Delegated Governance and The British State (Oxford) PDF

Delegated Governance and the British State:
Walking Without Order

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Delegated Governance
and the British State
Matthew Flinders
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Flinders, Matthew V.
Delegated governance and the British state : walking without order /
Matthew Flinders.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978–0–19–927160–3
1. Executive advisory bodies–Great Britain. 2. Administrative agencies–
Great Britain. I. Title.
JN409.F55 2008
352.2 6–dc22 2008020966
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
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ISBN 978–0–19–927160–3
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Tamsin
Acknowledgements
As with most ventures of this kind, I have called upon a great number
of friends and colleagues in the course of writing this book. I thank
the following who have offered helpful advice: Jim Buller, Michael Cole,
Sandra Van Thiel, Carsten Greve, Christopher Hood, Oliver James, Colin
Hay, Andrew Gamble, Mike Kenny, Ian Bache, Felicity Matthews, Alix
Kelso, and Richard Kelly.
Various parts of the book were presented as papers at departmental
seminars and conferences around the world between 2005 and 2008, and
I would like to thank the participants at these events for their insightful
comments and suggestions for improvement. During the course of this
project, I was also fortunate enough to hold a Leverhulme Trust Research
Fellowship (2005–06) and a Whitehall Fellowship within the Cabinet
Office (2005–06). Taken together, these afforded me a break from my
normal teaching and administrative responsibilities in Sheffield and also
access to a critical mass of documents and interviewees. The sections of
this book on parliamentary scrutiny and forms of legislative oversight
between 1997 and 2007 also drew upon research undertaken alongside
Alex Brazier and Declan McHugh of the Hansard Society under a Nuffield
Foundation funded audit of parliamentary modernization.
I was also involved in a number of international research networks and
colloquia that helped me develop my arguments and theories in a number
of ways. These included the COBRA Research Network on Bureaucratic
Autonomy, the Study of Parliament Group, the ESRC Special Seminar
Series on Europeanization, the Scandinavian Consortium for Organiza-
tion Research, the PSA Specialist Group on Parliaments and Legislatures,
the ESRC Special Seminar Series on Public Accountability in a New Insti-
tutional Environment, and the European University Institute-sponsored
International Research Project on Party Patronage. In addition to the
members of these networks, I would like to thank Jim Buller and Matthew
vii
Acknowledgements
Denton for collaborating with me on research into depoliticization and

devolution, respectively.
Finally, I would like to thank Dominic Byatt and Lizzy Suffling at Oxford
University Press for their editorial advice and guidance throughout this
project.
Matthew Flinders
December 2007
viii
The Quango
By Wendy Winter Garcia
(Facit indignatio versum).
Just what do you do all day?

Tell me quango, quango, quango
Sitting on your derriére
Torpid quango, quango, quango
Spewing paper in your tray
Superfluous, quango, quango
While the sun shines making hay
Fruitless quango, quango, quango
If you should go far away
With your quango, quango, gang-oh
Not a person you’d dismay

Would we care a hang-oh, quango?
Just what do you do all day?
I will tell you quango, quango
Just dulce far niente

Useless quango, quango, quango
Just disappear we pray
With a loud explosive bang-oh.
ix
Contents
List of Figures xii

List of Tables xiii
Abbreviations xv
1. Walking Without Order 1
Part I. Foundations
2. Theory 33
3. History 62
4. Structure 99
Part II. Themes
5. Internal Control 141

with Matthew Denton
6. External Accountability 167
7. Patronage 207
with Matthew Denton
8. Depoliticization 235
9. Above and Below 268
Part III. Dynamics
10. The Politics, Principles, and Politicization of Delegation 309
Appendix 1. Twentieth Century Delegated Institutions 328

Appendix 2. Delegated Public Bodies Established May 1997
to May 2007 333
Index 337
xi
List of Figures
1.1. The spectrum of autonomy 5

2.1. Principal–agent theory 50
2.2. Office of communications: primary and secondary principal
relationships 52
4.1. Russian Doll Model 109
4.2. From Russian Doll to Spider’s Web 132
5.1. Cascading control relationships 155
6.1. Multiple accountabilities 171
6.2. Delivery chain for child obesity 175
6.3. Playing the blame-game through delegation 177
8.1. Politicization and depoliticization(s) 242
8.2. Flow chart of depoliticization choices 250
8.3. Interdependent depoliticization tactics: context, agency, and
structure in monetary policy 258
xii
List of Tables
1.1. Comparative review of quasi-autonomous bodies 4

1.2. Significant dimensions of the delegated governance debate 8
1.3. The study of delegation: three dominant traditions 15
1.4. Mega-themes 23
2.1. Three theoretical pillars 34
2.2. Types of multi-level governance 41
2.3. Westminster Model and multi-level polity 44
2.4. Historical Institutionalism 46
2.5. Principal–agent theory: interlinked challenges and issues 51
2.6. Examples of ministerial control mechanisms 53
3.1. Selected delegated public bodies (1514–1896) 64
3.2. Executive NDPBs (1979–97) 78
3.3. Executive NDPBs (1997–2006) 84
4.1. Examples of terminological inaccuracy 102
4.2. Seven layers of delegated governance (2007) 119
5.1. Six dimensions of autonomy and control 144
6.1. Formal accountability frameworks 181
6.2. Models of legislative oversight 185
6.3. Parliamentary scrutiny reforms (2001–05) 191
6.4. Select committee core tasks 192
6.5. Select committee reports on broad delegated governance issues
(1997–2005) 193
6.6. Select committee scrutiny of specific delegated public bodies
(1997–2005) 195
6.7. PAC and NAO scrutiny of specific delegated public bodies
(1997–2005) 196
6.8. Select committee responses to core task 7 198
xiii
List of Tables
7.1. Differences between patronage and public appointments 209

7.2. OCPA’s principles for public appointments 216
7.3. Patronage to public appointments in Britain: constraining
ministerial reach 1995–2005 221
7.4. Government by appointment: report and response 224
8.1. Perceived benefits of depoliticization 240
8.2. Depoliticization tactics 252
9.1. Delegated governance in Scotland 1998 and 2007: bodies,
personnel, expenditure 271
9.2. Principles adopted by the Scottish Executive for the retention and
creation of Scottish public bodies 273
9.3. Executive assembly sponsored public bodies in 1998 277
9.4. Executive ASPBs in Wales, 1998, 2004, and post-2008 proposals 281
9.5. Delegated governance in Northern Ireland, 1999–2008 284
9.6. Devolution and delegation 1998–2008: comparative analysis 286
9.7. Delegated governance within the European Union, 2008 289
xiv
Abbreviations
AAO Additional Accounting Officer

ALB Arm’s Length Body
ALMO Arm’s Length Management Association
AO Accounting Officer
APBT Agencies and Public Policies Team
APPP Arbiter for Public-Private Partnerships
AQUAs Autonomous and Quasi-Autonomous bodies
ASPB Assembly Sponsored Public Bodies
BBFC British Board of Film Classification
BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation
BSA Basic Skills Agency
BSAS British Social Attitudes Survey
BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
BTI British Trade International
BWFLR Board of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues
C&AG Comptroller and Auditor General
CAFCASS Children and Family Court Adv. and Support Service
CBPB Cross-Border Public Body
CC Competition Commission
CEB Central Electricity Board
CFSMS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service
CHRE Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence
CMG Committee on Machinery of Government
COM Complementary and Alternative Medicine Council
CPA Commissioner for Public Appointments
CPRS Central Policy Review Staff
xv
Abbreviations
CSC Civil Service Commission

CSD Civil Service Department
CSPL Committee on Standards in Public Life
CSR Comprehensive Spending Review
CTRL Channel Tunnel Rail Link
DBFO Design, Build, Finance, Operate
DCA Department for Constitutional Affairs
DCMS Department for Culture, Media and Sport
DEFRA Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
DERA Defence Evaluation and Research Agency
DETR Department for the Environment, Transport and Regions
DFES Department for Education and Skills
DoH Department of Health
DoT Department for Transport
DPB Dental Practice Board
DSS Department for Social Security
DTI Department for Trade and Industry
DVTA Dental Vocational Training Authority
DWP Department for Work and Pensions
EA Environment Agency
ECB European Central Bank
EEA European Environment Agency
EGO Extra-Governmental Organisation
ELWa Education and Learning Wales
ERA European Regulatory Agency
ESCB European System of Central Banks
EU European Union
FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office
FHSAA Family Health Services Appeal Authority
Fin.SA Financial Services Authority
FMI Financial Management Initiative
FSA Food Standards Agency
FSS Forensic Science Service
GBH General Board of Health
xvi
Abbreviations
GCC General Chiropractic Council

GMC General Medical Council
GOC Government Owned Company
GTC General Teaching Council
HDA Health Development Agency
HFEA Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
HI Historical Institutionalism
HIA Home Improvement Agency
HLAC House of Lords Appointments Commission
HMC Historic Manuscripts Commission
HMT Her Majesty’s Treasury
HTA Human Tissue Authority
IAC Independent Appointment Commission
IBA Independent Broadcasting Authority
ICT Information and Communicative Technologies
IFC Independent Football Commission
INGO International Non-Governmental Organization
IP Institutional Depoliticization
IRC Industrial Reorganisation Corporation
ISB Independent Standards Board
ISO Independent Statutory Office
ITC Information Technology and Communication
JAC Judicial Appointments Commission
JCHR Joint Committee on Human Rights
JUG Joined-Up Government
LEA Local Education Authority
LIFT Local Improvement Finance Trust
LPSB Local Public Spending Body
MAD Multiple Accountabilities Disorder
MHAC Mental Health Act Commission
MINIS Management Information System for Ministers
MLP Multi-Level Polity
MORI Market and Opinion Research International
MPC Monetary Policy Committee
xvii
Abbreviations
MRC Medical Research Council

MSP Member of the Scottish Parliament
NACAB National Association of Citizen’s Advice Bureaux
NACC National Accounts Classification Committee
NAO National Audit Office
NATS National Air Traffic Control Services
NAW National Assembly of Wales
NBA National Blood Authority
NBSB National Biological Standards Board
NCAA National Clinical Assessment Authority
NCB National Coal Board
NDPB Non-Departmental Public Body
NEB National Enterprise Board
NEDO National Economic Development Office
NERC Natural Environment Research Council
NESTA Nat. Endowment for the Sciences, Tech. and the Arts
NHS National Health Service
NHSAC National Health Service Appointments Commission
NHSPA NHS Pensions Agency
NICE National Institute of Clinical Excellence
NIPC Northern Ireland Parades Commission
NMC Nursing and Midwifery Council
NMD Non-Ministerial Departments
NPM New Public Management
NPSA National Patient Safety Agency
NSPCC Nat. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
OCPA Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments
ODPM Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
OECD Org. for Econ. Co-operation and Development
OE-E Office of the E-Envoy
OFCOM Office of Communication
OFFER Office of Electricity Regulation
OFGAS Office of Gas Supply
OFGEM Office of Gas and Electricity Markets
xviii
Abbreviations
OFT Office of Fair Trading

OFTEL Office of Telecommunications
OFWAT Office of Water Services
OGC Office of Government Commerce
OGDs Other Government Departments
ONS Office for National Statistics
OPSR Office of Public Services Reform
OPSS Office of Public Service and Science
PAC Public Accounts Committee
PAO Principal Accounting Officer
PASC Public Administration Select Committee
PAT Principal Agent Theory
PAU Public Appointments Unit
PBC Public Bodies Coordinator
PCS Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
PFI Public Finance Initiative
PFP Private Finance Panel
PIC Public Interest Company
PMDU Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit
PMETB Postgraduate Medical and Education Training Board
POS Prior Options Scheme
Postcomm Postal Services Commission
PPA Prescription Pricing Authority
PPP Public-Private Partnership
PQ Parliamentary Question
PRO Public Records Office
PSA Public Service Agreements
PSC Public Service Comparator
PSE Public Sector Efficiency
PSP Public Sector Performance
PSRB Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Body
PSX Cabinet Committee on Public Services and Expenditure
QCA Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
QG Quasi-Governmental
xix
Abbreviations
QNG Quasi Non-Governmental

QUALGO Quasi-Autonomous Local Government Organisation
QUANGO Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation
QUEST Quality, Efficiency and Standards Team
RAFT Regulatory Authority for Fertility and Tissue
RHA Regional Health Authority
RIA Regulatory Impact Assessment
RPA Rural Payments Agency
RPANI Review of Public Administration in Northern Ireland
RRA Regulatory Reform Act 2001
RRO Regulatory Reform Order
SCG Sector Classification Guide
SDA Service Delivery Agreements
SDS Senior Departmental Sponsor
SHA Special Health Authority
SOCA Serious Organised Crime Agency
SPB Scottish Public Body
SpHAs Special Health Authorities
SRA Strategic Railway Authority
SRB Self-Regulatory Body
SRCNI Sentence Review Commissioners for Northern Ireland
SRI Social Research Institute
SSAT Specialists Schools and Academies Trust
TSC Treasury Select Committee
UKT UK Transplant
WAG Welsh Assembly Government
WM Westminster Model
xx
1
It is a commonplace that the characteristic virtue of Englishmen is

their power of sustained practical activity, and their characteristic vice
a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to princi-
ples. They are incurious as to theory . . . [they] are more interested in
the state of the roads than in their place on the map.1
State structures have been radically reformulated in recent decades. In

both developed and developing countries a neoliberal informed model
or narrative of ‘good governance’ has seen many functions and respon-
sibilities hived-off or delegated beyond the direct control of politicians
and public officials. However, the state has not been ‘withered away’ or
‘rolled back’: it has been transformed. At the heart of this transformation
rests a preference for a smaller policy-orientated central department that
acts as a ‘hub’ and seeks to steer complex networks of quasi-autonomous
organizations. Government now takes places within a broader context of
governance in which governmental actors operate within an increasingly
fragmented, complex, and delegated administrative environment involv-
ing private, voluntary, and parastatal organizations. This book presents
a specific thesis and a broader critique. The thesis argues that the British
state is evolving in an ad hoc, arbitrary, and unprincipled manner which is
evident in three ways: (1) in the existence of widespread and fundamental
confusion about the administrative structure of the state; (2) in confusion
about the existence and utility of the control and accountability mecha-
nisms surrounding delegated organizational forms; and (3) in the absence
of any explicit logic or rationale that can explain the ambitions, conse-
quences, or trajectory of this process. We will refer to this group of factors
throughout this book as the ‘walking without order’ thesis. The broader
critique focuses on the way that delegation has traditionally been studied
within what might loosely be termed as the British political tradition.
1
Questions of delegation, autonomy, and control have been posed and

answered in a number of ways throughout the twentieth century, but
one constellation of views prevails and has always dominated the debate,
specifically the view that delegation and quasi-autonomous organizations
were undemocratic: a bad thing.
However, if this view is subjected to any kind of pressure or challenge, it
commonly retreats to one of several more modest positions concerning a
lack of accountability or concern about the appointments process, and so
on, arguments that frequently rely on either a complete lack of practical
knowledge or a secondary set of highly questionable assumptions and
assertions. Discussions about delegation, accountability, and patronage
have, within British political studies at least, been impeded by superficial
and lazy invocations of a presumed ‘democratic superiority’ to be found
in organizations operating under the direct control of elected individuals
against which delegated governance is to be contrasted. A critical argu-
ment of this book therefore challenges the often simplistic and polemical
stance which has for too long dominated British political studies in the
analysis of delegation. It may be an inconvenient truth for many scholars
but traditional versions of long-established truisms tend to be, on closer
inspection, either grossly exaggerated or false. Moreover, where problems
do exist with the implementation and operation of delegated organiza-
tional forms, these tend to reflect, as I shall show in the case of the UK,
pathologies in the broader constitutional configuration rather than any
inherent features of delegation per se. Delegation as it has been used in
the past should not be confused with how delegation might be used in the
future. As Harden and Marquand stress, ‘If a vibrant democracy depends
on a vibrant civil society in which it is possible to participate in a wide
range of intermediate institutions, not all of them necessarily elected,
quango-isation might be an agent of democracy rather than an enemy
of it.’2
Although I have read possibly more books, articles, chapters, and
reports on the topic of delegation than any other person, this book
makes no pretence to being comprehensive. My aim has been to make
a specific contribution to a much broader debate rather than attempting
to address each and every issue. I do, however, hope to have examined
some long-standing issues in new ways while also adding some original
concepts and models through which scholars may be able to generate a
richer and more varied account of the politics of delegation in Britain and
beyond. This introductory chapter provides answers to the following five
questions:
2
1. What does the concept of ‘delegated governance’ encompass?

2. Why do delegation and the ‘walking without order’ thesis matter?
3. How has delegation been studied in terms of theory and methods?
4. What are some of the main themes and issues?
5. How is this book structured?
1.1. Delegated Governance
Delegation is a central concept in the study of modern governance. The

modern state could not function without delegation. The delegation of
functions and responsibilities to semi-independent or ‘parastatal’ actors
operating on the boundaries or fringe of the state arguably empowers
governments to address a wide range of social issues simultaneously
without having to be involved with the minutiae of day-to-day socio-
political interactions. Delegation therefore provides a structural and eso-
teric capacity beyond the cognitive and physical limits of politicians. In
recent years, the extent of delegation has increased markedly as numerous
governments have attempted to achieve increased levels of efficiency,
effectiveness, and responsiveness through the radical restructuring of
their administrative systems by introducing various forms of arm’s-length
agencies (see Table 1.1). This centrifugal process of ‘unbundling’ or ‘unrav-
elling’ has been encouraged and nurtured in developing countries by
international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, OECD, and
World Bank.3
Delegated governance refers to the dense sphere of independent agen-
cies, non-majoritarian institutions, ‘parastatal’ or ‘satellite’ bodies, extra-
governmental organizations, hybrids—‘fringe bodies, quangos, and all
that’—that have been created in most advanced liberal democracies in
recent decades, and which are an increasingly important sector of devel-
oping countries.4 It is what Harden, Birkinshaw, and Lewis label ‘gov-
ernment by moonlight’, which forms the central focus of this book.5
Delegated governance is therefore something of an umbrella term out of
necessity, as it attempts to provide a framework within which a disparate
assortment of organizations, each enjoying a degree of autonomy from
elected politicians, can be collected and analysed. This range of bodies
can be represented on a two-dimensional representation of the structure
of modern states (Figure 1.1). The vertical axis represents the public–
private distinction, while the horizontal axis represents levels of organi-
zational autonomy. These axes create a spectrum on which it is possible
3
Table 1.1. Comparative review of quasi-autonomous bodies
Country Quasi-autonomous bodies
France Public establishments (Éstablissements publics Nationaux) Independent

administrative authorities (autorités administatives indépendantes)
Germany Federal agencies (unmittelbare Bundesverwaltung) Indirect federal
administration (mitelbare Bundesverwaltung) Private law entities
(Bundesverwaltung in Privatrechtsform)
The Netherlands Independent adminstrative bodies (zelfstandige bestuursorganen, ZBOs)
Agencies (agentschappen)
Sweden Boards and agencies
Denmark Special public agencies State-owned companies Self-governing institutions
Private companies with contracts for public services
Spain Autonomous bodies (Organismos Autonomos) Public entities (Entitades
Publicas Empresariales, EPE) Public bodies (Organismos Publicos)
Italy Public establishments (enti pubblici) Independent administrative
authorities (autorita adminstrative indepdendente) Agencies (agenzie)
Republic of Ireland Statutory corporations Corporate bodies Government-owned public
companies
Belgium Internally autonomous public organizations without legal personality
(Diensten Afzonderlijk Beheer) Funds with public law legal personality
Internally autonomous public organizations with public law legal
personality (Openbare Instellingen Categorie A) Externally autonomous
public organizations with public law legal personality (Openbare
Instellingen Categorie B, D of sui generis) Externally autonomous public
organizations with private law legal personality.
Norway Central agencies with special extended authority Government
administrative enterprises Independent financial institutions
State-owned companies and hybrid bodies Central/fringe foundations
Austria ‘Corporatizations’ Agencies Statutory bodies Public enterprises
Estonia Executive agencies Private law foundations Autonomous institutions
Jointly-owned companies
Finland Central agencies Parliamentary agencies Boards State-owned
companies/enterprises Independent regulatory authorities
Germany Federal authorities Public enterprises Hybrid organizations ‘Indirect’ public
administrative bodies
Hungary Autonomous administrative organizations Semi-independent
government/central bureaux ‘Deconcentrated’ bodies
Israel Public corporations Independent regulatory agencies
Portugal Autonomous public organizations Public companies/enterprises
Independent regulatory agencies
Switzerland Executive agencies Incorporated enterprises Semi-private enterprises
United States Independent agencies Independent regulatory commissions
Government-owned enterprises/corporations Hybrid bodies
Japan Independent administrative institutions (dokuritsu-gyoseihojn)
Thailand Autonomous public organizations (ongkarn mahachon)
New Zealand Crown entities Semi-autonomous bodies
Canada Special operating agencies Legislative service agencies Departmental
agencies
4
Along the Arm’s Length
Purely Public Executive Non-Departmental Central Bank

Ministerial
Agencies Public Bodies • Bank of England
Departments
• Prison Service • Arts Council
• Department of Trade
• Benefits Agency • British Council
and Industry
• Department of Health
Indicators of
‘Public’
• Public Supply
• Government
Non-
Creation
Ministerial
• Power of
Departments
Continuation
• Ofsted
• Appointment of • Charity Commission
Board
• Funding
• Accountability
• de facto public
Special Health Public Public Interest
power
Authorities Corporations Companies Public/
• Public Purpose
• NHS Direct • BBC

• NHS Blood and • Civil Aviation
• Network Rail Private
• Welsh Water Partnerships
Transplant Authority
Purely Private Degree of control by ministers

• terms of reference • definition of outcomes • political salience
High • expert knowledge • appointment/dismissal • terms of funding Low
Figure 1.1. The spectrum of autonomy

5
to locate a number of different organizational forms. At opposing poles

are ministerial departments (purely public/low autonomy) and private
sector companies (purely private/high autonomy) and running between
these extremes are a range of public bodies each enjoying different lev-
els of operational autonomy and commercial characteristics. It is these
intermediate bodies, this terra incognita, which this book seeks to explore
and understand. Five core components unite the intermediate bodies that
are examined in this book: (1) they enjoy a degree of formal autonomy
from their parent department (structural disaggregation exists); (2) they
conduct public tasks at the national level; (3) their employees are public
servants, but not necessarily civil servants; (4) they are financed by the state
or the state carries residual financial liability; and (5) they are subject to
some kind of public governance framework.6
The acronyms frequently used to describe autonomous public bodies—
particularly the term ‘quango’—have deliberately been avoided in order to
avoid the pejorative connotations they commonly invoke. The ‘quango
debate’ has been a perennial one in British politics and it is arguably
fair to suggest that these bodies are viewed at best as democratically
suspicious and, at worst, democratically illegitimate: ‘Even as a word,
quangos is pejorative.’7 As mentioned above, an important element of this
book’s aim is to encourage a more reflective analysis that recognizes the
problems associated with traditional forms of government, in addition to
the challenges raised by delegation. The concept of delegated governance
therefore responds to Cole’s plea for ‘an acceptable alternative to the term
quango’, while at the same time widening the focus of analysis to encom-
pass the growing number of independent public bodies that operate at
the supranational and global level.8 In essence, delegated governance is
less insular, conceptually and empirically, than traditional approaches to
this field within British political studies and emphasizes the evolution
of different structures and models of multilevel governance existing at
one removed from state structures. This book is therefore sympathetic to
Johnson’s view that
. . . society cannot be run solely by a combination of elected representatives and

completely depoliticized officials. . . . This model is far too simplistic and always
was. As society has to draw on the energies and talents available . . . it is natural
to find ways of engaging in their provision an additional dimension of support
and enthusiasm drawn from those who have no vocation to be either full-time
politicians or officials but nevertheless have an interest in contributing to the
public good.9
6
My starting point is that scholars need to move away from and

reject implicitly binary classifications which seek to label organizational
forms as either accountable/unaccountable, legitimate/illegitimate, cor-
rupt/scrupulous and instead seek to tease apart the specific meanings
and connotations of these terms and by so doing develop an awareness
of the existence of gradations or levels, potential pathologies, and the
frequent need to engage in sophisticated conceptual trade-offs. However,
before engaging in these issues, any reader might reasonably ask: why
does delegated governance and the ‘walking without order’ thesis matter?
What is at stake in the discussions that unfold in the pages of this book?
1.2. Significance
Delegated governance remains a sphere of politics that frequently gener-

ates a great deal of heat but relatively little light. Indeed, its significance
to a range of socio-political and socio-administrative debates has often
been concealed by simplistic and facile accusations of patronage, blame-
avoidance, and non-accountability. It is therefore necessary to develop
and sharpen our tools of political analysis, particularly in the British con-
text, if we are to understand the risks and potentialities of delegated gover-
nance alongside a deeper understanding of the analytical leverage offered
by the concept of delegated governance. Most modern state projects can
be characterized, to a greater or lesser degree, as delegated states. By which
I mean that the greater part of their bureaucratic apparatus has been del-
egated beyond the direct day-to-day control of elected politicians. OECD
research estimates that delegated governance, or what it terms ‘distributed
public governance’, accounts for at least 50 per cent and frequently more
than 75 per cent of a country’s public expenditure and public employ-
ment. And yet delegated governance has not been the topic of extensive
or sustained research. Moreover, Bouckaert and Peters are correct to con-
clude that the literature that does exist—with only a handful of notable
exceptions—tends to reflect little theoretical development, an absence of
comparable data, few attempts at comparative analysis or awareness, and
is generally devoid of explicit empirically tested hypotheses.10 In Section
1.2.1, we will examine the manner in which delegation has been studied,
but in order to assess its contemporary significance it is useful to pose a
number of questions across a number of levels (see Table 1.2).
7
Table 1.2. Significant dimensions of the delegated governance debate
Political level Key questions
Macro-political • How does the issue of delegated governance fit within wider debates
concerning the evolution and future of state projects?
• In what way is the growing sphere of delegated governance affecting the
nature and operation of representative democracy?
• What is the relationship between depoliticization and delegated governance?
Meso-political • Has the governance of public bodies changed since the election of ‘New’
Labour in 1997?
• How has devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland affected
delegated governance?
• What negative externalities or unintended consequences occur from
delegation?
• Is there evidence of the legislature attempting to develop new forms of
scrutiny and oversight?
Micro-political • How many public bodies actually exist?
• How many people do they employ?
• What is their combined expenditure?
• Through what process are senior appointments made?
Clearly, Table 1.2 provides a selection of representative questions from

which it is possible to draw out a number of themes and issues, each
of which contributes in its own way to the specific thesis and broader
critique with which this book is principally concerned. My aim in this
section is not to provide the answer to each question, as this will be done
in later chapters, but simply to underline why each of these questions is
significant and locate them within the broader contours of this book.
1.2.1. Macro-Political Issues and Questions

The ‘walking without order’ thesis clearly has a number of implications
and a powerful antithesis: most state projects inevitably involve on an
ad hoc and incremental basis in light of contextual, structural, or path-
dependant imperatives. Such an antithesis risks overlooking or justifying
the manner in which modern states are evolving, the existence of cen-
trifugal pressures, the role of dominant rationalities, and the sheer scale
of delegated governance within this process. If one looks up from the
analysis of specific incidents of delegation to assess the broader impact
delegation has had on the nature and structure of state projects during the
twentieth century, and how this process is augmenting, across and within
policy sectors and countries, then one is suddenly forced to reflect on
the contemporary compatibility of our bureaucratic and democratic struc-
tures. It is in this vein that Van Thiel suggests that ‘Quangocratization can
8
be viewed as one of the most recent stages of state development in the

western world’.11 Similarly, Jessop interprets what he calls ‘destatization’
as a central aspect of his analysis of the trajectory of the capitalist state,
[which] involves redrawing the public-private divide, reallocating tasks, and

rearticulating the relationship between organizations and tasks across this
divide . . . functions previously or newly performed by states have been transferred
entirely to, or shared with, other (that is, parastatal, non-government, private or
commercial) actors.12
Jessop accepts that governments have always relied on other organiza-

tions to assist them in achieving their objectives but notes that this
process has been ‘reordered and increased’ towards the end of the twen-
tieth century (a conclusion supported by the research of the OECD).13 In
the UK, gathering reliable facts and statistics is problematic and bedev-
illed by definitional arguments and inadequate records systems. However,
as I will demonstrate, the greater part of the British central state has
now been delegated into one form or another of public body. In 1983
Bulpitt wrote, ‘The whole subject of non-elected agencies still requires
considerable investigation, and nowhere is that more true than in the
United Kingdom.’14 This statement remains true today: if anything, with
added validity given the reforms that have taken place in the intervening
decades. Once again this raises the central issue of compatibility between
the structure of the state and the democratic frameworks that are intended
to scrutinize and thereby legitimate state power.
In 1996 Tony Blair stated, ‘Changing the way we govern, and not just
changing our government, is no longer an optional extra for Britain. So
low is public esteem for politicians and the system we operate that there is
little authority for us to use unless and until we first succeed in regaining
it.’15 And yet despite introducing an extensive programme of constitu-
tional reform, levels of public trust in politicians and political institutions
have not increased.16 Indeed, there is a contemporary paradox within
British politics and governance that levels of public trust are frequently
improved by moving functions away from elected ministers. Public bodies
are often established to restore public confidence in the wake of scandals
or policy disasters concerning ministerial departments (for example, the
Food Standards Agency), and have increasingly been used as a consti-
tutional brace to help rebuild faith in specific areas (for example, the
Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, Statistics Com-
mission, and the Electoral Commission). More commonly, functions are
delegated when ministers are reluctant to become closely associated with
9
certain salient issues and are keen to establish some form of buffer zone. In
these situations, complex blame-games can occur in which actors try and
deflect responsibility for errors or omissions, a process that can further
weaken public confidence in the political system.
The British constitution has always struggled to accommodate dele-
gation within the broad framework of ministerial responsibility to Par-
liament. Clear fault-lines, anomalies, and inconsistencies have always
existed and yet these have arguably become more glaring as the role
and the number of public bodies have increased. And yet the debate
goes beyond mere structures and into much larger debates concerning
the nature of politics, how we define ‘the political’, the legitimate sphere
of government, and the perceived benefits of depoliticization. Indeed
without any detailed elaboration, this latter concept has imbued the
Labour Governments’ approach to governance since 1997: ‘What gov-
erns our approach is a clear desire to place power where it should be:
increasingly not with politicians, but with those best fitted in different
ways to deploy it. . . . This depoliticising of key decision-making is a vital
element in bringing power closer to the people.’17 Morison has responded
by arguing that the nature of British democracy needs to be radically
altered in a manner which provides for the scrutiny and legitimation
of what he interprets as ‘fugitive power.’18 The trend towards delegated
governance, therefore, is much more than an aspect of administrative
reform and raises fundamental questions about the nature of modern
democracy and evolving structures of multilevel governance. However,
beneath the wider issue of the nature and future of British democracy lay
a number of second-order or meso-political issues.
1.2.2. Meso-Political Issues and Questions

Delegation inevitably entails a transfer of power. But this can become
problematic when those to whom power is delegated either misunder-
stand their role, fail to fulfil their goals, or simply abuse their position. The
process of delegation is therefore fraught with issues concerning control,
complexity, accountability, incentives, trust, appointments, legitimacy,
and informal and formal relationships. Although politicians have little
choice regarding the need to delegate, to some extent they do enjoy criti-
cal choices in relation to how to delegate functions, which functions to del-
egate, the degree of delegation that is appropriate, when to intervene, and
the nature and extent of control and accountability frameworks. Although
this book primarily focuses on developments in Britain, the issues and
10
themes that it raises are relevant to all those scholars and students with an
interest in modern governance and political systems. It examines where
power resides and the complex web of resource-dependencies that dic-
tate change, control, and accountability. Decisions to delegate functions,
powers, and resources involve difficult choices and trade-offs that are in
themselves informed and based upon dominant rationalities and political
imperatives. Crucially, the centrifugal pressures that have imbued recent
reform projects have important, arguably profound, implications for the
role, authority, and power of elected politicians. These same pressures
create new challenges not only for the legislatures that are charged with
ensuring accountable government but also for the public in terms of
understanding where responsibility now lies for basic state services.
Although the Labour Party was highly critical of the manner in which
the Conservative Governments of the 1980s and 1990s delegated state
responsibilities to quasi-autonomous bodies, delegation has formed a
central tool of governance since the election of New Labour on 1 May
1997. As I will show, during the first decade of the twenty-first century,
the sphere of delegated governance in Britain has grown and become
increasingly complex. At the same time, issues including delegation,
bureaucracy, and fragmentation have been high on the political agenda as
competing political parties seek to convince the electorate that efficiency
savings can be generated and reinvested in public services (thereby reduc-
ing the need for tax increases). In many ways, these debates strengthen
and demonstrate the ‘walking without order’ thesis that I am seeking
to make. The Gershon Report of July 2004 that examined public sector
efficiency at the behest of the Prime Minister could find little rationale for
the labyrinthine bureaucratic architecture it uncovered. The report con-
cluded that the existence of extended delivery chains containing numer-
ous ‘autonomous or independent bodies’ (that often had blurred and
overlapping responsibilities) contributed to inefficient and cumbersome
delivery systems and that cost savings of £20 billion could be realized
through a package of measures which included merging and abolishing
a number of delegated public bodies.19 Similar findings, conclusions, and
recommendations were made by the James Report in January 2005, but
in this case cost savings amounting to £35 billion were suggested through
a package of abolition, outsourcing, privatization primarily in the sphere
of delegated governance.20 Just weeks later, the Centre for Policy Studies
(CPS) published a report that claimed to have uncovered no less than 529
‘quangos’, 111 of which the report claimed had been created since the
election of New Labour.21 The report labelled many of these bodies as
11
‘useless’, suggested severe inefficiencies and organizational duplication,

and recommended the introduction of limits on the number of public
bodies and the introduction of sunset clauses to abolish bodies after a set
time frame unless the clause is formally renewed.
The CPS report stimulated a number of articles in the broadsheet press
that were reminiscent of the polemical debates that had taken place in the
1970s on the topic of public bodies.22 In an article entitled ‘Invasion of the
bodies that snatch chunks of public money’, The Telegraph commented,
‘They [quangos] are the MRSA of the British body politic—resistant to
all known antidotes, and quietly breeding in grubby corners of govern-
ment offices.’23 The Conservative Party immediately unveiled a policy of
‘destroying unwanted and unnecessary quangos and slimming down the
rest’. As part of this, the Shadow Deregulation Secretary, John Redwood,
published a ‘Kill or Keep’ review of public bodies that identified no less
than 168 public bodies for immediate abolition that would deliver an
immediate saving of £4.3 billion.24 The Liberal Democrat Spokesman, Ed
Davey, similarly criticized the ‘quango explosion’ that had occurred under
New Labour and committed his party to ‘abolish many, merge others, and
make any that remain properly accountable.’25
Dissatisfaction with the use of public bodies in Scotland and Wales
formed an important aspect of the pro-devolution campaign in the 1980s
and 1990s, and yet it is unclear to what degree devolution has actu-
ally led to either the widespread abolition of public bodies or reformed
governance structures. Devolution in Scotland and Wales, as well as in
Northern Ireland and London, may have implications for the national
level through processes of spillover and spill-back. Similarly, if devolution
has failed to lead to the introduction of reformed governance systems,
more transparent frameworks, or even a reduction in the number of public
bodies then this may well have wider implications for future state–society
relations. This is equally true at the supranational level, where since the
1980s independent agencies have played an increasingly prominent role
within the evolving architecture of the European Union and institutions
including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Health
Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, Internet Corporation
for the Assignment of Names and Numbers, International Council of
Arbitration for Sport, World Anti-Doping Agency, and World Intellectual
Property Organization are key actors within global governance. The ten-
sions surrounding the control, accountability, and attempted depoliticiza-
tion of certain functions beyond the nation state, particularly within the
European Union, resonate with debates taking place at the national and
12
sub-national level. And yet in the British context, even the most basic
questions need to be answered.
1.2.3. Micro-Political Issues and Questions

I have argued above (and will elaborate further below) that the dominant
tradition in the study of delegation in Britain has been subjugated by a
set of assumptions that have, in turn, loomed large over the analysis of
delegated organizational forms in a way that has not been conducive to
considered or insightful analysis. A polemical anti-delegation narrative
has been developed and sustained, and this has exerted a paradoxical
influence on those working within delegated public bodies by discour-
aging them from engaging with scholars (or indeed the media) due to
an awareness that they are unlikely to receive a balanced hearing. To
be branded a ‘quangocrat’ is to be associated with sleaze, corruption,
and patronage. Although Stefan Collini was writing on the topic of the
study of intellectuals in Britain when he wrote ‘the sheer predictability
of so much of the writing in this case is truly awful to behold’, this
sentiment is apt for the study of delegation within British political studies
during the twentieth century. And yet one of the main reasons why long-
established arguments and assumptions have not been knocked down
or at least challenged is because we actually know very little about the
structure or governance of the British state at the national level beyond
ministerial departments. As later chapters will demonstrate, for reasons
associated with the British political tradition and the adversarial nature
of our highly majoritarian polity, it is actually very hard to find out even
the most basic information about the sphere of delegated governance. In
December 2003, for example, the Better Regulation Task Force concluded
its report on independent regulators by stating that simply identifying
all the delegated public bodies ‘involved in a particular policy area is
very difficult indeed—it would be almost impossible to guarantee all had
been identified. We question whether even ministers could be certain
that they know of all the independent regulators that surround their
Departments’.26 Moreover, the ‘Code of the Woosters’ (The ‘good chaps
theory of government’, or the nature of ‘club government’, call it what
you will) that continues to influence the outer-margins of the British
state is bereft of explicit theories, explanations of organizational status,
or transparent modes of control or regulation.27 In this context, simply
providing clear-cut information on the structure of the state, the control
and accountability frameworks that exist, and the processes for making
13
public appointments, eiusdem generis, in itself provides a significant addi-

tion to our knowledge.
This book is not in any way a defence or celebration of delegation or
quasi-government. But it does adopt an explicitly revisionist position, by
which I mean one that avoids polemic and instead adopts an administra-
tively agnostic position that considers the benefits of delegation alongside
the challenges and negative unintended consequences that widespread
delegation tends to create. In adopting this stance, this book seeks to
depart from what might be termed as the British political tradition in
the study of delegation.
1.3. Traditions
In order to demonstrate the distinctiveness of a particular object,

approach, or method, it is necessary to provide some reference points
or markers against which judgements concerning idiosyncratic qualities
can be made. This section seeks to review the wider literature on del-
egation and through this process identifies three dominant approaches
or traditions in the study of delegation (Table 1.3). Although seeking to
specify dominant approaches in this manner risks exaggerating the degree
of epistemological and methodological coherency that actually exists, it
is possible to argue that a constellation of values and assumptions can be
identified in each case.
1.3.1. Tradition 1 (T1)

American scholars have played a leading role in terms of the theory and
methods employed to understand delegation. Not only does this reflect
their long historical tradition of governing through semi-independent
agencies and the existence of robust systems of public law and legislative
oversight but it also reveals the influence of rational choice theory from
the 1970s and the role it played in popularizing specific assumptions,
theories, frameworks, and methods. By the end of the nineteenth century,
the topography of the American state was littered with hybrid bodies
which had been established to overcome a number of obstacles faced by
traditional public bureaucracies.28 During the first half of the twentieth
century, the study of delegation adopted a predominantly case study-
based methodology and frequently involved highly normative observa-
tions regarding control and accountability.29
14
Table 1.3. The study of delegation: three dominant traditions
Tradition T1 T2 T3
Reluctant epithet ‘Americanist’ ‘Europeanist’ ‘British’

Normative foundation Rational choice and public choice theory Principal–agent theory (combined in Normative political theory
Principal–agent theory recent work with ‘richer’ approaches
such as historical institutionalism or
institutional isomorphism)
Ontology Foundationalist Foundationalist Anti-foundationalist (?)
Epistemology Positivist Realist Critical realist (?)
Methodology Quantitative Blended. Statistical survey evidence Qualitative. Descriptive case studies
complemented by case study and semi-structured elite
analysis and interview material interviews. Some superficial
survey evidence and analysis
Disciplinary tradition Scientific management Public law History/philosophy
Approach Deductive Deductive Inductive
Thematic priority Control Control Accountability/patronage
Arguments for • Provides a rigorous approach with the • Ability to combine • Combines a detailed account of the
capacity to analyse a range of structural-instrumental governance of delegation with the capacity
variables and their interrelationships perspectives with those to detect the nature and importance of both
across a number of actors. emphasizing cultural, functional, formal and informal relationships.
• Tight research design. and external factors. • This style of approach is accessible to a
non-academic audience.
Arguments against • Quantitative methods and deductive • Underplays political dimensions. • Little more than ‘rich description’ or political
• Overly concerned with formal

approaches lack the capacity or journalism.
flexibility to reflect the iterative nature mechanisms of delegation and • Often insular with little methodological
of delegated relationships. control. capacity for comparative analysis.
• This style of approach is not accessible • Case studies offer ‘low leverage’.
to a non-academic audience. • Historically unable to locate delegation within
• Overly concerned with formal broader socio-political developments.
mechanisms of delegation and control. • Polemic anti-delegation stance.
• Data driven. • Overemphasis on definitional debates.
Example text Epstein, D and O’Halloran, S. (1999) Van Thiel (2002) Quangos: Trends, Barker (1982) Quangos in Britain
Delegating Powers Causes, Consequences
Example journal Constitutional Political Economy Public Administration Parliamentary Affairs
15
During the second half of the twentieth century, the theories, meth-
ods, and assumptions underpinning the study of delegation within this
tradition altered significantly under the influence of public choice the-
ory. The view of individuals as rational, self-interested utility-maximizers
facilitated the construction of models, notably principal–agent theory,
from which explanations could be deduced and predictions made of the
behaviour of actors.30 American scholars devised a number of methods
to test hypotheses (i.e. a deductive approach) about the existence and
influence of presidential and congressional controls over the sphere of
delegated governance, and it is possible to trace a flow of studies involving
gradual theoretical and methodological maturation in response to empir-
ical research.31
The 1990s witnessed a further step—change in the theory and study of
delegation as the focus of analysis moved from the behaviour of agents
to the delegation stage itself, where principals make strategic decisions
about the need to delegate and how to balance independence and control.
This approach remained rooted in rational choice theory and principal–
agent modelling but now sought to gain an improved insight into the
conditions under which principals will delegate functions and allocate
discretion through the application of a transaction cost analysis (i.e. the
net benefits of delegation minus the administrative and oversight mecha-
nisms established to prevent shirking).32 The transaction cost approach to
delegation was also accompanied by an increased emphasis on the analy-
sis of ‘hard’ data and a move away from the case study approach, which
was increasingly viewed as a ‘soft’ (i.e. overly descriptive and lacking in
theoretical rigour) form of research.33
Overall, T1 consists of five core elements: allegiance to a broadly pos-
itivist approach to political analysis; a commitment to deductive logic
and reasoning; a preference for quantitative analysis and large-n surveys;
a focus on formal mechanisms of delegation and control; and an attempt
to discourage normative democratic theory within studies in favour of a
more neutral ‘scientific’ approach to delegation.

