given to Ministers as legislators, how Ministers are required to exercise their legal powers, and the position of Ministers as plaintiffs and defendants. Finally, the loss of office, and its consequences, is considered.
Download or read book A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less written by Christopher Hood and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UK is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its public administration. Successive reforms have been accompanied by claims that the changes would make the world a better place by transforming the way government worked. Despite much discussion and debate over government makeovers and reforms, however, there has been remarkably little systematic evaluation of what happened to cost and performance in UK government during the last thirty years. A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? aims to address that gap, offering a unique evaluation of UK government modernization programmes from 1980 to the present day. The book provides a distinctive framework for evaluating long-term performance in government, bringing together the 'working better' and 'costing less' dimensions, and presents detailed primary evidence within that framework. This book explores the implications of their findings for widely held ideas about public management, the questions they present, and their policy implications for a period in which pressures to make government 'work better and cost less' are unlikely to go away.
Download or read book Megaphone Bureaucracy written by Dennis Grube and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing look at how today’s bureaucrats are finding their public voice in the era of 24-hour media Once relegated to the anonymous back rooms of democratic debate, our bureaucratic leaders are increasingly having to govern under the scrutiny of a 24-hour news cycle, hyperpartisan political oversight, and a restless populace that is increasingly distrustful of the people who govern them. Megaphone Bureaucracy reveals how today’s civil servants are finding a voice of their own as they join elected politicians on the public stage and jockey for advantage in the persuasion game of modern governance. In this timely and incisive book, Dennis Grube draws on in-depth interviews and compelling case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to describe how senior bureaucrats are finding themselves drawn into political debates they could once avoid. Faced with a political climate where polarization and media spin are at an all-time high, these modern mandarins negotiate blame games and manage contradictory expectations in the glare of an unforgiving spotlight. Grube argues that in this fiercely divided public square a new style of bureaucratic leadership is emerging, one that marries the robust independence of Washington agency heads with the prudent political neutrality of Westminster civil servants. These “Washminster” leaders do not avoid the public gaze, nor do they overtly court political controversy. Rather, they use their increasingly public pulpits to exert their own brand of persuasive power. Megaphone Bureaucracy shows how today’s senior bureaucrats are making their voices heard by embracing a new style of communication that brings with it great danger but also great opportunity.