Although T2 has borrowed heavily in terms of theory and methods
from their colleagues across the Atlantic, it is possible to identify three
major differences in terms of its empirical focus, epistemological basis,
and research methods. Empirically, this approach is targeted on a quite
different constitutional terrain as scholars within this school are seeking
16
to understand the nature and consequences of delegation either within

or between mainland European parliamentary democracies or inside the
evolving architecture of the European Union (EU).34 In essence, the depth
and precision of analysis achieved by T1 reflect the fact that it has been
developed and refined around a very specific constitutional configuration
and although this may be transferable to other systems with broadly
similar characteristics, such as the institutions of the EU,35 its sharpness
and precision are dulled by the incorporation of a wider set of dependant
variables. Moreover, many of the specific official data sets that made
certain methodological techniques possible in the USA are not available
in other countries, thereby closing off certain analytical choices.
Second, although the scholars who operate within this approach are
broadly committed to a deductive approach, accept principal–agent the-
ory as a valuable frame of reference, and are skilled in quantitative
methodological techniques, they are less committed to the positivist zeal
which is implicitly or explicitly ingrained within T1. Although rational
choice theory is influential, its application is tempered by the need to
develop theories and approaches to the study of delegation that can
accommodate institutional complexity while also reflecting the existence
of informal or ‘soft’ mechanisms of autonomy and control. For these rea-
sons (and third), T2 is characterized by a pluralistic approach to method-
ology combining sophisticated large-n quantitative analysis alongside a
number of detailed case studies and elite interviews which is frequently
missing from studies within T1 and T3.36 Elgie defends this methodolog-
ical approach by stating:
. . . there are distinct advantages to an approach that combines large-N and case
studies . . . findings are likely to be more robust if they are based on information
from different types of investigation rather than only one. It is the accumulation
of evidence across the different types of study that matters as no single piece of
information proves or disproves any of the hypotheses advanced.37
Moreover, scholars within this tradition have also sought to accommodate

the tension between breadth and depth by adopting a common and
reasonably effective research design in which a number of country profiles
are located within introductory and concluding sections which provide
and then reflect on a thematic or theoretical framework of analysis.38
In this context, Thatcher and Stone Sweet’s The Politics of Delegation
(2003); Bergman, Muller, and Strom’s Delegation and Accountability in
Parliamentary Democracies (2003); and Braun and Gilardi’s Delegation in
Contemporary Democracies (2006) represent arguably the most advanced
17
or state-of-the-art studies within this tradition. What these studies pro-

vide is a greater level of theoretical and methodological depth than had
hitherto been present within T2. Conceptually and methodologically,
this involves a willingness to adapt or complement functional principal–
agent approaches with ‘richer’ explanations: ‘the politics of delegation
in Europe today calls for analyses going well beyond simple functional
logics, involving how actors’ interests are defined, policy is made and
enforced, and the legitimacy of government is conceived.’39 Institution-
ally, this approach frequently utilizes the notion of ‘chains of delegation’
to fit not only within the complexity of parliamentary democracies but
also within the emerging models of multilevel governance.
The advantage of T2 exists at a number of levels. From a normative
perspective, it avoids the overly positivist pretensions of T1 while also
rejecting the highly normative anti-delegatory thrust of T3. Empirically it
offers the capacity to achieve a detailed and consistent comparative analy-
sis that can reveal cross-national patterns and trajectories, and method-
ologically its pluralistic approach sensitizes analysis to the existence of
formal and informal modes of control as well as the complex interplay
between agency, context, and structure.

T3 is distinctive because it has proved largely resilient to the influence
of the positivist and rational choice determined approaches that have
been dominant for some time within T1 and increasingly influential in
T2. In this regard, it imports its own assumptions, theories, and methods
into the study of delegation which are in themselves derived from a well-
documented ‘British approach’ to the study of politics that is imbued with
an enduring ‘anti-scientific’ sentiment.40 T3 has therefore been infused
from its inception by ambivalence towards explicit deductive modelling
and conceived as more of a cooperative enterprise between practitioners
and academics characterized by an inductive approach; little sophisti-
cated modelling or hypothesis generation; a preference for qualitative
methodologies (notably case studies and semi-structured elite interviews);
a tendency to locate analyses within normative democratic theory; and an
insular, almost parochial, focus on delegation in Britain.
The study of delegation aimed to demystify the institutions and
processes of politics and government in a manner which eschewed ‘sci-
entific’ posturing and was suspicious of importing theories of frameworks
from overseas. This approach was epitomized in seminal texts like Finer’s
18
Primer of Public Administration (1950). The British approach was, and to

some degree remains, somewhat complacent, smug even, in that it sug-
gests that the British political tradition with its emphasis on flexibility and
‘muddling through’ could placate the challenges of modern governance
in a way that other countries could not. This atheoretical descriptive–
prescriptive normatively laden approach is found within the majority of
twentieth-century studies that focused on tracing the changing contours
of the state,41 examined the issue of control and coordination,42 and
focused on accountability43 and ministerial patronage.44 Of particular sig-
nificance in terms of distinctiveness is T3’s highly normative foundation.
Almost without exception, scholars within this tradition have adopted an
anti-delegation stance and a critical–descriptive–prescriptive style of writing
in which issues are raised, examples provided, and recommendations
for reform made. Quasi-autonomous bodies are interpreted as a ‘bad’
thing. Indeed, the ‘quango debate’ has been curiously one-sided, which
led Hogwood to conclude that ‘the only shared value seems to be that
quangos are rather shameful’.45
Towards the end of the twentieth century, two new strands emerged
within T3. First, the politics of delegation became a central element of
the ‘governance turn’ to the degree that it was suddenly located within
a concerted-drive towards a more theoretically driven and methodologi-
cally rigorous approach. Through its emphasis on central strategic capac-
ity, the steering of complex networks, and fuzzy forms of accountability,
governance theory provided a framework, discourse, and approach to
delegation which posed distinctive questions about the ‘unravelling’ of
the state.46 The second strand involved a challenge to the normative
foundation of T3 and particularly its assumption that delegation and
democracy were incompatible. Indeed, according to work within this
strand, delegation may offer an as yet unrealized democratic potential
by opening up new arenas of democratic engagement and mechanisms
of accountability.47 These two strands merged to promote the study of
‘delegated’ or ‘distributed’ public governance which were not new terms
for well-trodden issues but marked a distinct approach to the study of
delegation based around a number of themes.48 Central among these
was an acceptance of delegation as a central feature of modern state
projects, an awareness of the role of delegation above and below the
nation state, and encouraging a deeper and more analytically refined
appreciation of delegation than the overly descriptive and frequently
normatively charged accounts that had dominated T3 for much of the
twentieth century.
19
The impact, however, of these two strands should not be exagger-

ated. Although governance theory marked an influential and highly
distinct alteration in understandings of the state, it did not reflect an
attempt to promote the theories and methods of studying delegation
that were pivotal within T1 and T2. If anything, it marked a further shift
away from rational choice-inspired deductive modelling and quantitative
techniques.49 Older traditions had been adapted rather than repudiated.
Moreover, traditions, styles, and cultures are notoriously difficult to alter
and despite the influence of governance theory and the work of propo-
nents advocating a less normative foundation for analyses, the 1980s and
1990s saw the publication of a number of influential scholarly texts that
were clearly written and located squarely in T3.50
As with any typological endeavour, it is possible to suggest that Table 1.3
could and/or should be further refined by the addition of more traditions
or sub-strands, and yet the aim here has been to put down a number of
markers or reference points on an otherwise uncharted conceptual terrain.
Clearly not all the scholars within a specific geographic terrain are operat-
ing within the parameters of a single tradition. The work of a number of
scholars with an attachment to the London School of Economics, notably
Patrick Dunleavy, Keith Dowding, and Oliver James, has sought to import
elements of T1 and T2 into British political studies.51 Conversely, several
American scholars have recently produced highly influential studies of
delegation which appear more closely attached to T3 than to T1 in terms
of theory and methods.52 However, at a relatively broad level, it is possible
to justify a typology exhibiting three specific traditions and propose a rela-
tively clear relationship between them and research in the USA, mainland
Europe, and Britain, respectively. It is in this vein that Pollack seeks to
draw out a specifically ‘Americanist’ and ‘Europeanist’ approach to the
study of delegation. The critical element of this threefold typology is its
attempt to draw out a particularly distinct British tradition from that of
its European neighbours. Moreover, although it is possible to identify a
degree of convergence between T1 and T2 as the Europeanists ‘learn from
the Americanists (again)’53 —as exemplified in the work of Yesilkagit54 —
T3 appears peculiarly resilient to external influences. The significance
of these traditions in the context of this chapter stems from the fact
that dominant approaches inculcate certain values, not just regarding the
nature of knowledge in the social sciences but specific ideas and beliefs
regarding the object of analysis and how it should be studied.
By now it should be obvious to the reader that this book is not located
squarely within T3 but instead seeks to draw on elements of T1 and T2 in
20
order to achieve a deeper and more balanced understanding of the politics

of delegation within the British context. More specifically, I seek to reject
and move beyond the anti-delegatory stance that is implicit within T3
in order to deliver a richer and more balanced account of the politics of
delegation within British and European governance. How I achieve this is
set out in the next Section.
1.4. Overview
This book develops the central argument that the British state is ‘walking
without order’ by which I mean that an increasingly dense and significant
tier of delegated governance exists within a chaotic contextual environ-
ment in which there is fundamental and widespread political and admin-
istrative confusion regarding the number and status of the public bodies,
how they ‘fit’ within the wider constitutional architecture, and the gov-
ernance frameworks within which they operate. In order to support this
argument and emphasize its implications, this book has been divided into
three parts. The three chapters that make up Part I (Chapters 2, 3, and 4)
seek to provide a solid foundation for the later empirical and conceptual
chapters. The second chapter sets out the theoretical framework that I
employ in this book. This consists of three complementary theoretical
approaches—the Westminster Model (WM), Historical Institutionalism
(HI), and Principal–Agent Theory (PAT)—which each in its own distinct
way allows us to dissect and tease apart the politics of delegation in
Britain. Moreover, these approaches also operate at distinct levels, which
again deepens our understanding of both the theory and the practice of
delegation. The WM is a theory of how the British state is structured
and should operate and is empirically and symbolically associated with
majoritarian models of democracy; indeed, Lijphart uses the terms inter-
changeably. It therefore provides a macro- or meta-political framework
and set of reference points. HI, by contrast, with its emphasis on path-
dependency and sunk-costs, provides a temporally based method of cut-
ting into debates regarding delegation. This obviously resonates with the
historical providence of the WM in the British context but provides a
more sophisticated set of assumptions through which to understand and
assess the evolution of the state. If the WM provides the macro-political
framework, and HI focuses on what could be termed as the meso-political
level, then PAT provides the most detailed or fine-grained level of analysis.
By setting out the theory of delegation and then seeking to uncover and
21
defend against negative externalities (principal capture, agency shirking,

information asymmetries, etc.), PAT provides a powerful public choice
theoretic model with the capacity for empirical testing. Moreover, draw-
ing on each of these theoretical frameworks not only allows us to work
across and between a number of levels and dimensions but also allows us
to draw upon the distinct benefits and advantages of each of the traditions
outlined in Table 1.3. PAT has been dominant within T1; HI remains
highly influential within T2; and the WM has, implicitly or explicitly,
formed the main approach within T3.
Chapter 3 illustrates the persistence, growth, and evolution of dele-
gated governance from the earliest stages of state development in Britain
through to the first decade of the twentieth century. This reveals the
long-term bureaucratic layering which has occurred and considers why
political elites failed to take advantage of specific windows of opportunity
when a broad reform initiative could have been introduced. History never
repeats itself but it does tend to rhyme. This is clear from the historical
analysis provided in the second chapter as numerous official, parliamen-
tary, and academic inquiries have failed in their attempt to uncover
and classify the sphere of delegated governance in Britain. This issue
is taken forward in the fourth chapter which disaggregates the existing
strata of delegated governance into its component parts, thereby not only
illuminating the complexity of modern governance but also providing for
greater precision in relation to the later analyses of control, accountability,
and appointment frameworks.
Part II of this book examines a number of ‘mega-themes’ (see Table 1.4),
and the constituent chapters (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9), each in its own
way, seek to either challenge established assumptions about delegated
governance or contribute new perspectives and issues to the debate. It
is in this vein that Chapter 5 seeks to uncover the manner in which
public bodies are controlled by their parent department and particularly
how an effective balance between independence and control is main-
tained. Chapter 6 challenges the dominant view that public bodies are
unaccountable and instead seeks to cultivate a more sophisticated frame
of analysis which is aware of and sympathetic to different forms and
gradations of accountability as well as different forms of scrutiny. The
issue of public appointments and patronage forms the focus of Chapter 7,
and here I make a very strong statement against the view that the sphere
of delegated governance is either a patronage resource for ministers or
replete with financially lucrative and under-demanding positions. In fact,
what I show is a gradual but very clear ‘shrinking reach’ in terms of the
22
Table 1.4. Mega-themes
Chapter Theme Explanation Importance
5 Autonomy This theme focuses on the degree of independence Autonomy raises fundamental issues of control and coordination and yet our
enjoyed by public bodies and seeks to differentiate understandings of the degree or type of autonomy enjoyed by public bodies
between different forms of autonomy (political, financial, (and how this differs across different levels of delegated governance) is very
legal, etc.) while also recognizing that the actual degree limited. How do the governance frameworks which seek to balance
of autonomy enjoyed by a public body may be far independence and control operate in practice?
different from the level it was intended to have in theory.
6 Accountability How public bodies are held to account for the powers, Contrary to the dominant academic position, public bodies exist within a
responsibilities, and decisions they make forms the core complex web or network of accountabilities of which political accountability is
of this theme. This involves understanding the chain of one important element. However, little research has sought to understand the
delegation as a cascade of different accountability interrelationships between different accountability processes or the ‘executive
relationships. mentality’ in relation to limiting or vetoing reform proposals designed to shed
more light on this sphere of governance.
7 Patronage The concept of patronage examines the discretion of At the macro-political level, debates regarding patronage and delegated
politicians’ vis-à-vis senior appointments to public governance are essentially debates concerning raw political power. However,
bodies. Appointment processes may involve an despite patronage being a core concern within the debate about delegation,
independent regulatory element and/or a role for the there have been very few attempts to actually map out or understand the
legislature. manner in which the appointments process has been recently reformed. Nor
has the sensationalist media portrayal of public appointments as financially
lucrative and under-demanding been subject to empirical research.
8 Depoliticization Depoliticization refers to the range of tools, mechanisms, Politicians, political institutions, and ‘politics’ in general are not held in high
and institutions through which politicians can attempt esteem by the public. Moving issues away from elected politicians and the
to move to an indirect governing relationship and/or traditional governmental framework is increasingly seen as a way of fostering
seek to persuade the demos that they can no longer be public confidence, avoiding short-term partisan decisions, and increasing the

reasonably held responsible for a certain issue, policy credibility of public policy more generally. However, the limiting or denial of
field, or specific decision. politics raises fundamental issues about the nature of ‘the political’, the limits of
democracy, the existence of choices and how the ‘fugitive power’ which
depoliticization places in new arenas can be legitimated.
9 Decentralization The large-scale transfer of functions to an elected arena at Decentralization (either upwards to the European Union or downwards to the
the sub-national or supranational level. This will involve constituent nations of the UK) creates an opportunity for the introduction of
executive competence for specified public bodies new mega-constitutional orientations which are less amenable to delegated
operating within that territory and legislative governance. This might involve abolition and the drawing of functions back
expectations in relation to scrutiny and oversight. under the direct control of elected politicians, or the creation of a tighter and
more explicit governance framework to increase transparency and set out the
23
principles on which this tier of governance operates.

breadth and nature of ministerial appointment capacity. One element of

this process has involved the creation of independent appointment com-
missions to which responsibility for recruiting candidates and, in some
areas, making appointments has been delegated on the basis that these are
functions that should be ‘depoliticized’ from party politics. In Chapter 8,
I examine the concept of depoliticization in detail and seek to show
how it has played an increasingly important role since the election of
New Labour in 1997 and also how it raises fundamental questions about
the nature of ‘the political’, the limits of democracy, and the existence
of more positive choices in the face of growing public disenchantment
with politics. One prominent alternative to the challenges of delegation
rests on the movement of responsibilities above and below the nation
state to democratic structures that may offer greater capacity in terms
of scrutiny and control. It is for this reason that decentralization and
devolution form the focus of Chapter 9, which contains sections on the
degree to which the implementation of devolution to Scotland, Wales,
and Northern Ireland since 1998 has led to a reduction in the sphere of
delegated governance within those territories, or the imposition of tighter
and more transparent governance frameworks. In order to complete the
analyses of vertical decentralization, this chapter also examines the role of
delegated governance within the European level. An important reason for
examining the politics of delegation above and below the nation state is
that the creation of alternative processes, frameworks, or expectations vis-
à-vis delegated governance may lead to constitutional spillover in which
pressure builds for similar reforms to be implemented at the national
level, or at the very least for national politicians to account for why
differing modes of governance are appropriate for other political levels
but not at the national level.
Although each of the chapters in Part II focus on separate themes,
there is also a very clear analytical current that weaves them together.
Indeed, many of the chapters overlap and interrelate; depoliticization,
for example, is a process that raises all the issues of control, autonomy,
accountability, and patronage that form the focus of other chapters.
There is also a common emphasis (discussed above) in that each chapter
seeks to challenge or at least tease apart certain common assumptions
and through doing this establish a more balanced understanding of the
reality, rather than mythology, of delegated governance. Heretical though
it might appear for academics to write this, but public bodies are not
unaccountable. (Nor are they packed full of party-political appointees
who are rewarded with very large amounts of public money for very
24
little work.) However, a debate does exist regarding whether the existing
accountability framework(s) for public bodies is sufficiently robust which
in itself links into a related discussion concerning the economic costs of
accountability processes, the organizational impacts of scrutiny frame-
works, and the dangers of ‘multiple-accountabilities disorder’. It is for
this reason that the third element that unites the chapters in Part II and
hopefully provides a more sophisticated and accurate representation of
the politics of delegated governance is the emphasis on gradations, trade-
offs, and balance. In this context Fritz Scharpf’s work on the relationship
or exchange between input-orientated legitimacy (emphasizing the demo-
cratic process) and output-orientated legitimacy (prioritizing efficiency
and delivery in service delivery) provides a valuable distinction that I will
return to throughout the course of this book.55
Part III consists of just one chapter and in this I seek to not only reflect
on the findings and contribution of the research and analyses offered
within the pages of this book but also locate this book within a number of
broader themes and agendas. In particular, I argue for scholarly interest in
the politics of delegation to be matched by what I term the politicization of
delegation. By this, I mean that the logic of delegation itself, rather than
its consequences, needs to be the focus of critical political analysis in order
to push the process back within the sphere of public contestation. The
logic of delegation appears almost beyond dispute: it has become almost
an ‘essentially uncontested’ concept within contemporary conceptions of
good governance. And yet the benefits of delegation remain far from
uncontested. Consequently, the politicization of delegation emphasizes
the existence of contingency. This is an issue I will return to later; the next
chapter sets out the three theoretical pillars on which this book rests.
Notes
1. Tawney, R., The Acquisitive Society, 1921.

2. Ian Harden and David Marquand, ‘How to Make Quangos Democratic’, in
Matthew Flinders, Ian Harden, and David Marquand (eds.), How to Make
Quangos Democratic (London: Charter 88, 1997), p. 19.
3. Pollitt, C. and Talbot, C. (eds.), Unbundled Government (London: Taylor and
Francis, 2004); Hooghe, Lisbet and Marks, Gary, ‘Unravelling the Central
State, but How?’, American Political Science Review, 97/2 (2003), 233–43;
McCourt, W. and Minogue, M., The Internationalisation of Public Management:
Reinventing the Third World State (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000).
25
4. Chester, D. N., ‘Fringe Bodies, Quangos and All That’, Public Administration,
57 (1979), 51–4.
5. Ian Harden, Patrick Birkinshaw, and Norman Lewis, Government by Moon-
light: The Hybrid Parts of the State (London: Unwin, 1990).
6. Adapted from Pollitt and Talbot (2004) op. cit. pp. 3–22.
7. House of Commons Debates, 16 March 2000, Col.116WH.
8. Cole, M., ‘Quasi-Government in Britain: The Origins, Persistence and Impli-
cations of the Term Quango’, Public Policy and Administration, 13/1 (1998),
69–70.
9. Johnson, N., ‘Quangos and the Structure of British Government’, Public
Administration, 57/4 (1979), 385.
10. Bouckaert, G. and Peters, G., ‘What Is Available and What Is Missing from
the Study of Quangos?’, in Pollitt, C and Talbot, C. (eds.), Unbundling Gov-
ernment (London: Routledge, 2004).
11. Sandra Van Thiel, Quangocratization: Trends, Causes, Consequences (London:
Ashgate, 2001), p. 1.
12. Bob Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), p. 199.
13. OECD, Distributed Public Governance: Agencies, Authorities and Other
Autonomous Bodies (OECD: London, 2001).
14. Bulpitt, J., Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1983), p. 25.
15. Tony Blair, Democracy’s Second Age, The Economist 14 September 2006.
16. Catherine Bromley, John Curtice, and Ben Seyd, Is Britain Facing a Crisis of
Democracy? (London: Constitution Unit, 2004); Colin Hay, Why We Hate
Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).
17. Lord Falconer, Speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, London,
2003.
18. Morison, J., ‘The Case Against Constitutional Reform’, Journal of Law and
Society, 25/4 (1998), 510–35.
19. HM Treasury, Releasing Resources to the Frontline—Independent Review of Public
Sector Efficiency, July 2004:17, para. 2.18 [The Gershon Report].
20. Conservative Party, Review of Taxpayer Value, January 2005 [The James
Report].
21. Centre for Policy Studies, Essential Guide to British Quangos 2005 (London:
CPS, 2006).
22. See Cole, M., ‘Quangos: The Debate of the 1970s in Britain’, Contemporary
British History, 19/3 (2005), 321–52.
23. The Telegraph, 11 February 2005.
24. Conservative Party, Kill or Keep Review of Public Bodies (London: Conservative
Party, 2005).
25. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4255709.stm.
26. Better Regulation Task Force, Independent Regulators (London: Cabinet Office,
2003), p. 3.
26
27. See Hennessy, P., ‘Harvesting the Cupboards’, Transactions of the Royal Histor-
ical Society, 4 (1994), 203–19; Moran, M., The British Regulatory State (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003).
28. See Koppell, J., The Politics of Quasi-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
29. See, for example, Guild, F., ‘Special Municipal Corporation’, American
Political Science Review, 14 (1920), 286–91; Friedrich, C., ‘Public Policy
and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility’, Public Administration
Review, 1 (1940), 3–24; Cushman, R., Independent Regulatory Commissions
(London: Oxford University Press, 1941); Seidman, H., ‘The Theory of the
Autonomous Government Corporation’, Public Administration Review, 12
(1952), 89–96.
30. Niskanen, W., Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine,
1971).
31. For example Weingast, B. and Moran, M., ‘Bureaucratic Discretion or
Congressional Control?’, Journal of Political Economy, 91 (1983), 765–
800; Moe, T., ‘An Assessment of the Positive Theory of Congressional
Dominance’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 12 (1987), 475–520; Wood, B.,
‘Principals, Bureaucrats and Responsiveness in Clean Air Enforcement’,
American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 213–34; Ferejohn and Shipan,
‘Congressional Influence on the Bureaucracy’, Journal of Law, Economics &
Organization, 6 (1990), 1–19.
32. See Huber, J., ‘Delegation to Civil Servants in Parliamentary Democracies’,
European Journal of Political Research, 37 (2000), 397–413; Epstein, D. and
O’Halloran, S., Delegating Powers (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
33. See Huber and Shipan (2000) op. cit. p. 35.
34. For example, Huber, J., ‘Delegation to Civil Servants in Parliamentary
Democracies’, European Journal of Political Research, 37 (2000), 397–413.
35. Pollack, M., The Engines of European Integration (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003).
36. Van Thiel (2001) op. cit.
37. Elgie, R., ‘Why Do Governments Delegate Authority to Quasi-Autonomous
Agencies?’, Governance, 19 (2006), p. 211.
38. See, for example, OECD (2002) op. cit.; Pollitt and Talbot (2004) op.
cit.; Pollitt, C., Talbot, C., Smullen, A., and Caulfield, J. (eds.), Agencies
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).
39. Thatcher, M. and Stone Sweet, A., ‘Theory and Practice of Delegation to Non-
Majoritarian Institutions’, West European Politics, 25/1 (2002), 1–22 (at p. 20).
40. Hayward, J., Barry, B., and Brown, A. (eds.), The British Study of Politics in the
Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
41. See, for example, Cushman (1941) op. cit.; Bunbury, H., ‘The Public
Corporation’, Public Administration, 22 (1944), 137–42; Anderson, J., ‘The
27
Machinery of Government’, Public Administration, 24 (1946), 147–56;

Street, A., ‘Quasi-Government Bodies Since 1918’, in G. Campion (ed.),
British Government Since 1918 (London: George Allen, 1950); Friedman,
W., ‘The Legal Status and Organization of the Public Corporation’, Law
and Contemporary Problems, 16 (1951), 576–93; Willson, F., ‘Ministries and
Boards’, Public Administration, 33 (1955), 43–58; Chester, D. and Willson,
F., The Organization of British Central Government 1914–1956 (London: Allen
& Unwin, 1957); Parris, H., Constitutional Bureaucracy (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1969); Jordan, G., ‘Hiving Off and Departmental Agencies’, Public
Administration Bulletin, 21 (1976), 37–52; Chester (1979) op. cit.
42. See, for example, Robson, W., ‘The Public Service’, Political Quarterly, 7
(1936), 179–93; Hanson, A., ‘Labour and the Public Corporation’, Public
Administration, 32 (1954), 203–9; Hanson, A., ‘Ministers and Boards’,
Public Administration, 47 (1969), 65–75; Schaffer, B., A Consideration of
Non-Ministerial Organization in Central Government, Unpublished Ph.D.
Thesis, London University, (1956).
43. See, for example, Finer, H., ‘Administrative Responsibility in Democratic
Government’, Public Administration Review, 1 (1940), 335–50; Daniel, G.,
‘Public Accountability of the Nationalised Industries’, Public Administration,
38 (1960), 27–35; Chapman, R., ‘The Vehicle and General Affair’, Public
Administration, 51 (1973), 273–90; Barker, A. (ed.), Quangos in Britain
(London: Macmillan, 1982).
44. See, for example, Jennings, I., ‘Corruption and the Public Service’, Public
Administration, 9 (1938), 31–46; Finer, S., ‘Patronage and the Public Service’,
Public Administration, 30 (1952), 329–60; Richards, P., Patronage in British
Government (London: Unwin, 1963); Goldston, R., ‘Patronage in British
Government’, Parliamentary Affairs, 30 (1977), 80–97; Doig, A., ‘Public
Bodies and Ministerial Patronage’, Parliamentary Affairs, 30 (1978), 86–94.
45. Hogwood, B., ‘The growth of Quangos’, in F. Ridley and D. Wilson (eds.),
The Quango Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 227.
46. Hooghe and Marks (2003) op. cit.
47. See Flinders, M., Harden, I., and Marquand, D. (eds.), How To Make Quangos
Democratic (London: Charter 88, 1997); Matthew Flinders and Martin
Smith, Quangos, Accountability and Reform (London: Macmillan, 1999).
48. Flinders, M., ‘Delegated Governance in Britain’, Public Administration, 82/4
(2004), 883–909; Flinders, M., ‘Delegated Governance in the European
Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 11/3 (2004), 520–44; Flinders, M.
and Denton, M., ‘Democracy, Devolution and Delegated Governance in
Scotland’, Regional and Federal Studies, 16/1 (2006), 63–82.
49. See, for example, the influential work of Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes—
Governance Stories (London: Routledge, 2006); Interpreting British Governance
(London: Routledge, 2003).
28
50. See, for example, Barker (1982) op. cit.; Weir, S. and Hall, W., EGO-Trip
(London: Charter 88, 1994); Skelcher, C., The Appointed State (Buckingham:
Oxford University Press, 1998).
51. Patrick Dunleavy, Bureaucracy, Democracy and Public Choice (London:
Harvester, 2001); Keith Dowding, The Civil Service (London: Routledge,
1995); Oliver James, The Executive Agency Revolution in Whitehall (London:
Palgrave, 2003).
52. See Koppell (2003) op. cit.; Daniel Carpenter, The Forging of Democratic
Autonomy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
53. Pollack, M., ‘Learning from the Americanists (Again)’, West European Politics,
25 (2002), 200–19.
54. Yesilkagit, K., ‘Bureaucratic Autonomy, Organizational Culture and
Habituation’, Administration & Society, 36 (2004), 528–52.
55. Scharpf, F., Governing in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
29
Part I
Foundations
2
Theory
The British system . . . has generally been covert and inexplicit, con-
cealed behind the traditional façade of Westminster parliamentari-
anism. As such it has also been secretive, occasionally even furtive,
and easily repudiated. It has operated through tacit, fluid conventions
and understandings, not through clearly defined or generally known
procedures. In Britain, doctrine and reality are unusually far apart.1
The British constitution has a tradition of pragmatic, ad hoc adaptation,

and in this sense, the ‘walking without order’ thesis of this book has a
certain historical and cultural providence. However, in focusing on the
institutions of delegated governance and suggesting that the degree of
delegation has now become so great that a greater degree of coherence and
transparency is needed to respond to certain administrative and demo-
cratic concerns, this book takes little comfort from the British political tra-
dition. Analytically, it also takes little solace from the British approach to
studying delegated governance which has until recently largely eschewed
explicit theory, instead preferring a highly descriptive and frequently
normative approach. The aim of this chapter is to provide a theoretical
foundation through which the complex mixture of issues, themes, and
trade-offs can be examined and understood which, in turn, will deliver
theoretically informed policy-relevant research. This foundation takes
the form of three theoretical approaches—the Westminster Model (WM),
Historical Institutionalism (HI), and principal–agent theory (PAT)—which
provide powerful conceptual lenses and reference points that we will
return to throughout the course of this book. These theoretical pillars
have been selected as they allow us to cut into a range of debates and
issues at a number of different levels and from a number of perspectives
(see Table 2.1).
33
Theory
Table 2.1. Three theoretical pillars
Level Theory Rationale
Macro-political Westminster Model The WM provides a model with both empirical

and normative elements. It attempts to
describe both how British government
functions and how it should operate. Recent
challenges in the form of governance
theoretic positions attempt to provide a more
sophisticated account of how the British state
operates while also posing new questions
about the nature and location of political
power and strategic capacity.
Meso-political Historical Institutionalism HI provides a theoretical framework that
emphasizes the constraining influence of
previous decisions on future policy choices.
Analysing British constitutional history from
this perspective aids understanding in relation
to path-dependency, critical junctures, sunk
costs, and certain inherent biases against
reform.
Micro-political Principal–agent theory PAT outlines the perfect or ideal relationship
between a delegator and delegatee which has
provided an influential logic of delegation.
Theorists in this tradition are, however, aware
of a number of possible pathologies in which
intended power relationships and information
flows can become inverted. Applying this
approach in the sphere of delegated
governance therefore provides a sophisticated,
policy-relevant, and fine-grained framework of
analysis.
Russell’s concept of a ‘mega-constitutional orientation’ (MCO) refers

to the existence of widespread agreement regarding the identity and
fundamental principles of a polity.2 A country’s mega-constitutional ori-
entation may be explicit in the form of a codified constitution or exist
in a more implicit and cryptic form through conventions, standard-
operating procedures, and historical precedent. However, whether explicit
or implicit, the MCO of a polity is likely to be embedded within the
dominant political culture of a regime which itself inculcates and priori-
tizes certain values and judgements. Consequently, what we might term
‘mega-constitutional’ politics would therefore focus on debates concern-
ing the basic foundations, framework, or ‘rules of the game’ which, in
turn, would set certain parameters—a form of constitutionally bounded
rationality against which reform proposals or constitutional arguments
would be based.3 Historically, Britain’s MCO has always been represented
34
Theory
in the precepts and emphases of the WM which, as we will see in next

chapter, deifies both the department of state, as the main administrative
form at the national level, and the convention of individual ministerial
responsibility to parliament. For these reasons, any discussion of the
theory of the British state must be based upon a detailed understanding
of the empirical and normative influence of the WM as well as a number
of governance-derived frameworks which rose to prominence towards the
end of the twentieth century. This forms the focus of Section 2.1. The
debates about the contemporary relevance and influence of the WM and
the counterpoints provided by the governance narrative provide a macro-
political context or backdrop within which the politics of delegated gov-
ernance forms a central component. However, there is arguably a need
for complementary tools of political analysis with the capacity to operate
with greater precision and refinement while also contributing different
insights which is why the second theoretical pillar utilizes HI.
This approach (or more precisely the manner in which it is used in this
book) provides a meso-level theoretical framework with the capacity to
understand the evolution and trajectory of the British state. Its emphasis
on the influence of previous policy decisions, sunk costs, and critical
junctures provides a powerful tool for understanding how delegation has
developed to its present level despite the glaring inconsistencies with
core tenets of the WM. Ideas of gradual accretion and sedimentation
provide a powerful language and discourse through which to tease apart
and explore not only how the current politico-administrative confu-
sion arose but also the nature of elite blockages and the various ‘costs’
involved in reform initiatives. Clear complementarities exist between
the WM and HI as they both focus, though with different areas of
emphases and levels of precision, on path-dependency. The final theo-
retical approach—PAT—provides the capacity to drill-down still further
in order to provide a more detailed and institutionally focused theoret-
ical lens through which to understand the issues surrounding delegated
governance.
This approach is derived from new institutional economics and posits
certain assumptions about the interests of actors operating within del-
egated relationships. The value of this approach is that it sets out why
governing at a distance is theoretically attractive to both politicians and
senior public sector managers in terms of providing a framework which
can accommodate both independence and control. Moreover, PAT has
also evolved to alert analysts to the ways in which the theoretical and
operational benefits of delegation may not be achieved in practice which
35
Theory
has a direct relevance and application to many of the concerns surround-

ing delegated governance in Britain.
The aim of each of these pillars is to provide a model and a discourse
which, taken together, are mutually reinforcing and interrelated and can
be utilized as the various themes and debates that move up or down
Sartori’s ‘ladder of abstraction’.4 They provide us with a powerful range
of tools of political analysis with which to deliver a more sophisticated
analysis of delegated governance than has hitherto been produced in the
British context and in so doing, demonstrate the core ‘walking without
order’ thesis of this book. Before proceeding to discuss each pillar, it is nec-
essary to offer two caveats about this theoretical approach: first, My aim
in the proceeding sections is not to provide an exhaustive review of each
approach but to simply provide a rounded account of each theory and
how it relates to the topic of this book; second, I am not suggesting that
any of these theories are intrinsically meso- or micro-political in nature
but simply stating that this is how they will be principally deployed on
this occasion, which leads us into a discussion of the first pillar.
2.1. Westminster Model
Throughout the twentieth century, the WM formed the dominant ana-

lytical perspective for the study of British politics and government.5 It
is a theory of how British government works and how it should operate;
it therefore harbours descriptive and prescriptive components. Although
the model was always something of a parody or caricature, its influence
cannot be overstated in terms of providing a structure for academic
research, for shaping the behaviour of politicians, and in influencing
the public’s expectations and criticisms of government.6 The model’s
essential characteristics—parliamentary sovereignty, a two-party system,
the departmental model, ministerial responsibility to parliament, cabinet
government, and a unitary state—provided a relatively straightforward
rationale and sketch of how Britain’s constitutional arrangements theo-
retically functioned during much of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies. The inherent risk with any organizing perspective or conceptual
lens is that it may unnecessarily restrict or obfuscate the field of vision,
and (as Chapter 3 will demonstrate) the WM’s emphasis on ministerial
departments gave the impression of a far more unified and hierarchical
state structure than has ever existed in practice. As the twentieth century
drew to a close, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the intrinsic
36
Theory
complexity of modern governance with the order, stability, and clarity

offered by the WM. Observers noted that within the WM, ‘there is no
place for the chaos and discontinuity of a “differentiated polity” which
many political scientists (not to mentioned practitioners—and not least
those trained in history) more easily recognise’.7
In this context, the concept of the ‘Differentiated Polity’ (DP) became
influential as a more sophisticated and accurate account of the day-to-day
dynamics of British governance.8 In this model, the dominant position
of the executive was diluted by an appreciation of the existence of inter-
dependence, a segmented executive, resource-dependencies, and policy
networks. The centrifugal emphasis of the managerialist reforms of the
1980s and early 1990s, privatization, agencification, and a general shift
towards indirect patterns of governing, combined with other forms of
upwards and downwards decentralization had fostered an environment
of governance rather than government. This involved self-steering networks
of actors and raised issues concerning the ‘hollowing out of the state’—
a euphemism designed to indicate a loss of central strategic capacity on
the part of the core executive. The DP raises a number of critical themes,
many of which will be examined in great detail during the second part of
this book. Most broadly, the approach pinpointed important weaknesses
in the WM that had arguably always existed but had been amplified by
recent structural reforms while also providing a more empirically realistic
reflection of the contemporary structure of the British state. The DP posed
distinctive questions about British governance and with its emphasis on
veto-points, policy chains, resource-dependencies, and operational fail-
ures, it appeared to dovetail with many of the strategic and implementa-
tion challenges raised by politicians and officials in the 1990s. Ministerial
complaints regarding ‘rubber levers’ (i.e. policy decisions made at the
centre were not being operationalized, or at least not in the intended
manner) provided, for example, an empirical manifestation of many of
the themes and issues raised by the DP.9 In addition to these broad
benefits the DP stimulated two specific debates or controversies that are
directly related to the ‘walking without order’ thesis with which this book
is principally concerned—strategic steering capacity and the nature and
location of power.
A central element of Rhodes’s work on governance, in general, and
the DP, in particular, emphasized what he called the ‘hollowing out of
the state’, a phrase that sought to capture the diminution of central
state control capacity as the degree of institutional fragmentation and
number of potential veto-points increase.10 (In this context, Downs’s
37
Theory
laws of bureaucracy—imperfect control, lessening control, diminishing

control, and counter control11 —are pertinent.) Moreover, institutional
complexity commonly creates a ‘problem of many hands’ where dif-
ferent actors disseminate different messages or governing codes which
can lead to confusion, sub-optimal efficiency, and pluralistic stagnation.
However, what could be termed the ‘second wave’ of governance litera-
ture adopted a more cautious approach to the issue of strategic capacity
and at the heart of this approach was a reconsideration of how the
notion of power had traditionally been interpreted within British political
studies.
In essence, the WM had always interpreted the issue of power as a
zero-sum game in which actors either won or lost power. Consequently,
many political debates and issues were framed in rather crude, static,
and over-simplistic dualities—cabinet versus prime ministerial govern-
ment, parliament versus the executive, politicians versus the judiciary,
public versus private, etc.—which not only over-exaggerated the role
of agency but also under-emphasized the importance of structure and
context. Work on the DP adopted a more sophisticated approach to power
based upon the notion of power-dependency in which different actors
(ministers, parliamentarians, civil servants, pressure groups, etc.) have
different resources (financial, political, information, personnel, expertise,
nodality, etc.) which leads to complex games and bargaining behaviour.
Critically, power was seen as fluid and dynamic and not by definition
zero-sum. If a minister decided to delegate functions and responsibilities
to a public body, for example, beyond the core department, this did
not necessarily mean that the minister had lost power. Indeed, it was
possible that ministers have been empowered, with a greater strategic or
policy capacity by relieving themselves of the direct responsibility for
detailed administrative issues or specific functions that were highly time-
consuming. Agencification may actually provide ministers with more
power rather than less because it can now set down clear parameters and
targets in areas where it has never previously had strong control levers.12
It is in this vein that Bache’s research suggested that policymakers were
able to increase their policy capacity by proactively creating a network of
fragmented actors as this provided a ‘divide and rule’ strategy that sig-
nificantly weakened the existing powerful institutions in the sector—‘the
emergence of governance did not undermine central power but enhanced
it’.13 Other scholars highlighted the manner in which the core executive,
recognizing a need to bolster its strategic capacity, was instituting new
procedures and building new institutions that could be interpreted as
38
Theory
an attempt at ‘filling in the hollowing out’.14 For Saward, the state ‘is
being redefined, or reshaped, not hollowed out’.15 Taylor similarly noted,
‘Hollowing out leads not to a loss of control but rather to a change in the
method(s) whereby central influence and control are secured.’16
Although operating within the intellectual parameters of governance
theory, Marsh, Richards, and Smith have challenged the pluralistic
assumptions of the DP—‘we would argue that the British political system
continues to be more closed and elitist than Rhodes acknowledges’—and
have instead argued that the British political tradition remains under-
pinned by a limited conception of democracy, a conservative notion of
responsibility, faith in strong centralized executive power, and a com-
mitment to strong majoritarian democracy: ‘Politicians and bureaucrats
operate with this top-down view of democracy, a view which actually fits
more happily with the Westminster Model than with the Differentiated
Polity model.’17 They have presented a more guarded interpretation of
British politics in which they seek to emphasize the continuing role and
power of the WM within a broader context of governance. Of particular
value is their view that although the nature of resource-dependencies
has been altered, power has not been dispersed equally and that the
core executives retain certain critical resources (i.e. an asymmetric power
model). Ministers and their senior officials remain dominant actors within
policy networks, in this view, because their pre-eminent position is based
upon political, financial, and legal resources combined with specific resid-
ual powers (that are not available to other actors) which arguably allow
them to shape or steer both the context and ambitions of actors. This
is a view which resonates with Jessop’s work on ‘meta-governance’ or
‘the governance of governance’, which examines the analysis of the role
of the state in shaping the broader environment, rule-system, context,
or architecture in which self-organizing delegated actors and networks
operate.18
Marsh, Richards, and Smith also acknowledge the importance of ideas,
cultures, narratives, and traditions and how these influence actors and
institutions (and vice versa). Ideas have a real-world effect in that they
provide a form of bounded-rationality that either negate certain reform
options or lead to them being implemented in a very specific manner.
This stress on ideas and narratives feeds into a third element of Marsh,
Richards, and Smith’s argument which suggests that elements of the ‘hol-
lowing out’ thesis that are commonly assumed to be negative or problem-
atic for ministers and their officials may in fact be advantageous because
they may empower a government by reducing public expectations and
39
Theory
placing responsibility for potentially unpopular decisions on unspecified

global forces.19 They conclude that ‘it is more appropriate to conceive of
the state as having been reconstituted, rather than hollowed out, over the
last thirty years.’20
To recap, the WM provided the dominant organizing perspective for
the study of British politics and government for much of the twentieth
century. The model not only provided an outline of how British gov-
ernment was intended but it also transmitted an implicit statement or
set of ideas, which were essentially elitist, regarding the way the politi-
cal system should operate. Towards the end of the twentieth century, a
variety of governance-theoretic positions challenged the conceptual and
empirical utility of the WM. These debates concerning the delegation of
functions and the capacity of the state had not, however, been taking
place in isolation and had, indeed, informed debates beyond their field.
The concept of multi-level governance (MLG) emerged in the context of
EU studies and seeks to describe and analyse the dispersion of author-
itative decision-making across and between multiple levels of govern-
ment and governance.21 It therefore contains both vertical and horizon-
tal dimensions. The ‘multi-level’ adjective emphasizes increased vertical
interdependence between territorial levels while ‘governance’ signals the
growing horizontal interdependence between governments and delegated
public bodies and non-governmental actors. Although interest in MLG
has flourished in recent years, it is only necessary here to tease out the
main issues and themes raised by this conceptual approach. Bache and
Flinders suggest that this body of literature is united by four common
strands:
(1) that decision-making at various territorial levels is characterized by

the increased participation of non-state actors;
(2) that the identification of discrete and nested territorial levels of
decision-making is becoming more difficult in the context of com-
plex overlapping networks;
(3) that in this changing context, the role of the state is being trans-
formed as state actors develop new strategies of coordination, steer-
ing, and networking to protect and, in some cases, enhance state
autonomy;
(4) that in this changing context, the nature of democratic account-
ability has been challenged and needs to be rethought or at least
reviewed.22
40
Theory
The research of Hooghe and Marks on MLG has been highly influential
and is directly related to historical debates in the USA and Western
Europe concerning the appropriate size and division of functions across
various governing levels.23 At the centre of these debates is a practical
argument concerning structural efficiency. Proponents of polycentricity
(the coexistence of numerous but formally independent decision-making
arenas) advocated a disaggregated and flexible system of multiple and
overlapping jurisdictions in order to generate competition and mar-
kets in order to maximize efficiency.24 Conversely, ‘consolidationalists’
argued that redistribution, capacity, and efficiency were maximized by
amalgamating numerous overlapping jurisdictions into a limited number
of governmental layers.25 Large bureaucracies theoretically benefit from
exploiting economies of scale; they can internalize policy externalities,
ensure equality of service provision, deliver shared learning across and
between services, and provide clear lines of control and accountability.
Critics, however, suggest that large multi-functional organizations tend
to become bloated, inefficient, inflexible, risk averse, and rarely develop
specialist or managerial competencies. Although decisions relating to the
delegation of functions beyond the central state are based upon the per-
ceived costs and benefits of different organizational forms, it is important
to recognize the different structures or types of MLG, which is where
Hooghe and Marks’s work on ‘unravelling the central state’ is pertinent
because it conceptualizes two logically coherent types or structures of
MLG that although not unproblematic usefully capture alternative juris-
dictional and structural arrangements (see Table 2.2).
Type I MLG could arguably be more accurately termed multi-level
government as it focuses on power-sharing among a limited number of
Table 2.2. Types of multi-level governance
Type I Type II
General purpose jurisdictions Task-specific jurisdictions

Non-intersecting memberships Intersecting memberships
Jurisdictions at a limited number of levels No limit to the number of jurisdictional levels
System-wide durable architecture Flexible design
Consolidationism Polycentricity
Emphasis on voice Emphasis on exit
Communal identity Citizen preferences
Process-based legitimacy Output-based legitimacy
Layer cake Marble cake
Bundled Unbundled
Adapted from Hooghe and Marks (2003: 236).
41
Theory
governments operating at just a few levels. Decision-making powers are

dispersed across jurisdictions (e.g. local, regional, or national) but bundled
together in order to limit the negative externalities and transaction costs
of disaggregating tasks across multiple task-specific arenas. The member-
ship boundaries of jurisdictions do not overlap and are commonly territo-
rially defined. Therefore, in Type I forms of MLG, a series of nested juris-
dictions can be identified which tend to be relatively stable and durable
as functions and responsibilities may be constitutionally entrenched,
as in federal systems, and even where this is not the case, reconfigur-
ing the jurisdictions is likely to incur significant costs and therefore be
relatively rare.
If Type I MLG suggests homogeneity and clarity of governmental hier-
archies, then Type II MLG captures the heterogeneity and complexity of
modern governance. In this model, multiple, task-specific, independent
jurisdictions are ‘hived-off and insulated’ and are intended to be flexible
rather than durable and commonly have incongruent and overlapping
territorial boundaries. This is the model favoured by polycentric theorists
who perceive value in creating market-like environments. Two critical
aspects of Type II MLG are high levels of institutional hybridity (for-
mal organizational status, powers, appointment procedures, governance
arrangements, etc.) and significant levels of organizational independence
and autonomy. Indeed, although the exact parameters of Type II MLG are
slightly ambiguous by associating it with the ‘edges of type I governance’
and the ‘public/private frontier’, it is clear that Hooghe and Marks have
in mind the sphere of delegated governance with which this book is
concerned and state that Type II governance mechanisms tend to be
‘. . . task-specific, arm’s length from traditional government and largely
autonomous’.26
The distinction between different types of MLG focuses attention on
two key issues that have already formed key planks of this chapter. The
first is what Hooghe and Marks refer to as ‘the co-ordination dilemma’—
steering becomes exponentially more difficult as the number of linkages
in the policy chain increase. Second is the potentially more fertile line of
enquiry that the different types of multi-level governance ‘embody con-
trasting conceptions of community’ because Type I structures are based
on a preference for collective self-government and a commitment to the
notions of community and public good.27 Within this system, procedures
and frameworks are established to facilitate ‘voice’—the capacity of citi-
zens to make politicians and officials aware of issues.28 Type II structures
commonly emphasize efficiency, ‘exit’, and outputs over deliberation; one
42
Theory
could even provocatively suggest that they reflect a different conception

of democracy, an alternative mega-constitutional orientation that may
link with Scharpf’s work on different forms of legitimacy (issues we will
return to in Chapter 11).29
There is an obvious link between the concept of MLG as devel-
oped by scholars with an interest in European integration and those
governance-theoretic approaches outlined above in the British context.
When Hooghe and Marks refer to ‘the dispersion of authority away from
central government—upwards to the supranational level, downwards to
sub-national jurisdictions, and sideways to public/private networks’, they
are essentially describing Rhodes ‘hollowing out’ thesis. Devolution to
Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and London, combined with ongoing
delegation and an increasingly opaque boundary between the public and
private spheres, have led an increasing number of scholars to locate the
manner in which British governance is evolving within the contours
of MLG: ‘Governing Britain—and indeed any other advanced western
democratic state—has thus become a matter of multi-level governance.’30
Following on from this, and drawing from the literature discussed
above, it is possible to construct an alternative organizing perspective,
the multi-level polity, which provides a counterpoint to the WM (see
Table 2.3).
Although the multi-level polity (MLP) arguably provides a more accu-
rate empirical representation of modern British governance, as well as
pointing to many of the critical tensions and issues, an argument is
not being made that this has replaced the WM. The reality is far more
sophisticated and dynamic due to the fact that an embryonic MLP is
evolving within and against the parameters of the WM. Furthermore,
despite recent constitutional and bureaucratic reforms, the WM continues
to shape the manner in which reforms are designed and implemented
as well as the ideas and culture of the political elite, and it is for this
reason that Rhodes states, ‘The Westminster Model has not, and will not,
evaporate. But its institutions have been eroded and transformed since
1945.’31 Lord Norton similarly emphasizes, ‘The Westminster model has
been modified, perhaps vandalised but it has not been destroyed’ and
Nairn comments that ‘the mainframe has remained sacrosanct.’32 It is the
tensions and anomalies arising from this interaction between attempts to
retain traditional aspects of the WM, at least in theory, while at the same
time instituting reforms that undermine (or at least set in train dynam-
ics that are likely to destabilize) core tenets of this model that explain
and underpin many contemporary tensions in British governance. The
43
Theory
Table 2.3. Westminster Model and multi-level polity
Westminster Model Multi-level polity
Centralized Unravelled
Directional dynamic
Centripetal Centrifugal
General principles
Hierarchy Heterarchy
Control Steering
Clear accountability Fuzzy accountability
External dimensions
National sovereignty Shared/negotiated sovereignty
British foreign policy Multiple foreign policies
Internal dimensions
Club government Open government
Unitary state Quasi–federal state
Parliamentary sovereignty Inter-institutional/multi-level bargaining
Strong executive Segmented executive
Patronage Public appointments
Direct government Delegated governance
Politicized Increasingly depoliticized
Unified civil service Fragmented civil service
Political constitution Quasi–judicial constitution
value of the MLP for this book is that not only does it capture or
at least reflect the existence and dynamics of delegated governance,
but it also touches a number of themes which form the focus of later
chapters—control, accountability, depoliticization, etc. Indeed, Hooghe
and Marks’s conclusion that modern states are a ‘baroque patchwork of
Type II jurisdictions overlaying a nested pattern of Type I jurisdictions’
neatly summarizes British governance at the beginning of the twenty-first
century.
However, there is a need to be conceptually cautious. Governance-
theoretic positions have been criticized for being overly descriptive and
often ahistorical. Marinetto, for example, questions the emergence of a
distinct shift in recent decades from direct to indirect modes of govern-
ing and suggests that we have, in fact, witnessed ‘further centralization
rather than a haemorrhaging of power and authority’.33 As Chapter 3
reveals, the British polity has long been decentralized which in itself raises
questions concerning the logic of delegation, the evolution of democratic
frameworks, any vaunted transformation in the capacities of the state,
and the originality of ‘new’ forms of governance. It is for these reasons
that Pierre and Peters describe governance as a ‘proto-theory’—a prelimi-
nary theory awaiting future refinement through theoretical and empirical
44
Theory
research.34 So, although the governance-narrative, and particularly the

MLP, provide a valuable counterpoint to the WM, it is necessary to sup-
plement this approach with a theoretical means of explaining and exploring
the interrelationship between the historical evolution of state structures
and the dominant logic or ideas which sought to legitimate or rationalize
this structure. This is particularly important given our emphasis on the
WM’s enduring centrality as a set of understandings which determine
opportunities and incentives for behaviour, as well as structuring and
legitimating the relative ease or difficulty of inducing change. In order
to achieve this theoretical complementarity and particularly allow us to
highlight continuity and change, the next section examines Historical
Institutionalism.
2.2. Historical Institutionalism
HI is a variant of the ‘new institutionalists’ approach that seeks to identify

and explain enduring structural constraints on human behaviour and
which defines institutions not solely in terms of structures and orga-
nizations but also in terms of rules, traditions, operating procedures,
rituals, ceremonies, and standards. This feeds in to an emphasis on how
power is embedded in institutional configurations and an awareness of
the interaction between individuals and institutions. The central claim
of HI is that history matters; decisions made when an institution is
established or policy formulated have a constraining effect on future
action. Put another way, choices at a decisive point, or T1, establish a
framework, funnel, or channel that is likely to augment the recurrence
of a specific pattern in the future, at T2. This constraining or shaping
effect—‘path-dependency’—leads to a degree of continuity, shared norms,
bounded rationality, or what March and Olsen describe as a ‘logic of
appropriateness’.35 Institutions, in particular, create vested interests that
are likely to sustain particular patterns of politics and therefore oppose
reform in order to defend their stake in the existing institutional forma-
tion. As initial decision(s) bed-in over time, levels of ‘increasing returns’
should theoretically increase thereby deterring any fluctuation or experi-
mentation. Consequently, the degree of path-dependency intensifies, the
amount of ‘sunk costs’ increase, and decisions become ‘locked in’, and the
costs (political, administrative, financial, etc.) associated with alternative
options (policy or institutional) increase to the point where they are no
longer feasible.
45
Theory
The influence of path-dependency creates high costs in imposing sig-

nificant change that means that institutions will often have a ‘layered’
quality, in that new institutional forms are added to the pre-existing
architecture, or the policy capacities of existing institutions are enlarged.
This bureaucratic sedimentation may, over time, lead to a dense and
complex administrative terrain. This degree of continuity will only be
changed when a sufficiently strong force or ‘crisis’ occurs leading to a
critical juncture in which abrupt and significant change may be imple-
mented: ‘Massive failure is an important condition for change.’36 History
is interpreted as displaying ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (i.e. fairly long peri-
ods of stability interspersed with critical junctures in which major insti-
tutional change is possible). Decisions taken at the outset or at specific
critical junctures emerge as crucial in that they orientate the boundaries
of what is interpreted as feasible or acceptable within the extant system
(Table 2.4).
Table 2.4. Historical Institutionalism
Historical Institutionalism
Theoretical approach An emphasis which attempts to sensitize analysts to logics of

path-dependence through the contextualization of agency both
historically and institutionally.
Theoretical assumptions Actors display a mixture of ‘cultural’ and ‘calculus’ logics.
Analytical approach Deductive–inductive.
Method Theoretically informed; historical; narrative.
Conception of institutions ‘Formal and informal procedures, routines, norms and
conventions’ (Hall)
Institutional change 1. Focus on institutional creation as defining path down which
subsequent evolution occurs.
2. ‘Punctuated equilibrium’—a crisis or confluence of events and/or
social pressures created a ‘window of opportunity’ into which a
new way of doing things can be inserted.
Key themes 1. Path-dependence
2. Sunk costs
3. Punctuated equilibrium
Common criticisms 1. An emphasis on genesis at the expense of an adequate account
of post-formative institutional change.
2. Tendency to focus on path-dependency to the detriment of
path-shaping.
3. HI’s focus on equilibrium and path-dependency may overlook
how incremental reforms can have transformative effects.
4. An inherent tendency to accord history a logical
trajectory—‘retrospective rationality’.
5. HI struggles to conceptualize and account for political conflict.
6. Little analytical leverage in relation to explaining change as
opposed to charting change.
46
Theory
Although HI alerts us to the enduring effects of past decisions and the

significance of traditions and ideas, it is open to criticism and has been
accused of possessing a number of ‘theoretical and conceptual voids’.37
First, the focus on path-dependency and intermittent crises may under-
estimate how incremental steps can produce transformative results.38
This risks smaller changes being defined away, even if those incremental
changes—cracks and wedges—cumulatively produce significant change.
There is also a definitional issue concerning the point at which a change
ceases to be incremental and is classified as a ‘critical juncture’. It has also
been suggested that HI tends to accord history a more logical trajectory—
‘retrospective rationality’—than actually might have been the case as
decisions are viewed as the logical and generally the most rational choice
at any given time.39 This risks overlooking the availability of choices and
conflict at particular points and therefore may downplay the existence
of complexity and luck/fate at formative moments. HI has also been
criticized for inadequately conceptualizing and accounting for political
conflict. Conflict is likely to exist at all times, rather than just in times of
crisis, as dominant actors and rationalities are forced to fend off attempts
by minorities to alter the status quo. Political conflict and pressures
for change are therefore more persistent than commonly assumed by
historical institutionalists, which in itself increases the probability of
incremental change. This leads to possibly the most frequent criticism of
HI—its inability to explain change.40 The concept of ‘punctuated equi-
librium’ may well help explain dramatic episodic changes, but it may
also overlook more subtle changes. Scholars working within the frame
of HI have responded to these criticisms in a number of ways: through an
acknowledgement that change often takes place at an incremental rather
than episodic pace; that actors within networks are not passive; and that
the relationship between agents and institutions is dialectical. There is
also a growing acceptance that different variants of new institutionalism
can borrow from each other. Sociological institutionalism, for example,
with its more expansive view of institutions and emphasis on consider-
ations of power and legitimacy in explaining how institutions emerge
and are reformed, clearly provides a complementary approach through its
focus on how collectively held norms and ideas—‘shared cognitions’ and
‘interpretive frames’—define appropriate conduct, shape reform options,
and implicitly embed certain power relationships.41
The primary focus of HI is therefore the construction, maintenance, and
adaptation of institutions, and it has a particular interest in how ideas,
interests, and positions generate preferences, and the manner in which
47
Theory
these evolve over time. Used in combination with other approaches and
with an awareness of its limitations, HI provides a powerful methodolog-
ical tool for exploring the politics of delegated governance in Britain.
The ‘walking without order’ thesis that this book seeks to present is
itself a normative argument based on an understanding and judgement
on the historical evolution of the British state. That this piecemeal,
uncoordinated, and unprincipled evolution has occurred and shows few
signs of abating raises questions regarding the capacity of individuals to
affect change, the influence of path-dependency, and the scale of sunk
costs. Moreover, HI’s emphasis on ideas, cultures, and traditions—and
particularly the observation that ideational change invariably precedes
institutional change—arguably facilitates a deeper understanding of the
continuing role of the WM as a powerful ideational framework that can
itself be viewed as an institution that shields, maintains, and legitimates
the position of certain stakeholders. This book’s thesis and the logical
argument for a rationalization process (the introduction of a clearer gov-
ernance framework and a principled statement on the use and boundaries
of this sphere of governance) that flows from it is, in essence, calling for
a significant change in the dominant and long-standing modus operandi
of British governance. The utility of HI is that not only does it emphasizes
the existence of systemic impediments to change, but it also provides
an erudite exposition of the issues surrounding the interpretation of a
‘governing crisis’ within which previously circumscribed policy options
are considered and certain political relationships reconfigured. Hay
notes,
Crises unleash shorts bouts of intense ideational contestation in which agents

struggle to provide compelling and convincing diagnoses of the pathologies afflict-
ing the old regime/policy paradigm and the reforms appropriate to the resolution
of the crisis.42
This draws attention to the role of certain actors in proselytizing new

or alternative ideas, the interpretation and existence of ‘crises’, and the
discursive parameters within which crisis narratives are likely to be set. Of
particular importance is the argument that pressure for change is likely to
augment as the gap between institutional theory and institutional practice
increases, a theme emphasized in the above distinction between the WM
and the actually existing institutional structures. Finally, HI provides a
way to analyse the veracity of governance-theoretic perspectives from
an historical perspective by allowing us to examine certain assumptions
about ‘new’ forms of indirect governance and identify previous debates
48
Theory
concerning strategic capacity while also considering the drivers behind

and consequences of previous reform initiatives. However, if the WM and
alternative governance-derived models provide a theoretical canvas at the
macro-political level and HI supplies a framework and discourse at the
meso-political level, the final pillar—principal–agent theory—on which
this book stands provides the capacity to drill-down still further and
theorize relationships at the micro-political level.
2.3. Principal–Agent Theory
PAT not only provides a powerful framework for understanding the theory
of delegation, but it also highlights a number of potential dangers that
can, if not addressed, create severe unintended consequences in which
intended power relations become inverted. Although used extensively in
cognate disciplines, PAT has not been used extensively by scholars with
an interest in British governance. And yet Epstein and O’Halloran’s Dele-
gating Powers (1999) and Huber and Shipan’s Deliberate Discretion? (2002)
on American congressional politics and Pollack’s The Engines of European
Integration (2003) demonstrate that PAT provides great analytical leverage
in relation to understanding inter-institutional relationships at quite a
fine-grained level. It also provides both an ideal model and a discourse
that isolates, identifies, and explains common and frequently problematic
dimensions in the relationship between politicians (i.e. principals) and
delegated public bodies (i.e. agents). As such, it provides a micro-level
theoretical tool with the capacity to provide new insights into the issues of
control, steering, autonomy, accountability, etc. that form central themes
of this book.
The basic framework of PAT is simple: the principal engages the agent
to fulfil a specific task. The detailed requirements, financial resources,
timescales, etc. are set out in an explicit agreement or contract which
will also contain a number of targets against which the agent will be held
to account. If the performance of the agent falls below certain prescribed
levels, then financial penalties may be applied or the contract terminated.
The simplicity of PAT is one of its key assets as the framework suggests
that positive general results are attainable in many contexts. The contract
theoretically ensures clarity in terms of roles and responsibilities, while
also providing the agent with high levels of autonomy and managerial
flexibility to fulfil their obligations in the most efficient manner (see
Figure 2.1). PAT has provided a powerful and enduring set of ideas that
49
Theory
Context and Underlying Structure of

Accountability Relationships
Demands for information on actions,

activities, etc.
Principal Transfer of resources or Agent

responsibilities with expectations.
Supply of information on actions,

activities, etc.
Bases and types of accountability

relationship (e.g. probity/process/
performance/programme/policy,
ex post/ex ante).
Figure 2.1. Principal–agent theory
have imbued wave after wave of public sector reforms since the 1980s
as the idea that it was possible to separate policymaking from opera-
tional concerns gained credence. The international trend towards the
creation of agencies towards the end of the twentieth century was inspired
by PAT with politicians delegating responsibilities to delegated agencies
and framework documents acting as the quasi-contractual focus of the
relationship.
PAT therefore suggests that the decision to delegate will be based on a
rational assumption about the anticipated benefits of delegation (organi-
zational clarity, improved information flows, increased credibility, blame-
shifting potential, optimum levels of economic efficiency, etc.). However,
whether these benefits are delivered in practice depends on a number
of factors as well as an acceptance that delegation may well entail cer-
tain costs, or at the very least trade-offs. A central challenge of PAT is
ensuring that the agent does not behave opportunistically and pursue
their own preferences at the expense of their principal’s.43 The American
literature on the relationship between Congress and its independent
agencies demonstrates that controlling or managing ‘bureaucratic drift’44
or ‘agency shirking’45 (i.e. in which the agent behaves opportunistically
and/or pursues their own preferences instead of the principal’s) is not
only a major challenge but also the resources employed in mitigating
this issue may well undermine the logic of delegation in the first place.
50
Theory
Table 2.5. Principal–agent theory: interlinked challenges and issues
Issue Description
Singularity PAT assumes a straightforward relationship involving one principal

and one agent. This underplays the empirical reality of modern
governance that frequently involves multiple principals and
multiple agents.
Letting go The principal seeks to corrupt the formal principal–agent
relationship by seeking to control/influence the agent via
informal control mechanisms.
Clarifying accountability The existence of discretion, informal relationships, and rules
concerning the release of information can undermine the clarity
promised by PAT and can result in complex ‘blame games’ as the
principal and agent seek to deflect responsibility and blame onto
each other.
Information asymmetries ‘Principal capture’ can occur when the principal is reliant on the
agent for detailed information concerning the operation of the
relationship. However, maintaining the principal as an intelligent
customer may involve control mechanisms which undermine or
frustrate the benefits of delegation.
Tunnel vision Agents focus on the achievement of their targets at the expense of
broader inter-organizational initiatives where the benefits are less
direct, longer term, and difficult to realize.
Rationality The ontology of PAT is based on the presupposition that actors will
act within a very specific understanding of ‘rationality’ and yet
rational behaviour is a relative and agent-specific concept. PAT
therefore provides a theoretical model within a political vacuum.
Observational equivalence Studies that focus on the frequency of sanctions being applied to
the agent by the principal face the methodological problem that
the absence of sanctions is consistent with both the obedient
servant and the runaway bureaucracy theory—observational
equivalence, each of which predicts for completely different
reasons the rarity of sanctions.
McCubbins and Schwartz have developed a ‘runaway bureaucracy theory’

which contends that Congress has effectively abdicated its policymaking
responsibilities to independent agencies who, in the absence of strong
or regular legislative control mechanisms, have manipulated informa-
tion asymmetries to develop and pursue their own policy preferences.46
Although the ‘runaway bureaucracy theory’ (also termed the ‘abdication
thesis’) is modelled on the American political configuration, a clear rela-
tionship exists between it and the ‘walking without order’ thesis presented
in this book which further confirms the utility of PAT in the context of
delegated governance. Table 2.5 provides an overview of the main issues
or challenges to operationalizing PAT theory.
The first challenge for PAT in relation to delegated governance is that
its singularity is somewhat misleading: a more accurate framework would
suggest the existence of both multiple principals and multiple agents.47
51
Theory
Many public bodies actually have a dual-principal structure. In Britain,

both the Office of Communication and the Design Council, for example,
are jointly controlled by two departments (Department for Trade and
Industry and Department for Culture, Media, and Sport) which share
responsibility for setting and monitoring targets, making appointments,
and accounting to parliament. Conflicting preferences among multiple
principals not only makes the effective deployment of sanctions prob-
lematic but may also undermine the capacity of the agent to focus on
core tasks (as well as creating a situation with the potential for the agent
to exploit conflicting preferences). Even if a public body has just one
parent department, it would still be naïve to assume that PAT provided
a complete account of inter-organizational relationships as public bodies
must respond to the informatory demands of a wide number of what
could be termed second-level principals (HM Treasury, Cabinet Office,
cognate departments involved in shared targets, National Audit Office,
Parliament) as well as to the public directly (see Figure 2.2).
Irrespective of whether a public body has one or a number of principals,
the second issue raised on Table 2.5 highlights the fact that although
certain powers and responsibilities may well be delegated to an agent,
there is no guarantee that the principal will actually resist the temptation
to interfere, particularly if the delegated issue becomes politically salient.
The centrifugal pressures of delegation grate against the centripetal logic
Cabinet Cognate National Audit

HM Treasury
Office Departments Office
Parliament Public
Dept. for Trade and Dept. for Culture,

Industry Media and Sport
Office of Communications
Figure 2.2. Office of communications: primary and secondary principal

relationships
52
Theory
Table 2.6. Examples of ministerial control mechanisms
Internal External
Formal • Agree new targets • Abolish organization

• Appoint new chief executive • Reallocate responsibilities to another
• Reform the board organization
• Create ‘agency shadowing team’
Informal • Meetings • Speeches containing ‘policy steer’
• Phone calls • Press releases
• Lunches • Media interviews
of ministerial responsibility as ministers retain a duty to intervene, or at

least pay greater attention, in areas for which they are responsible that
have become issues of public concern. In these situations, the arm in
the arm’s-length relationship can suddenly become much shorter, and
Table 2.6 illustrates that principals have a number of control mechanisms
at their disposal and these can usefully be divided along two dimensions.
Internal control mechanisms operate largely within the parameters of the
department whereas external methods commonly have a very high public
visibility. Formal control mechanisms draw upon the reserve powers of
ministers and, although they may vary slightly depending on the formal
status of the public body, their use is explicit, official, and must be
employed in accordance with established due process. Informal control
mechanisms, by contrast, are unofficial in that the minister attempts to
influence the public body through meetings which have no formal status,
and as a result the proceedings are not on public record (phone calls,
lunches, etc.), or through making statements or speeches that although
are not aimed explicitly at the agency clearly carry a ‘policy steer’. As the
memoirs of former chief executives of delegated public bodies illustrate
at length, informal controls can have serious consequences for arm’s-
length organizations as they distract the attention of senior managers and
prevent them from focusing on the primary duties of the organization
(thereby potentially exacerbating the problems that stimulated minister-
ial involvement in the beginning).48
Those modes of control within the Internal/Informal quadrant of
Table 2.6 (‘government by luncheon’ as it became known in relation to
the nationalized industries) also risk creating a situation in which the
formal principal–agent relationship obscures the existence of actual min-
isterial government and as a result, the clarity of responsibility promised
by PAT is often quite opaque in practice. Moreover, the rigid demarcations
in terms of roles, responsibilities, and outputs may well be difficult to
53
Theory
achieve in areas of governmental activity that are either politically salient

or where targets are difficult to specify due to the nature of the task.
Mather notes,
The purity of the model is often obscured by the messiness of actual practice.
Strategic objectives for public organisations are almost always political. The lan-
guage of politics is rhetorical, ambiguous and persuasive . . . it does not lend itself
easily to the clarity of specification required in the devolved management model.49
Not only is it difficult to design targets that capture the complex nature
of many public sector tasks (such as teaching, policing, or nursing)
without relying on quite crude measures that may in themselves create
perverse incentives, but it is also impossible for any framework document
to specify the response or duties of both the principal and agent in
every conceivable situation. Therefore, a significant element of any inter-
organizational relationship must rely on negotiated compromise, discre-
tion, mutual understanding, and trust (known within Whitehall as the
‘no surprises rule’). However, this opacity can be problematic in certain
situations and particularly where an agent fails to achieve their prescribed
targets. Organizational failure could result from a number of factors (poor
operational management by the agent; poor policy choice or insufficient
resource allocation by the principal [or even informal interference]; or
the failure of related public bodies to achieve their objectives which
had detrimental implications for the agency in question), but isolating
causal variables and then attributing blame can be very difficult and may
descend into ‘blame games’ in which principals and agents seek to deflect
responsibility. It is not, however, the external accountability and scrutiny
relationships that can become problematic but also the internal control
relationships between principal and agent.
The fourth challenge of PAT focuses on maintaining the principal as
an ‘intelligent customer’ in light of the dominant position of the agent
in relation to information. PAT will only deliver optimum benefits where
there is a situation of ‘perfect information’ in which the principal has
sufficient information to be confident that agents are fulfilling their oblig-
ations and are being organizationally ‘stretched’ in terms of maximizing
efficiency. Without this information, there is a risk of ‘principal igno-
rance’ in which not only can there be control and incentive dilemmas,
but also, more broadly, the agent may become the dominant partner in
the relationship. Williamson has referred to this situation as ‘informa-
tion impactedness’ which combined with opportunism can weaken the
power and control of the principal, particularly where the agent knows
54
Theory
the principal is likely to use the ‘ratchet effect’ to increase performance

targets.50 Not only do delegated public bodies have greater access to
detailed information about their performance than ministers but it may
also be in their interest to misrepresent that information where it could
affect certain contractual benefits. Pollack notes,
Without some means of acquiring the necessary information to evaluate the

agent’s performance, therefore, the principal seems to be at a permanent disad-
vantage, and the likelihood of agency losses seems large.51
In order to moderate these information asymmetries, principals can

employ any number of a range of control mechanisms (agency shadowing
bureaucracies, consultation requirements, tight internal audit, executive
veto powers, reporting regimes, etc.) involving incentives and sanctions,
through which they can attempt to monitor and control the behaviour of
agents and prevent bureaucratic drift.52 These control mechanisms which
are essentially risk-reduction tools incur their own costs (agency costs)
and may generate their own negative unintended consequences. This is
a critical point. There is a risk that in order to retain the ability to make
informed decisions about contracts with forms of delegated governance,
the government will dissipate the efficiency savings accrued through
delegation in the first place. As Massey notes, ‘moving to a system of
contract based accountability is not a cheap option . . . it may prove more
expensive than the system being dismantled.’53 In terms of unintended
consequences, the imposition of tight auditing regimes may counteract
the organizational flexibility that delegation was designed to deliver while
a focus on ‘auditable’ targets may create perverse incentives for agents, in
which formal aim-achievement is over-emphasized to the detriment of
other possibly more important but less tangible functions.54 This leads
into the fourth challenge of principal–agent theory: tunnel vision.
PAT as it has been applied to the public sector advocates the disaggrega-
tion of large multi-purpose bureaucracies into task-specific organizations
that are free, as far as possible, of traditional bureaucratic restraints (both
procedurally and culturally). Targets are established and included in a
quasi-contractual agreement, and agents are encouraged to utilize modern
management styles wherever possible. However, the focus of this model is
organizationally specific and thereby risks promoting a degree of ‘tunnel
vision’ (i.e. organizations focus on the achievement of their targets at the
expense of broader inter-organizational initiatives where the benefits are
less direct, longer term, and difficult to realize). This danger of tunnel
vision also has implications for the realm of ideas and knowledge as
55
Theory
although the delegation of tasks to public bodies is designed to deliver

increased institutional capacity, it risks undermining the intellectual capac-
ity of the state in terms of its institutional history, shared knowledge-
base, and epistemic potential as the delegation of tasks risks ‘de-skilling’
the state in certain areas and fields and particularly its holistic capacity.
Moreover, the ontology of PAT is based on the presupposition that actors
will act rationally, and it could therefore be argued that a limitation of
the framework is that it provides a theoretical model within a political
vacuum. Rational behaviour is a relative and agent-specific concept. The
political behaviour of politicians is conditioned to some extent by the
relatively short timeframes of the electoral-cycle and this may lead to sub-
optimal decisions or interventions that have detrimental consequences
for the long- or medium-term value of a policy.55 Agents too should not
be treated as passive actors as they are likely as ‘competence maximizers’
to try and shape relationships in order to realize their own goals and
aspirations which again may lead to behaviour that confounds principal–
agent theory.56
Finally, a major problem of testing and observing assumptions within
PAT is that an agent may rationally anticipate the reactions of their prin-
cipals, as well as the probability of sanctions, and adjust their behaviour
to avoid the costly imposition of sanctions. If this is the case, then agency
behaviour which may at one level appear autonomous may in fact be
determined by the preferences of principals—even in the absence of any
overt sanctions. The more effective the control mechanisms employed
by the principals, the less overt sanctioning would be observable, since
agents rationally anticipate the preferences of the principals and the
high probability of sanctions for shirking and adjust their behaviour
accordingly.57 Studies that focus on the frequency of sanctions being
applied to the agent by the principal face the methodological problem
that the absence of sanctions is consistent with both the obedient servant
and the runaway bureaucracy theory—observational equivalence, each of
which predicts for completely different reasons the rarity of sanctions.
Despite the issues raised in Table 2.5 and discussed above, PAT remains
a dominant framework in both public management reform and scholarly
analysis. It provides a rationale for delegation as well as a detailed account
of the potential pathologies of moving to an indirect governance relation-
ship. Its discourse and language permeate official documents and frame
many contemporary debates regarding issues of control and account-
ability. PAT therefore provides this book with a clear model of how the
relationship between central departments and delegated public bodies is
56
Theory
expected to operate in theory as well as an insight into a number of issues

that have arisen during the empirical application of this model. Whether
and to what extent these issues exist in relation to delegated governance
in Britain or how mechanisms have been put in place to emasculate these
dangers will be examined in later chapters.
In order to develop the ‘walking without order’ thesis, it is necessary
to understand the theories and ideas that shape and condition both the
study and operation of the British state. It is for this reason that this chapter
has given an account of three theoretical perspectives each of which
provides a different way of understanding and teasing apart many of the
complex issues surrounding delegated governance. At the macro-political
level, the contrast between the WM and the MLP provides the capacity
to comprehend the continuing role and influence of the former as well as
the evolution of alternative governance structures within its increasingly
tenuous parameters. HI, by contrast, provides a meso-level approach that
sensitizes us to the influence of previous decisions and how constitutional
history may suggest certain patterns or assumptions, the logic of which
may well have become exhausted. Finally, PAT presents an influential and
fine-grained (i.e. micro-political) framework for understanding both the
theory of delegation and a number of potential dilemmas. Taken together,
each of these three pillars offer insights into the nature and impact of
delegation, open up debates about state capacity and power, while also
identifying many of the key issues and challenges of modern governance.
The development and evolution of the contemporary state which has
given rise to these issues and challenges will be examined in the next
chapter.
Notes
1. Marquand, D., The Unprincipled Society (London: Fontana Press, 1988),

p. 162.
2. Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1992).
3. Matthew, Flinders and Dion Curry, ‘Bi-Constitutionalism’, Parliamentary
Affairs, 61/1 (2008), 99–121.
4. Giovanni, Sartori, ‘Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics’,
American Political Science Review, 14/4 (1970), 1033–53.
5. On this, see: Greenleaf, W., The British Political Tradition, Parts 1, 2
& 3 (London: Methuen, 1983/7); Jennings, I., The British Constitution
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Mackintosh, J., The Politics
57
Theory
and Government of Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1977); Gamble, A.,

‘Theories of British Politics’, Political Studies, 38 (1990), 404–20; Judge, D.,
The Parliamentary State (London: Sage, 1993).
6. Smith, M., The Core Executive in Britain (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1999);
Judge (1993) op. cit.
7. Lowe, R. and Rollings, N., ‘Modernising Britain, 1957–64’, in R. Rhodes
(ed.), Transforming British Government—Volume 1 Changing Institutions
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 112.
8. Rhodes, R., Understanding Governance (Buckingham: Open University Press,
1997).
9. See Rhodes, R., ‘New Labour’s Civil Service: Summing-Up Joining-Up’,
Political Quarterly, 71/2 (2000a), 151–67.
10. Rhodes, R., ‘The Hollowing Out of the State’, Political Quarterly, 65 (1994),
138–51; Rhodes (1997) op. cit., Chapter 3; Peters, G., ‘Managing the Hollow
State’ in K. Eliassen and J. Kooiman (eds.), Managing Public Organizations
(London: Sage, 1993); Klijn, E., ‘Governing Networks in the Hollow State’,
Public Management Review, 4/2 (2002), 149–65.
11. Downs, A., Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1967).
12. Holliday, I., ‘Is the British State Hollowing Out?’, The Political Quarterly, 71/2
(2000), 167–77; Skelcher, C., ‘Changing Images of the State: Overloaded,
Hollowed-out and Congested’, Public Policy and Administration, 15/3 (2000),
3–19.
13. Bache, I., ‘Governing Through Governance’, Political Studies, 51 (2003),
300–14 (at p. 300).
14. See, for example, Ayres, S. and Pearce, G., ‘Building Regional Governance
in England’, Policy and Politics, 33/4 (2005), 581–600; Bache, I. and Bristow,
G., ‘Devolution and the Gatekeeping Role of the Core Executive’ British
Journal of Politics and International Relations, 5/3, 405–27; Davies, J., ‘The
Governance of Urban Regeneration: A Critique of the Governing Without
Government Thesis’, Public Administration, 80/2 (2002), 301–22; Flinders,
M., ‘Governance in Whitehall’, Public Administration, 80/1 (2002), 51–75;
Holliday 2000 op. cit; Taylor, A., ‘Hollowing Out of Filling In? Taskforces
and the Management of Cross-Cutting Issues in British Government’, British
Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2/1 (2000), 46–71. See also,
Rhodes, R. A. W., ‘Understanding Governance: Ten Years On’, Organization
Studies, 28/8 (2007), 1243–64.
15. Saward, M., ‘In Search of the Hollow Crown’, in P. Weller, H. Bakvis, and
R. Rhodes (eds.), The Hollow Crown (London: Macmillan, 1997), p. 26.
16. Taylor, A., ‘Arm’s-Length but Hands On’, Public Administration, 75 (1997),
441–66 (at p. 442).
17. Marsh, D., Richards, D., and Smith, M., ‘Unequal Plurality: Towards an
Asymmetric Power Model of the British Polity’, Government and Opposition,
38/3 (2003), 306–32 (at p. 310).
58
Theory
18. Jessop, B., ‘Multi-Level Governance and Multi-Level Meta-Governance’,

in I. Bache and M. Flinders (eds.), Perspectives on Multi-Level Governance
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
19. ‘It is crucial to remember that governments often do things for their own
domestic reasons and interests, but blame the EU as a way of deflecting
blame from themselves’ (Marsh, Richards, and Smith (2003) op. cit., p. 330).
20. Ibid. 332.
21. Hooghe, L. and Marks, G., Multi-Level Governance and European Integration
(London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
22. I. Bache and Matthew Flinders (eds.), Multi-Level Governance (Oxford: Oxford
23. Hooghe and Marks (2001) op. cit.; Hooghe, L., Cohesion Policy and European
Integration: Building Multi-Level Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996); Hooghe, L. and Marks, G., ‘Unravelling the Central State, But How?’,
American Political Science Review, 97/2 (2003), 233–43.
24. See Ostrom, V., Tiebout, C., and Warren, R., ‘The Organization of
Government in Metropolitan Areas’, American Political Science Review,
55 (1961), 831–42; Ostom, V. and Ostrom, E., ‘Public Goods and Public
Choices’, in M. McGinnis (ed.), Polycentricity and Local Public Economies
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).
25. Frug, G., City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
26. Hooghe and Marks (2003) op. cit., p. 238.
27. Hooge and Marks (2003) op. cit., p. 240.
28. Hirschman, H., Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Harvard: Harvard University Press,
1972) 2006 ed.
29. Scharpf (1999) op. cit.
30. Pierre, J. and Stoker, G., ‘Towards Multi-Level Governance’, in A. Gamble,
et al. (eds.), Developments in British Politics 6 (London: Macmillan, 2000),
p. 29. Bulmer, S., Burch, M., Carter, C., Hogwood, P., and Scott, A., British
Devolution and European Policy Making: Transforming Britain into Multi-Level
Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).
31. Rhodes (1997) op. cit., p. 200.
32. Quoted in Morrison, J., Reforming Britain (London: Reuteurs, 2001), p. 510;
Nairn, T., After Britain (London: Granta Books, 2001), p. 70.
33. Marinetto, M., ‘Governing Beyond the Centre’, Political Studies, 51/3 (2003),
592–608 (at p. 600).
34. Pierre, J. and Peters, G., Governance, Politics and the State (London:
Macmillan, 2000), p. 7.
35. March, J. and Olsen, J., Rediscovering Institutions (New York: Free Press, 1989).
36. March, J. and Olsen, J., Elaborating the ‘New Institutionalism (Oslo: Centre
for European Studies, 2005), p. 12. See also Collier, R. and Collier, D.,
Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
59
Theory
Ertman, T., Birth of the Leviathan (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997).
37. Peters, G., Pierre, J., and King, D., ‘The Politics of Path Dependency: Political
Conflict in Historical Institutionalism’, The Journal of Politics, 67/4 (2005),
1275–300 (at pp. 1277–8). See also Peters, G., Institutional Theory in Political
Science (London: Pinter, 1999).
38. See Thelen, K., ‘How Institutions Evolve’ in J. Mahoney and
D. Rueschemeyer (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social
Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
39. Peters, Pierre, and King (2005) op. cit., p. 1277.
40. Clemens, E. and Cook, J., ‘Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining
Durability and Change’, Annual Review of Sociology, 25 (1999), 441–66.
41. Meyer, J. and Rowan, B., ‘Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure
as Myth and Ceremony’, in W. Powell and O. DiMaggio (eds.), The New
Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991); Scott, W., Institutions and Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 1995); Katzenstein, P., Cultural Norms and National Security (New York:
Cornell, 1996).
42. Hay, C., ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’, in R. A. W. Rhodes, Sarah Binder,
and Bert Rockman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 67.
43. See Pollack (2003) op. cit.; Kiewiet, R. and McCubbins, M., The Logic of
Delegation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Moe, Terry, ‘The
Politics of Structural Choice’, in Oliver E. Williamson (ed.), Organizational
Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
44. McCubbins, M., Noll, R., and Weingast, B., ‘Structure and Process, Politics
and Policy: Administrative Arrangements and the Political Control of
Agencies’, Virginia Law Review, 75 (1987), 431–82; Macey, J., ‘Organizational
Design and Political Control of Administrative Agencies’, Journal of Law,
Economics & Organization, 8/1 (1992), 93–110; Shepsle, K., ‘Bureaucratic
Drift, Coalitional Drift and Time Consistency’, Journal of Law, Economics &
Organization, 8/1 (1992), 111–18.
45. McCubbins, Mathew and Page, Talbot, ‘A Theory of Congressional
Delegation’, in M. McCubbins and T. Sullivan (eds.), Congress: Structure and
Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 410–11.
46. McCubbins, M. and Schwartz, T., ‘Congressional Oversight Overlooked’,
American Journal of Political Science, 28 (1984), 165–79. See also Mark,
Pollack, ‘Delegation, Agency and Agenda Setting in the EC’, International
Organization, 51/1 (1997), 99–134.
47. See Pollack (2003) op. cit., pp. 43–7; Spiller, P., ‘Politicians, Interest Groups
and Regulators: A Multiple Principals Agency Theory of Regulation’, Journal
of Law and Economics, 33 (1990), 65–101.
60
Theory
48. See Derek, Lewis, Hidden Agendas (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1997); Greg,
Dyke, Inside Story (London: Harper, 2005).
49. Mather, G., ‘Management by Contract’ Public Money and Management, 10/3
(1990), 1–5 (at p. 1).
50. Williamson, O., Markets and Hierarchies (New York: Free Press, 1975).
51. Pollack (2003) op. cit., p. 27.
52. See Sappington, D., ‘Incentives in Principal–Agent Relationships’, Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 5/2 (1991), 45–66.
53. Massey, A., ‘Civil Service Reform and Accountability’, Public Policy and
Administration, 10/1 (1995), at p. 28.
54. See Power, M., The Audit Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
Miller, P., ‘Dilemmas of Accountability: The Limits of Accounting’, in
P. Hirst and S. Kilhani (eds.), Reinventing Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell,
1996); Hood, C., ‘Paradoxes of Public Sector Managerialism, Old Public
Management and Public Service Bargains’, International Public Management
Journal, 3 (2000), 1–22.
55. See Flinders (2002) op. cit.
56. Thatcher, M. and Stone-Sweet, A., ‘Theory and Practice of Delegation to
Non-Majoritarian Institutions’, West European Politics, 25/1 (2002), 1–22.
57. Weingast, B. and Moran, M., ‘Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional
Control?’, Journal of Political Economy, 91/5 (1983), 765–800.
61
3
History
The whole process of creating quangos has gone ahead in a piecemeal

fashion, presenting a perfect illustration of opportunistic pragmatism
at work.1
As broad historical trends and fashions have largely been overlooked in

the study of delegated governance, this chapter examines the historical
evolution of the British state and the relationship or balance between
direct and indirect modes of governing throughout this process. The
historical span analysed in this chapter runs from the middle of the
nineteenth century to the first decade of the twentieth century. Instead
of providing a detailed chronological narrative, the aim of this chapter
is to pull out key themes and trends, issues, and debates, finally relating
them back to the core argument of this book. The main questions this
chapter seeks to answer include
1. Has the Westminster Model ever truly captured the heterogeneity of

the British state?
2. How have previous decisions affected future options?
3. Has any government ever set out an explicit statement of principles
regarding the use and boundaries of delegated governance?
4. Is it possible to identify specific periods when far-reaching reforms
were considered?
5. Does a long-term historical narrative suggest that the British state
has always been ‘walking without order’ and, if so, does this have
implications for the argument of this book?
In the first section, I examine the genesis of the modern British state and
trace its development to the end of the nineteenth century. The second
62
History
section analyses the politics of delegation throughout the twentieth cen-

tury up to the election of the Conservative administration in May 1979.
The next two sections consider the patterns of delegation and reform
which marked the Tory administrations between 1979 and May 1997
and the Labour governments between 1997 and May 2007, respectively.
By reflecting on the theoretical pillars outlined in the previous section,
notably the WM and HI, the concluding section draws out a number of
enduring themes and issues from this historical account and relates them
to the central argument of this book.
3.1. State Formation
Unlike other states in other countries, the embryonic British state

emerged from the sixteenth century onwards in an extemporized fash-
ion. Systemic logic, explicit theory, and grand planning were eschewed
in favour of piecemeal ad hoc adaptation. This led Finer to write, ‘the
striking feature of English administrative evolution is the small amount
of conscious or at least formal thought bestowed upon it until the end of
the eighteenth century.’2 Prior to the nineteenth century, the King was
reluctant to vest too much power in one person and Crown-appointed
multi-member independent boards or commissions formed the dominant
administrative unit (see Table 3.1).
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, complaints were made
regarding a perceived lack of accountability of these delegated bodies. In
1694, for example, John Somers, then Attorney General, wrote to King
William III:
There is one thing necessary for carrying on your service which was extremely
wanting in those two commissions [the Board of Customs and the Board of Excise];
that there should be somebody of them who might upon all occasions give a
satisfactory account in the House of Commons of what related to their proper
business.3
During the early decades of the eighteenth century, Britain was governed
by twelve ministries and sixteen independent boards, but as the century
progressed, complaints regarding delegation, patronage, and accountabil-
ity became more strident and formed an important element of the chang-
ing relationship between Crown, executive, and parliament.4 After the
1832 Reform Act in particular, MPs felt empowered by the extension of
the franchise to play a greater role in overseeing the bureaucracy, while
63
History
Table 3.1. Selected delegated public bodies (1514–1896)
Trinity House 1514 Crown Agents 1833

Sewers Commission 1540 Board of Stamps and Taxes 1834
Navy Board 1546 Board of Works 1834
Bankruptcy Commission 1570 Public Works Loan Board 1835
Spanish Company 1577 Tithe Commission 1836
Turkey Company 1579 Ecclesiastical Commission 1836
British East India Company 1600 Railway Departments Board 1840
Misemployment of Land Commission 1601 Emigration Commission 1840
Board of Trade 1621 Copyhold Commission 1841
Board of Excise 1643 Lunacy Commission 1845
Office of Works 1660 Inclosure Commission 1846
Royal Africa Company 1662 Railway Commission 1846
Wine Licences Commission 1671 Board of Inland Revenue 1849
Board of Customs 1671 Patent Commission 1852
Bank of England 1694 Charity Commission 1853
Salt Duties Commission 1701 Civil Service Commission 1855
Queen Anne’s Bounty 1704 Local Government Board 1869
South Sea Company 1711 Hist. Manuscripts Commission 1869
British Museum 1753 Endowed Schools Commission 1869
Board of Control 1784 Suez Finance Company 1875
National Debt Commission 1786 Public Works Loan Commission 1875
Public Works Loan Board 1793 Prison Commission 1877
Encouragement of Agriculture Board 1793 Crown Lands Commission 1878
Holyhead Road Commission 1801 Land Commission for England 1882
Board of Health 1805 Railway and Canal Commission 1888
Crown Estate Paving Commission 1814 British South Africa Company 1889
National Gallery 1824 Central Welsh Board 1896
the demands of the industrial revolution called for a more coherent and
professional public service. From this point onwards, it became common
for an MP to sit on the board of delegated bodies in order to provide
a link between the legislature and wider administration by answering
questions in the House on behalf of their respective organization. This
reform proved unsuccessful as the relationship between MPs and board
members frequently became fractious and unworkable. But as the sphere
of delegated governance increased—fifteen new boards were created dur-
ing 1832–55—legislative pressure for reform grew and by the middle of
the nineteenth century, a number of factors had conspired to ensure
that reform of some form was necessary.5 The Poor Law Commission in
particular aroused so much parliamentary attention and criticism that
it played a central role in fostering support for the idea of the min-
isterial department. In The English Constitution (1867), Bagehot cites it
as the most prominent example of the weakness of ‘. . . conducting the
administration of a public department by an independent unsheltered
authority’.
64
History
Although the Poor Law Commission was replaced with a Poor Law
Board in 1847 which, as the President of the Poor Law Board was both
an MP and full-time Minister of the Crown, was tantamount to creating a
ministerial department, the controversy had much broader ramifications.
Proponents drew up the incident as being symptomatic of a broader prob-
lem that urgently required attention: as exemplified in Toulmin Smith’s
Government by Commission: Dangerous and Pernicious (1849). Bentham,
Mill, and Bagehot held up the experience with the Poor Law Commission
as underlining the value of creating departments of state headed by a
minister who was directly and personally responsible to parliament.6 This
model, so they argued, would deliver a balance between clear and effective
lines of accountability while also providing stability via party discipline
within the House of Commons. The minister would provide the ‘buckle’
in the relationship and act as a buffer between the various arms of the
state and the legislature. Bagehot stated that,
The incessant tyranny of Parliament over the public offices is prevented and
can only be prevented by the appointment of a parliamentary head, connected
by close ties with the present Ministry and the ruling party in Parliament. The
parliamentary head is a protecting machine.7
The controversy surrounding the Poor Law Commission also affected

parliamentarians by quite starkly demonstrating their lack of control or
power over significant sections of the bureaucracy. MPs became resent-
ful of the independence and insularity of boards and ‘. . . began to feel
dissatisfied with a form of administration [boards] which omitted to
provide for what they regarded as acceptable ministerial representation
in the House of Commons’.8 As a result, during the second half of
the nineteenth century, a number of boards were abolished and their
functions taken over by ministerial departments and where independent
boards continued to operate without a minister, they did so under the
auspices of a nominated minister that meant that they frequently found
their independence curtailed and encountered a far higher degree of
ministerial involvement in their day-to-day activity.9 Critically, it was at
this point in Britain’s constitutional history that the institution of the
ministerial department and the convention of ministerial responsibility
to parliament became ingrained (in principle if not in practice). Towards
the end of the century, many commentators believed that the demise of
appointed boards had been sealed as parliamentary appreciation of the
virtues of individual ministerial responsibility grew, ministerial depart-
ments became better equipped to take on new functions, and the weight
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of tradition to invest new functions to independent commissions waned.

In his Representative Government of 1861, John Stuart Mill wrote, ‘Boards
are not a fit instrument for executive business; and are only admissible
in it when to give full discretionary power to a single minister would be
worse.’ In his 1864 Parliamentary Government, the 3rd Earl Grey offered an
explicit formulation of the relationship of direct and universal ministerial
responsibility to the structure of the central administration:
It is no arbitrary rule which requires that all holders of permanent offices must
be subordinate to some Minister responsible to Parliament, since it is obvious that
without it, the first principles of our system of government—the control of all
branches of the administration by Parliament—would be abandoned.10
Although the ascendancy of the ministerial department meant that text-

books in the second half of the nineteenth century tended to overlook
the existence and role of what would soon become known as ‘non-
departmental organizations’, a detailed review of the historical literature
and public records reveals three critical issues.11 First, as Parris’s Consti-
tutional Bureaucracy (1969) illustrates, individual ministerial responsibility
reflected a distinct period of state evolution in which the responsibilities
of departments were still of such a limited size that ministers really could
be expected to be directly involved in all the decisions, down to the
relatively trivial administrative work. The late-Victorian period was one
of ministerial administration as most departments employed less than ten
staff.12 Although this explains why the House of Commons felt justi-
fied in enforcing the personal responsibility of ministers, its capacity to
enforce the convention of ministerial responsibility proved short-lived. By
the end of the nineteenth century, increasing demands on MPs coupled
with a general growth in the responsibilities of departments meant that
ministers had little choice but to delegate a great deal of their depart-
mental responsibilities beyond their direct control. At the same time,
the development of professionally managed political parties and internal
procedural reforms to the House of Commons had conspired to shift
the balance of power in favour of the executive.13 Finally, although the
late-Victorian period witnessed the creation of several ministerial depart-
ments, the process of delegation to quasi-autonomous bodies continued
apace throughout this period. The choice of administrative machinery
was not conditioned by any coherent administrative principles, nor can
the inconsistencies be attributed to changes of government.
Before examining the evolution of delegated governance during the
twentieth century, it is worth reflecting on the main themes and issues
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History
arising from this short account of the genesis of the British state. Possibly,
the clearest theme is one of longevity and durability. Delegated public bod-
ies have formed a central part of British governance since its inception.
They pre-date the ministerial department as the default administrative
unit. The fact that they continued to exist (and more were created) during
vaunted phases of centralization not only points to their durability but
also suggests that delegation may be inevitable once the responsibilities
of the state pass a certain point. A second major theme is encapsulated
in Finer’s description of the nascent British state as being character-
ized by ‘incoherent arbitrariness’. Unlike other polities at a similar stage
of state development, no attempt was made to ground the evolution
of the bureaucracy within an explicit public law framework or set of
administrative principles. Disorder and confusion reigned until the crisis
with the Poor Law Commission tapped into a deeper vein of concern
both within and beyond parliament. Consequently (and third), we saw
that during the second half of the nineteenth century, the logic of the
ministerial department and the convention of ministerial responsibility
to parliament became established—in theory if not in practice—as the
principles around which the British state should be based. Although a
relatively small number of boards and commissions replaced (or were
amalgamated into) ministerial departments, those affected were just the
tip of a much larger iceberg that continued to exist and grow in size,
beneath the administrative waterline and therefore largely beyond pub-
lic and parliamentary oversight, throughout the century. The shift in
the balance of power between the executive and parliament during the
second half of the nineteenth century not only restricted the practical
utility of ministerial responsibility, but it also sensitized us to a fourth
key theme—accountability. As far back as the late 1600s, it is possible to
find documentary evidence of concern regarding how delegation could
be reconciled within the parameters and frameworks of a parliamentary
state. Although the convention of ministerial responsibility was intended
to solve this dilemma, the fact that it was popularized during a period
when the ambitions and size of the state were limited meant that its
capacity was outstripped by the state’s rapid growth. A final issue that
possibly reflects the ‘incoherent arbitrariness’ discussed above is that there
exists no official record, register, or catalogue which provides a comprehen-
sive account of the number of public bodies created, their role, func-
tions, or powers and when they were either abolished or amalgamated
into an alternative organizational form. Whether the evolution of the
state during the twentieth century led to reforms that were designed to
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History
address some of these five themes and issues is the topic of the next
section.
3.2. The Long View (1900–79)
In theory at least, the nineteenth century had culminated in a view that

the ministerial department should form the basic administrative unit of
British government. The reality was, however, that although the number
of ministerial departments increased during the twentieth century, the
main area of growth was on the fringes or the periphery of the state.
The ambitious programme of social reform enacted by the Liberal Gov-
ernment (1906–14) was heavily dependant on the logic of delegation
as many new responsibilities were delegated to semi-independent boards
(e.g. Rural Development Commission in 1909, Road Board in 1909, Insur-
ance Commission in 1911). The rationale for delegation was based on a
broadly accepted view that some functions should be placed at a distance
from party politics and, as many of the functions involved industrial or
commercial elements, a concern that the orthodox administrative depart-
ment might be too inflexible and its staff too cautious. The early decades
of the twentieth century therefore overlooked established constitutional
principles and amounted to a deliberate attempt to bypass the ministerial
department in favour of appointed boards enjoying a significant degree
of autonomy from ministerial and parliamentary control.
The social ambition and legislative vitality of the Liberal Government
led up to the First World War (1914–18) and the demands of hostilities
were frequently answered by the delegation of specific functions to semi-
independent public bodies: during this period, 10 new ministries and over
160 independent boards and commissions were created. The First World
War formed something of a catalyst as the reach and role of the state was
rapidly expanded and the notions of private property, personal liberty,
and the public sphere were challenged in a manner that generally weak-
ened the limits that had previously been imposed on governmental activ-
ity. In its aftermath, the British state did not retract to the pre-war level
due to a belief that the capacity of the state could now be turned towards
easing certain social ills and these new expectations could only be fulfilled
by modifying and extending the administrative framework that had been
established during 1914–18, a framework that was heavily reliant on
delegated public bodies. In July 1917, the Ministry of Reconstruction was
established with a remit to consider post-war renewal. Considerations of
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History
the role and structure of the state—‘to enquire into the responsibilities of
various departments of the central executive government, and to advise
in what manner the exercise and distribution by the Government of its
functions should be improved’—fell to the Committee on the Machinery
of Government chaired by Lord Haldane.14 The Haldane Committee’s
central conclusion provides an early rendition of the central argument
of this book and is for this reason worthy of quoting at length,
Our investigations have made it evident to us that there is much overlapping

and consequent obscurity and confusion in executive Government. This is largely
due to the fact that many of these departments have been gradually evolved in
compliance with current needs, and that the purposes for which they were first
called into being have so gradually altered that the later stages of the process have
not accorded in principle with those that were reached earlier. In other instances
departments appear to have been radically established without preliminary insis-
tence on definition of function and precise assignment of responsibility. Even
where departments are most free from defects we find that there are important
features in which the organisation falls short of a standard which is becoming
progressively recognised as the foundation of efficient action.15
The sphere of delegated governance formed a key element of the com-

mittee’s final report as it drew attention to the muddled, unwieldy,
and disorganized structure that had evolved throughout the nineteenth
and early part of the twentieth century and recommended a thorough
rationalization. The Insurance Commission, Road Board, Electricity Com-
mission, and the Development Commission, to name but a few, were
all identified as examples where the provision for ministerial respon-
sibility is ‘obviously unsatisfactory’.16 [This conclusion supported that
of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service (1914) which had come
to similar conclusions about the undesirability of independent boards
and commissions on the basis of accountability and patronage factors.17 ]
The Haldane Report re-emphasized the ideal of the ministerial depart-
ment and warned against the creation of independent boards beyond
the departmental model ‘immune from ordinary parliamentary criticism’.
In the wake of the report, a number of boards and commissions (e.g.
Local Government Board, Road Board, Insurance Commission, Railway
Departments Board, Board of Agriculture and Fisheries) were replaced
with departments headed by a minister. And yet, in a similar manner
to the reforms of the late-nineteenth century, the organizations affected
amounted to a tiny proportion of the sector as a whole and Street
is correct to conclude that ‘Generally speaking . . . the sentence of the
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History
Haldane Committee was not carried out . . . in the decades that followed
when there was a proliferation of quasi-government bodies’.18 The stark-
est example of the committee’s failure to impose its conclusions on the
political elite at the time is reflected by the fact that although some
delegated public bodies were abolished in the wake of the report, an
even greater number were created and these frequently took over the
responsibilities from ministerial departments (e.g. Electricity Commis-
sion, Railway Rates Tribunal, Unemployment Assistance Board, Traffic
Commission).
Although the Bridgeman Committee (1932–36) reported firmly against
the transfer of the Post Office from a ministerial department to a semi-
independent authority, this conclusion was swimming against the tide.
The interwar period had witnessed a significant growth in the sphere
of delegated governance. Wade notes, ‘In the years between 1919 and
1939 it was fashionable to solve acute political problems of an admin-
istrative character in the Home sphere by the creation of independent
governmental agencies with executive, as distinct from purely advisory
functions.’19 This process had not gone entirely unnoticed. Hewart’s The
New Despotism (1929) provided a general criticism of delegation and high-
lighted the risk of ‘administrative lawlessness’, while Robson notes, ‘We
are, it would seem, drifting towards something not far removed from what
may be called ‘Government by Commission.’20 In 1941, Jennings wrote,
‘We shall soon reach the stage where it can be seriously asked whether
we have democracy when we are governed by a vast array of boards,
commissions, corporations, companies, authorities, and the rest whose
relation to Parliament or to a local electorate is remote.’21
But if the First World War augmented the role and capacity of the state,
then the outbreak of hostilities for a second time, just two decades later,
would have even greater consequences. War collectivism saw the intro-
duction of rationing, conscription, manpower budgeting, control over or
assistance to commerce and industry, various subsidies, price controls,
and a range of other central control mechanisms that led to a sudden
increase in both the size and complexity of the state. In order to avoid
overloading the central administrative, many of these responsibilities
were delegated to organizations separate from the standard departmental
structures.
Due to a concern that the number of delegate bodies had proliferated
in a muddled and chaotic manner and that this was likely to be the topic
of parliamentary and public concern after the war in November 1942,
the War Cabinet’s Official Committee on the Machinery of Government
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History
(CMG) established a committee of enquiry, the Anderson Committee,

into the use and role of ‘non-departmental organisations (NDOs)’.22 The
committee’s final report of 3 January 1945 found that
[T]he number of non-departmental organisations which have been set up at vari-

ous times is enormous . . . they present a variety which can certainly be described as
bewildering.23 The committee has been unable to find any single comprehensive
list of delegated bodies and although it had trawled departmental return in order
to create a list containing several hundred bodies it believes this list is by no means
complete.24
Although the Anderson Committee had attempted to understand the

logic and basis on which tasks were delegated, designing no less than six-
teen different categories, the sheer scale and variety of the organizations
in question defeated any attempt at orderly classification, a fact which led
the committee to report that ‘from the multifarious cases we have consid-
ered it is extremely difficult to deduce generalized conclusions which in
any particular future case could be usefully applied without important
qualifications’. This point is critical. In a manner that links Finer’s use
of the term ‘incoherent arbitrariness’ with the central ‘walking without
order’ thesis of this book, the Anderson Committee found no rationale
or principled underpinning for the use of delegation: ‘it is impossible
to deduce, either from existing practice or theoretical considerations,
any general rule on the matter.’25 Governance frameworks, appointment
procedures, and statutory provisions varied greatly among apparently
similar forms of non-departmental organizations, and some public bodies
had further delegated tasks to a complex tier of secondary bodies which
straddled the boundary between the public and private sectors and whose
governance regimes were even more opaque. Despite these findings, the
Anderson Committee did not echo the Haldane Committee but instead
provided a balanced account of advantages and disadvantages of delega-
tion and in so doing challenged the Haldane Report’s (1918) emphasis on
the centrality of the ministerial department.
In some cases it is of the essence that the body should be entirely independent
both of Ministers and Parliament. In others—such as the BBC and the National
Museums and Galleries—it is commonly recognised as necessary that over many
of their activities not even the most general control should be exercised. In
others again—such as the Electricity Commission, the Assistance Board and many
others—it is recognised as expedient that the Minister should not be held respon-
sible for the body’s detailed exercise of its powers.26
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The issue for the Anderson Committee was not the use of delegation by
ministers per se but the manner in which functions were being delegated
and particularly the complete lack of clear guidance on general principles,
best practice in relation to the creation and governance of delegated bod-
ies, or any comprehensive register of the number, role, staff, or budgets
of bodies. The committee recommended that HM Treasury establish and
maintain a register of bodies and make this available to all departments
while also becoming responsible for advising departments about gover-
nance issues when the creation of a new body was being considered.
‘In this way there would be available to the Government some central
knowledge of how the system as a whole is working and of whether the
proliferation of non-departmental organisations is in danger of passing
reasonable bounds.’27 However, although a register of NDOs, containing
182 entries, was compiled by the Machinery of Government branch in
1946, the list was never updated, nor was it used as the basis of a more
detailed corpus of knowledge and guidance as envisaged by the Anderson
Committee. By 1949, officials were questioning the value of the list and
by 1951, it had been abandoned. As we shall see, this failure to monitor
the process of delegation across government would have long-term ram-
ifications. It also reflected the fact that the British political tradition, by
which we mean a view or approach to governing held by the political
elite irrespective of party-affiliation, reflected a degree of complacency
whereby those recommending the introduction of transparency, logic, or
order were interpreted as failing to appreciate the capacity of the British
constitution to ‘muddle-through’.28
During 1945–51, the Labour government introduced a programme of
nationalization (coal, gas, electricity, ports docks, railways, etc.) that
saw responsibilities delegated to the quasi-autonomous boards of public
corporations.29 A substantial literature exists on the governance of the
nationalized industries, and it is sufficient here to note that although
they became a core component of the British state in the post-war
decades (in the mid-1970s, eighteen public corporations existed employ-
ing 1.64 million people with a combined annual turnover of £24 billion),
delegated management proved difficult to reconcile with the centralizing
logic of ministerial responsibility.30 Delegation appeared to stimulate,
rather than dampen, parliamentary attention and complaints regard-
ing a perceived lack of legislative oversight led to the creation of the
Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries in 1951. This devel-
opment heightened ministerial sensitivity regarding delegated respon-
sibilities and made them less obliged to cede control. As a result, the
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History
intended principal–agent relationship became blurred as ministers sought

to influence the boards of nationalized industries through informal
channels thereby making the statutory relationship a veil for de facto
ministerial control.31 A vicious cycle was created in which the benefits
of delegation (expertise, flexibility, downward focus, etc.) were under-
mined by political demands (to ministers and parliament) that dis-
tracted the senior management away from their primary duties of run-
ning the industry (thus contributing to inefficiencies, stimulating more
parliamentary attention, greater ministerial pressure, etc.).32 Accommo-
dating arm’s-length ‘accountable management’ within the convention
of ministerial responsibility proved problematic, and despite Morrison’s
attempt to display the potency of parliamentary accountability for public
boards in his Government and Parliament (1954), his list of parliamen-
tary control mechanisms was arguably more formidable in length than
content.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the sphere of delegated governance grew
in scale and complexity as the perceived benefits of delegation were
viewed as outweighing any potential democratic costs. In 1968, the Fulton
Report concluded that the generalist qualities of the civil service lacked
the necessary flexibilities and skills to meet the challenges of the twen-
tieth century and recommended ‘fundamental change’ by way of large-
scale delegation in order to rectify this position.33 In direct opposition to
the Haldane Report published exactly half a century earlier, the Fulton
Report concluded,
. . . we see no reason to believe that the dividing line between activities for which
Ministers are directly responsible, and those for which they are not, is necessarily
drawn in the right place today. The creation of further autonomous bodies, and of
the drawing of the line between them and central government, would raise parlia-
mentary and constitutional issues, especially if they affected the answerability for
sensitive matters such as social and education services . . . We think, however, that
the possibility of considerable hiving-off should be examined, and we therefore
recommend an early and thorough review of the whole question.34
In terms of delegation, no major programme of ‘hiving off’ took place.35

The main emphasis of the Reorganisation of Central Government white
paper in 1970 was clearly centripetal rather than centrifugal as it advo-
cated the amalgamation of public bodies and departments into a smaller
number of large multi-purpose ‘super departments’.36 However, despite
the white paper’s emphasis, the actual direction of reform throughout the
1970s continued to be grounded on the notion of delegation, especially
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History
in relation to new tasks and responsibilities. In the mid- to late 1970s, the
‘growth of quangos’ became a major political and public issue because
despite their pre-election promises, both of the main parties had created
large numbers of them when in office which were now perceived to be
inefficient, unaccountable, and illegitimate.37 The Expenditure Commit-
tee echoed these concerns within parliament and suggested that, ‘hiving-
off is only viable in limited areas of government and that it should be
approached with caution’.38 However, the Labour government’s capacity
to counter legislative and public concern was severely limited by the
absence of any reliable statistics or information after the abolition of the
register of NDOs in 1951.
In order to rectify this situation in late 1975, the Civil Service Depart-
ment commissioned a retired Treasury Official, Gordon Bowen, to under-
take a comprehensive survey of ‘fringe bodies’. After 3 years of research,
and even using a restrictive definition, Bowen doubted whether his report
containing a list of 778 bodies was comprehensive.39 His final report
presented a picture of administrative confusion, overlapping responsi-
bilities, labyrinthine structures, and where attempts to deduce general
principles were futile. The Bowen Report was seized upon by the media
and opposition parties to criticize the scale and use of delegation. ‘Today,
instead of the voice of compassion, the croak of the quango is heard in
the land. There may not be enough jobs for the workers, but there are
certainly plenty of jobs for the boys’, Mrs. Thatcher told the Conservative
Party Conference in October 1978 and in May the following year, a Con-
servative government won office on an explicit platform that included
the abolition of quangos.
But before we examine developments from 1979 to 1997, it is useful to
reflect briefly on the thematic similarities between our first two historical
sections. In terms of longevity and durability, there appears to be little
change. Throughout the first three quarters of the twentieth century, the
sphere of delegated governance continued to grow in terms of the number
of public bodies and the extent of their responsibilities (see Appendix
1). Despite parliamentary and academic criticism, both the main parties
established public bodies to fulfil a vast range of functions. Despite this
growth and several official warnings, the issue of ‘incoherent arbitrariness’
was not addressed. Evidence to the Anderson Committee in the 1940s
had referred to the ‘bulk danger’ and warned that ‘the already formidable
number of independent agencies is in danger of producing an uncoor-
dinated fourth arm of government enjoying a high degree of irrespon-
sibility. The British administrative machine is already somewhat chaotic
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History
because each department is free to propose machinery for implementing

its policy’.40
The register of NDOs was discontinued, and Lord Fulton’s later rec-
ommendations concerning the need for rationalization and clarity were
not heeded. The principle of the ministerial department and conven-
tion of ministerial responsibility continued to provide a constitutional
smokescreen. At the same time, concerns regarding how to accommodate
delegation with not only the convention of ministerial responsibility
but also that pertaining to the anonymity of officials had not led to
reforms.41 The Anderson Committee had considered a range of measures
to increase the scrutiny capacity of the House of Commons, but these
were not recommended in the final report for fear of attracting MPs ‘with
special fancies on the subject who may not understand the need to limit
accountability in some circumstances’. Finally, although the absence of
an official register, record, or catalogue of public bodies was a recurring
theme throughout this period, officials failed to view it as a serious issue.
In the late 1940s, for example, the Treasury’s NDO register was viewed
as a task that ‘should be one of low priority. We could use the revision
of the register as a filling-in job for any member of the Branch who
was temporarily unemployed’.42 Whether these themes and issues were
addressed and to what extent during 1979–97 is the focus of the next
section.
3.3. Conservatives (1979–97)
During Mrs. Thatcher’s first term (1979–83), two broad reviews of the
sphere of delegated governance were undertaken with a view to making
significant reductions in the number and role of delegated public bod-
ies. In this aim, both reviews were unsuccessful. As one new Cabinet
Minister noted, ‘. . . a glance at the system suggests that there is not
very much scope for substantial, as opposed to cosmetic, pruning.’43
In May 1979, the Prime Minister (PM) Mrs. Thatcher informed the
cabinet that ministers ‘should consider a reduction in the quangos for
which they are responsible and submit progress reports on this by
7 June’, but departmental responses sought to emphasize the scale of
delegation and the consequences of pulling functions and responsibil-
ities back within ministerial departments.44 The Scottish Office, which
was responsible for well over 300 public bodies, responded by inform-
ing the PM that the department was not willing to adopt the ‘root
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History
and branch’ approach to reform. The Lord Chancellor wrote to the

Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, urging him
to moderate his ‘anti-quango tirades’ and ensure that his department’s
press releases and ministerial statements ‘insert expressly what is already
recognised implicitly, an acknowledgement that quangos are not intrin-
sically bad’.45 In December 1979, the PM informed parliament that
the government had identified 436 public bodies for abolition. This
announcement was significant for several reasons. First, the vast majority
of those bodies identified for abolition were advisory (many had not
been active for some time). Second, the PM acknowledged that delegation
had (and would continue to) played a role under her government. She
noted,
Whenever bodies are no longer needed they will be wound up. There are always
pressures for the creation of new bodies. We shall be robust in resisting them. But
we shall approve proposals for new bodies if we can be convinced that the function
is essential and that a non-departmental body is the most appropriate way to do
the job, as in the case of the urban development corporations and other bodies we
have set up.46
Finally, the internal review had not only led to significant reform propos-
als involving executive bodies, but it had also revealed the absence of even
a definitive listing of active public bodies. This led her to commission a
second review into delegated governance under the direction of a former
Treasury Permanent Secretary, Sir Leo Pliatzky. This exercise was also
resisted by a large number of departments, ‘. . . permit me to raise an
eyebrow at such an apparent extension of Philistinism into our public
affairs’ was the response received by Pliatzky from the Permanent Secre-
tary at the Welsh Office. Nevertheless, the Pliatzky Report was published
in 1980 and identified over 1,500 independent advisory bodies and nearly
500 executive (i.e. delivery) non-departmental organizations.47 This latter
group of bodies had a combined annual expenditure of £6 billion and
employed over 250,000 people. However, the structural Impact of the
Pliatzky Report was limited: only thirty executive bodies were abolished
which was ‘a sharp contrast between the rhetoric of quangocide and the
reality of spending cuts and token sacrifices’.48 Pliatzky later reflected,
‘. . . that such undogmatic findings should have been accepted, against
the background of the dogmatic anti-quango campaign, seemed to me a
satisfactory result.’49 The report did, however, emphasize long-standing
concerns regarding the lack of any central register of public bodies
and the absence of any central repository of knowledge regarding good
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History
governance or best practice. As a result, the Civil Service Department

published an annual report on NDPBs from 1980, and new guidance
documents were produced and disseminated to departments, notably
Non-Departmental Public Bodies: Guide for Departments in 1981.50
The Pliatzky Report did however leave a more enduring legacy through
its definition and focus on ‘Non-Departmental Public Bodies’ (NDPBs)
which for the purpose of the report was an attempt to delineate and
circumscribe government-related bodies from that much broader range
of bodies that were also commonly labelled ‘quangos’. From the Pliatzky
Report onwards, NDPBs were judged in official and governmental terms
as synonymous with quangos. This provided a definition, and a formal
categorization that was politically convenient for a number of reasons.
First, it allowed Tory governments to claim throughout the 1980s that
they had reduced the number of ‘quangos’ because during 1979 and 1997,
the number of executive NDPBs fell by nearly 50 per cent. However,
the fact that during the same period the combined expenditure of this
declining number of delegated bodies increased from £6 to £22 billion
illustrates the transformation rather than abolition of this layer of dele-
gated governance. Amalgamations and mergers had produced a smaller
number of more powerful bodies (See Table 3.2).
Second, in order to reduce the official ‘quango count’ during the 1980s
and 1990s when functions were delegated to new bodies, they were sim-
ply not formally classified as NDPBs. The large number of independent
regulatory bodies that were established as a result of the government’s
privatization were, for example, classed as non-ministerial departments
(NMDs), as were a number of other new bodies beyond the economic
sphere (e.g. OFSTED and OFLOT) and as a result did not appear in the
statistics and analysis provided annually in the Cabinet Office Report
Public Bodies. However, the ‘inherent arbitrariness’ of this approach was
reflected in the fact that there appeared to be little difference between
the wave of NMDs in the 1980s and many of the NDPBs listed in the
report. No explanation was provided as to why similar tasks had been
invested in different organizational forms. And yet, although delegating
responsibilities to powerful NMDs may have been politically convenient,
it arguably further strained democratic tensions because, as we will see in
the next chapter, NMDs do not operate under the auspices of a parent
department. The chain of delegation is therefore more opaque than is
the case with other organizational forms with a minister from a cog-
nate ministerial department answering parliamentary questions on their
behalf.
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History
Table 3.2. Executive NDPBs (1979–97)
Year Number Total expenditure

(billion pounds)
1979 492 6.15

1982 450 8.33
1983 431 9.94
1984 402 7.28
1985 399 7.77
1986 406 8.24
1987 396 9.10
1988 390 9.45
1989 395 11.87
1990 374 13.08
1991 375 13.75
1992 369 15.41
1993 358 18.33
1994 325 20.84
1995 320 21.42
1996 309 22.40
1997 305 24.13
Source: Public Bodies 1998 Cabinet Office

Note: No statistics are available for 1980 and 1981.
During the mid-late 1980s, these issue of control, accountability, and

autonomy became even more pressing as the Tory governments focused
their New Public Management–inspired attention on the civil service. In
1986, Sir Robin Ibbs was appointed by the PM to review the efficiency of
the civil service. His conclusions and their consequences have been exam-
ined in-depth elsewhere, and it is sufficient here to note that Ibbs argued
in favour of polycentricity and the disaggregation of large multi-purpose
bureaucracies, in this case ministerial departments, into a large number
of single-focused semi-autonomous bodies called executive agencies.51 In
doing so, he drew upon many of the themes and recommendations that
had been first raised in the 1968 Fulton Report regarding ‘hiving-off’. The
PM accepted the report’s recommendations but refused to accept that the
whole-scale delegation of operational responsibilities beyond the direct
day-to-day control of ministers necessitated any change to constitutional
conventions.
There will be no change in the arrangements for accountability. Ministers will

continue to account to Parliament for the work of their departments, including
the work of the agencies. Departmental select committees will be able to examine
departmental agencies’ activities and agency staff in the same way was they
examine departments now.52
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Although the government upheld the sanctity of ministerial responsibil-

ity to parliament as the defining principle of the constitutional frame-
work, many observers believed that constitutional elasticity of the con-
vention would be overstretched by agencification and that new forms
of accountability or information flows needed to be put in place. Both
the Fulton and Ibbs Reports had been explicit about the constitutional
implications of large-scale delegation within the civil service. The former
had recommended that an extensive review should be commissioned
on how delegation could be reconciled with ministerial responsibility,
while the latter suggested that the agency chief executives should be
directly responsible to parliament for their operational responsibilities (i.e.
not indirectly responsible through a minister). Although parliamentary
concern was expressed in a number of critical reports, the government
forged ahead with the Next Steps initiative and within 3 years over
3 quarters of the civil service worked in approximately 120 executive
agencies.53 It quickly became apparent that agencification had affected
ministerial responsibility in a number of ways. Notably, the procedures
for answering PQs were altered so that agency chief executives answered
questions concerning operational issues and changes to Hansard were
made to accommodate this adjustment. This underlined the fact that
although agencies remained formally part of their parent department (i.e.
hived-in delegation rather than hived-out), they were instituted on the
basis of a policy-operational divide that was frequently very difficult to
sustain in practice (a point we will return to in later chapters). It was also
clear that although agency chief executives were formally appointed as
civil servants, the rules regarding official anonymity could not be applied
as they frequently possessed a very public profile. And yet, this increased
personal responsibility and visibility—an intended outcome of the reform
programme—was difficult to reconcile with the fact that as civil servants
agency chief executives were bound by strict rules in relation to select
committee appearances.54
In short, delegation was a core-business philosophy for the Tory govern-
ments during 1979–97. But during the mid-1990s, the role of ‘quangos’
became embroiled in wider accusations of patronage, sleaze, and corrup-
tion. The Prime Minister John Major responded by establishing the Com-
mittee on Standards in Public Life in 1994 and publishing the Governance
of Public Bodies white paper in 1997, but this had little impact in terms of
fostering greater understanding, public confidence, or trust in Conserva-
tive politicians.55 In a manner that was reminiscent of the Tories in the
late-1970s, the Labour Party launched a scathing attack on the growth
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and use of public bodies. At the 1996 Labour Party Conference, Jack Straw
promised that ‘Labour will dismantle the unelected quangos state’, and
Tony Blair said that he would place ‘the quango state in history’s dustbin
where it belongs’. However, this stance was difficult to reconcile with the
fact that many of the Labour Party’s proposals involved delegation which
is why the PM responded by telling the House of Commons,
For the Labour Party these days, a quango a day keeps policy away because it has
announced three so far this week. Yes, a new quango on Monday, a new quango
on Tuesday and a new quango on Wednesday . . . We await today’s developments
with some interest.56
Before examining developments during 1997–2007, it is useful to con-

clude this section by teasing out elements of continuity or change in
relation to the earlier historical sections. In terms of longevity and dura-
bility, it is clear that despite pre-election commitments and early efforts,
the sphere of delegated governance was transformed in some areas and
expanded in others, and that the central dynamic was one of growth;
change, therefore, in relation to the form of delegation, but consistency
in relation to its increasing scale and significance. There is little evidence,
however, of any change in relation to the theme of ‘incoherent arbitrari-
ness’; new bodies were created, others amalgamated, but there was no
determined effort to provide a coherent framework on which to base or
legitimize this evolving sphere of governance. Nor was there any attempt
to explain why certain functions were located in specific organizational
forms or how and why their respective governance frameworks differed.
Continuity can also be identified in relation to the theory and practice
of ministerial responsibility. As the Next Steps reforms illustrated with
force, the Conservative governments remained unwavering in their com-
mitment to the theory of ministerial responsibility to parliament despite
the fact that the architects of the reforms had been very open about the
practical impact of their proposals for the convention. The convention
became a tool used by the executive to legitimate rejecting reforms that
may have empowered the legislature vis-à-vis the executive with a source
of information that was beyond executive control. One final area where
there is evidence of some change is in relation to the existence of some
official register, record, or catalogue of public bodies. From 1980 onwards, a
register of public bodies was maintained and annually published although
its utility was undermined by the governments’ tendency to manipulate
the ‘quangos numbers game’ by defining public bodies in or out of official
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statistics. How the Labour governments during 1997–2007 addressed

these issues is the topic of the next section.
3.4. New Labour (1997–2007)
The decade 1997–2007 spanned three Labour governments and in rela-

tion to delegation can be divided most broadly into a period of hyper-
innovation and creativity followed by a period of attempted rationaliza-
tion and reform. However, it is important at this stage to emphasize that
delegation has been a primary theme of governance under New Labour, and it
is in this vein that Robinson and Shaw note,
Thatcherism and, more recently, New Labour’s ‘Third Way’, have reduced the
nature and contours of the state, with the result that much responsibility and
power now lies with ‘arms length’ agencies within the purview, but outside,
government.57
After eighteen years in opposition, the Labour Party was intent on appear-
ing economically competent and managerially progressive, but the cen-
tralization of previously delegated tasks, increasing the role of politicians
or increasing the scrutiny capacity of parliament would have contributed
little to sustaining this image. Indeed, the first act of the government was
to confer operational independence on the Monetary Policy Committee
of the Bank of England. This is not to say that reforms have not been
introduced. But I am making a very explicit argument regarding the
nature of British governance under ‘New’ Labour and particularly about its
failure to underpin the widespread use of delegation within a principled
or transparent governing framework.58
In November 1997, the government published a green paper—Opening
up Quangos—in which it announced its intention to review of all NDPBs.
A distinctive quality of this document was its balanced tone which was
far-removed from the ‘anti-quango’ polemics that had dominated the
discourse and publications of Labour politicians during the mid-1990s.
The document not only set out in great detail the benefits of delegation
but also signalled that a ‘bonfire of quangos’ was not about to take place:
‘. . . many [public bodies] will continue to exist, either as at present or in
a revised or amalgamated form’.59 Six months later, the government set
out its main reforms for the openness and transparency of public bod-
ies in Quangos: Opening the Doors.60 Although the document’s foreword
suggested that ‘the reform package represents a major breakthrough in
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an area previously thought of as secretive and closed to the public’, the

actual proposals were notable for their frailty rather than their strength
and included the following elements:
1. NDPBs should hold annual open public meetings, where practicable

and appropriate.
2. Where practicable, NDPBs should release summary reports of meet-
ings.
3. NDPBs should invite evidence from members of the public to discuss
matters of public concern.
4. NDPBs should aim to consult their users on a wide range of issues by
means of questionnaires, public meetings, or other forms of consul-
tation.
5. Executive NDPBs and Advisory NDPBs that have direct dealings with
members of the public should be brought within the jurisdiction of
the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
6. The Government proposes to invite parliamentary select com-
mittees to take a more active role in scrutinizing the work of
NDPBs.
7. All advisory and executive NDPBs should produce and make publicly
available Annual Reports.
Moreover, by stating that the government would (1) seek to reduce the
number of NDPBs ‘where possible’, (2) while also acknowledging that new
public bodies would be established where this was the most-appropriate
and cost-effective means of carrying out a function, and (3) inviting
parliamentary select committees to play a more active role the Labour
government was replicating the approach taken by the incoming Tory
government in 1979.
During 1997 and 1998, the House of Commons Public Administration
Select Committee (PASC) examined the government’s reforms and con-
cluded that they were ‘typically British—unambitious, piecemeal and ad
hoc’.61 Equally significant for the thesis I develop in this book, the PASC
encountered the perennial problem of simply finding out how many
delegated public bodies existed, what they did, and how many people
they employed. It also found that most public bodies were unaware of
their own formal organizational status and that a large number were not
complying with the openness criteria set out in the government’s reform
documents. The committee therefore recommended that the government
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establish a comprehensive ‘Directory of Governance’ that would bring

together information about all the forms of delegated governance within
one single document.62 It also argued in favour of greater consistency
across the public sector in terms of accountability systems and procedural
rules and recommended that ministers circulate the minutes of meetings
with NDPBs to the relevant select committee.63
In emphasizing organizational clarity and consistency, these recom-
mendations were very much in line with the thrust of the government’s
own Modernising Government (1999) white paper of March 1999 and yet
the government rejected the majority of PASC’s recommendations.64 No
attempt was made to create a comprehensive directory of government and
in 2004, the annual publication Public Bodies was not even published. An
online version was published in March 2005 but in April 2006, it was
announced that the Public Bodies Database was to be discontinued and
the future of any official database appears uncertain (a fact augmented by
the abolition of the Cabinet Office’s Agencies and Public Bodies Team in
2007). The government was also unwilling to accept PASC’s recommen-
dation regarding the need for greater consistency and clarity in relation
to accountability frameworks, and was unwilling to entertain a greater
and more formalized role for select committees.65 This was a particularly
stark position for the government to adopt as in the run up to the
election, a number of shadow ministers had argued for select commit-
tees to be given exactly those powers which PASC had recommended
and the government were now rejecting.66 The Labour government was
simply not willing to fetter its governing capacity by placing any kind
of restrictions on its capacity to remould the structure of the state. In
many ways, this position would have been less problematic had the
government not adopted delegation as a central plank of its statecraft
strategy.
As previous sections have illustrated, gauging and tracking alterations
in the sphere of delegated governance is difficult because it is in the
interests of any government to keep as much delegatory activity offstage.
If we start with the official statistics for public bodies (i.e. just NDPBs),
this suggests that the number of public bodies has fallen from 305 in
1997 to 199 in 2006 (see Table 3.3). However, this baseline statistic
hides a number of issues. The reduction in the number of NDPBs was
achieved as a result of devolution to Scotland and Wales. As we will see in
Chapter 9, the reduction did not stem from abolitions but from a transfer
of responsibilities from the national to sub-national level. Moreover, as
devolution reduced the number of executive NDPBs operating at national
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History
Table 3.3. Executive NDPBs (1997–2006)
Year Number Expenditure

(billion pounds)
1997 305 22.40

1998 304 24.13
1999 306 23.37
2000 297 23.90
2001 276 25.17
2002 192 20.77
2003 206 25.54
2004 210 29.48
2005 211 32.87
2006 199 36.75
level by around a third, it might be expected that this would be reflected

in a significant reduction in the annual expenditure; but as Table 3.3
shows, there is no clear correlation. Apart from a temporary reduction
in 2002, the combined expenditure figures continued to increase (rising
by around £10 billion over the decade). Although this increase suggests,
at the very least, that the Labour government did not seek to reverse the
role and resources of public bodies, it is possible to argue that the sphere
of delegated governance actually grew far more rapidly during this period
but that much of this growth did indeed take place offstage, by which
we mean tasks were delegated to public bodies that were not formally
designated as NDPBs.
Appendix 2 provides a full list, as far as it is possible to ascertain, of
the delegated public bodies created by the Labour Government between
May 1997 and May 2007. Although this list contains nearly 300 public
bodies, their multitude of organizational forms means that many of them
would be overlooked in official documents. Some of these organizations
represent the latest incarnation of long-devolved functions, the Inde-
pendent Police Complaints Commission, for example, was established
in 2002, but similar functions had been previously conducted by the
Police Complaints Authority (1984–2002) and Police Complaints Board
(1976–84). However, a significant number forms central components of
the Labour government’s flagship policies (e.g. New Opportunities Fund,
Youth Justice Board, Office of Fair Access in Higher Education, Low
Pay Commission, Strategic Rail Authority, Disability Rights Commission,
Food Standards Agency, Independent Regulator for Foundation Hospi-
tals). Although the process sat uncomfortably with the government’s
emphasis on joined-up government, the pace of institutional creation
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(and therefore bureaucratic sedimentation) during the 1997–2001 parlia-

ment was particularly rapid.
In the early sessions of the subsequent parliament (2001–05), the gov-
ernment appeared to be suffering from ‘institutionalitis’—the tendency
to respond to every problem by setting up another organization.67 In the
health sector, for example, the disagreement between the Chancellor of
the Exchequer and the Health Secretary over foundation hospitals led to
the creation of the Office of the Independent Regulator for NHS Founda-
tion Hospitals; tensions between the Home Secretary and senior members
of the judiciary over sentencing led to the creation of the independent
Sentencing Guidelines Council; plans to increase the capacity of univer-
sities to raise tuition charges led to the establishment of the Office of Fair
Access; concerns regarding the proceeds of crime led to the setting up of
the Assets Recovery Agency; the government’s response to terrorist attacks
led to the creation of the Independent Reviewer of the Anti-Terrorism,
Crime and Security Act 2001; the programme of constitutional reform
led to the establishment of the Electoral Commission, Office of the Infor-
mation Commissioner, and Independent House of Lords Appointments
Commission; tensions in Northern Ireland saw the creation of the Parades
Commission and Sentence Review Commission; financial difficulties in
the nuclear energy sector led to the creation of the Nuclear Decommis-
sioning Authority; and disputes between Transport for London and the
various private contractors working on the redevelopment of the London
Underground system were delegated to the Office of the Public Private
Partnership Arbiter. Specific incidents and controversies also led to the
creation of new bodies. The death of twenty cockle pickers in Morecambe
Bay led to the creation of a Gangmasters Licensing Authority in 2004,
the scandals of organ retention at Alder Hey and Bristol Hospitals led
to the establishment of the Retained Organs Commission in 2001 and
then the Human Tissue Authority in 2004, concerns regarding criminal
involvement in the security industry led to the foundation of the Security
Industry Authority in 2001, while the government’s response to the death
of school pupils on a field trip took the form of the Adventure Activities
Licensing Authority.
As we have suggested above, the institutional (hyper)-activism that was
apparent between 1997–2002 was not matched by the creation of trans-
parent framework, statement of principles, or comprehensive account of
all the public bodies that exist, why they were created and why a specific
organizational form has been adopted in each case. It is exactly this clarity
and consistency which the PASC was demanding in its 1998 report and
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History
in its 2001 report Mapping the Quango State.68 These issues were, however,
brought to the fore in July 2002 with the publication of Better Government
Services by the PM’s Office for Public Sector Reform which highlighted
irrational organizational design, ambiguous governance frameworks, and
the dangers of unregulated fragmentation and complexity. The report
also suggested that departmental control and coordination mechanisms
had become so weak in some areas that ‘some agencies had become dis-
connected from their departments’ to the extent that they had assumed
‘orphan status’.69 When the Better Regulation Task Force echoed these
complaints in October 2003 and the Gershon Review suggested significant
efficiency savings could be accrued through the amalgamation and aboli-
tion of public bodies in July 2004 (see Chapter 1), the government entered
a clear rationalization and consolidation phase on which ‘landscape sur-
veys’ or ‘end-to-end reviews’ were conducted in a number of departments
or policy fields. The Haskins Review led to abolition of several bodies
and the amalgamation of several others into a new organization, Natural
England.70 In the Department of Health, the Warner Review saw thirty-
two ‘arm’s-length bodies’ reformed into just twelve.71 The 2003 Commu-
nications Act saw five independent regulators amalgamated into a new
Office for Communication, while the 2006 Equality Act established the
Commission for Equality and Human Rights in place of the previous three
public bodies. In the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), fif-
teen public bodies were reformed into just four, while the 2005 Hampton
Review on administrative burdens recommended that thirty-one of the
sixty-three national regulators be consolidated into just seven.72
Although it is possible to portray 2003–07 as a period of rationalization,
it is important to distinguish it from a centralizing phase. As the Better
Government Services report of 2002 emphasized, governing at a distance
remained the central dynamic of the public reform agenda. The sphere
of delegated governance was reformed into a slightly smaller number
of public bodies with broader responsibilities. For example, despite the
merger of fifteen public bodies into just four in the DCMS, this still left the
department overseeing a ‘family’ of sixty NDPBs, six public corporations
and one executive agency to which over 97 per cent of the department’s
annual budget is delegated. It is also true that the rationalization phase
was not wholly successful. In several areas, the government’s plans to
abolish specific bodies were abandoned due to parliamentary or inter-
est group objections. For example, the planned merger of the five HM
Inspectorates (prisons, police, probation, etc.) into one Justice and Com-
munity Safety Inspectorate were not taken forward after the Lords voted
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History
against the Police and Justice Bill 2006, and the Hampton Report led to
nineteen (as opposed to the thirty-one identified in the report) being
amalgamated into seven bodies. Finally, three aspects of this phase are
particularly significant for the wider ‘walking without order’ thesis: (1)
the various ‘landscape reviews’ and streamlining measures led to very few
functions actually being taken back into departments; (2) a significant
number of those bodies abolished or amalgamated during this phase had
been in existence for a very short time; which links into the fact (3) that
although these measures were an explicit response to the ‘institutionalitis’
of New Labour’s first term, they were blinkered in terms of being depart-
mentally or sectorally focused rather than seeking to provide the clarity
and consistency across government.73
To conclude, the longevity and durability of this sphere of governance
has continued since 1997. Change, however, was evident in relation to
the context in which new bodies were either created or amalgamated.
The government’s commitment to a programme of constitutional reforms
which aimed to increase levels of transparency, accountability, and open-
ness within the British political system sat uncomfortably with the growth
of powerful delegated public bodies which operated largely beyond the
constitutional framework. The emphasis on ‘joined up’ or ‘holistic’ gover-
nance also sat rather awkwardly with the centrifugal dynamic of its reform
strategy. The government rejected parliamentary demands for greater
clarity and consistency and continued to adopt an approach of incoherent
arbitrariness. No attempt was made to examine the structure of the state
as a whole or develop the core executive’s capacity to monitor delegation
at the departmental level. Critically, not only were functions delegated to
a number of traditional organizational forms, but just as the government
sought to renounce ideological dogma and forge a ‘third way’ between
the public and private sectors, so the boundaries of the state evolved to
encompass new forms of delegated governance, like public interest com-
panies and public–private partnerships.74 Although this had implications
for the convention of ministerial responsibility in theory and practice, the
government continued to promulgate and defend the convention’s cen-
trality as part of the broader WM. The link between incoherent arbitrariness
and the theory and practice of ministerial responsibility is demonstrated
by the Labour governments’ use of delegation as a method of increasing
public trust in politicians. As we will see in later chapters, removing
or significantly diminishing the decision-making powers of ministers
through delegation was in many fields intended to rectify the perceived
failure of ministerial responsibility through the transfer of functions away
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History
from departments. And yet, this process raises the question of why it
has been viewed as necessary to delegate some functions but not others
where problems have occurred (i.e. ‘incoherent arbitrariness’) and how
can ministers remain accountable for these functions, but not responsible
(i.e. theory and practice of ministerial responsibility).
Taken together, these issues feed into a discussion of continuity and
change in relation to the frameworks and mechanisms for ensuring effec-
tive accountability and three familiar themes emerge: (1) the government
has not sought to put in place a transparent framework that clearly states
how different forms of delegated governance are held to account and
explains why different requirements are placed on some bodies but not
others; (2) despite parliamentary demands for a more formalized set of
scrutiny measures, the Labour government has displayed a preference for
largely informal ‘soft’ accountability measures; and (3) the government
has resisted calls to empower the legislature vis-à-vis delegated governance
by, for example, giving select committees a formal role in appointments
or making the chief executive or chairman of some public bodies directly
accountable to them.
Although select committees have since 2002 sought to play a more
proactive and formalized role in relation to the scrutiny of public bodies
(an issue I discuss in Chapter 6), one of the key challenges for committees,
or indeed MPs, has been to identify what bodies actually exist within their
respective sphere of reference. In 1998, the PASC recommended that the
government should furnish every select committee with a full list of all
the relevant public bodies at the beginning of each session but no such
lists have ever been produced or distributed. This, in some part, reflects
the fact that a comprehensive register, record, or catalogue of all public bodies
is not readily available within central government, an issue which dates
back at least fifty years, and which itself reflects the complexity and multi-
layered nature of the modern state. But before we take up this challenge
and seek to map the topography of delegated governance in Chapter 4,
we now turn briefly to the three theoretical pillars set out in the previous
chapter and consider how they help us gauge or understand why this
historical account matters.
3.5. Theory
This chapter has charted the evolution of the British state in order to
identify patterns of behaviour and common themes within the history
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of delegation. It has argued that although delegation has formed a cen-

tral component of the British state since its inception, there has never
been a clear statement of underlying principles, or any central strategic
oversight capacity. A strong preference existed for designing organizations
around problems, rather than slotting new problems or responsibilities
into predetermined organizational forms. And it is this ‘lazy hand to
mouth method’ (as Finer described it) which led Hennessy to note, ‘We
[Britain] are deeply ingrained as a back-of-the-envelope nation, certainly
in the organisation of the central state’.75 The British state has always
therefore been ‘walking without order’ to some extent, and the aim of this
concluding section is to draw out the main implications of this process
by reflecting back on the theoretical pillars outlined in the previous
chapter.
This historical account illustrates that the British state has never exhib-
ited the degree of uniformity and centralization suggested by the WM.
Delegation has formed a constant and central component of British polit-
ical history. Historians have assumed rather than demonstrated that the
WM was an apt organizing perspective when in fact the reality was quite
different.76 The uniformity, hierarchy, and direct control suggested by the
WM were from the very earliest stages of state development misleading,
and if governance is accepted as a metaphor for networks, then Sidney
Low’s (1904) The Governance of England employed the concept correctly
a century before it became the grand narrative it is today. However,
delegation has never been smoothly assimilated within the constitutional
framework. The principles on which the modern British state was founded
in middle of the nineteenth century and later canonized in the 1918
Haldane Report (ministerial departments, individual ministerial respon-
sibility to parliament, etc.) have never been applied with any consistency
in practice, and the development of an extended or delegated state quickly
undermined the idea of a unified system under ministerial control. A
historical account therefore appears useful for deconstructing some tenets
of the WM, thereby possibly elevating the value of governance-theoretic
frameworks, but in terms of understanding why this account matters in
terms of contemporary governance, we must turn to our second theoreti-
cal pillar, HI.
History matters because decisions made at a certain time are likely to
have a constraining effect on future policy choices due to cultural, finan-
cial, and political factors and sunk costs. History creates an institutional
and contextual framework of path-dependency. The path observed in this
chapter has been one of constant delegation: the continuous accretion or
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History
sedimentation of functions to public bodies operating on the boundaries

of the state, interspersed by infrequent and largely unsuccessful rational-
ization attempts. Accounts that suggest a tidal sequence between periods
of centralization and decentralization fail to recognize that delegation has
been a constant variable. Although it may be possible to identify a rhetor-
ical commitment to centralization in ministerial speeches and official
documents, the sphere of delegated governance has proved remarkably
resilient to reform. And the reason for this is, at base, the growth in
the size and responsibilities of the British state. When Lord Shelburne
became the first Home Secretary in 1782, his department consisted of
just one chief clerk and ten civil servants. In 2007, the Home Secretary
is responsible for over 70,000 staff working across the central department,
4 executive agencies, 33 NDPBs, and 3 independent inspectorates. Dele-
gation was an obvious solution to the dangers of ministerial overload and
yet indirect control was difficult to reconcile this with the convention of
individual ministerial responsibility.
The historical pedigree of delegation has arguably fostered a ‘logic of
appropriateness’ in which the political elite have been endowed with a
certain cultural propensity (facilitated by the executive’s usually dom-
inant position within the constitutional system and great flexibility in
relation to the administration) to respond to new issues and demands via
decentralization. Despite Lord Haldane’s attempt to affirm the centrality
of ministerial departments and Sir Leo Pliatzky’s conclusion that, ‘the
moral is we should not think in terms of a further considerable exten-
sion of hiving-off’, there has been a constant selective bias in favour of
delegation which escalated towards the end of the twentieth century.77
Not only does this cultural logic establish a certain bounded rational-
ity, but also as the scale of delegation increases over time, so do the
costs (economic, political, cultural, legal, etc.) involved in implementing
significant change, thereby creating a certain path-dependency. Interest
groups that have developed close relationships with certain public bodies
will bring into play a range of resources to ensure that ‘their’ body is
not abolished for fear of losing their position within a narrow policy
community. Reform measures are also frequently affected not by long-
term strategic considerations but by cultural prejudices on the part of
officials who do not want to be ‘taken over’ by another organization
which had been culturally regarded as a rival body within the sector.
The level of bureaucratic complexity has in itself become something of
a force for inaction. In December 2003, for example, the Government
accepted a recommendation from the PASC and agreed to ‘undertake a
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History
fundamental review of all public bodies attached to central government

and ‘map’ them’.78 Nearly four years later, this review had not been
completed.
These factors which apparently weigh in favour of continuity rather
than change lead into a discussion regarding the nature and timing of
change. Pierson suggests that ‘change points’ often occur when condi-
tions disrupt or overwhelm the specific mechanism that previously repro-
duced the existing path.79 This complements Hay’s work on the existence
and interpretation of crises which argues that not only must problems
occur but they must also be recognized and understood by the political
elite as posing an irreconcilable challenge to the governing regime.80
Although delegation poses distinctive problems for the governing logic,
there has never been a crisis of the necessary magnitude to stimulate far-
reaching reform.
If a critical juncture is to be identified, it would be the formative period
of the modern British state in the middle of the nineteenth century when
the principle of the ministerial department and ministerial responsibil-
ity was enshrined within constitutional orthodoxy but regularly over-
looked in constitutional practice. Ironically, what is significant about
this period is that in many ways, it did not represent a ‘change point’
because the state continued to be orchestrated around a penumbra of
delegated public bodies, but a powerful set of ideas were enshrined in
order to veil and legitimate this process. These ideas, encapsulated in the
WM, provided frames of reference, social and political constructions, that
resisted change and defined the boundaries of what was interpreted as
constitutional/unconstitutional.
The various official internal reviews of delegation (1918, 1945, 1970,
1978, 1979, 1997) could be interpreted as ‘windows of opportunity’ in
which significant change could have occurred. But a window of opportu-
nity does not in itself guarantee change: ‘policy makers also must want
change and must move to exploit the opening.’81 Change did not occur
because although these reviews shed light on obvious contradictions
and anomalies within the constitutional configuration they were not
interpreted by the political elite as being sufficiently pressing to disrupt
the existing pattern of governance or dominant ideational constellation.
Three issues underpin this elite interpretation. First, delegation can be
accommodated, albeit in a highly problematic manner, within the para-
meters of ministerial responsibility to parliament by maintaining that all
public bodies operate under the auspices of a parent department headed
by a responsible minister. As the next chapter will show, although this
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is not strictly true, it does at least highlight how both the role of ideas
and dominant culture can explain the persistence of particular patterns
of governance over time. Second, the political benefits of delegation (i.e.
reducing ministerial overload and creating an administrative buffer zone
around politically salient issues) were not outweighed by the costs of
maintaining this stance. Indeed (and third), the existence of obvious con-
tradictions and anomalies will only lead to sudden change when a coher-
ent and credible alternative exists. But as the alternatives involved either
centralization or the introduction of direct accountability between the
bureaucracy and parliament, they were not viewed as ‘credible’ options
by successive governments.
More broadly, the demands of reformers for a more coherent, ‘ratio-
nal’, and explicit framework in which to embed the rapidly evolving
bureaucracy held little sway with a dominant political elite who were
suspicious of grand theories in terms of institutional designs and had little
interest in constitutional thought. There was a confidence that the British
political system was sufficiently malleable to cope with any situation
without radical change and that advantages accrued from avoiding any
principled stance, administrative blue-print, or transparent framework.
The suggestion, for example, that the government establish a compre-
hensive Government Manual, as occurs in the USA, was first made in
1944 and has been proposed many times throughout the second half of
the twentieth century. However, as the official records of the 1943–45
Anderson Committee into NDOs reveal, any attempt by temporary offi-
cials or external observers to emphasize broader governance issues tend
to be interpreted by senior civil servants as betraying a lack of knowledge
about how the system really works.82 The ambivalence of officials on the
value of external opinion may have reflected constitutional ambiguities
which they all recognized in the structure of the state. This tension or
diffidence accrued from the a formal and rhetorical commitment to the
WM which assigned responsibilities to departments of state while actually
following a pattern of governance which frequently deliberately eschewed
a ministerial head.
It is, however, necessary to consider whether HI’s focus on critical
junctures may be underplaying the existence of incremental reforms
which taken together may have achieved transformative effects in the
sphere of delegated governance. Although an argument to this effect
will indeed be made in relation to the specific issue of public appoint-
ments (Chapter 7), the broad history of the use and governance of
public bodies does not reveal a pattern whereby initial minor reforms
92
History
have provided critical ‘cracks or wedges’ that have then been devel-
oped over time to produce significant change. Irrespective of the party
in office, throughout the twentieth century, the executive mentality
reflected a preference for ad hoc unprincipled evolution, departmental
autonomy over decisions to delegate, a preference for soft-law account-
ability frameworks and a firm refusal to empower the legislature with
formal scrutiny powers. Viewing the position of parliament through the
lens of PAT suggests that although parliament is theoretically the princi-
pal in the chain of delegation, the actual balance of power within the
constitutional configuration has created a situation of ‘principal cap-
ture’ (through tight control of the legislative majority). Moving down
this chain to the relationship between ministerial departments and del-
egated public bodies, the former being defined as external accountabil-
ity (Chapter 6) and the latter internal control (Chapter 5), there is also
a rich seam of historical material indicating common PAT dilemmas.
If we adopt the shorthand contained in Table 2.5, ‘letting go’ and
‘clarifying accountability’ were key issues in the debates surrounding
the governance of the nationalized industries, whereas ‘Information
Asymmetries’ and ‘Tunnel Vision’ have been associated with executive
agencies.
One of the benefits of PAT is that it is clearly rooted within an awareness
of certain trade-offs, zero-sum games, and strategic calculations in which
some governance-derived qualities are promoted above others. The ben-
efit of archival research within a historical perspective is that it demon-
strates that calculations based upon these assumptions existed long before
PAT became prevalent in the early 1970s. The 1945 Anderson Report into
NDOs, for example, concluded, ‘The constitutional problem is defined
as one of securing the best compromise between maximum efficiency
of administration and maximum accountability to Parliament.’83 History
also displays great variation in relation to the conclusions drawn regard-
ing the balance of emphasis. The Haldane Report came down firmly in
favour of accountability: ‘A more efficient public service may expose the
state to the evils of bureaucracy unless the reality of parliamentary control
is so enforced as to keep pace with any improvement in departmental
methods.’84 Whereas the Anderson Report suggested that the positive
economic efficiency promised by delegation warranted any associated
negative costs it might deliver in terms of accountability: ‘If the presence
of independent authorities makes for efficiency in government, the British
parliamentary system, just because it is democratic, can afford such exper-
iments as these.’85 Whether the British parliamentary system can still
93
History
afford such experiments forms the central focus of this book. This chapter
has suggested that the WM provides a smokescreen behind which lies
a highly diffuse and fragmented state system.86 Many officials, scholars,
and parliamentarians have sought to look beneath this constitutional
cloak in order to map out and understand the topography of the British
state. Few have succeeded. This challenge forms the focus of the next
chapter.
Notes
1. Johnson, N., ‘Quangos and the Structure of British Government’, Public

Administration, 57/4 (1979), 384.
2. Finer, H., The Theory and Practice of Modern Government (London: Methuen,
1932), p. 1281.
3. Quoted in Parris (1969) op. cit., p. 34.
4. See Craig, J., ‘Whitehall Through the Centuries’, Public Administration,
28 (1950), 105–10; Willson, F., ‘Ministries and Boards: Some Aspects of
Administrative Development Since 1832’, Public Administration, 33 (1955),
43–58.
5. Parris (1969) op. cit., p. 84.
6. Schaffer, B., ‘The Idea of the Ministerial Department: Bentham, Mill and
Bagehot’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, 3/1 (1957), 60–78.
7. Bagehot ([orig. pub. 1867] 1967), pp. 190–1.
8. Hanham, T., The Nineteenth Century Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge
9. Abolitions included Board of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues (1851),
Railway Commission (1851), Board of Works (1851), Board of Health (1854),
Board of Ordnance (1855), Emigration Commission (1878), Patent Commis-
sion (1883), Land Commission (1889), Tithe Commission (1889), Copyhold
Commission (1889), and Inclosure Commission (1889). No departments
were called ‘ministries’ in the nineteenth century, therefore when a new
organization headed by a minister responsible to parliament was estab-
lished, they were still referred to as a ‘board’ but now with a minister as
chairman of the board, as was the case with the Board of Agriculture and
Board of Education (both created 1889).
10. Earl Grey, Parliamentary Government (London, 1864), p. 300.
11. See, for example, Traill, H., Central Government (London, 1887); Porritt,
E., The Englishman at Home (London, 1893); Courtney, L., The Working
Constitution of the United Kingdom (London, 1905).
12. See Willson (1955) op. cit.; Greenleaf (1987) op. cit.
13. Fraser, P., ‘The Growth of Ministerial Control in the Nineteenth Century
House of Commons’, English Historical Review, 75 (1960), 444–63.
94
History
14. Cm. 9230 (1918). Report of the Machinery of Government Committee [Haldane
Report].
15. Ibid. p. 3
16. Ibid. paras pp. 31–3.
17. Cm. 7748 (1914). Royal Commission on the Civil Service.
18. Street, A., ‘Quasi-Government Bodies Since 1918’, in G. Campion et al.
(eds.), British Government Since 1918 (London: George Allen, 1950), pp. 157–
93 (at p. 158).
19. PRO, 222/61, 8 March 1943. See also Chester, D. and Willson, F., The Orga-
nization of British Central Government 1914–1956 (London: Allen & Unwin,
1957).
20. Robson, W., ‘The Public Service’, The Political Quarterly, 7/2 (1936), 179–93
(at p. 192).
21. Jennings, I., The British Constitution (Cambridge University Press, 1941),
p. 116.
22. See PRO, T222/61, December 1942; See Anderson, J., ‘The Machinery of
Government’, Public Administration, 24 (1946), 147–56.
23. PRO, T222/62.
24. PRO, T222/273.
25. PRO, 222/62, December 1946, para 99.
26. Ibid.
27. PRO, T222/61, 8 March 1943, para 196.
28. Ibid.
29. Hanson, A., ‘Labour and the Public Corporation’, Public Administration, 32
(1954), 203–9; Friedman, W., ‘The Legal Status and Organization of the
Public Corporation’, Law and Contemporary Problems, 16 (1951), 576–93.
30. See, for example, Daniel, G., ‘Public Accountability of the Nationalised
Industries’, Public Administration, 38/1 (1960), 27–35; Bunbury, H., ‘The
Public Corporation’, Public Administration, 22 (1944), 137–42; Hanson, A.,
‘Ministers and Boards’, Public Administration, 47 (1969), 65–75.
31. See Chester, N., The Nationalization of British Industry (London: HMSO,
1975).
32. A theme examined in National Economic Development Office A Study of UK
Nationalised Industries (London, 1976).
33. Cm. 3638 (1968) The Civil Service. [The Fulton Report]. For a review, see
Hennessy, P., Whitehall (London: Secker & Warburg, 1989), pp. 190–1.
34. Ibid. para 190.
35. In 1968, the Treasury did respond to the Fulton Report by producing a new
document A Guide to Setting Up New Public Bodies.
36. Cm. 4506 (1970). The Reorganisation of Central Government. See: Johnson,
N., ‘The Reorganization of Central Government’, Public Administration, 49/1
(1971), 1–12; Clarke, O., ‘The Number and Size of Government Depart-
ments’, Political Quarterly, 43 (1972), 169–86.
95
History
37. For a detailed account of this period, see: Cole (2005) op. cit.
38. HC 535 The Civil Service, Eleventh Report by the Expenditure Committee,
Session 1976–77, para 191.
39. See Chester (1979) op. cit.; Doig, A., ‘The Machinery of Government and the
Growth of Governmental Bodies’, Public Administration, 57/3 (1979), 309–
33.
40. PRO, T222/61, 5 November 1943.
41. HC 133 Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Vehicle and General Affair,
Session 1971–72. See Baker, R., ‘The Vehicle and General Affair and Ministe-
rial Responsibility’, Political Quarterly, July–September (1972); Chapman, R.,
‘The Vehicle and General Affair’, Public Administration, 51/3 (1973), 273–90.
42. PRO, T222/911.
43. PRO, PSD 11/1/2.
44. PRO, BD/82/1, 17 May 1979.
45. Ibid.
46. House of Commons Hansard, 3 December 1979; see also 19 November 1984.
47. Cm. 7797 (1980) op. cit.
48. Hood, C., ‘Axeperson, Spare that quango’, in C. Hood and M. Wright
(eds.), Big Government in Hard Times (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981),
p. 102.
49. Pliatzky, L., ‘Quangos and Agencies’, Public Administration, 70 (1992), 555–63
(at p. 557).
50. Initially as NDPBs: Facts and Figures (1980 and 1981) and from 1982 as Public
Bodies which brought together three hitherto separate publications—the
‘white paper on Public Boards of a Commercial Character’; the ‘Directory
of Paid Public Appointments’ and ‘NDPBs: Facts and Figures’.
51. Cabinet Office (1988). Improving Management in Government: The Next Steps.
On the creation of agencies, see James (2003) op. cit.
52. House of Commons Hansard, 18 February 1988.
53. HC 494 Civil Service Management Reform: The Next Steps, Eighth Report by
the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, Session 1987–88; HC 496
The Next Steps Initiative, Seventh Report by the Treasury and Civil Service
Committee, Session 1990–91.
54. On this, see HC 313 Ministerial Accountability and Responsibility, Second
Report by the Public Service Committee, Session 1996/97.
55. Cm. 3557 (1997). The Governance of Public Bodies: A Progress Report, para 12.
56. House of Commons Debates, 18 May 1995.
57. Robinson, F. and Shaw, K., ‘Governing a Region’, Regional Studies, 35/5
(2001), 476–92 (at p. 473).
58. Flinders, M., ‘Distributed Public Governance in Britain’, Public Administra-
tion, 82/4 (2004), 883–909.
59. Cabinet Office (1997). Opening Up Quangos, p. 10.
60. Cabinet Office (1998). Quangos: Opening the Doors.
96
History
61. HC 209 Quangos, Sixth Report by the Public Administration Committee,

Session 1998/99, p. ix.
62. Ibid. para 20.
63. Ibid. paras 43 and 75.
64. Cm. 4310 (1999). Modernising Government; HC 317 Responses to the Sixth
Report from the Select Committee on Public Administration Session 1998–99,
‘Quangos’, First Special Report from the Select Committee on Public Admin-
istration, Session 1999–2000.
65. Ibid. p. x.
66. See, in particular, Taylor, A., ‘New Politics, New Parliament’, Charter 88
seminar on the reform of Parliament, London, 14 May 1996.
67. The Times, 4 September 1969, quoted in Hood, C., ‘Keeping the Centre
Small: Explanations of Agency Type’, Political Studies, 26 (1978), 30–46.
68. HC 367. Mapping the Quango State, Fifth Report of the Select Committee on
Public Administration, Session 2000–01.
69. Cabinet Office/HM Treasury (2002). Better Government Services: Review of
Executive Agencies in the Twenty-First Century.
70. DEFRA Rural Delivery Review 2003 [The Haskins Review].
71. Department of Health, Reconfiguring the Department of Health’s Arm’s Length
Bodies 2004 [The Warner Review].
72. DCMS Annual Report (2005); HM Treasury (2005) Reducing Administrative
Burdens [Hampton Report].
73. Gill Morgan, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, noted: ‘Many of
these quangos were set up by a government that identified quality as one
of its top priorities. The wish was to have them at arm’s length. But many
were knee jerk reactions. Every time there was a problem they set up an
organisation to deal with it’ (The Times, 26 November 2003).
74. Flinders, M., ‘The Politics of Public-Private Partnerships’, British Journal
of Politics and International Relations, 7/2 (2005), 543–67.
75. Finer, H., The Theory and Practice of Modern Government (London: Methuen,
1932), p. 1283; HL 55 Report of the Select Committee on the Public Service,
Session 1997–98, para 159.
76. See Lowe and Rollins (2000) op. cit., p. 99.
77. Cm. 7797 (1980) op. cit., para 69.
78. Cm. 6056 (2003). Government Response to the PASC’s Fourth Report, ‘Govern-
ment by Appointment’. p. 1.
79. Pierson, C., ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependence and the Study of Politics’,
American Political Science Review, 94/2 (2000), 251–67 (at p. 266).
80. See, for example, Hay, C., ‘Crisis and the Structural Transformation of the
State’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1/3 (1999), 317–
44.
81. Cortell, A. and Peterson, S., ‘Altered States’, British Journal of Political Science,
29 (1999), 177–203 (at p. 183).
97
History
82. See PRO, T222/33; T222/34; OM398/1/01; OM396/1/02; PRO, T222/61,

December 1943.
83. PRO, T222/62, 1945.
84. Cm. 9230 (1918) op. cit., para 56.
85. PRO, T222/61, 8 March 1943.
86. The ‘smokescreen’ analogy is taken from Bevir, M. and Rhodes, R., ‘Prime
Ministers, Presidentialism and Westminster Smokescreens’, Political Studies,
54/4 (2006), 671–90.
98
4
Structure
‘What’s a quasi-government body?’ asked Alice. ‘It’s the worse devil,’

shrieked the Red Queen, ‘it’s bourgeois and worse it’s state capitalism’.
‘It’s the devil’ wailed the walrus, ‘it kills enterprise,’ while the jabber-
colquahock, fast asleep, murmured between snores, ‘Civil Service, red
tape, bureaucracy’. ‘But’ began Alice, ‘how can it mean all these things
at the same time?’ ‘It does’, I said, ‘it’s the devil all right. It can mean
all things to all men’
The previous chapter can be summarized in three simple statements: (1)

delegation beyond the ministerial department has never been smoothly
assimilated within the British constitutional configuration; (2) as the
state evolved in terms of size and responsibilities, a greater proportion
operated under the aegis of delegated governance; and (3) during 1997–
2007 the Labour Government utilized public bodies as a central tool
of governance but did little in terms of achieving greater clarity and
consistency. Possibly, the most significant recurring theme of the previous
chapter, particularly for the ‘walking without order’ thesis I present in this
book, was the failure to create any central repository of knowledge within
the core executive that could provide a degree of transparency through
the provision of basic statistics and information about the number of
public bodies, their role, status, and expenditure, and why responsibilities
has been delegated to specific organizational forms. At one level, this
reflected a strategic response by successive administrations to the political
risks of being associated with delegation; accusations of sleaze, patronage,
corruption, etc. However, I am also suggesting that this failure to provide
clarity and consistency with regard to the machinery of governance is
also reflective of a deeper British political culture that is essentially elitist,
superior—bordering on arrogant—when it comes to arguments about
reform.
99
Structure
This chapter maps out the topography of delegated governance. It

outlines and then applies the Russian Doll Model in order to deconstruct
the state into its component layers and through this provides a more
sophisticated account of not only different gradations of autonomy but
also the choices available to ministers and the inherent administrative
confusion that exists. Delayering the state in this manner also provides
the comprehensive ‘directory of governance’ that parliament has been
demanding for several years, while viewing the British state as a series of
concentric circles or ripples emanating out from a central point also pro-
vides a means for tracking ‘institutional drift’ as the degree of delegation
increases overtime (i.e. agencification, quangocratization, privatization).
However, a lack of official data, the existence of numerous examples of
secondary delegation and complex hybrids, the requirement to proac-
tively investigate every department and every organization, combined
with a political culture that is generally suspicious of external requests for
information makes research in this field time-consuming and frustrating.
This is reflected in the fact that although Johnson noted back in 1979 that
‘What is really needed as a first step in Britain is a serious attempt to estab-
lish definitional categories for the quango sector’,1 the Better Regulation
Task Force concluded in 2003 that ‘It is doubtful whether it is possible
to develop a classification system for governmental organisations’.2 This
chapter provides this elusive classification system. The first two sections
briefly chart previous attempts by scholars and officials to map and
understand the sphere of delegated governance in Britain and outline the
definitional debates that have to some degree dominated and restricted
research in this field. The third section examines the formal procedure
and guidelines for establishing and classifying public bodies which leads
us into an application of the Russian Doll Model in the fourth section.
The final section returns to our three theoretical pillars in order to tease
apart and unravel not only the significance of the research outlined in
this chapter but also how it relates and what it contributes to the ‘walk-
ing without order’ argument we are seeking to sustain throughout this
book.
4.1. Previous Missions
There have been many official attempts to elucidate the structure of the
state beyond ministerial departments, and similar projects have been
undertaken by a number of scholars—including Wade and Phillips (1946),
100
Structure
Greaves (1947), Chester and Willson (1957), and Mackenzie, Hague and
Barker (1975)—but there is little to be gained from reviewing these studies
in great detail.3 It is sufficient to note that each uncovered a dense and
rather opaque administrative hinterland, vast disparities in terms of role,
function, size, and status and a general lack of any broad principles
guiding their use. Moreover, the lack of any reliable source of baseline
knowledge on delegation meant that studies devoted much of their time
to compiling descriptive lists that left little scope for detailed analysis on
empirical or theoretical issues.
Wade’s attempts to list and categorize NDOs for the Anderson Commit-
tee between 1943 and 1945 led him to complain that such an exercise was
both ‘bewildering and intractable’.4 Forty years later, Wilding’s research
on ‘fringe bodies’ concluded, ‘it is not possible to make true statements
about them all; the impossibility lies in their bewildering variety.’5 How-
ever, several scholars have attempted to devise classification frameworks.
Friedman, for example, divided the delegated public bodies he uncovered
into ‘commercial operations’, ‘social service corporations’, or ‘supervisory
public corporations’, and Street and Griffith later modified these classifi-
cations into ‘managerial economic’, ‘managerial social’, and, ‘regulatory-
social’.6 However, none of these typologies proved capable of corralling
the existing bodies into incontrovertible categories; anomalies existed
and a significant number of bodies straddled several categories. This fact
encouraged Chester to adopt three much broader categories of analysis—
‘ministerial departments’, ‘local authorities’, and ‘the rest’. In essence,
this book is a study of ‘the rest’. And yet, even collecting reliable data
on ministerial departments has proved difficult and has exposed many
of the methodological challenges that are simply amplified in relation to
delegated governance. The research of Hood, Dunsire, and Thompson on
the number and nature of Whitehall departments in the 1970s provides
a case in point. Definitional confusion about what constituted a ‘depart-
ment’ among officials across Whitehall frustrated their research and led
them to conclude,
There is certainly no single and all encompassing definition of such agencies—

only a variety of lists of agencies called ‘departments’, compiled for a number of
different purposes, with a high degree of mismatch.7
The same problem but on a greater scale faces students of delegated

governance. The attempts by Hood and Dunsire (1981), Pollitt (1984),
Dunleavy (1989), Jordan (1994), and Hogwood (1995), to mention just
a few, all found an ambiguity in relation to the information provided in
101
Structure
official documents and had little option but to devise their own analytical
frameworks.8 The historical analysis of structural reform in Whitehall
undertaken by McLean and colleagues in the late 1990s encountered
exactly this problem and took comfort from the fact that in relation to
the classification system they had devised, ‘. . . our arbitrary decisions are
no more arbitrary than anyone else’s’.9
As the previous chapter illustrated, internal official reviews have fared
little better. The departmental returns provided to the Bowen Report
in the late 1970s, for example, reflected a range of definitions and
great confusion in relation to the organizational status of certain bodies.
Mr. Bowen’s attempt to make sense of this complexity by devising a list of
Table 4.1. Examples of terminological inaccuracy
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘Boards’ but were/are in fact ministerial
departments (Board of Trade), non-ministerial departments (Public Works Loan Board) or public
corporations (British Waterways Board), advisory non-departmental public bodies (Civil Service
Appeal Board), executive non-departmental public bodies (Gaming Board), ‘other’
non-departmental public bodies (Independent Monitoring Boards of Prisons), NHS Bodies
(Dental Practice Board), and task forces (Depleted Uranium Oversight Board), or ad hoc
advisory groups (Regional Housing Board, NHS Modernisation Board).
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘authorities’ but were/are in fact
non-ministerial departments (Strategic Rail Authority), public corporations (Civil Aviation
Authority), special health authorities (National Clinical Assessment Authority), and executive
non-departmental public bodies (British Tourist Authority).
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘agencies’ but were/are in fact
executive non-departmental public bodies (Environment Agency, Sector Skills Agency), former
agencies that have been privatized (Occupational Health Safety Agency), non-ministerial
departments (Food Standards Agency, Assets Recovery Agency), special health authorities
(Health Development Agency), public corporations (Oil and Pipelines Agency), private
companies providing services to government departments (Higher Education Statistics Agency);
public–private partnerships (NHS Connecting for Health Agency), or government-sponsored
registered charities (Basic Skills Agency).
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘commissions’ but were/are in fact
either non-ministerial departments (Charity Commission), public corporations (Independent
Television Commission), executive non-departmental public bodies (Equal Opportunities
Commission), advisory non-departmental public bodies (House of Lords Appointments
Commission), NHS Bodies (Mental Health Act Commission), tribunal non-departmental public
bodies (Foreign Compensation Commission), or bodies without any formal organizational
classification (Northern Ireland Parades Commission).
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘corporations’ but were/are in fact
either executive non-departmental public bodies (Housing Corporation) or nationalized
industries (British Coal Corporation).
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘councils’ but are/were in fact advisory
non-departmental public bodies (Nuclear Research Advisory Council) or executive
non-departmental public bodies (Natural Environment Research Council).
r A number of delegated public bodies have been called ‘Directorates’ but were/are in fact
executive agencies (Pesticides Safety Directorate and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate).
102
Structure
common features was ultimately unsuccessful as only 33 of the 252 bodies

he found displayed all 7 elements. Chester later commented, ‘. . . what a
morass or a jungle Mr. Bowen found himself in. Usually, however, those
who penetrate jungles leave a track which makes it easier for those who
come after. Mr. Bowen does not do that.’10 The challenge of mapping
and understanding delegated governance is compounded by the fact that
functions are frequently delegated to organizations that either have dual
status or misleading names (see Table 4.1)
The 1980 Pliatzky Report did, however, ‘leave a trail’ that would be
significant for later analyses. The trail took two forms. First, the report
set out and defined the term ‘non-departmental public body’ which then
became the official definition of a ‘quango’. Second, it led to the annual
publication of a register of NDPBs in the form of Public Bodies which
was subsequently expanded to encompass a broader range of bodies. The
report therefore set the parameters, in conceptual and empirical terms, of
a far more open and explicit debate about the extent and consequences
of delegation. But the annual Public Bodies report has never been compre-
hensive and as Hogwood notes, ‘differing definitions will produce widely
varying indicators of the scale of quango activity.’11 It is to this debate
that we now turn.12
4.2. Definitional Debates
In Politics and the English Language (1946), George Orwell suggested that
political language and terminology is frequently designed to misrepresent
without lying. This sophistry is aided by the fact that political concepts
tend to be so permeated and surrounded by values that politicians and
scholars may argue interminably without ever reaching agreement on
the true meaning and implications of the concept: they are ‘essentially
contested’.13 The term ‘quango’ as both an institutional and norma-
tive concept has been the focus of debates that have sought to both
restrict and expand the range of bodies included beneath this conceptual
umbrella. To some extent, these definitional debates have formed a core
element of what we previously labelled the ‘British Approach’ (Table 1.3)
to the point that they have restricted research and distracted attention
from more important debates concerning the evolution of the state. In
this chapter, I seek to transcend definitional arguments through the use
of a framework with the capacity to accommodate all facets of the debate.
103
Structure
But first it is necessary to briefly reflect on the origins and usage of the
term.
The expression ‘quasi–non-governmental organization’ emerged in the
USA during the 1960s to signify private entities that worked with govern-
ment agencies on social policy issues (e.g. Rand Corporation, Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation), but during the Anglo-American
Carnegie Project in 1969, the term ‘quango’ was coined and quickly
became applied to a disparate range of organizations with an indirect
connection with the state.14 In 1982, a member of the original project
team wrote, ‘it would be encouraging to feel that this now overused
and misused term would have only a brief life’, but this was not to
be the case, and twenty years later Parry described it as ‘one of the
most confusing and unhelpful in public policy studies’.15 It is at this
point that the interrelationship between definitional disputes and the
politics of delegated governance becomes clear. Delegation is intended
to distance certain issues from the pressures and demands of day-to-
day partisan politics. Incumbent governments are therefore reluctant to
elaborate unnecessarily on the wider structures of delegated governance
and maintaining a narrow definition is a strategic response to demands for
information. Opposition parties and the media, by contrast, have an inter-
est in utilizing the vagueness of the term ‘quango’ in order to embrace
as many organizations as possible in order to damage the government
and fuel concerns regarding an ‘undemocratic quango explosion’. This
contextual environment has practical implications as using information
regarding delegation as a crude tool of party political warfare reinforces
the negative executive mentality regarding the release of information or
new forms of accountability (we return to this issue in Chapter 6).
Since the Pliatzky Report in 1980, successive governments have main-
tained that the term ‘quango’ is synonymous with just one organizational
form—executive NDPBs. This is therefore the official or ‘minimalist’ posi-
tion. The ‘maximalist’ position, by contrast, seeks to capture all those
organizations that either fulfil a public task or spend public money with
some degree of autonomy from elected politicians. This latter approach is
generally adopted by the scholarly community, the media, and opposition
parties and is reflected in Weir and Halls’s research on ‘extra-governmental
organisations’ in the 1990s which identified over five and a half thousand
delegated public bodies operating across all levels of government with a
combined annual budget of around £50 billion.16 The contrast between
this approach and the minimalist position is stark as less than 10 per cent
of the organizations identified by Weir and Hall were included within the
104
Structure
government’s official records (i.e. Public Bodies) at that time. The benefit of
the Russian Doll Model that we apply below is that it not only embraces
both these positions, but it also achieves a high degree of secondary pre-
cision by dissecting and examining the constituent elements of the state
or what we describe as layers. This then allows observers to understand
and evaluate the variety of control, accountability, and appointments
frameworks that apply to each type of delegated governance. But before
seeking to peel away and examine the various layers that constitute the
contemporary British state, it is necessary to understand, as far as it is
possible, how various bodies are classified, and in particular the process
through which the boundary between the public and private sectors is
officially drawn.
4.3. Boundaries and Structure
This section seeks to answer three interrelated questions. Why does an

organization’s status matter? Who decides whether an organization is
a public or private sector body? If an organization is deemed part of
the public sector—how are decisions regarding its formal organizational
classification agreed? There are a number of administrative, legal, and
political reasons why an organization’s formal status matters. From an
administrative perspective, allotting an organization to a recognized and
specific category of bodies reflects a general view regarding the expected
level of autonomy that a public body is expected to enjoy. An NDPB is,
for example, intended and expected to enjoy more autonomy than an
executive agency, and this is reflected in its statutory basis. The formal
organizational status of an organization also locates it within certain con-
trol and accountability frameworks that may have implications not only
for the strategic capacity of the executive but also in terms of legislative
scrutiny and oversight. The chief executives of agencies are formally civil
servants and, as such, are bound by potentially restrictive rules in relation
to select committees than apply to those managing NDPBs. The existence
of ‘floating’ or ‘unrecognized’ bodies without formal status is likely to be
highly problematic in terms of ensuring ‘joined-up’ governance or sys-
tematic scrutiny. From a legal perspective, Britain’s membership to the EU
brings with it certain legal requirements to publish annual accounts that
distinguish between public- and private-sector spending. As public spend-
ing is expected to stay within certain agreed criteria, the classification
of certain (high-spending) bodies as being outside the boundaries of the
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Structure
public sector can have important political implications. Similarly, rule-

based systems at the national level create additional political incentives
to locate funding outside the public sector where possible.
From a political perspective, the formal organizational status of a pub-
lic body matters because creating new NDPBs will increase the official
‘quango count’ and may expose the government to criticism. For parlia-
ment, the delegation of responsibilities beyond the core and particularly
to hybrid bodies without formal classification is likely to further strain
a scrutiny system that remains predominantly focused on ministerial
departments. The manner in which delegation is operationalized in terms
of using administrative or statutory processes may also affect the occur-
rence and nature of ‘blame-games’ between ministers and officials should
problems occur (an issue we will return to in Chapter 6). Organizational
classification and particularly how the boundary between the public and
private sectors is policed are therefore highly political issues.
The assignment of organizational status operates at two levels. Is the
organization part of the public or private sector? If public, what formal
organizational status should it have? Decisions on whether a body is part
of the private or public sectors are made by the Treasury according to the
Office for National Statistics’ guidance which states that the public sector
comprises of
1. Central Government—includes departments (ministerial and non-

ministerial), agencies, the devolved administrations, non-depart-
mental public bodies, and other non-market bodies controlled and
mainly financed by them.
2. Local Government—includes those kinds of public administration that
only cover a specific locality and any non-market bodies controlled
by them.
3. Public Corporations—market bodies controlled by either Central
Government or Local Government, These can include government-
owned companies and trading funds.17
The vast majority of delegated public bodies are therefore defined as part
of the public sector but when the Treasury is unable to decide or where
there is debate between departments or within parliament regarding the
appropriate classification, then decisions may be referred to the National
Accounts Classification Committee of the Office for National Statistics for
a final decision. The key question for this committee is ‘Who controls
this organization?’ In answering this question, the guidelines require that
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Structure
a broad view is adopted that not only relies solely on legal status but also
examines funding lines, appointment procedures, and reserve powers,
and these issues tend to be most problematic in relation to organiza-
tions at the boundaries of the state, notably with forms of public–private
partnership where the operational distance from ministers is great and
identifying primary and secondary control mechanisms can be difficult.
The debate surrounding the control and therefore classification of
Network Rail provides an example of the challenges and importance of
demarcating the boundary between the public and private sectors. Net-
work Rail is a public-interest company (limited by guarantee) established
in 2002 to take assume ownership and operate the railway infrastructure
after the collapse of Railtrack Plc. As ministers had initially selected its
Board of Directors, it was classified as a public body on creation but was
reclassified as a private sector in March 2003 when its members (who were
predominantly private sector representatives and not subject to govern-
ment control) approved Network Rail’s Board. The members’ supporting
vote for the Board of Directors effectively privatized Network Rail accord-
ing to the sector classification system as at that moment, the Board be-
came formally appointed by and accountable to the organization’s mem-
bers rather than directly to ministers.18 This reclassification brought with
it a range of political benefits, notably by removing Network Rails’ huge
financial liabilities from the public accounts while potentially also pro-
viding politicians with greater blame-shifting potential than would have
been the case had the organization remained part of the public sector.
Cases like Network Rail’s are rare and the vast majority of delegation
takes place within the public sector and the main question relates to for-
mal organizational status. The options for how tasks might be delegated
are set out in a Cabinet Office guidance document—Classification of Public
Bodies: Guidance for Departments—which offers seven forms of delegation:
1. non-ministerial departments;
2. executive agencies;
3. executive NDPBs,
4. public corporations;
5. government-owned companies;
6. public–private partnerships; and
7. special health authorities.
Although the document outlines the main characteristics of each form of

delegation and outlines the tasks that have commonly been distributed
to each category, the final decision is a matter for individual departments.
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Structure
This is a critical point that feeds into broader concerns regarding strategic-
capacity, clarity, and consistency. The Cabinet Office has no capacity
in relation to imposing consistency or monitoring developments. Estab-
lished procedures dictate that departmental Public Body Coordinators
should inform the Cabinet Office, specifically the Agencies and Public
Bodies Team, when their department was considering the creation of a
new public body or a change of status to an existing body. However,
departments frequently delegate responsibilities to new bodies without
informing the Cabinet Office or following the guidance documents. As a
result, the first indication that Cabinet Office officials have that a new
body has been created will often be through parliamentary questions
or media enquiries. In short, the Cabinet Office, despite having formal
responsibility for machinery of government issues, has little strategic
capacity or hard leverage mechanisms through which it can impose any
coherent framework across government or play a proactive role in moni-
toring delegation.
4.4. The Russian Doll Model
Instead of focusing on the specific function or role of each public body

as the majority of previous classification attempts have done, our focus
in this chapter is on formal organizational classification. Not only does
this allow us to interrogate the topic in a manner derived from the
official template (previous section above), but it also allows us to highlight
correlations and inconsistencies between functions and forms, status and
governance, etc. It is also an approach that chimes with the metaphor
employed by Hood regarding administrative structures as families, with
a department at the core and numerous public bodies playing the role
of children or distant cousins depending on the length of the arm in
the arm’s-length relationship.19 An even closer metaphor to our model is
Hood and Dunsire’s likening of public bodies elliptically revolving around
departments at various distances like planets around a sun.20 The benefit
of focusing on organizational status is that it is possible to distinguish
a number of formally distinct categories of institutional delegation that
are designed to achieve different degree or levels of autonomy from both
ministers and, to some degree, parliament. The British state is therefore
arguably best characterized and understood as a series of nested layers,
like a Russian Doll, with relatively small departments at the core and a
series of fairly distinct layers working outwards (Figure 4.1).
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Structure
7
6
5
4
F B
3
2
1
∗∗
∗
1
E C
Layer:
D
∗ Core Executive
∗∗ Ministerial Departments
1 Non-Ministerial Departments
2 Executive Agencies
3 Special Health Authorities
4 Executive Non-Departmental Public Bodies
5 Public Corporations
6 Central Bank Institutions
7 Public-Private Partnerships
A. Independent Parliamentary Bodies
B. Professional Self-Regulatory Bodies
C. Independent Statutory Bodies and Inspectorates
D. Public Policy Orientated Private Companies
E. Independent Governmental Bodies
F. Floating/Unrecognized Bodies
Figure 4.1. Russian Doll Model
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Structure
Although Dunleavy asks whether, ‘departmental boundary lines pro-

vide theoretically significant categories for analysis’, it is a core con-
tention of this book that formal organizational status does provide a
valuable framework for mapping and understanding delegation because it
reflects certain judgements regarding the extent of delegation, and should
denote certain expectations regarding executive, legislative, and public
relationships.21 Viewing the structure of the state as a series of layers also
illustrates how the ‘reach’ of certain safeguards or control mechanisms,
such as the jurisdiction of the Commissioner for Public Appointments
(which we examine in Chapter 7), has been extended over time. More-
over, the fact that a significant number of delegated public bodies exists
beyond this framework does not weaken the value of our approach but
adds further weight to our contention regarding the contemporary evo-
lution of the state and the capacity of the core executive to monitor and
regulate its own organizational frameworks.
One of the benefits of the Russian Doll Model is that it reflects, on
a broad basis, a number of relatively uncontroversial assumptions con-
cerning the relationship between organizational form and autonomy. It
would generally be agreed that executive NDPBs are more autonomous
than non-ministerial departments (NMDs), and that ministerial depart-
ments and public–private partnerships should be located at opposing
poles along a spectrum of autonomy. However, the clarity of this model
becomes clouded once we examine the border between distinct layers in
more detail. Some parts of ministerial departments that have esoteric or
salient responsibilities may enjoy a high degree of operational autonomy
despite not formally having agency status, and it is in this sense that UK
visas remains part of the core Home Office but is operated ‘on agency
lines’.22 In some cases, the granting of agency status may well represent a
formalization of a delegated organizational relationship that has existed
for some time.
Conversely, some delegated public bodies may enjoy less autonomy
than their formal organizational status would usually confer. The Depart-
ment for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) 1998 review of its arm’s-length
bodies, for example, led to the introduction of tighter departmental
control mechanisms and what Taylor describes as an ‘arm’s-length but
hands on’ style of governance.23 The review’s final report noted, ‘We are
convinced that the arm’s length principle remains valid but the arm has
different lengths, and is sometimes too long.’24 In January 2006, the arm
in the ‘arm’s-length relationship’ grew far shorter between the Gambling
Commission and the DCMS in the aftermath of a newspaper interview
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Structure
in which the Chairman made a number of comments that appeared

to contradict government policy. This proved highly embarrassing for
the government and the department responded quickly by announcing
that a series of ‘very regular’ meetings had now been arranged with the
Gambling Commission so that the department can ‘provide help and
guidance in sensitive areas’.25
Figure 4.1 also alerts observers to the fact that organizational status may
reflect differences in departmental capacities rather than a difference in
relation to the degree of autonomy they are expected to enjoy. The prac-
tical difference between executive NDPBs and Special Health Authorities
(SHAs) in terms of autonomy and governance are negligible. The only
distinction between these organizational forms (Layers 3 and 4) is that
the Department of Health can establish SHAs via delegated legislation,
while NDPBs generally require legislation (see below). Acknowledging the
existence of layers and then examining functional distribution can also
highlight other anomalies, such as the delegation of broadly identical
functions to different organizational forms by different departments. The
Prison Service, for example, is an agency but the Immigration and Nation-
ality Directorate remains part of the core department; Historic Scotland
is an agency whereas English Heritage is an NDPB. The following sub-
sections provide a brief account of each of the layers beyond ministerial
departments (all figures and statistics are as of 2007).
4.4.1. Layer 1: Non-Ministerial Departments

There are currently 29 NMDs that employ 161,000 civil servants and have
a combined annual expenditure of £2.4 billion of which 2 billion is gov-
ernment funding. These are government departments in their own right,
established to deliver a specific function, are not funded by a sponsor
department, and represent the first level of delegation. The precise nature
of their relationship with ministers varies according to their individual
policy and statutory framework, but the general rationale is to distance
the day-to-day administration of the particular activity from direct min-
isterial control, while retaining some governmental input to the wider
policy context. They are managed by an appointed office holder, com-
missioner, or board with statutory responsibilities, are staffed by civil ser-
vants, and publish their own annual report and accounts. Their legislative
accountability is secured via ministers in a related department who answer
PQs on behalf of the NMD but are not constitutionally responsible, in
terms of accepting blame or sanctions, for the information provided in
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Structure
that account. They vary greatly in size and role from smaller bodies like
the National School of Government, Office of Water Services, and the
Assets Recovery Agency with around 200 staff to organizations employing
several thousand employees, like the Crown Prosecution Service and HM
Customs and Revenue.
And yet, even at this first stage and with what appears to be at first
glance a fairly coherent set of bodies, a closer analysis reveals confusion
and opacity. First, six NMDs have ‘agency’ status which means they
are managed as trading funds and consequently enjoy a slightly higher
degree of flexibility.26 However, although these bodies are NMDs, they
are not included in the official list of NMDs (which therefore lists just
twenty-three bodies). The situation is confused further by the inclusion
of several organizations on the official list that are not actually NMDs.
UK Trade & Investment, for example, is a Crown body with no formal
organizational status, while the Crown Estate is actually a landed trust
where the Monarch remains the owner of the capital but the Chancellor
of the Exchequer receives the revenue stream in return for the Civil List.27
4.4.2. Layer 2: Executive Agencies

There are 75 executive agencies in which 284,000 civil servants work
(around 80 per cent of the total civil service). They have a combined
annual expenditure of £25.6 billion of which 18.1 is government-funded.
(There are also forty-two executive agencies that operate under the aus-
pices of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, and Northern Ireland
Assembly and will be examined in Chapter 9.) Like NMDs, the agency
concept embraces a wide range of organizations in terms of size and
responsibilities from the National Weights and Measures Laboratory and
Government Decontamination Service with less than a hundred staff to
organizations like Jobcentre Plus, HM Courts Service, Highways Agency,
and HM Prison Service with tens of thousands of staff and annual budgets
running into several billion pounds. In relation to the primary func-
tions the agencies carry out: 39 per cent deliver services to external
customers; 35 per cent (nearly all Ministry of Defence agencies) to gov-
ernment departments; 9 per cent offer mainly research services; and 17
per cent are regulators. Agencies remain part of their parent department
but enjoy a significant degree of operational autonomy: ‘ministers do
not concern themselves with the day-to-day running of the agency’.28
Cabinet Office guidance states that agencies are best suited to functions
where:
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Structure
1. Functions or services to be delivered are not likely to be subject to

perpetual parliamentary or public scrutiny;
2. It is neither appropriate or realistic for ministers to take personal
responsibility for day-to-day functions;
3. The function is predominantly concerned with the delivery of ser-
vices to the public;
4. The number of staff is large enough to justify a separate organization;
5. The function can be independently accountable within the sponsor-
ing department.
A ‘framework document’ sets out the main aims and targets of the agency
and the financial resources made available by the parent department and
a business plan (or annual performance plan) will set out how the agency
intends to achieve its targets.29 Agencies publish an annual report and
accounts and these are incorporated into those of the parent depart-
ment. An Agency does not usually have a management board acting
as a buffer between itself and the relevant department, and the main
agency–department link is expected to operate between the agency’s chief
executive (or a member of its senior management group) and a nominated
Senior Departmental Sponsor or ‘Fraser Figure’.30 Agencies are funded
through their parent department but may also generate their own revenue
streams. Appointments are made by the Permanent Secretary, although
often with the approval of the Secretary of State and as they are civil
servants, they fall within the remit of the Civil Service Commission (CSC)
rather than the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments
(an issue we examine later). Agency chief executives are responsible to
ministers and apart from their financial responsibilities as an additional
accounting officer (AAO), they have no direct line of accountability to
parliament. Ministers remain accountable to parliament for their depart-
ment’s agencies, although chief executives may be called to appear before
select committees and are expected to abide by the Code of Conduct for
Officials Appearing before Select Committees (the ‘Osmotherly Rules’).
Chief executives are also expected to answer written PQs about opera-
tional aspects of their agency’s work on behalf of their minister.
As with NMDs, within this second layer, there exists a sub-category that
enjoys a slightly greater degree of autonomy in the form of those seven-
teen agencies that are registered as trading funds under the Government
Trading Funds Act 1973.31 These are expected to derive at least 50 per cent
of their funding from commercial activities but in return enjoy enhanced
independence and flexibility: ‘they are one further remove from the
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Structure
department’.32 Their personnel remain civil servants, ministers remain

accountable to parliament, and the departmental Permanent Secretary
remains the primary Accounting Officer, but agencies with trading fund
status publish separate accounts to their parent department and do not
need detailed advance approval of their expenditure plans. They may also
retain unspent funds from one financial year to the next without having
to surrender surpluses to the Exchequer.
Although agencies form just the second layer of the Russian Doll Model,
it is already possible to identify ‘double delegation’ as many agencies
(third layer bodies) are accountable not to ministerial departments but
to NMDs (i.e. second layer organizations). Examples include the Meat
Hygiene Service (accountable to the Food Standards Agency) and Forest
Enterprise (accountable to the Forestry Commission). The complexity
of double delegation is augmented by the fact that agencies have been
created by organizations which are of an unclear organizational status.
For example, OGCBuying.Solutions is listed by the government as an
executive agency of the Office of Government Commerce, but this parent
body is neither a ministerial nor a non-ministerial department.
4.4.3. Layer 3: Special Health Authorities

There are 12 SHAs that employ 18,000 staff and have a combined annual
expenditure of £2.6 billion of which £561 million is government-funding.
As with the first and second layers, this organizational category displays
significant variations in terms of size and budget, with four authorities
that are largely self-funding.33 SHAs are established under the NHS Act
1977 to provide a national service to the whole of the NHS but with day-
to-day autonomy from ministers. They are generally regarded as slightly
less autonomous than executive NDPBs because they do not have their
own primary legislation but are viewed as part of the NHS ‘departmental
family’. SHAs are not part of the DoH and are not staffed by civil servants.
Their specific remit is stipulated in their founding statutory instrument
and a subsequent framework document sets out the intended authority–
department relationship.
The chief executive is accountable to a management board that is, in
turn, accountable to health ministers, but most day-to-day interactions,
formal and informal, will take place between the senior management
group of the SHA and a nominated departmental contact. Organizational
targets are set out in an Annual Business Plan which forms part of a
wider three-year Corporate Plan. Performance results are set out in the
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Structure
authority’s annual report and accounts that are laid directly before par-
liament. As an AAO, the chief executive has personal responsibility for
the content of these accounts and all SHAs fall within the jurisdiction
of the NAO. Apart from their legislative basis, the only other governance
characteristic that differs from Executive NDPBs is that appointments are
made by the NHS Appointments Commission on behalf of ministers and
in line with the OCPA Code of Practice. Ministers retain a formal power
of control and oversight and must account to parliament for their activity
and performance. The current structure of twelve SHAs is a result of the
2004 Warner Review that saw five bodies amalgamated to form the NHS
Business Services Authority.34 However, even this rationalization process
exhibits elements of the ‘incoherent arbitrariness’ discussed in previous
chapters because although the Counter Fraud and Management Service
ceased to exist on 1 April 2006, the official transition documentation
emphasizes that it will remain ‘a semi-autonomous independent division’
within the new Business Services Authority. SHAs therefore represent a
very specific third layer of the Russian Doll with only elements of their
foundation and appointments process demarcating them from executive
NDPBs.
4.4.4. Layer 4: Executive NDPBs

In 2007, there were 199 executive NDPBs that employed around 100,000
people and enjoyed a combined annual expenditure of £37 billion of
which £32 billion was government funded. Cabinet Office guidance sug-
gest that NDPBs are appropriate where (1) political considerations should
play little part in decisions but where it is agreed that the function should
still be carried out in the public sector; (2) it is desirable to involve many
people, including the public and representative groups, in decisions about
the delivery of the service; and (3) it is desirable to underwrite the body’s
independence, powers, and obligations through legislation. These bodies
‘permit a service or function to be carried out independently, at arm’s-
length from Government . . . they function deliberately at a remove from
Ministers’.35 They are not part of departments and are not staffed by
civil servants. NDPBs vary greatly in terms of size and responsibilities
from the relatively small (in budget and staff) National College for School
Leadership, Independent Police Complaints Commission, and Standards
Board to small bodies with huge budgets (like the Higher Education Fund-
ing Council) and large bodies with huge budgets (e.g. English Heritage,
Natural England).
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Structure
Core governance characteristics include a statutory foundation; a man-

agement board with non-executive directors; funding through a mix of
grant-in-aid from their sponsor department and income self-generation;
appointments are made either by ministers, by the Monarch on minister-
ial advice, or by the chairman of organization with ministerial approval,
all appointments are regulated by OCPA; an annual report and accounts
must be laid before parliament; the NAO is the external auditor; and min-
isters remain answerable to parliament while also retaining the capacity
to invoke reserve powers or abolish the public body subject to, where
appropriate, the approval of Parliament or, where a Royal Charter exists,
the Monarch. A Royal Charter is a charter of incorporation that confers
independent legal personality on the body and defines its objectives,
constitution, and powers to govern its own affairs. A Royal Charter is
therefore viewed as conferring a slightly higher, or at least more protected,
level of autonomy and only a small number of NDPBs possess them
(including the British Council, Arts Council, Natural and Environmental
Research Council, and the Museum and Galleries Trust Commission).36
A contractual relationship exists between NDPBs and their sponsor
department which is set out in a range of corporate documents, notably
the Financial Memorandum and Business Plan, and performance against
targets is accounted for in each NDPB’s annual report and accounts which
must be audited by the National Audit Office and laid before Parliament
each year (chief executives are designated as AAOs for financial purposes).
Three specific elements of NDPB governance are noteworthy. (1) The
existence of a management board and chairman in the chain of delegation
between the minister and chief executive provides an important buffer
that can insulate the organization from informal ministerial pressure or
constant intervention. (2) The fact that NDPBs are not staffed by civil
servants not only means that chief executives are not bound by the
potentially restrictive rules of disclosure that bind agency chief executives
but (3) it also provides senior managers with greater flexibility in terms of
the pay and incentives for staff motivation.
4.4.5. Layer 5: Public Corporations

Lord Sharman’s 2001 report into accountability and audit in central gov-
ernment noted that ‘[public corporations] are regarded as operating at a
greater distance from the government than NDPBs and are not usually
classed as being part of central government’.37 Although they operate
under the auspices of a parent department, they are separate institutional
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units, enjoy significant day-to-day operating autonomy, and they are

predominantly trading bodies that generate at least half of their costs.
In 2007, there were 23 public corporations (PCs) with 270,000 staff and a
combined gross annual expenditure of £19 billion of which £4 billion is
government funding. This layer, like those discussed above, also displays
great heterogeneity in terms of size and functions, from relatively small
bodies like the Oil and Pipeline Agency, Architects Registration Board or
Covent Garden Market Authority to very large organizations, like the BBC,
Royal Mail, and British Nuclear Fuels.
The governance characteristics of PCs are almost exactly the same as
those of executive NDPBs (above) with the only difference being classifi-
cation as a PC is intended to indicate a slightly higher degree of delegation
and is seen as being particularly appropriate to industrial or commercial
enterprises where the emphasis is on independence but with a broad
framework of ministerial control and responsibility. Again, it is possible to
distinguish a sub-level within this fifth layer in the form of those PCs (e.g.
Remploy, Royal Mail) which have been registered under the Companies
Act 1985 to form government-owned companies (GOCs). GOC status
provides PCs with further legal protections from ministerial interference
and as a result confers a slightly higher level of autonomy, particu-
larly where GOC status is intended as an intermediate stage towards
privatization.
4.4.6. Layer 6: Central Bank

A Central Bank is a public financial corporation with monetary authority
within a given country. The Bank of England was founded in 1694,
nationalized in 1946, and gained operational independence in 1997 and
was classified as a Central Bank in 1998. In 2007, it employed 2000 staff
and operated with a total gross annual expenditure of £230 million. The
Bank is responsible for ensuring monetary and financial stability and,
since the 1988 Bank of England Act, setting UK’s official interest rate. The
Crown appoints the Governor on the advice of the PM and Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Minutes of meetings between the Chancellor and the
Governor are published, as are the minutes of the quarterly meetings of
the Monetary Policy Committee. Parliamentary accountability is estab-
lished through the bank’s statutory duty to produce an annual report
and lay it before the House and also through the scrutiny of the Treasury
Select Committee (whose approach and work we will review in Chapters 6
and 7).
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Structure
4.4.7. Layer 7: Public–Private Partnerships

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) encompass a vast range of organiza-
tional forms and have been established at all governing levels. However,
PPPs share the common trait of tying a private actor to a defined public
function in order to harness certain capacities and can be viewed as form-
ing the outermost layer of the Russian Doll Model. Some PPPs are wholly
owned by government (as is the case with Public Interest Companies like
Network Rail and National Air Traffic Services) whereas others take the
form of joint-ownership ventures in which a private sector company (or
consortium) and the government share ownership (like Partnerships UK,
BW Watergrid, Partnerships for Health). A growing body of work exists on
the politics of PPPs, and it is sufficient for us to note that many of the
themes and issues concerning the negative unintended consequences of
delegation (fragmentation, accountability, control, etc.) are to be found,
but often in a more extreme form, in the research on partnerships. PPPs
also form a critical component of debates about depoliticization, the
capacity and future of the state, and the changing nature of democracy.
However, although we will return to these broader discussions in later
chapters, it is more important to note at this stage that PPPs can be located
within the core ‘walking without order’ thesis of this book in several ways.
First, due to a range of definitional and departmental factors, there is
no central database or comprehensive list of PPPs from which a reliable
overview can be ascertained. Pockets of information can be obtained
in relation to, for example, NHS Local Improvement Finance Trusts (49
bodies spread across England) and Community Interest Companies (818
bodies across England, Scotland and Wales) but gathering information—
even finding out what bodies exist—about PPPs operating at the national
level is highly problematic. Clarity and consistency remain elusive prin-
ciples. Even where an organization is identified, obtaining further infor-
mation about its core characteristics is likely to be delayed or blocked
due to issues of commercial confidentiality.38 Second, the responsibilities
delegated to PPPs reveal little functional consistency across departments.
Issues that remain core departmental responsibilities in some departments
will have been delegated in several others without any rationale being
offered to explain and legitimate this discrepancy. Third, organizational
complexity and fragmentation is further compounded by the growth
in forms of institutional delegation which are established to regulate
PPP behaviour (Office of the Public Private Partnership Arbiter, Office
of the Independent Regulator for NHS Foundation Hospitals [known as
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Structure
Monitor], Independent CIC Regulator, etc.) and yet these secondary bod-
ies display the ‘incoherent arbitrariness’ this book seeks to expose. The
regulator of foundation trusts (which are Public Interest Companies) is
an executive NDPB but the regulator for Community Interest Companies
exists in the hinterland (see below) as an independent statutory body.
The Russian Doll Model is an organizing perspective that provides a
framework through which a complex set of interrelated issues or variables
can be observed and analysed. It was devised as a tool for sustaining
and empirically demonstrating the ‘walking without order’ thesis, which
suggests that the level of delegation has now reached a point of such scale
and complexity that the British political tradition (i.e. ad hoc unprinci-
pled ‘muddling through’) must acknowledge the need for greater clarity
and consistency. This is not a critique of delegation per se but a cri-
tique of delegation without coherent and transparent governance frame-
works or a statement concerning its limits. In terms of the contemporary
scale of delegation, the research outlined in this chapter reveals that at
the national level, Britain is, to a greater or lesser extent, a delegated
state. As Table 4.2 levels even if we exclude Layer 7 (PPPs) where debates
regarding the boundary of the public sector are most intense and reliable
information most difficult to obtain, the remaining 6 layers include 339
delegated public bodies, employing over 800,000 staff with a combined
annual budget in excess of £80 billion (75 per cent of which is direct
government funding).
Table 4.2. Seven layers of delegated governance (2007)
Layer Number Staff Government Total gross

funding annual expenditure
(million pounds) (million pounds)
1. Non-Ministerial Departments 29 160,928 1,958 2,383

2. Executive Agencies 75 283,648 18,136 25,676
3. Special Health Authorities 12 17,951 561 2,662
4. Executive NDPBs 199 93,416 31,667 36,751
5. Public Corporations 23 270,814 4,007 19,412
6. Independent Central Bank 1 2,000 0 230
7. PPPs U/A U/A U/A U/A
Totals 339 828,757 56,329 87,114
In addition to illustrating the scale of delegation in Britain, the Russian

Doll Model also emphasizes the absence of any coherent rationale
for the distribution of tasks to specific organizational forms; different
departments have located similar functions within a range of delegated
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Structure
organizational forms and each category appears to contain a number of

anomalies. The General Teaching Council is a PC and yet the General
Social Care Council is an NDPB. The distinction between bodies in Layers
4 and 5 is particularly opaque; Partnerships for Schools, for example, is
an executive NDPB generating over 50 per cent of its income and could
therefore enter the PC category. Understanding the basis for functional
allocations remains, ‘absolutely mysterious . . . It is quite impossible to find
any logic, I think I know what it ought to be, but what it is is beyond
human imagining almost’.39 This confusion is augmented by the Cabinet
Office’s propensity to introduce new categories of delegation without
explaining the rationale or logic on which those changes were made. The
BBC and S4C have historically been classed as PCs until they were reclas-
sified into a new category of ‘Public Broadcasting Authorities’ in Public
Bodies 2006. Why this reclassification was necessary, what implications
this change has for governance frameworks, and why other similar bodies,
like the BBC World Service, escaped reclassification remains unclear.
Indeed, a potential danger of the Russian Doll Model is that, taken at
face value, a degree of rationality and coherence may be implied that
simply does not exist in practice. This feeds into the third theme, that
of innate complexity. The structure of the British state is truly labyrinthine
and obtaining basic and reliable information is complicated by the fact
that there is no central nodal point with the strategic capacity to maintain
a comprehensive register or impose some institutional coherency within
and between departments. However, there is yet a final layer of delegated
governance which further enhances our arguments regarding scale, ratio-
nale, and complexity while also posing distinctive questions regarding
the contours of the state, the nature of accountability, and the concept of
depoliticization. It is to this administrative hinterland that we now turn.
4.4.8. The Hinterland

As Figure 4.1 indicates, the hinterland consists of a range of organiza-
tions to which public tasks have been delegated and will commonly be
either sponsored by a ministerial department, spend public money or
have statutory responsibilities. However, these bodies are not generally
considered elements of the state (i.e. they are truly non-governmental)
and may take the form of independent parliamentary bodies, profes-
sional regulatory bodies, independent statutory bodies and inspectorates,
public policy–orientated private bodies, or what are termed ‘floating’ or
‘unrecognized’ bodies. This layer of public governance beyond the state
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Structure
provides an alternative reference point for debates concerning the logic

and extent of delegation because in many cases, it is unclear why some
functions have been located to bodies within the hinterland while similar
tasks can be found within the body of the Russian Doll Model. Indeed,
the hinterland, and particularly the absence of any sense of clarity or
rationale, provides further support for the ‘walking without order’ thesis
while also generating specific questions in relation to state capacity and
the limits of ministerial responsibility, which in themselves create a larger
set of questions regarding politicization and de-politicization (the theme
of Chapter 8).
A: INDEPENDENT PARLIAMENTARY BODIES

In 2007, there were five Independent Parliamentary Bodies (IPBs) or
‘constitutional watchdogs’ as they are sometimes called (Comptroller and
Auditor General, Parliamentary Ombudsman, Parliamentary Commis-
sioner for Standards, Electoral Commission, and Office of the Information
Commissioner). These are formally independent institutional units that
review the actions of government on behalf of (and report to) parlia-
ment rather than the executive and in many ways, the existence and
governance of these bodies provides a microcosm of the broader ‘walking
without order’ thesis presented in this book. Although they have all been
established in response to concerns regarding the ethical propriety of
ministers, MPs and public servants, IPBs vary greatly in terms of pow-
ers, staff, budget, institutional design, and role. There are few common
characteristics and their governance and accountability frameworks have
evolved in a typically mudded and confused manner, a fact that led
Gay to conclude, ‘more coherence is necessary after decades of inchoate
growth’.40
However, the incoherent arbitrariness that is to be found within the
sphere of IPBs is just one facet of an external debate concerning the logic
of delegation. The Electoral Commission and Office of the Information
Commissioner were established as IPBs by the Labour Government on the
basis that the responsibilities of these organizations necessitated severing
the link between ministers and these bodies. But the government has not
been willing to extend the same logic to other delegated public bodies, like
the Public Appointments Commission or Judicial Appointments Commis-
sion, which perform similar tasks. The joint Parliamentary Committee on
Human Rights recommended that the new Equality and Human Rights
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Commission should be an IPB in order to reflect and protect its indepen-

dence from government.
The time has come for the Government to recognise that there are a class of public
bodies which have a distinctive constitutional role, and these need to be designed
with this special status in mind. It is not sufficient to pick the NDPB model off the
shelf and apply it to every new public institution.41
The government rejected this recommendation and has failed to explain

why IPB status has been interpreted as appropriate for some delegated
responsibilities but not others. This inconsistency has been particularly
prominent in light of the government’s view that the most appropriate
organizational model for the future of the House of Lords Appointments
Commission would be an IPB modelled on the Electoral Commission.42
Devolution has introduced a new dimension into arguments concerning
the appropriate distribution of functions between NDPBs and IPBs as,
for example, both the Children’s Commissioners in Scotland and Wales
are IPBs (appointed, funded, and accountable to the Scottish Parliament
and Welsh Assembly, respectively), while in England the Office of the
Children’s Commissioner is an executive NDPB appointed, funded, and
accountable to the Department for Education and Skills.
B: PROFESSIONAL SELF-REGULATORY BODIES

Professional self-regulatory bodies have played a major role in the gov-
ernance of England since the formation of the modern state several
centuries ago. During the nineteenth century, the embryonic British state
conferred regulatory responsibilities on a number of professional associa-
tions (Royal Colleges, Law Society, General Medical Council, Royal Phar-
maceutical Society, etc) through Royal Charters and legislation, for two
principal reasons. First, from a governing perspective delegation in this
manner increased the capacity of the state without ministers becoming
directly responsible. Second, from a political perspective delegation in
this manner insulated certain professional and political elites from the
direct consequences of democratization and perpetuated the existence
of the pre-existing and highly elitist form of ‘club government’. Moran
argues that this historical aspect of the evolution of the British state
forms a key explanatory variable in relation to understanding the ‘hyper-
innovation’ that occurred in the regulatory system towards the end of
the twentieth century.43 In essence, the established framework could not
cope with the demands of an increasingly educated and less-deferential
public, and recent governments have been forced to intervene in order to
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increase levels of transparency, formality, and public accountability. This

occurred towards the end of the twentieth century as both Labour and
Conservative Governments created specialist bodies to regulate certain
professions (e.g. the General Dental Council in 1984, General Teaching
Council 1998, Health Professions Council 1999).
PSRBs are not formally sponsored by departments, receive no pub-
lic monies, and are intended to be completely autonomous from gov-
ernment. Ministers are not expected to accept responsibility for their
activities. However, they clearly have a relationship with departments
and ministers, and are a significant aspect of public governance that is
operationalized through a delegated form. This highlights the relation-
ship between these bodies and the broader political context in which
they operate. The independence of PSRBs is dependant upon maintain-
ing public and political confidence. Where professional self-regulation is
perceived to be inadequate as has been the case, for example, in relation to
the role of the Advertising Standards Agency and Press Complaints Com-
mission (both non-statutory bodies), politicians may be forced to consider
creating new regulatory actors to restore public confidence. Professional
self-regulation may be retained in principle, but the state’s capacity for
indirect control or intervention is enhanced through the introduction of
new forms of institutional delegation with statutory powers. Concerns
regarding the handling of public complaints regarding healthcare work-
ers, solicitors, and charities, for example, culminated in legislation that
established the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (2003), Legal
Services Complaints Commissioner (2004), and Fundraising Standards
Board (2007).44
However, these examples also illustrate the ad hoc nature of British
governance and a number of inconsistencies and anomalies that currently
exist. There is no clear reason why some functions have been delegated
to PSRBs in some fields and to organizations within the Russian Doll
Model for others (the General Teaching Council and General Social Care
Council are both executive NDPBs). The original planning documents
for the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence stated that it would
be classed as a NMD (Layer 1), but it has subsequently been established
without any formal organizational status.45 As a result, although this
organization receives an annual grant of nearly £3 million from the
Department for Health and resembles several other Layer 3 and 4 bodies,
it exists beyond the scope of the public appointments framework and
is not listed in Public Bodies. The main explanation for this is political:
it was established when ministers and officials had just completed the
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reconfiguration of arm’s-length bodies in the department and were ‘intent

on keeping the body count down’.46 It is also (thirdly) unclear why some
PSRBs which had existed for some time within the hinterland without
any concerns regarding their efficacy have recently been reclassified as
layers of the state. In 2005, the Architects Registration Board (Architects
Act 1997) and the General Teaching Council for England (Teaching and
Higher Education Act 1998) were both reclassified as PCs and as a result
brought within the fold of the various public governance frameworks.
But why these two organizations in particular were reclassified as opposed
to any other similar PSRB remains unclear, as is why the Fundraising
Standards Board appears unique in being established as a Community
Interest Company (Layer 7).
Finally, the procedure for making appointments to PSRBs is an area that
has become increasingly confused in recent years. Although there is no
rationale for the distribution of responsibilities, lay appointments to some
PSRBs are made by ministers on behalf of the Privy Council, while other
bodies, such as the Law Society, appoint their own. In April 2005, health
ministers delegated their appointment responsibilities for eight PSRBs and
the CHRE to the NHS Appointments Commission.47 This represents a
further example of ‘incoherent arbitrariness’ as no explanation has been
offered about why such a measure is appropriate in the health sector but
not in others (an issue we return to in Chapter 7).
C: INDEPENDENT STATUTORY BODIES

There are 23 independent statutory bodies (ISBs) with executive and
regulatory responsibilities currently operating in Britain with a combined
annual budget of £42 million and a total of 450 staff. The ISBs range from
small independent offices (Legal Services Complaints Commissioner, Life
Sentences Reviewer, Arbiter for PPPs, Intelligence Services Commissioner,
Interception of Communications Commissioner, etc.) that employ very
few staff to larger bodies employing over fifty staff and with budgets of
several million pounds (the five HM inspectorates [Prisons, Police, Proba-
tion, Court Administration, Crown Prosecution Inspectorate], Immigra-
tion Services Commissioner, Social Fund Commissioner, etc.). ISBs enjoy
statutory powers and are not part of government departments but receive
their budget through a departmental vote. The governance characteristics
of this category also reveal a number of anomalies and inconsistencies.
The Office of the Adjudicator for Higher Education, for example, is an
ISB and yet the Office of the Independent Complaints Adjudicator for
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OFSTED that fulfils similar regulatory and oversight functions within the
same sector is a non-statutory office.
D: PUBLIC POLICY ORIENTATED PRIVATE COMPANIES

WITH CHARITABLE STATUS
Organizations in this category are generally registered as both private
companies and charities but are so closely tied to a specific element of
government policy and funded to a significant degree by a ministerial
department to the extent that it is possible to question whether they
have not in fact become para-statal bodies and an element of delegated
governance that should be incorporated within official registers. Three
brief examples help develop this argument. Citizens Advice, for example,
is a limited company with charitable status dating back to 1939 that deliv-
ers a number of government services (e.g. National Homelessness Advice
Service) and in recent years, around 80 per cent of its £40 million annual
budget has been government funding. Its hybrid status is also reflected in
the fact that it must produce annually a corporate plan and work plan for
approval by the DTI and must abide by the Treasury rules on NDPBs.
The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust is another limited company
and charity that supports government policy. During the financial year
2006–07, over 65 per cent of its £50 million budget was provided by the
Department for Education and Skills. Civil servants also work in the Trust
on secondment and describe it as a ‘near to government’ organisation.48
Finally, the Basic Skills Agency is also a charity and limited company
that describes itself as an ‘independent arm’s-length organisation’, which
works to deliver the government’s adult literacy policies. Government
grants make up over 90 per cent of its annual budget, and the agency
operates to a governance framework based around departmentally agreed
targets and a number of associated corporate documents in a manner
akin to an executive agency. Other similar bodies include Foundations
(advocates and supports the creation of Home Improvement Agencies),
Youth Dance England, National Asylum Support Service, Motability, Care
and Repair, and Groundwork UK. The practical difference between many
of these bodies and those existing within the Russian Doll Model is
very slight and yet they exist largely beyond parliamentary and public
oversight, not least because their existence and role is not made explicit
on any official registers. The Public Accounts Committee has repeatedly
insisted that these bodies are, in effect, arms of their parent departments
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and as such there should be greater official clarity and consistency about
their role, funding, and responsibilities.49
E: INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENTAL BODIES

This category focuses on the significant number of ‘offices independent
of their parent departments’ that have been created since 1997 that
conduct specified functions and are involved in developing and enforcing
government policy throughout Whitehall.50 The interesting feature of
these bodies is they appear very similar to NMDs or executive NDPBs
and yet they have no clear formal organizational status. In May 2002,
the government announced plans to create an independent NHS Bank
that would form part of a wider strategy to reduce political management
in the health service and would be governed by a board of governors
operating at arm’s-length from the Department of Health. It was duly
established in 2003 with around 300 staff and an annual budget in
excess of £100 million and yet it enjoys no clear formal organizational
framework and is not to be found in the Public Bodies Directory or on the
DoH’s arm’s-length bodies website. Departmental officials were unable to
clarify the bank’s status, describing it as ‘a mutual organisation operating
as an unincorporated association’.51 Similarly, the Office of Government
Commerce (OGC) employs 450 staff and has an annual budget in excess
of £43 million, and its corporate literature and website emphasizes its
independence from ministers. From a simple structural and governance
perspective, the OGC would appear to resemble an NMD operating under
the auspices of HMT and yet it lacks any formal organizational status.
Bodies like the Public Diplomacy Board, Office of the E-Envoy, and
those mentioned above share a number of common characteristics that
locate them clearly within the sphere of delegated governance and our
‘walking without order’ thesis. Although they are clearly governmental
in role and position, there is a clear intention and expectation that
they will operate to some degree autonomously from ministers, and the
muddled nature of British governance beyond the core is reflected in their
unclassified status.
F: FLOATING OR UNRECOGNIZED BODIES

This final category includes a number of delegated public bodies that have
been established without any formal organizational classification and
simply exist in a constitutional no-man’s land on the boundaries of the
state. These are the ‘unrecognized’ bodies operating beyond the formal
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classifications, ‘as “other bodies” in departmental corners, no doubt doing

good and necessary work, but not very transparent and accountable’ as
the PASC noted.52 The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a not-
for-profit company established in 1912 by the film industry (originally as
the British Board of Film Censors), to implement a uniform classification
system to guide cinema audiences about the content and suitability of
films. It has no formal powers in relation to films shown in cinemas,
and local councils may overrule the board’s classification. However, the
state effectively exploited the capacity of the BBFC with the 1984 Video
Recordings Act that empowered the BBFC with statutory powers to regu-
late videos. The BBFC is therefore a curious hybrid with a non-statutory
role in relation to films shown in cinemas, but statutory powers in relation
to films for home viewing.
Other bodies within this category do not enjoy this historical pedi-
gree and it is sufficient here to highlight four examples. The Social
Care Institute for Excellence was created by the government in 2001 to
improve social care services and is funded through a grant-in-aid from the
Department of Health. The Energy Savings Trust and Carbon Trust have
a combined annual income of £150 million (predominantly government
funding) and were established by ministers in 1993 and 2001, respectively,
to promote renewable energy and reduce CO2 emissions at a distance from
ministers. Finally, the Activity Centres Act 1995 created the Adventure
Activities Licensing Authority which describes itself as an ‘independent
cross-departmental public authority, funded by the Department for Edu-
cation and Skills’. All four of these bodies share three basic characteristics:
(1) they operate with a very clear departmental sponsorship; (2) they
spend public money; and (3) they fulfil public tasks. However, although
they are very similar in form and function to bodies in Layers 3 and 4,
none of them posses a formal organizational classification and therefore
will not be found in the Public Bodies directory. They exist ‘offstage’.
This effectively hides the true scale of delegated governance while also
exacerbating concerns regarding fragmentation, complexity, and effective
scrutiny.
The hinterland is a complex administrative terrain. Ad hoc pragmatic
adaptation may have created a dense landscape, but it has provided
few maps and even fewer topographical statements with which we can
understand how specific functions came to be located in certain institu-
tional forms. This feeds into the broader argument of this book regarding
the democratic and administrative consequences of delegation. Although
compiling a list of the public bodies that exist in relation to each of
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the layers of the Russian Doll Model is extremely difficult, such a task
becomes all but impossible in relation to the hinterland. This raises two
critical issues about structure and capacity. Structurally, the hinterland
contains organizations that are in effect layers of the state but oper-
ate beyond the governance frameworks that are intended to deliver a
degree of transparency and accountability. This feeds into a concern
regarding the capacity of the core executive to orchestrate, regulate, or
even monitor the creation of public bodies by departments. The flexi-
bility delivered by the British political tradition’s indifference to theory
and planning in relation to the state can become highly problematic in
the absence of a strong strategic capacity at the centre. But despite the
Cabinet Office’s plea that ‘department ministers must not seek to take
advantage of this flexibility by seeking to avoid classification of bodies
within existing classifications’, it is clear from the above that this advice
is not always followed.53 However, on its own mapping, institutional
complexity is insufficient to fully understand the nature of many of
the themes and issues surrounding delegated governance which is why
the next section not only reflects on the methodological utility of the
Russian Doll Model, but it also seeks to locate the information generated
by it within the parameters of the three theoretical pillars outlined in
Chapter 2.
4.5. Theory
The main argument of this book is that the British state is evolving in
an increasingly confused and unprincipled manner and that in order to
counter the administrative and democratic consequences of this process,
there is a need to inject a greater degree of clarity and consistency,
in terms of principles, governance, and organizations. This chapter has
supported this line of reasoning by mapping the topography of delegated
governance as it exists in 2007 and in doing so, it has revealed the scale
and extent of delegation and the administrative confusion (bordering on
chaos) that currently exists. Incoherent arbitrariness remains a suitable
epithet for the evolution of British governance in the twenty-first century.
However, the most exhausting challenge confronting those interested in
delegated governance is simply finding out exactly what bodies exist,
why they have been designated as a certain organizational form, and the
principles on which delegation is based. There is no one central repository
of information or ‘directory of governance’ from which reliable data and
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statistics can be drawn. Pools of information are spread across a number

of institutions (e.g. Cabinet Office, Treasury, Partnerships UK, Office of
National Statistics), but the value and reliability of this information is
reduced by the use of different definitions and interpretations by dif-
ferent departments which lead to markedly different classifications and
statistics. This mismatch is exacerbated by the fact that the available data
becomes even scarcer as the focus of analysis shifts towards the outer
boundaries of the state. Even where information is available, it is often
outdated and unreliable. Although these findings replicate those of pre-
vious studies, the contemporary scale and extent of delegation combined
with evidence of the unintended negative consequences of this process
lends weight to arguments favouring reform.
The Russian Doll Model provides a valuable tool with the capacity to
offer both a general overview of the sphere of delegated governance with a
more refined understanding of the interrelationship between component
elements and although it has been developed in the British context, it
could easily be adapted to delayer the various forms of delegation that
exist in a range of countries. It could also be employed in relation to
longitudinal research to trace the evolution of state forms and the impact
of administrative ‘fashions’. This is linked to the fact that the model
allows us to trace ‘quango drift’ as specific functions move from the
centre outwards through a variety of organizational forms.54 The Forensic
Science Service was part of the Home Office until it became an executive
agency in 1991, received trading fund status in 2000, and became a
public corporation in 2005. This notion of drift and the layered quality
of Figure 4.1 also provides a distinctive framework for examining the
nature, extent, and existence of depoliticization. Many functions have
been delegated to bodies located at the margins of the state or in the hin-
terland due to a belief that certain public functions should be conducted
outside the parameters of conventional political frameworks. Mapping
where this ‘fugitive power’ is located on a map of public governance not
only illuminates certain inconsistencies and anomalies regarding func-
tional distribution between departments but also raises complex question
regarding the point (i.e. the layer on Figure 4.1) at which a function
can be interpreted as have being truly ‘depoliticized’. Would the Judicial
Appointments Commission be depoliticized if its status changed from
NDPB to IPB or would this simply be a change in the politicized arena
in which decisions were taken? Are issues actually made any less political
by transferring responsibilities away from ministers or is this process
more accurately described as ‘arena shifting’? Conversely, if ministers
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respond to public concern by abolishing professional self-regulation and

reallocating those responsibilities to a new public body (Layers 3, 4, and
5), should this be interpreted as politicization? Another advantage of
viewing the state as a series of concentric circles is that it allows us to
map out jurisdictional and definitional boundaries which can be set out as
follows:
1. The official (or minimalist) definition of a ‘quango’ refers to just

Layer 4.
2. The maximalist definition of a ‘quango’ includes all the layers plus
the hinterland.
3. Employees in Layers 1 and 2 are civil servants.
4. The Civil Service Commission regulates appointments to Layers 1
and 2.
5. The Commissioner for Public Appointments regulates ministerial
appointments to bodies in Layers 3, 4, and 5 and those bodies in
Layer 7 that are classified as within the public sector.
6. The annual publication Public Bodies contains information on Layers
3, 4, and 5.
7. The Cabinet Office’s guidelines on openness relate to Layers 3, 4,
and 5.
Appreciating the gradation of levels of autonomy from the centre out-

wards also aids understanding in relation to the scope and utility of
accountability frameworks. Different forms of delegated governance oper-
ate within various expectations vis-à-vis the public and parliament, with
the border of the civil service being particularly important. However,
in terms of the autonomy–accountability relationship, the Russian Doll
Model clarifies a number of distinctive features. First, contrary to demo-
cratic theory’s emphasis on ‘auxiliary precautions’ where electoral control
mechanisms are not in place, there is no evidence that the delegation
of functions away from the centre, and therefore ministerial control,
is countered by the intensification of accountability safeguards. If any
correlation between autonomy and accountability exists, it is zero-sum
in nature because the accountability requirements become increasingly
opaque and the legislature’s scrutiny capacity more accentuated as one
moves towards the boundary of the state. However (and second), the
baseline accountability requirement that does unite Layers 1–7, as well as
many of the organizations in the hinterland, is the duty to lay an annual
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report and accounts before parliament. The absence of more stringent

‘hard’ accountability requirements is clearly linked to the logic of dele-
gation which advocates minimizing democratic oversight and safeguards
in order to maximize economic efficiency (i.e. a switch from Scharpf’s
input legitimacy to output legitimacy).55 And yet, this rather ‘thin’ model
of external accountability contrasts sharply with what appears to be a fairly
detailed and sophisticated contractual framework which stipulates the
internal control relationship between all the bodies in Layers 2–5. Although
the basis of this relationship may be non-statutory (Layer 2) or statutory
(Layers 3, 4, 5), the documents form the basis of a clear principal–agent
relationship.
However, at the macro-theoretical level, it is difficult to reconcile
the scale of delegation and the innate complexity uncovered in this
chapter with the centralizing dynamics and relatively simple structures
that form key tenets of the WM. Governance-theoretic positions with
an emphasis on levels of delegation, fuzzy accountability, and the chal-
lenges of steering complex networks arguably provides a narrative and
discourse that would appear a more appropriate and empirically robust
framework of analysis. Figure 4.2 combines the Russian Doll Model with
the data on different organizational forms to provide an overview of
the topography of the British state at the national level. The structural
reality this exposes helps us understand the debate concerning central
strategic capacity (i.e. ‘hollowing out’ and ‘filling in’), which forms a
central element of governance debates. How has the centre of British
government sought to maintain/increase its strategic capacity while at
the same time embracing delegated governance as the primary tool of
governance?
It could be argued that the existence of reliable, up-to-date, and com-
prehensive information sources about the institutional configuration
through which public policy will be implemented would form a basic
requirement of central strategic capacity within the core executive. The
absence of the former may help us understand broader concerns about
the latter; and yet one of the key messages of this chapter is that, despite
numerous warnings and recommendations to the contrary, the issue of
delegation and how to manage the obvious consequences of this process
have never been explicitly addressed by the political and administrative
elite. Not only is obtaining information difficult, but there is also evi-
dence that departments commonly fail to follow central guidance and
instructions. The joint Treasury/Cabinet Office review of public bodies
in 2002 discovered that although some departments followed the official
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Unknown
23
199
12
75
29
∗∗
Layer:
∗Core Executive
∗∗Ministerial Departments
Non-Ministerial Departments 29
Executive Agencies 75
Special Health Authorities 12
Executive NDPBs 199
Public Corporations 23
Central Bank Institutions 1
Public-Private Partnerships Unknown
Figure 4.2. From Russian Doll to Spider’s Web
procedures, ‘others appear to be less diligent in following the guidelines

that are available’.56 The core executive lacks the incentives and sanc-
tions necessary to maintain a clear ‘meta-governance’ framework in terms
of the capacity to identify major actors and enforce the rules of the
game.
Figure 4.2 therefore helps us understand the contemporary tensions and
anomalies that exist in relation to pressures on the WM. As more and
more functions have moved from the centre out towards the periphery of
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the state, it has become more difficult for the convention of ministerial
responsibility to explain how this process could be accommodated within
a democratic framework which focuses on the core. In light of the scale
and complexity of delegation, it could be suggested that the constitu-
tional malleability of the convention has been exhausted. This raises two
questions:
1. Why are governments so reluctant to publicly acknowledge the true

extent of delegation?
2. How have governments been able to hide or veil the true extent of
delegation?
The answers to both these questions highlight the continuing importance

of the WM: its role and influence exists in the realm of ideas and tradition.
Governments are reluctant to acknowledge the true extent of delegation
because to do so would risk stimulating and strengthening demands for
the design and introduction of new forms of scrutiny and oversight over
which the executive might have less control. The great benefit of the con-
vention of ministerial responsibility is that it legitimates the executive’s
right to control the flow of information and witnesses to the legislature.
Proposals that seek to institute a direct relationship between parliament
and the administration are thereby defined as ‘unconstitutional’. Few
incentives exist for an incumbent government to amend this system,
but publishing a comprehensive digest of governance which revealed the
extent of delegation may foster and environment in which reform became
unavoidable. In explaining how governments have been able to conceal
the true extent of delegation, the WM is once again central. By focusing
on ministerial departments, it distracts attention from the broader sweep
of delegated governance while also suggesting that where delegation is
employed, a minister is always accountable to parliament. It therefore pro-
vides a political comfort blanket which plays down the degree to which
the state has evolved away from the much simpler nineteenth-century
structures around which our democratic frameworks were designed.
The model also perpetuates an elitist culture in which there is lit-
tle emphasis on public knowledge or participation combined with a
practical desire to maintain a degree of proportionality in relation to
accountability.
And yet, the scale and extent of delegation can no longer be accom-
modated beneath the veil of the WM. Sir Christopher Foster’s British
Government in Crisis (2005) and the Rowntree Trust-funded Power Report
(2006) both focused attention on the administrative and democratic
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consequences of delegation. The conclusion of the joint Treasury/Cabinet

Office Report in 2002 that some delegated public bodies have effectively
achieved ‘orphan status’ from their parent department does at least point
towards the need for the introduction of clearer and more transparent
governance frameworks and the need to be explicit about the principles
underlying delegation, a point recognized by the Lords’ Public Service
Committee,
Given the very large number and variety of public bodies which have come
into existence, we recommend that there should be a review to establish some
clear, easily understood common principles to guide future developments in this
field.57
Figure 4.2 reveals much about the current distribution of power, the
nature of delegation, and the challenges of managing arm’s-length rela-
tionships which poses distinct questions for PAT from a number of per-
spectives. If we take the issue of singularity (see Table 2.5) as an issue,
Figure 4.2 illustrates the existence of multiple principals and numerous
agents. It also reveals the existence of ‘double-delegation’ where public
bodies spawn their own arm’s-length bodies (e.g. the Food Standards
Agency’s Meat Hygiene Service) enter into contracts with private sector
providers for certain services (e.g. the Quality Assurance Agency’s rela-
tionship with a number of exam boards) and PPPs establish their own
secondary PPPs (Partnerships UK created Partnerships for Health), thereby
raising questions about the degree to which ministers remain ‘intelligent
customers’ and how they avoid creating significant agency shadowing
bureaucracies. Figure 4.2 also alerts us to the dangers of tunnel vision and
the challenge of steering complex networks in order to fulfil ‘joined-up’
or inter-organizational objectives. PAT sharpens our awareness of these
issues while also complementing the broader governance narrative with
its emphasis on complexity and unintended consequences. Overall, this
chapter has revealed the extent and complexity of delegated governance
in Britain. It has provided a model that offers a sharper and more refined
analysis of the dense institutional terrain that political actors must nego-
tiate while also providing a framework within which debates regarding
certain concepts and the nature of proportionality can be located. In order
to develop these issues and further understand the politics of delegated
governance, the next chapter examines the logic or assumptions underly-
ing delegation.
134
Structure
Notes
1. Johnson (1979) op. cit., p. 393.

2. Better Regulation Task Force, Independent Regulators (London: Cabinet Office,
2003), p. 5.
3. Greaves, H. R., Civil Service in the Changing State (London, 1947); Wade, E.
and Phillips, G., Constitutional Law (London: Longmans, 1946); Chester, D.
and Willson, F., The Organization of British Central Government 1914–1956
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1957); Mackenzie, W. J. M., Hague, D., and Barker,
A. (eds.), Public Policy and Private Interests (London: Macmillan, 1975).
4. PRO T222/62, MGO (61) (3).
5. Wilding, R., ‘A Triangular Affair: Quangos, Ministers and MPs’, in A. Barker
(ed.), Quangos in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 34.
6. Friedman (1951) op. cit.; Street, A. and Griffith, J. A. G., Principles of Admin-
istrative Law (London: Pitman, 1952), pp. 271–5.
7. Hood, C., Dunsire, A., and Thompson, S., ‘So You Think You Know What
Government Departments Are . . . ?’, Public Administration Bulletin, 27 (1978),
20–32.
8. Dunleavy, P., ‘The Architecture of the British State, Part I: Framework for
Analysis’, Public Administration, 67 (1989), 249–75; Dunleavy, P., ‘The Archi-
tecture of the British State, Part II: Empirical Findings’, Public Administration,
67 (1989), 391–417; Pollitt, C., Manipulating the Machine (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1984); Jordan, G., The British Administrative System: Principles versus
Practice (London: Routledge, 1994); Hood, C. and Dunsire, A., Bureaumet-
rics (Farnborough: Gower, 1981); Hogwood, B., ‘The Growth of Quangos:
Evidence and Explanations’, in E. Ridley and D. Wilson (eds.), The Quango
Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
9. McLean, I., Clifford, C. and McMillan, A., ‘The Organization of Central
Government Departments: A History, 1964–1992’, in R. A. W. Rhodes (ed.),
Transforming British Government (vol. 1) (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000),
p. 148.
10. Chester (1979) op. cit., p. 52.
11. Hogwood (1995) op. cit., p. 209.
12. Ibid.
13. Gallie, W., ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 56 (1955), 157–97.
14. The output of the Carnegie Conference was published in three volumes
as Smith, B. and Hague, D., The Dilemma of Accountability in Modern Gov-
ernment: Independence versus Control (London: Macmillan, 1971); Smith, B.,
The New Political Economy: The Public Use of the Private Sector (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1975); and Mackenzie, Hague and Barker, Public Policy and Private
Interests.
135
Structure
15. Barker, A. (ed.), Quangos in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 220; Parry,
R., ‘Quangos and the Structure of the Public Sector in Scotland’, Scottish
Affairs, 29 (1999), 12.
16. Weir, S. and Hall, W., Extra-Governmental Organisations in the UK and their
Accountability (London: Charter 88, 1994).
17. ONS, Sector Classification for the National Accounts (2007).
18. See ONS, National Accounts Sector Classification of Network Rail (2004), Ref.
2001–22.
19. Hogwood, B. W., The Tartan Fringe: Quangos and Other Assorted Animals
in Scotland (Centre for the Study of Public Policy, Glasgow: University of
Strathclyde, 1979).
20. Hood and Dunsire (1981) op. cit., p. 65.
21. Dunleavy (1989) op. cit., p. 251.
22. See HL 55 (1997–98) op. cit., para 158.
23. Taylor, A., ‘Arm’s-Length but Hands on’, Public Administration, 75 (1997),
441–66.
24. HC 506 DCMS and Its Quangos, Sixth Report by the Select Committee on
Culture, Media and Sport, Session 1998–99, para 9; DCMS, A New Approach
to Investment in Culture (1998).
25. The Times, 4 January 2006.
26. Central Office of Information, National Savings and Investments, Office for
National Statistics, Office of HM Paymaster General, Ordnance Survey, and
Royal Mint.
27. The Treasury defines the Crown Estate as a ‘self-financing corporation’, and
its literature describes it as ‘a related body, reporting to the Chancellor’.
Ascribing the organization with NMD status veils this complexity but has
the benefit of allowing the Crown Estate to have its own Accounting Officer
and Vote.
28. Cabinet Office, Classification of Public Bodies: Guidance for Departments
(2005), Table 4.2.
29. See Cm. 914 The Financing and Accountability of Next Steps Agencies (1998);
HC 525 Improving Service Delivery: The Role of Executive Agencies, Report by
the Comptroller and Auditor General, Session 2002–03.
30. Prime Minister’s Efficiency Unit (1991) Making the Most of Next Steps: The
Management of Ministers’ Departments and their Executive Agencies [The Fraser
Report].
31. Examples include Companies House, Defence Science and Technology Lab-
oratory, Meteorological Office, Patent Office, and the Driving Standards
Agency.
32. HL 55 (1998) op. cit., para 165.
33. NHS Direct, NHS Blood and Transplant, NHS Litigation Authority, NHS
Professionals.
136
Structure
34. These were the Counter Fraud and Management Service, Dental Practice
Board, NHS Logistics Authority, NHS Pensions Agency, and the Prescriptions
Pricing Authority.
35. Cabinet Office (2005) op. cit., p. 4.
36. Other forms of delegation including non-ministerial departments (Forestry
Commission) and public corporations (BBC) may also possess a Royal
Charter.
37. HM Treasury Holding to Account: The Review of Audit and Accountability for
Central Government [the Sharman Report] (2001), p. 12.
38. IPPR Opening It Up: Accountability and Partnerships (London: IPPR, 2004).
39. HL 55 (1998) op. cit., para 159.
40. Gay, O., ‘Time for Coherence: Parliament and the Constitutional Watch-
dogs’, in P. Giddings (ed.), Future of Parliament (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
2005), p. 159.
41. HL 156/HC 998 Commission for Equality and Human Rights: Government’s
White Paper, Session 2003–04, para 45.
42. See HC 165, Government by Appointment, Fourth Report of the Public Admin-
istration Select Committee, Session 2002–03, para 99; Department for Con-
stitutional Affairs Constitutional Reform: Next Steps for the House of Lords.
Summary of Responses to Consultation (2004).
43. Moran (2003) op. cit.
44. Established from April 2003 and originally called the Council for the Regu-
lation of Healthcare Professionals. See Cm. 4818 (2000) NHS Plan.
45. Department of Health, Modernising Regulation in the Health Professions (2001),
p. 9.
46. Private Information.
47. General Dental Council, General Chiropractic Council, General Medical
Council, General Optical Council, General Osteopathy Council, Health Pro-
fessions Council, Nursing and Midwifery Council, and the Royal Pharma-
ceutical Society.
48. Departmental Correspondence, 21 July 2003.
49. See, for example, HC 158 The Department of the Environment, Transport and
Regions: Grants to Voluntary Bodies, Fourteenth Report, Session 1998–99.
50. Cabinet Office/HM Treasury (2002) op. cit., p. 15.
51. Correspondence with the author, 20 November 2003.
52. HC 165 (2002–03) op. cit., para 36.
53. Cabinet Office (2005) op. cit., para 8.2.
54. Greve, C., Flinders, M., and Van Thiel, S., ‘Quangos—What’s in a Name?’,
Governance, 12 (1999), 129–47.
55. Scharpf (1999) op. cit.
56. Cabinet Office/HM Treasury (2002) op. cit., para 8.3.
57. HL 55 (1998) op. cit., para 170.
137
Part II
Themes
5
Internal Control
with Matthew Denton
Successive British Governments, especially those that take office

intending large changes, have come to believe that their efforts have
been frustrated by the system. The Prime Minister takes the bridge
and pulls. From below comes a grinding of gears—and nothing much
happens.1
Delegation involves the creation of a complex relationship between the

principal and agent that operates at a number of levels and through
a variety of processes. A critical element of this relationship is focused
on the need to achieve an acceptable balance between independence
(for the agent) and control (for the principal). However, understanding
the internal-control relationships between ministerial departments and
delegated public bodies has not been the topic of sustained or detailed
research in the British context. T1’s (see Table 1.3 above) overriding
concern with the issues of accountability and patronage rather than the
less glamorous but equally important topic of principal–agent control has
marginalized research on the internal dynamics of modern governance.
As the original Next Steps Project Manager, Sir Peter Kemp, stressed, ‘much
more important than accountability is the relationship between purchaser
and provider—they [departments] need to be intelligent customers but
there is still a backlog of thinking to be done within departments.’2
This oversight is made even more curious given the fact that most of
the incidents and problems which attract parliamentary attention are
the accumulated result of tensions, or the complete breakdown, of the
internal governance relationship between principal and agent. Shifting
the focus of research, or at least balancing the analysis of external dimen-
sions with a consideration of the internal autonomy-control relationship,
141
Internal Control
will contribute to our understanding of the complexity of modern

governance.
In line with the wider ‘walking without order’ thesis, this chapter con-
tends that the British political system has failed to pay sufficient attention
to the skills and procedures required to operationalize devolved manage-
ment within a political context. We argue that Pollitt’s ‘poor parenting
model’ is therefore a suitable epithet for the control of delegated public
bodies as most organizations enjoy very high levels of independence—
bordering on the ‘orphan status’ found by the official review of the agency
model in 2002—which can be suddenly curtailed should the service being
implemented suddenly become politically salient. As part of this argu-
ment, we suggest that the nature of internal-control relationships is ad
hoc, unprincipled, and asymmetrical. We show this through a historical
analysis of internal-control issues and through an examination of the
main instruments and procedures governing the relationship. This reveals
the importance of informal control mechanisms and interpersonal rela-
tionships above the formal/contractual relationship.
In the first section, we examine the arm’s-length principle and tease
apart the concepts of autonomy and control into their component parts
in order to achieve a more sophisticated account of internal-control
relationships. This leads to a historical analysis of key official reports
and reviews of internal-control relationships in the second section. An
important feature of this historical perspective is that a pattern of com-
mon issues and themes is evident and these, in different ways, underpin
the incoherent arbitrariness that we have sought to demonstrate in each
chapter. The third section explores the day-to-day structures and processes
through which ministers and departmental officials seek to steer their
sponsored public bodies, which leads into a discussion of how some
departments have in recent years sought to strengthen and augment their
oversight and control capacity. In the final section, we reflect on the find-
ings and arguments of this chapter through the theoretical perspectives
outlined above and notably through the lens of principal–agent theory.
5.1. Control and the Arm’s-Length Principle
The notion of control with regard to delegated governance is inextricably

linked with the arm’s-length principal. This takes the form of a principal–
agent relationship in which the latter enjoys a degree of operational
autonomy according to the extent of delegation (i.e. the length of the
142
Internal Control
arm). Although the reasons for delegating functions to public bodies are
numerous, the specific nature and implementation of the arm’s-length
principle has never been specified or officially defined in any detail. Taylor
notes,
The arm’s length principle came under considerable strain because it was never
defined. Ministers restated their commitment to it but the loose and unstructured
organizational, financial and political relationships meant government concern
about value-for-money and policy delivery, coupled with a determination to shift
implementation closer to the ‘market’, inevitably disrupted existing relationships.3
In this sense, the arm’s-length principle has been adopted across govern-
ment and with extra zeal in recent decades but in a manner devoid of
any broad guiding principles or statement of how devolved management
can be reconciled with the centralizing logic of ministerial responsibility.
What is clear from the views of former ministers and those who have run
public bodies is that misinterpretation is common as the principal and
agent hold different views over both the degree of autonomy delegation
is intended to achieve and the legitimate role of ministers.4 However,
in analytical and methodological terms, Bouckaert and Peters are correct
to note that ‘perhaps the most fundamental problem in the literature is
that the participants are often less than clear about what is meant by
autonomy’.5 Therefore, in order to understand internal-control relation-
ships, it is necessary to disaggregate the concepts of autonomy and con-
trol, and it is in this regard that the work of Verhoest and his colleagues is
valuable.6 Verhoest synthesizes the wider literature in order to distinguish
six dimensions or forms of autonomy and suggests that these are inversely
related to different dimensions of the concept of control (see Table 5.1).
This taxonomy is helpful for a number of reasons but not least because
distinguishing between different forms of autonomy supports our argu-
ments about different levels of degrees of autonomy and the existence of
a state structure that can be subdivided into component layers. Indeed,
the spectrum of autonomy that is represented by the layers of the Russian
Doll Model (Figure 4.1) matches the specific characteristics set out in
Table 5.1. In financial terms, for example, the degree of self-funding,
and thereby financial autonomy, increases towards the outer edges of
the model. Similarly, the legal and structural characteristics of NDPBs and
public corporations theoretically endow them with a longer arm’s-length
than non-ministerial departments of agencies. Table 5.1 also provides us
with a sophisticated account of the range of control mechanisms that are
available to ministers and departmental officials, and this disaggregation
143
144 Table 5.1. Six dimensions of autonomy and control
Internal Control
Dimensions of agent autonomy Dimensions of principal control
1. Managerial
The extent to which public bodies have some decision-making competencies Ex ante control on inputs by rules and ex ante approval of
delegated from the centre concerning the choice and use of inputs or decisions or involvement in decisions concerning
resources. management of financial, human, and organizational
resources.
2. Policy
The extent to which the agency itself can take ultimate decisions about the Ex ante control on processes or performance control by
(sub)processes and procedures it has to conduct to produce the externally specifying ex ante rules, standards, and norms concerning
prescribed good or services; the policy instruments used to implement the processes; policy instruments; and outputs.
externally set policy and the quantity and quality of the goods or services to be
produced; and the targets and societal objectives and outcomes to be reached
by the involved policy.
3. Structural
The extent to which the agency head is appointed and accountable to Control by influencing the agencies’ decisions through
government or to a supervisory board; the extent to which the members of the hierarchical and accountability lines towards the agency head
supervisory board represent the government or other parties; and the extent to or through the supervisory board.
which these members are appointed by government or by these other parties.
4. Financial
The extent to which the organization receives income from budget allocation of Control by influencing the agencies’ decisions by reducing or
the oversight department, transfers from other public authorities, self-raised increasing the level of budget granted to the agency.
taxes, selling products and services, gifts, sponsoring and memberships, or
other sources.
5. Legal
The extent to which the legal status of the agency prevents the government from Control by changing the legal status of the agency or
altering the division of decision-making competencies or makes such changes abolishing it.
difficult.
6. Interventional
The extent to which the agency is free from requirements to report its taken Control by influencing the agencies’ decisions by the means of
decisions and their outcomes ex post to government with respect to fulfilling reporting requirements, evaluation and auditing provisions
certain preset norms; and the extent that the agency is free from possible against externally set goals and norms, and (the threat of)
threats of governmental sanctions or interventions in the case of deviation. sanctions or direct interventions.
Source: Verhoest, K., Peters, G., Bouckaert, G. and Vershuere (2004).

Internal Control
allows us to develop our understanding of the complexity of internal-

control relationships. Autonomy and control, for example, are generally
viewed as antagonistic principles where an increase in one automatically
leads to a reduction in the other. However this zero-sum assumption fails
to take account of the potential for positive-sum relationships that this
more refined approach suggests. By increasing the managerial autonomy
of public bodies, politicians free themselves from the demands of day-
to-day politics and are able to increase their control over strategic policy
making. The notion of trade-offs in relation to specific forms of autonomy
and control also allows us to understand what Van Thiel and Leeuw
have called the ‘performance paradox, in which the principal attempts
to compensate for the reduction in their direct control capacity due to
delegation (i.e. the increase in managerial or policy autonomy) by increas-
ing the density of audit and reporting requirements (i.e. interventional
control).7 The problem with the ‘performance paradox’, as we highlighted
in Chapter 2, is that the flexibility and efficiency improvements that del-
egation was intended to deliver may well be exhausted by the principal’s
interventional control mechanisms.
However, a potential limitation of Table 5.1 is that although it captures
the complexity of internal-control relationships, it does so at a primarily
formal level. By this, we mean that by focusing on the formal modes
and mechanisms of autonomy and control, it risks overlooking the more
informal lines of inter-organizational communication that form a key
aspect of the principal–agent relationship. If we return to the three domi-
nant traditions in the study of delegation (set out in Table 1.3), it could be
suggested that Table 5.1 provides us with a public management perspec-
tive (T2) which underplays the politics of delegation in terms of the pres-
sures on politicians to demonstrate service improvements or challenges
of conducting delegated relationships within an acutely low-trust/high-
blame environment. It is these highly political features of delegation that
encourage ministers not only to intervene in formally delegated areas but
also to do so through informal rather than formal channels.
Indeed, what discussions with senior officials and politicians, as well
as a detailed analysis of specific incidents, reveal is that the arm’s-length
principle requires effective high-trust relationships at the interpersonal
level, and the quintessence of this fact lies in the ‘no surprises rule’ that
permeates official documents and guidance materials. Under this rule, the
sponsoring department and public body agree to notify each other at the
earliest opportunity of any issues, incidents, or announcements that may
adversely affect each other in the future.8 The 2002 review of the agency
145
Internal Control
model, the Alexander Report, underlined the role of informal interper-

sonal relationships and how the trust needed to delegate effectively
requires mutual understanding as well as clear frameworks. It also recog-
nized the political context in which these relationships are managed.
The ‘no surprises rule’ requires chief executives to have sufficient aware-
ness of the realities of government to spot potential problems and to be
able to ensure that ministers are sufficiently aware of emerging issues.
Evidence suggests that the biggest single problem for many chief execu-
tives in the area of governance and accountability is the lack of ability to
involve the minister in the activities of the agency until a crisis blows up.9
The role of interpersonal relationships and the failure of formal
processes and mechanisms are demonstrated by the problems encoun-
tered by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
in managing its relationship with the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) in
2006. The Single Payment Scheme (SPS) for agricultural subsidies was
intended to simplify the previous system that had involved eleven differ-
ent subsidies. Ministers had requested that the RPA implement the new
scheme as early as possible but by the time the new payments were due
to begin in early 2006, it was clear that the agency had overestimated
its capacity to deliver change. Consequently, large number of farmers did
not receive their payments and in March the Chief Executive was sus-
pended. The select committee enquiry uncovered a complex and blurred
internal-governance relationship in which the agency chief executive had
repeatedly informed DEFRA’s permanent secretary and ministers that the
scheme, although high risk, was deliverable. Faced with an information
asymmetry, the department had little option but to monitor and trust
the agency’s management until it became obvious that a major incident
was about to occur.10 A breakdown in internal relationships led to blame-
games in which the chief executive blamed ministers for setting unre-
alistic deadlines, while ministers and departmental officials sought to
shift the focus of attention back on to the management of the agency
and the repeated assurances received by the department that targets were
attainable.
However, a critical element of this case for our focus on internal-control
relationships was the failure to clarify the policy-operations dichotomy on
which delegation is based. This is reflected in the complex arrangements
surrounding the implementation of the SPS and which resonates with
the ‘problem of many hands’ (Chapter 6). The RPA’s chief executive (and
accounting officer) was not the sole ‘senior responsible owner’ of the
SPS project but in fact shared this responsibility with DEFRA’s Director
146
Internal Control
General for Sustaining Farming, Food and Fisheries. In addition, there

were two governance boards involved in monitoring the implementa-
tion process: the Common Agricultural Reform Implementation Board
(CAPRI) and the Executive Review Group (ERG) chaired by the Permanent
Secretary. According to the RPA’s chief executive, this dense agency–
department nexus undermined his capacity to focus on driving through
reform,
If I was an arm’s length agency where I was the Accounting Officer and senior
responsible owner I would not expect that level of contribution from the Depart-
ment. . . . I could expect an oversight, a board every quarter or whatever. We were
having these meetings almost weekly with Director Generals and the Permanent
Secretary and decisions were being taken on a regular basis by CAPRI/ERG. Papers
were being escalated to Ministers. . . . If you want to hold somebody responsible
you let them get on with it and you supervise it.11
The case of problems with the governance of the RPA provides an insight
into the dilemmas and challenges of steering at a distance. And yet, many
of the issues and themes raised in this country are not new but repre-
sent the latest incarnation of long-standing internal-control relationship
problems which in their own way relate back to the informal, ad hoc,
and arbitrary nature of the British political tradition as it relates to the
machinery of governance. The next section develops this point by pro-
viding a historical account of attempts to balance autonomy and control.
5.2. Perennial Issues
This section reviews four official reports on the internal-control relation-

ships between departments and delegated public bodies that have been
published since 1990. The aim being to identify a number of consistent
themes and issues with the internal governance arrangements and then
relate these issues to the arguments we set out at the beginning of this
chapter concerning a failure to develop the skills and procedures required
to operationalize devolved management within a political context.
5.2.1. The Fraser Report

On 17 September 1990, Sir Angus Fraser was asked by the then Prime
Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to look at the relationship between executive
agencies and departments. The role of the review was not to question
147
Internal Control
the principle of devolved management or delegation but to identify

examples of ‘best practice’, and the timing of the report was planned to
coincide with the three-year review of the earliest executive agencies. The
final report was published in May 1991 and emphasized how the arm’s-
length principle had to balance the respective interests and responsibili-
ties of a range of actors. The focus was on the Treasury’s responsibility for
public service expenditure, departmental ministers’ responsibility for spe-
cific services and functions, and the public body’s belief ‘that they are enti-
tled to expect that they will have the power to act in accordance with their
judgement without unwarranted interference from outside the agency’.12
The report, however, argued that the current internal governance rela-
tionships were generally unsatisfactory. Framework documents, the key
quasi-contractual documents between department and public body, were
frequently unclear about who was responsible for specific issues and this
often created tensions which led to sub-optimal performance levels. The
Fraser Report emphasized that delegated public bodies often encountered
problems making contact with appropriate departmental officials and
that they lacked any formal or explicit gateway into the department. It
also argued that chief executives were unnecessarily restricted on issues
of management, recruitment, and resources by the existing Civil Service
Order in Council and that the role, organization, and size of sponsoring
departments needed to be re-evaluated as a consequence of widespread
agencification.
Overall, the Fraser Report did not have a major impact, largely because
it was widely seen as not enjoying the support of the Prime Minister, but it
did lead to a number of reforms that were designed to clarify and facilitate
principal–agent relationships. Specifically, every agency being assigned a
senior departmental contact—what became known as the Fraser Figure—
as their main and regular point of contact with the department and
measures to increase the managerial flexibility of chief executives. Beyond
these reforms, the Fraser Report is notable for pinpointing a number of
issues and problems that would be re-emphasized and developed in later
official reports.
5.2.2. The Trosa Report

In 1993, HM Treasury and the Office of Public Service and Science
appointed Sylvie Trosa who was on secondment from the French civil
service to lead an enquiry with the following terms of reference, ‘To
consider, in the light of the Government’s response to the Fraser Report,
148
Internal Control
current Departmental arrangements for overseeing the management of

their executive agencies.’ This included ‘the organisational arrangements
for assisting ministers to exercise their strategic ownership role’ and ‘the
degree of personal involvement by Ministers’.13 The Trosa Report was
published in March 1994 and echoed several of the findings of the Fraser
Report but did so in a far more stark and urgent manner. There was a
failure, the Report suggested, on the part of both agencies and depart-
ments to understand their roles and responsibilities. Agencies frequently
considered themselves almost separate from departments; and ‘managing
diversity’, in terms of organizational fragmentation and the distribution
of responsibilities, was not a role that departments were either prepared
for or were apparently willing to accept. The report also found that
levels of managerial autonomy had not increased significantly and that
many agencies existed without a ‘Fraser Figure’ and that this remained a
source of frustration. The report highlighted a cultural tension in which
agencies tended to adopt ‘tunnel vision’ and fail to appreciate their role in
light of broader departmental and governmental aims while departmental
officials emphasized intellectual expertise but did not value management
skills or experience. The report concluded,
. . . there exists a considerable cultural gap on both sides with chief executives
often believing that Departments’ management is a bureaucratic obstacle, and
Departments viewing agencies as little fortresses following their aims regardless.
Both viewpoints can be true. In that case, if a Department does not make a
special effort to keep a certain unity, the divergence between Agencies and parent
Departments can only grow.14
5.2.3. The Massey Report

Professor Andrew Massey’s 1995 report, After Next Steps, explored the
relationship between agency chief executives and ministers, and the
roles of the sponsor departments and agencies.15 The central finding of
the Massey Report was that a significant tension still existed between
departments and agencies over their respective roles and jurisdictional
boundaries. Agency chief executives still complained of unnecessary
bureaucratic inflexibility and advocated market-testing and even priva-
tization as a way of increasing autonomy from their parent department.
The report found that framework documents were still failing to clarify
responsibilities and that the departmental culture continued to regard
individuals with operational or managerial skills as lower in status than
those with policy competencies. Like the Trosa Report that preceded it, the
149
Internal Control
Massey Report emphasized the importance of personal relationships and

trust between agency chief executives, ministers, and senior officials and
the importance of informal as well as formal channels of communication.
The report’s recommendations attempted to create processes through
which high-trust relationships and greater understanding of the respec-
tive responsibilities of the sponsoring department and agency could be
developed and centred on increasing personnel-mobility between depart-
ments and agencies in order to ameliorate cultural tensions.
5.2.4. The Alexander Report

Since 1997, an explicit shift has taken place in relation to the thrust of
government policy concerning internal-control relationships. This has
involved a change of emphasis from agency creation to agency manage-
ment. Agency management in this sense relates not solely to improving
the relationship between departments and their sponsored public bodies
and increasing performance levels but also in relation to focusing beyond
formal organizational boundaries in order to provide a focus on broader
outcomes. This shift of emphasis has impacted upon the internal-control
relationship in many ways and has been driven by the introduction of
Public Service Agreements (PSAs) and Service Delivery Agreements (SDAs)
since 2000. Some large public bodies are directly involved in SDAs and
in many other cases, high-level PSAs are cascaded down through ‘key
ministerial targets’ that are incorporated in framework documents. In
light of these far-reaching and Treasury-controlled attempts to improve
the strategic capacity of departments and the performance of delegated
delivery agents, the government announced a major agency policy review
in March 2001.
This review was chaired by Pam Alexander, former Chief Executive of
English Heritage, and reported in July 2002. Its final report—Better Gov-
ernment Services: Executive Agencies in the Twenty-First Century—contained
stark conclusions, especially in light of the government’s attempts to
nurture ‘joined-up’ government, and many of the themes and issues
raised were by no means new. It concluded that the relationships between
departments and agencies were still problematic: ‘Most agencies and
departments consider the situation to be unsatisfactory, with little clarity
of roles.’16 In their joint foreword, the Minister for the Cabinet Office
and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury complained that ‘. . . in too
many cases their [agencies’] work has become disconnected from the
increasingly well-defined aims of their Ministers’. The report suggested
150
Internal Control
that some agencies existed in a ‘vacuum of governance’ largely beyond

departmental control and oversight to the point that they had become
‘orphan activities’.
There was a strong view in both departments and agencies that there
were too many targets, many of which focused on internal processes
rather than outputs and outcomes and in so doing reinforced a ‘silo
mentality’. Moreover, agencies complained of being distracted from their
core tasks by repeated requests for data and information from numerous
departments. The report also complained that a high degree of confusion
existed surrounding why some responsibilities had been delegated to
executive agencies and other tasks to quite different organizational forms
and went on to lament the lack of a ‘clear rationale’ for this situation.17
A ‘new revolution’ within departments was called for by the report.
This would involve a reduction in the number of targets, greater clarity
regarding roles, the abolition of quinquennial reviews, and departments
maintaining a clearer view of their respective sphere of delegated gover-
nance through regular ‘landscape’ and ‘end-to-end’ reviews.
The aim of this section has not been to examine any of the four
reports in great detail but simply to tease out the core themes and issues
in order to identify perennial problems in the internal-control relation-
ship between departments and public bodies. An exercise such as this
is simplified by the existence of clear areas of consistency and overlap
between each and all of the reports, five of which deserve brief comment.
First, the relationship between departments and public bodies has always
tended to be problematic and unsatisfactory, which reflects the challenges
of clarifying respective roles and responsibilities within principal–agent
relationships. In this regard, the Alexander Report uncovered a ‘confused
mixture of arrangements for creating a strong and clear link between a
department’s strategic direction and an agency and the chief executive’s
responsibility for delivery’.18 This confused mixture of arrangements flows
into the second theme—nodality. The Fraser Report recommended a clear
and definitive link-person of a senior level to facilitate and negotiate
principal–agent relations. And yet as the Trosa, Massey, and Alexan-
der Reports all found, in many cases public bodies operate without an
assigned Fraser Figure.19 This failure to prioritize formal mechanisms and
procedures for achieving clarity in the day-to-day management of dele-
gated relationships reflects the third issue—culture. All the reports in their
own ways emphasized how the culture of senior departmental officials
is fixated with policymaking and ministerial interaction. Management
or operational experience tends to be viewed as exhibiting second-class
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qualities. This inbuilt cultural bias delivers real-world impacts in terms of

deterring officials from taking secondments within public bodies or devel-
oping the skills necessary to manage inter-organizational collaboration or
negotiations (a skills-deficit that the creation of the National School of
Government in 2005 was designed to address).
This cultural dynamic plus the challenges of demarcating responsibil-
ities in a clear but flexible manner underpins the importance of infor-
mal and interpersonal relationships (the fourth common theme raised
in each of the reports). It is for this reason that issues such as access
to ministers, clear two-way lines of communication, and consultative
processes for the design and agreement of agency targets are highlighted
in each of the reports as key issues. Not only are these issues vital for the
effective operation of the ‘no surprises rule’ but also where interpersonal
relationships break down participants are likely to fall back on the formal
agreements that are unlikely to clarify responsibilities and, in the absence
of constructive deliberations, may even exacerbate tensions or differences
of interpretation.
The final (fifth) issue that permeates each of the reports but is most
explicitly brought to the fore in the Alexander Report concerns a general
lack of rigour or thoroughness not just in relation to the delegation of
functions but also in relation to the capacity of the core to address the
obvious consequences of this process directly. Governing at a distance
requires new skills and procedures. It also requires clarity and consistency.
And yet, even this short historical account suggests that the core of the
state is either unable or unwilling (possibly both) to respond to criticisms
regarding internal-control relationships that have consistently been made
throughout recent decades. This point clearly resonates with the ‘walking
without order’ thesis set out in this book, but before we seek to explore the
connection between the two in more detail, it is necessary to sketch out
the structures and processes involved in delegation as they exist today.
5.3. Structures and Processes
In this section, we map out the current structures that govern the internal-
control relationship between public bodies and their sponsor depart-
ment. Although the Alexander Report identified ‘confused structures’, we
suggest that there is an identifiably core or idealized framework that is
recommended in official guidance documents and that the confusion that
undoubtedly exists relates to the corruption of this model by different
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departments through either a failure to implement the framework consis-

tently, the addition of arbitrary elements in an inconsistent manner, or
due to the unintended consequences of adopting a private-sector inspired
quasi-contractual approach to governing. In the first part of this section,
we sketch out the core framework before proceeding to examine why this
system frequently becomes opaque in practice.
The official Cabinet Office guidance on the relationship between depart-
ments and their public bodies states that
The relationship between each NDPB and its sponsor department must be clearly
defined in a way which supports the appropriate degree of delegation and indepen-
dence . . . while assuring the accountable minister and department that financial
management arrangements ensure propriety, regularity and value for money, and
that risks will be managed.20
However, the specific details of this relationship will depend upon a num-
ber of factors (degree of independence a body is required to have; whether
it operates within a statutory framework; whether the organization has
a board between the chief executive and the responsible minister, etc.).
Where a public body is founded in legislation or through a Royal Char-
ter, these primary documents may provide the broad parameters of the
intended internal governance relationship but beyond that the practical
day-to-day relationship will be set out in a performance management
document. This is commonly referred to as a ‘management statement and
financial memorandum’ for NDPBs or a ‘framework document’ for execu-
tive agencies. The aim of this document is to set out the responsibilities,
role, and aims of the public body, as well as the financial resources that the
sponsoring department is willing to make available for the organization
to achieve its targets or ‘key performance indicators’.
Once the performance management document has been agreed, the
public body will prepare a three-year corporate plan that conforms to the
Treasury’s guidance on the management of risk and sets out its strategy
for achieving its targets. An annual business plan will then translate the
organization’s strategic approach into a detailed operational plan. These
documents are generally approved by the minister. The performance loop
is then completed through the publication of an annual report and
audited set of accounts in which the public body reports on its outputs
vis-à-vis targets. All of these documents are usually available to the public
through its website, and the responsible minister will use either a parlia-
mentary statement or an answer to a parliamentary question to inform
the legislature that a public body’s report and accounts have recently
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been laid before the House (i.e. placed in the House of Commons Library).
Taken together, the performance management document, corporate plan,
and annual business plan combined with the annual report and accounts
provide the basis of how the internal-control relationship is formally
managed (see Figure 5.1).
In practice, however, this basic structure is both inverted to some degree
due to the nature of resource-dependencies in the principal–agent rela-
tionship and also augmented by the addition of a number of informal and
formal control mechanisms. Delegation is based on the notion that it is
possible to separate policymaking, the domain of ministers and senior
officials, from operational/implementation matters. This distinction gen-
erally frames the division of responsibilities that are set out in the main
performance management document. Maintaining this division of labour
is, however, difficult to achieve in practice and especially within a con-
stitutional context in which the ministers remains personally account-
able to the legislature for all that happens under the auspices of their
department. Most departments manage their relationship, particularly
with the larger public bodies, through a small ‘sponsor branch’ which
is directed by the Senior Departmental Sponsor (who may or may not
also be the Fraser Figure) and is responsible for ensuring that the public
body operates squarely within the parameters and policy framework set
by ministers while also resolving any tensions and issues as they arise.
Ongoing departmental oversight of this nature may be understandable
but it risks blurring the policy–operations dichotomy on which delegation
is based. This is recognized in official guidance:
Naturally this will require the sponsor branch to have some involvement in the
body’s affairs. A judgement needs to be made about how much involvement is
appropriate, and this will depend, amongst other things, on the size and profile of
the body as well as its activities.21
In addition to the role of the sponsor branch or ‘agency-shadowing team’,

the Chief Executives and Chairmen of public bodies will also meet regu-
larly with ministers. The frequency of these meetings varies according to
the size, role, and status of the public body, the standard operating proce-
dures in a department, and the personal management style of a particular
minister. In recent years, for example, the Minister for Schools has held
monthly meetings with the Chief Executive and Chair of the Qualifica-
tions and Curriculum Authority, but in the DCMS, ministers have met
with the Arts Council on a quarterly basis. However, where public bodies
find themselves in the midst of media and/or parliamentary controversy,
154
Three-year spending review Performance feeds back into next cycle
Public Service Agreement Core aim,

Government level
objectives
Departmental Aim and
outcome-
Objective I Objective II Objective III Objective IV Objective V based
targets
Target 2 Approved by
Target 1 Target 3 Target 4 Target 5 Target 6 Target 7 Target 8
PSX
Verified by
Technical Note-how targets will be measured
C&AG
Achievement:
Department
Department Senior Management Group Strategy Spring and

Autumn
Delivery Delivery Delivery Delivery Delivery Delivery Delivery Delivery Reports, PSX
Plan Plan Plan Plan Plan Plan Plan Plan Reviews, HMT
Portal.
Framework
Delegated governance:
Agencies, NDPBs, etc.
document
defines output
targets.
Arm’s Arm’s Arm’s Annual report/
length length length accounts/
Arm’s body Arm’s body Arm’s body Arm’s business plan.
length length length length Internal &
body body body body external audit.
Figure 5.1. Cascading control relationships

Internal Control
meetings with ministers have been known to take on a weekly or daily

frequency.22 The capacity for political salience to override agreed bound-
aries, mechanisms, and processes sensitizes us to the fact that the theory
of principal–agent modelling may become distorted in practice. Contrary
to theory, the principal may become deeply involved in routine oper-
ational decisions to the point that the arm’s-length principle becomes
something of a veil for what in effect is ministerial government. The
inversion of expected relationships may also occur due to the fact that
departments frequently lack the information necessary to set realistic
but stretching targets. As a result, targets are agreed through an infor-
mal process of negotiation in which the public body arguably has the
dominant position for two reasons. First, the agent controls the flow
and presentation of the esoteric operational information that will be
used to design targets. Unless the department has invested significant
agency-shadowing resources in order to create an alternative stream of
information to challenge that provided by the body and maintain the
minister as an ‘intelligent customer’ (which is unlikely), the principal will
be in a weak negotiating position. Second, in a high-blame low-reward
political context, there are few incentives for ministers to challenge the
views of the public body about the parameters of realistic targets because
the political rewards for achieving them will be negligible while the costs
of not achieving them may be significant. The highly partisan political
environment therefore creates a dynamic in favour of ‘soft’ targets, a point
we will develop in more detail in the next chapter.
The danger of Figure 5.1 is therefore that it provides a formal model
of internal-control relationships without reflecting the manner in which
these are affected and in some cases inverted by the more informal
resource-dependencies between actors. This point brings us back to the
dominant traditions in the study of delegation that were examined in
Chapter 1. One of the potential weaknesses of T1 and T2 in epistemolog-
ical and methodological terms is that they focus on formal relationship
risks overlooking the manner in which delegation is operationalized in
practice. It is in this sense that leading scholars within T1 have focused on
legislation laws, rules, budgetary processes, sanctions, and appointments
(i.e. explicit quantifiable variables). In this regard, the ‘rich description’
that has been a hallmark of T3 that is derived from more qualitative
methodologies may provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding
of how formal control mechanisms are interpreted and negotiated by
actors through informal and interpersonal means. The counter to this
argument may well be that T3 has failed to acknowledge the role of
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formal rules in setting the boundaries or parameters in which informal

relationships are then contested, and it is in this vein that Huber and
Shipan note the existence of a strand of literature which exhibits ‘the
almost complete absence of discussion of legislation as an instrument for
controlling bureaucrats’.23
This chapter began by examining the arm’s-length principle and dis-
aggregating the concepts of autonomy and control. It then went on
to explore a number of problems in the internal relationship between
departments and public bodies that have been highlighted in a number
of official reports during the last twenty years. This historical analysis
flowed into the current section that has provided an account of the
contemporary manner in which relationships are structured and which
has sought to emphasize the importance of informal as well as formal
modes of control. The overall argument we have sought to substantiate
is that the core executive has for a number of reasons largely failed
to develop the skills and mechanisms needed to manage arm’s-length
relationships. The costs of agency-shadowing combined with information
asymmetries frequently place departments in a weak position. In the final
section, we will examine this issue in more detail under the auspices of the
‘poor parenting model’, but, as the next section will show, it is possible
to identify examples where departments have recognized their position
vis-à-vis delegated governance and have sought to increase their central
steering capacity.
5.4. Reasserting Departmental Capacity
In 2003 and 2004, the Department of Health undertook a fundamental

review of all the public bodies operating under the auspices of the depart-
ment. This review was chaired by the Minister for Reform, Lord Warner,
and involved a detailed review of the role, status, and responsibilities of
a range of executive agencies, special health authorities, and executive
NDPBs (i.e. Layers 2, 3, and 4 of the Russian Doll Model). The introduction
of the review’s final report stated that
. . . the wider network of arm’s-length bodies built up over the years is now too
cumbersome in the context of devolution. To remain relevant, the ALB sector must
reflect the shifting balance of power towards frontline staff and patients. It needs
to be coherent and fit for purpose in this context.24
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The Warner Review was essentially a ‘landscape review’ as recommended

by the Alexander Report of 2002, which led to a streamlining or ‘reconfig-
uration’ of the sphere of delegated governance in the health sector as the
number of public bodies was reduced from thirty-eight to twenty. The
efficiency savings accruing from these reforms were estimated at £500
million (predominantly achieved through an overall staff reduction of
25 per cent). The review did not involve centralization or any decline
in the roles or responsibilities of public bodies but simply the merger
of smaller bodies into larger ones or, in some places, the reclassification
of bodies to remove them from the ‘quango count’ (see Chapter 4). The
critical aspect of the Warner Review, however, lay beyond the structural
modifications it set out for the topography of the state but in its focus
on the core capacity of the department itself. In this regard, the report
was distinctive because, as the Fraser Report of 1990 had first stressed,
it recognized that delegation impacted on departmental capacity and
demanded new skills and procedures. In this regard, the ‘Arm’s-Length
Bodies Oversight Group’, a team that had been established as part of the
Warner Review stated,
A key lesson of the last few years is that the Department needs to raise its game
in the way it relates to and holds ALBs to account if it is to be sure of maximising
their contribution to Government priorities and securing value for money. The
Arm’s-Length Body Review and the implementation work led by the Arm’s-Length
Body Change Programme, in conjunction with Senior Sponsors, is already bringing
about greater scrutiny of boundaries between Arm’s-Length Bodies and a greater
focus on business and financial management of the sector.25
However, the oversight group recognized that departmental sponsor

teams had little real capacity in relation to controlling their public bodies
or independently verifying the information they received. It also recog-
nized that without some capacity to look across the sphere of delegated
governance as a whole, there was a risk of ‘creeping growth’ as had
occurred in the years up to the Warner Review.26 In order to reinforce
and sustain this capacity, the oversight group recommended the creation
of a permanent Arm’s-Length Body Business Support Unit (BSU) within
the department that would have seven core tasks:
1. Keeping control over all arm’s-length body expenditure, headcount,

and performance (to avoid creeping growth and providing a flow of
information to the Departmental Management Board and relevant
subcommittees);
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2. Developing (with sponsors and arm’s-length bodies) and coordinat-

ing a consistent and professional approach to arm’s-length body
business planning and performance oversight across the department;
3. Providing expertise and capacity in business and financial manage-
ment to support senior sponsors in their oversight of arm’s-length
bodies;
4. Ensuring that there is periodic review of the overall shape of the
arm’s-length body sector, including the number of bodies and over-
laps between them;
5. Supporting arm’s-length bodies themselves through provision of
advice and guidance on generic issues, contacts within department,
etc.;
6. Facilitating sharing of best practice with arm’s-length bodies through
links to Department of Health corporate services expertise;
7. Contributing to the Improving the ‘Way We Work’ programme27 .
The BSU was established in 2005 with nine full time staff and an annual
budget of one and a half million pounds. This development can be inter-
preted in a number of ways and also resonates with both our theoretical
perspectives and the central ‘walking without order’ thesis we present in
this book. We said earlier that history does not repeat itself but it often
rhymes. The findings of the Warner Review and particularly its awareness
of the need to bolster the capacity of the core vis-à-vis the periphery are
almost identical to those of the Anderson Committee which had exactly
fifty years earlier warned of the ‘bulk danger’ of gradual but constant
delegation and the need to establish a unit at the centre of government
with the capacity to monitor developments across government, provide a
central repository of knowledge, and disseminate examples of best prac-
tice. These are exactly the tasks that will be fulfilled by the BSU, only
on a departmental level. This, in turn, raises two issues. First, although
the Department of Health oversees a wide range of public bodies, it is by
no means unique. And yet, similar measures have not been implemented
in other departments; a fact which underlines the ad hoc, arbitrary, and
departmentally led nature of delegation-related matters. Second, the cre-
ation of the BSU puts the size and capacity of the Agencies and Public
Bodies Team in the Cabinet Office in to some perspective. This latter unit
was until its recent abolition expected to undertake a cross-governmental
role in monitoring delegation and providing guidance, but it was staffed
by the equivalent of just two and a half full time staff: a unit to oversee
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just one department has nearly four times the staff of the unit charged
with watching over every department.
The BSU in the Department of Health is essentially attempting to deliver
the increased degree of clarity and consistency that is missing elsewhere.
In this sense, it fits perfectly and adds another dimension to the ‘walk-
ing without order’ thesis. Establishing the BSU also dovetails with our
theoretical perspectives and can be identified as an attempt by the core
executive to ‘fill in’ the ‘hollowing out’ or as an attempt to overcome
‘principal capture’ by the agency or the information asymmetries created
by delegation. The next section examines the link between this chapter
and our theoretical pillars in more detail, while also locating the topic of
this chapter within the broader thesis of this book.
5.5. Theory
British political studies has traditionally focused on the topics of account-

ability and patronage to the detriment of our understanding of the
internal-control relationships between public bodies and their sponsor
department(s). In this chapter, we have sought to respond to this fact
by disaggregating the concepts of autonomy and control into their con-
stituent parts and then examining the structures and processes through
which arm’s-length relationships are constituted and managed. In terms
of relating this research to the theoretical pillar outlines in Chapter 2,
it is clear that the language and discourse of PAT has permeated both
this chapter and the official documents we have examined. But before we
reflect on the utility and insights of PAT, it is clear that both the WM and
HI offer great analytical leverage in terms of deepening our appreciation
of the way we understand and conceptualize the British state as well as
identifying the existence of certain norms or values that appear to lock-
in certain assumptions which have real-world effects by preventing or
mitigating against change.
The first section of Chapter 2 examined the central tenets of the WM
and emphasized its importance not just as a descriptive account of how
the British state operated but also as a normative account of how the
British state should operate. It then proceeded to outline how the WM
had been challenged during the final decades of the twentieth century
by governance-theoretic models that aimed to provide a more realistic
account of the structures and process of modern politics. We made a very
specific argument not that one form or model of governance was replacing
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another but that the contemporary situation was more accurately concep-
tualized as involving the evolution of a complex Multi-Level Polity but
within an increasingly frail and eviscerated Westminster Model. As such,
the origins of many of the current challenges, tensions, and anomalies of
British politics lie in the awkward relationship between these two models
or forms of governance (see Table 2.3).
At the macro-political level, this juxtaposition of models provides a
convincing framework in which to locate our research on internal-control
relationships. The WM is built upon the centralizing logic of ministerial
responsibility and the Weberian logic of hierarchical bureaucratic lay-
ers. And yet, the dominant logic of good governance-inspired reform
initiatives from the 1980s onwards have been centrifugal in emphasis,
and which has lauded the development of indirect steering mechanisms
rather than direct control capacities. If we reflect on Table 2.3 in light of
the research outlined in this chapter, it is relatively clear that the char-
acteristics of the multi-level polity more accurately capture the realities
of modern governance. And yet, we are continually drawn back to our
emphasis on the continuing role and power of the WM as a set of ideas
that continue to govern the British political tradition. As such, it is at the
intersection or juncture of the WM and the MLP where these anomalies
are not only most extreme but also most explicit, a point which takes
us back full circle to the balance between (organizational) autonomy and
(ministerial) control. The Fraser Report and Alexander Report, and those
in between, all stress the need for departments to relax their managerial
and financial controls (see Table 5.1) over public bodies but reform of
this nature is prevented by the logic of ministerial responsibility as this
puts a constitutional duty on ministers to stay abreast of everything that
happens under the auspices of their department. In this sense, delegation
is high-risk and politicians seek to mitigate this risk by balancing the
transfer of certain responsibilities (i.e. operational, structural, financial,
legal) against increasing their control capacity in other ways (i.e. man-
agerial and financial). This is exactly the ‘performance paradox’ that Van
Thiel and Leeuw identified in a broader comparative context.
A second dimension of our macro-political theoretical perspective that
can be drawn out of this chapter relates to the ‘hollowing-out’ and
‘filling-in’ debates concerning central strategic capacity. The hub-model
of organizational design in which a small policymaking core sits at the
hub or core of a range of quasi-autonomous delivery or regulatory mech-
anisms is based on the assumption that the hub will possess the necessary
resources to steer at a distance. However, a central theme of official and
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parliamentary reports is a failure by departments not only to develop

the requisite managerial competencies and mechanisms but also a deeper
failure to acknowledge or comprehend why these new skills or tools are
necessary in the context of a delegated state. This makes the Department
of Health’s decision to create a focused Arm’s-Length Bodies Business
Support Unit distinctive, and the Cabinet Office’s decision to abolish
the Agencies and Public Bodies Team perverse. As one hub is ‘filling-
in’, another appears committed to ‘hollowing out’. In terms of internal-
control relationships, the Crown is for the most part hollow.28
Through its emphasis on historical trajectories and sensitivity to the
role of rules, cultures, rituals, and traditions, our second (macro-level) the-
oretical perspective provides a way of crafting an explanation for this sit-
uation. HI emphasizes the constraining influence of previous decisions or
approaches to governing on future policy choices and as such brings with
it a vocabulary that emphasizes path-dependency, critical junctures, sunk
costs, and certain inherent biases against reform. In terms of relating this
theory to the contents of this chapter, the focus of ‘new’ institutionalism
on both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ structures is pertinent. In terms of structures and
institutions (i.e. ‘hard’ institutions), the evolution of the British central
state was heavily conditioned on the notion of departmental autonomy.
Within the broad parameters of collective responsibility, this sought to
maximize the discretion and flexibility of ministers within their own
departments and as a result departments evolved in an arbitrary and ad
hoc manner with little regard for cross-governmental complementarity.
The Cabinet Office, in particular, despite having constitutional respon-
sibility for machinery of government issues, alongside the Treasury, has
never played a dominant or proactive role, and throughout the twentieth
century, its capacity in this area waned as the Machinery of Government
Division was gradually dismantled.
The historical absence of ‘hard’ (i.e. tangible institutional unit) capacity
to monitor and coordinate the sphere of delegated governance across
and within departments is buttressed by ‘soft’ (i.e. cultural or procedural
factors) but no less powerful factors that have prevented or at least dis-
suaded the core executive from developing the skills and resources that
are necessary to operate a hub model of government. The emphasis on
departmental autonomy was directly related to the ‘club government’
culture of the British political elite (discussed in Chapter 3) that eschewed
the need for broad frameworks or clear principles in favour of a confidence
and belief that informal methods of communication combined with the
‘good chaps’ theory of government could be relied upon to structure and
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operate the machinery of government. Senior departmental bureaucrats

in particular were, and to some extent remain, imbued with a culture that
cherishes the skills of a ‘generalist’ and emphasizes the role of officials
in providing policy-advice to ministers above all other facets of their
role. Unlike other countries such as Germany and France, the skills of
specialist bureaucrats and managerial experience are viewed as rather
inferior qualities. Political cultures, like cargo ships, take a long time to
change direction, but it is clear from the official reports reviewed in this
chapter (and a number of external reports) that departments remain ill-
equipped to manage many of the challenges of delegation.
This point leads us directly into our micro-level theoretical perspective,
and it is here that PAT provides arguably the sharpest insights in terms of
deepening our understanding of internal-control relationships. PAT, as we
discussed in Chapter 2, provides an ideal model of devolved management
in which the principal devolves certain powers and responsibilities within
a fiscal package and then monitors how the agent fulfils their duties in
order to prevent ‘agency shirking’ or fraud. Table 2.5 outlined seven com-
mon problems that can frustrate the theoretical simplicity of this model
being achieved in practice. It is sufficient here to draw on just these three
problems in order to demonstrate PAT’s capacity to generate theoretically
informed policy-relevant research. First and foremost, it is clear that the
singularity suggested by PAT in terms of both principals and agents greatly
oversimplifies the realities of modern governance. As Chapter 4 sought to
illustrate, departments oversee vast numbers of delegated public bodies
with differing levels of autonomy (Figure 4.2). At the same time, public
bodies account to a wide range of primary and secondary principals, as
shown in Figure 2.2. The situation is, however, far more complex than
is commonly recognized. Departments themselves are not homogenous
entities but consist of a vast number of divisions and directorates of
varying size and role. In addition to its departmental sponsor team, the
QCA, for example, is frequently in contact with up to twenty divisions
within its parent department.
The challenge for departments (second) in this context is retaining
their minister as an ‘intelligent customer’ within the principal–agent
relationship. And yet, as this chapter, and related research, has suggested,
departments rarely have the resources or information to challenge the
data they receive from public bodies, thereby risking a situation of ‘prin-
cipal capture’ and inverting the whole logic and flow of PAT.29 As the BSU
suggests, this issue has been recognized in some departments but not by
the government as a whole in terms of developing the skills and resources
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necessary to bolster the position of the minister vis-à-vis public bodies.

Moreover, the pattern of deployment in which senior bureaucrats serve
specified periods of two or three years in one post before being rotated
to another position also creates an inbuilt institutional bias against the
development of an ‘institutional memory’.
The notion of strengthening the hub with reference to delegation also
relates to the third theme that was highlighted in successive official and
parliamentary reports—tunnel vision. As the government’s ‘holistic’ or
‘joined-up’ government initiatives have discovered, it is very difficult to
reconcile not only the individualistic and competitive qualities of minis-
terial responsibility but also the focused organizational targets that bind
principals and agents with the prerequisites of cross-government mea-
sures. Performance-related pay plus the high-blame low-credit political
context create an incentives and sanctions framework in which actors are
reluctant to embrace projects that involve risk and actors beyond their
control and instead prefer to focus on discrete organizational targets.
The evidence we have presented in this chapter adds further weight
to our wider ‘walking without order’ thesis by outlining not only an
arbitrary, ad hoc, and unprincipled approach to government but also one
that has arguably failed to adapt, despite admonition and advice from a
range of quarters, to the skill-sets required by delegated governance. It is
also important to note that by focusing on the main layers of the Russian
Doll Model, we have stayed away from the public–private partnerships,
‘unrecognized’ and ‘floating’ bodies, and the broader administrative hin-
terland that we set out in Chapter 4 and by doing this have undoubtedly
understated the nature of internal-control dilemmas as they exist in toto.
However, in terms of framing the overall findings of this chapter, it is
possible to offer two quite different interpretations. The first of these we
call the ‘efficient delegated management’ model and for the second we
adopt Pollitt’s ‘poor parenting’ model.30
The former model seeks to portray the core executive’s rather laissez-
faire approach to internal-control as part of an efficient strategy in which
the costs, in terms of resources, of delegation are kept to a minimum by
the principal only getting involved with the governance of a public body
where an incident has occurred or the responsibilities of the organization
have become politically salient. In these situations, the ministers, and
therefore their officials, assert their constitutional duty to pay close atten-
tion to the public body in order for the minister to be sufficiently abreast
of developments to provide and account to the legislature. In this model,
the existence of ‘orphan status’ is simply a reflection of non-problematic
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arm’s-length management. The problem with this approach, however,

is that long periods of non-intervention can be replaced by close min-
isterial intervention at exactly the point when senior managers in the
organization need the capacity to focus (downwards) on their core tasks
rather than on responding (upwards) to the political needs of ministers. It
is exactly this pattern of governance that is demonstrated by incidents
with the Prison Service, Benefits Agency, RPA and BBC, to name just
a few.
It is for this reason that we prefer the ‘poor parenting’ model as a
more convincing interpretation of principal–agent relationships at the
national level. According to this model, public bodies are hardly steered
at all by their parent departments due to a lack of information, capacity,
and resources and/or motivation on the part of the minister/department.
There are two exceptions to this rule: in terms of internal control or
‘parenting’, public bodies will be more responsive to the minister respon-
sible for public finances, and the relevant departmental minister will
correlate their interest in a public body in relation to political salience.
The introduction of a powerful fiscal framework in the form of Public
Service Agreements by the Treasury since 2000 resonates with the first
exception, while the second complements our argument concerning a
sudden and rapid shortening of the arm in the arm’s-length relationship
when an issue becomes the topic of parliamentary or media attention.
And yet, the existence of multiple principals and agents and concern
regarding the prevalence of blame-games leads us into a consideration of
the topic of scrutiny and accountability. This will be the topic of the next
chapter.
Notes
1. The Economist.
2. Kemp, P., ‘Delivering Public Services’, Annual Lecture to the Centre for
Socio-Legal Studies, University of Sheffield, 12 November 1996.
3. Taylor (1997) op. cit., pp. 451–2.
4. See, for example, Landers, B., ‘Of Ministers, Mandarins and Managers’ in
M. V. Flinders and M. J. Smith (eds.), Quangos, Accountability and Reform
(London: Macmillan, 1998).
5. Bouckaert, G. and Peters, G. (2004) op. cit., p. 23.
6. Verhoest, K., Peters, G., Bouckaert, G., and Vershuere, B., ‘The Study of
Organisational Autonomy: A Conceptual Review’, Public Administration and
Development, 24 (2004), 101–18.
165
Internal Control
7. Van Thiel, S. and Leeuw, F., ‘The Performance Paradox in the Public Sector’,
Public Performance & Management Review, 25/3 (2002), 267–81.
8. See HC 208 The Passport Delays of Summer 1999, Twenty-Fourth Report of
the Public Accounts Committee, Session 1999–2000.
9. HM Treasury (2002), op. cit., p. 24.
10. HC 107-I, The Rural Payments Agency and the implementation of the Single
Payment Scheme, Third Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
11. HC 107-II, The Rural Payments Agency, Q1273.
12. Efficiency Unit, Making the Most of Next Steps: the Management of Ministers’
Departments and their Executive Agencies (London: Efficiency Unit, 1991) [The
Fraser Report].
13. Efficiency Unit, Next Steps: Moving On (London: Efficiency Unit, 1994) [The
Trosa Report], p. 1.
14. Ibid. p. 60.
15. Efficiency Unit, After Next Steps (London: Efficiency Unit, 1995) [The Massey
Report].
16. HM Treasury, Better Government Services: Executive Agencies in the 21st Century
(London: HM Treasury, 2002) [Alexander Report], p. 12.
17. Ibid. p. 16.
18. Ibid. p. 26.
19. Ibid. p. 26.
20. Cabinet Office (2004). Non-Departmental Public Bodies: A Guide for Depart-
ments, Part C, p. 3.
21. Department for Health. Guide to Managing the Relationship Between the Depart-
ment and its Arm’s Length Bodies) (2001) para 2.8.
22. Lewis, D., Hidden Agendas (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996).
23. Huber and Shipan (2000) op. cit., p. 31.
24. Department of Health (2004) op. cit., p. 3.
25. ALB Oversight Group, Business Case for the Proposed LB Business Support Unit,
ALBOG22/2005, p. 1.
26. Department of Health, Establishing the ALB Business Support Unit: Business
Case, Final Draft, 19 December 2005, p. 3.
27. Department of Health, Establishing the ALB Business Support Unit.
28. See Weller, Bakvis, and Rhodes (1997) op. cit.
29. See Flinders, M., The Politics of Accountability in the Modern State (London:
Ashgate, 2001), pp. 265–309.
30. Pollitt, C., Ministries and Agencies: Performance Management or Poor Parenting?
(Rotterdam: Erasmus University, 2002).
166
6
External Accountability
. . . [accountability] a concept that has lost its meaningful ‘soul’ in

a world filled with rhetoricians, reformers and functionalists—all
well intentioned, but each contributing to accountability’s fall from
conceptual grace.1
Accountability, both the word and the concept, has in recent years been
promoted as a, if not the, central tenet of good governance. Generations
of scholars have criticized public bodies for their lack of accountability
while those working within those organizations have consistently rejected
these accusations: ‘The commentators who say we are unaccountable and
that something must be done about us are wrong in law, are wrong in
fact, and are wrong in policy terms’.2 In order to understand this debate,
it is necessary to develop a more balanced and sophisticated analysis of
accountability than has generally existed within British political studies.
At the conceptual level, this will involve considering the aims and objec-
tives of accountability processes, the existence and interplay between
various forms of accountability, the pathological organizational impacts
of accountability ‘overload’, and the manner in which those charged
with providing an account may seek to deflect or shift responsibility.
Empirically, we actually know very little about the specific accountability
frameworks that surround public bodies and how these alter depending
on the degree of delegation. The accountability of public bodies is, how-
ever, shaped or defined by two basic issues:
1. Delegation seeks to locate certain functions in an environment in

which the accountability regime is less intense than that applied to
ministerial departments;
167
2. The control device or valve through which accountability is both

secured and restricted in Westminster democracies is the convention
of individual ministerial responsibility to parliament.
Delegation is intended to allow a focus on core organizational functions

(i.e. service provision, delivery, regulation, etc.) in order to increase effi-
ciency. The need to frequently account to external bodies is therefore con-
strained in order to achieve a proportionate balance between effectiveness
and accountability. It is exactly this issue of proportionality that lies at
the root of the accountability debate. British academics have tended to
adopt an implicitly liberal view that emphasizes openness, participation,
transparency, and scrutiny. The delegation of functions away from the
direct control of elected ministers should therefore, from this perspective,
be matched by the imposition of ‘auxiliary precautions’ in the form of
additional accountability safeguards. And yet, for politicians and officials,
the imposition of additional scrutiny measures would undermine the
basic logic of delegation (point 1 above). Put slightly differently, the logic
of delegation stresses output-based accountability forms that prioritize
effective and efficient service delivery above process-based methods that
focus on structures and procedures.
Beliefs and understandings about the role and obligations of account-
ability mechanisms are inextricably tied to fundamental values and
assumptions about the nature of democracy, the role of an individual, and
expectations pertaining to the operation of the state. These expectations
are never static but instead tend to evolve in response to specific events
or shifts in dominant ideational beliefs. T3’s reliance on the WM has,
however, created a narrowness and insularity in relation to how the pol-
itics of accountability is analysed and understood, particularly compared
with the analytical frameworks, theories, and methods that have been
developed in the USA (T1) and continental Europe (T2). Although elected
representatives are seen to be accountable because the electorate can vote
them out, it is an oversimplification to deduce from this that anyone who
has not been subject to an electoral process is by definition unaccount-
able. This chapter therefore forms part of the broader critique of T3 that
was set out in the opening chapter. Accountability is not always a ‘good
thing’. Public bodies are not unaccountable. Parliamentary scrutiny may
actually be viewed as effective when gauged against the specific model of
legislative oversight it is intended and resourced to deliver. In order to
develop these arguments, this chapter is divided into five sections. The
168
first section examines the concept of accountability at the conceptual

level and pays particular attention to the problems of ‘many eyes’ and
‘many hands’. This feeds into a review of the accountability frameworks
within which different forms of public body operate in the second section.
The third section continues the focus on forms of accountability by dis-
cussing different models of legislative oversight and how they relate to the
relationship between the House of Commons and delegated governance.
This relationship is examined in the fourth section through an audit of
select committee scrutiny of public bodies during 1997–2007. In the final
section, we return to the three theoretical pillars on which this book rests
in order to locate the research presented in this chapter within the broader
‘walking without order’ viewpoint.
6.1. Many Eyes, Many Hands
As Chapter 3 illustrated, during the twentieth century, British political

studies presented an almost unchallenged argument that the accountabil-
ity arrangements that accompanied delegation within the central state
were inadequate. Consequently, a significant body of work not only
exhorts the primacy of accountability but also argues for the reformula-
tion of traditional approaches and mechanisms of accountability in the-
ory and practice. It is for this reason that Dubnick seeks salvation for the
concept, Mulgan suggests that it has become an ‘ever expanding concept’,
and Bovens argues that ‘the concept has become less useful for analytical
purposes and today resembles a garbage can filled with good intentions,
loosely defined concepts and vague images of good governance’.3 A first
step in rebuilding a degree of conceptual clarity involves reflecting on
the aims and objectives of accountability processes and might include the
following elements:
1. Prevention of abuse, corruption, and misuse of public power;

2. Assurance that public resources are being used in accordance with
publicly stated aims and that public service values (impartiality,
equality, etc.) are being adhered to;
3. Improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of public policies;
4. Enhancing the legitimacy of government and improving public trust
in politicians and political institutions;
5. Lesson learning and preventing the recurrence of past mistakes;
169
6. Providing a fulfilling or cathartic or healing societal function; and

7. Achieving clarity in terms of where errors occurred within complex
policy networks.
It is clear that these objectives are diverse and potentially incompatible.

An accountability system that was designed to emphasize the first objec-
tive, for example, would be likely to stand in stark contrast to one that
focused on the third objective. The former would stress the precautionary
principle and focus on input-controls, tightly regulated procedures, and
monitoring; the latter would emphasize flexibility, entrepreneurship, and
output/outcome-measurements. The critical point in relation to delegated
governance is that public bodies are located within a socio-political con-
text in which they are held to account not by a single principal but by
a range of principals, all of which may be seeking to realize different but
frequently incompatible objectives—Boven’s problem of ‘many eyes’.4 As
the Chairman of OFCOM told the House of Lords Constitution Commit-
tee, ‘OFCOM is statutorily responsible both to individual members of the
public, both in their capacity as homo economicus and as homo civicus, as
well as to the public at large.’5 The Rail Regulator went further and argued
that a ‘matrix of accountability’ had been established around independent
public bodies ‘which is probably more specific and more intense than ever
applied to a Minister’.6
Figure 6.1 sets out this matrix or framework of multiple accountabil-
ities. The figure clearly reflects the directional nature of accountability
relationships and how a change in the dominant value-emphasis between
competing objectives will inevitably influence other forms of accountabil-
ity, as it implies the promotion of certain values and rationalities at the
expense of others. The dominant value-emphasis within the logic of del-
egation clearly emphasizes improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness
of public policies and as such seeks to accentuate downwards account-
ability in the form of customer-orientated responsiveness and delivery.
In Britain, this change in value-emphasis was reflected in the debate
in the mid-1990s between the Conservative Minister William Walde-
grave and Professor John Stewart.7 Stewart’s position that accountability
had been reduced by the public sector reforms of the 1980s was tightly
focused around upward accountability of politicians to elected arenas at
the local and national level; Waldegrave argued that accountability had
been increased through the introduction of new forms of downward- and
market-based accountability that supplemented traditional mechanisms
of accountability. However, the critical issue lies not in the existence of
170
Parliament
Ministerial
Department(s) National Audit Office
Statutory User DELEGATED PUBLIC Professional Regulatory

Watchdogs BODY Bodies
Ombudsmen Courts
Public/Customers/
Consumers
Figure 6.1. Multiple accountabilities
multiple accountabilities or ‘many eyes’ but in the fact that each form
of accountability tends to hold different objectives, make distinct data
demands, have different expectations based on varying sets of norms and
may therefore pass completely different judgements. Cumulatively, the
accountability demands on public bodies may eviscerate the benefits of
delegation by:
1. reducing flexibility, focus, and stability;

2. discouraging innovation and entrepreneurial behaviour;
3. making leaders risk-averse and rule-obsessed;
4. incentivizing tunnel-vision and ritualization; and
5. increasing the proportion of resources dedicated to rebuttal or defen-
sive image management.
It is in this vein that Koppell argues that organizations cannot satisfy

hierarchical superiors, behave consistently with all laws, norms, and
obligations, and respond to the demands or needs of constituents at the
same time. Attempting to be accountable in every way is likely to be highly
problematic, as
. . . organizations trying to meet conflicting expectations are likely to be dys-

functional, pleasing no one while trying to please everyone. . . . An organiza-
tion suffering from Multiple Accountabilities Disorder (MAD) is therefore likely
to oscillate between behaviours that are consistent with conflicting notions of
accountability.8
171
Although a small number of public bodies appear to be ‘MAD resistant’

and able to operate as ‘accountability entrepreneurs instead of account-
ability victims’, the pressures on senior managers leaves little space for
proactive accountability strategies.9 Koppell therefore concludes, ‘the
pressure to meet multiple accountability expectations is intense and not
easily resisted.’10
These pressures are augmented by the contextual parameters in which
they operate, which is imbued with a positivity offset and negativity bias
(i.e. an emphasis on focusing on problems and allocating blame) arising
from a societal context that is often interpreted as low-trust high-blame.11
Being accountable rarely involves a balanced review of performance but
more commonly involves an exercise in problem amplification and blame
allocation. The pressure for blame avoidance may well suffocate organiza-
tional creativity and lead to ‘automacity’ in which procedures are rigidly
based around avoiding errors and minimizing risk at all costs, or even the
termination of services to avoid liability.12 Bovens therefore suggests that
for public managers ‘being held accountable means being in trouble’, and
Behn states that politicians and bureaucrats ‘recognize that if someone is
holding them accountable two things can happen: When they do some-
thing good, nothing happens. But when they screw up, all hell can break
loose. Those whom we want to hold accountable have a clear understand-
ing of what accountability means: accountability means punishment’.13
The result of this negativity-bias is that politicians prioritize blame-
avoidance over credit-taking and ‘tend to discount potential gains relative
to losses in their calculus, and thus to minimize blame before being
concerned with political credit’.14 These pressures are particularly acute in
highly majoritarian polities like Britain that exhibit adversarial modes of
political interaction. In this context, the capacity of accountability mech-
anisms to deliver certain objectives (e.g. lesson learning, cathartic/societal
healing, and clarity) is reduced while the amplification of specific incidents
by opposition parties and the media into accusations of systemic failure
reduces public confidence in the legitimacy of government. For the incum-
bent government, the negativity-bias acts as a powerful incentive against
supporting reforms designed to strengthen certain forms of accountabil-
ity. And yet, as Figure 6.1 illustrates, public bodies operate within a dense
framework of multiple accountabilities that poses questions about how
a workable balance between democratic accountability and operational
efficiency can be maintained.
Dubnick’s distinction between ‘external pulls’ and ‘moral pushes’ pro-
vides a useful framework for teasing apart this issue of proportionality.15
172
‘External pulls’ involve a formal obligation to account to a stipulated

individual or organization with the possibility of receiving positive credit
(e.g. public approbation and monetary reward) or negative sanctions
(e.g. dismissal and imprisonment) for the content of that account. The
formality and unavoidable nature of these forms of accountability make
the adjective ‘hard’ appropriate. ‘Moral pushes’ by contrast might be inter-
preted as encompassing ‘soft’ forms of accountability which are reliant
on an individual’s or organization’s view of what is just, appropriate, and
correct. They therefore revolve around the notion of self-imposed duty
rather than any formal or legally enforceable rules or procedures. The
parliamentary accountability of ministers would in this framework be
interpreted as an ‘external pull’ (i.e. hard) form of accountability whereas
a public body’s decision to hold its meetings in public would be viewed
as a ‘moral push’ reflecting a sense of professional morality, virtuous
behaviour, or public responsiveness, rather than being the product of
a ‘hard’ legal requirement. This distinction aids understanding in rela-
tion to a number of debates concerning the obligations of public bodies
to provide and account and whether an accountability ‘gap’ or deficit
exists.
In terms of how we define, understand, and measure the concept of
accountability, the push/pull or hard/soft distinction allows observers to
set out the parameters or boundaries of their use of the term. Bovens’s
definition of accountability as ‘a relationship between an actor and a
forum in which the actor has an obligation to explain and justify their
conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor
can be sanctioned’ is clearly referring to external pulls and ‘hard’ forms of
accountability.16 Indeed, Bovens goes on to stipulate that the obligations
of accountability can only be fulfilled when the account: is provided in
public and is directed at a specific forum; involves an iterative process; and
when the person or organization providing the account has no choice in
the matter. Only ‘hard’ forms of accountability would be accepted within
this ‘narrow’ definition of accountability. The provision of information
through ‘soft’ mechanisms (i.e. websites, press releases, public meetings,
media interviews, speeches, etc.) would not qualify as none of these
conduits for the dissemination of information are compulsory or iterative,
nor are they accompanied by the possibility of sanctions.
At the empirical level, the push/pull or hard/soft distinction orientates
analysis to the relationship between different forms of accountability
and how the executive protects the independence of public bodies, in
order to prevent the development of MAD, by blending ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
173
forms of accountability. As will be examined in the next section, although

Figure 6.1 suggests a fairly dense network of multiple accountabilities,
these can be divided into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms, and one of the central
debates concerning the accountability of public bodies is whether certain
mechanisms which are currently informal good practice guidelines (i.e.
soft) should be formalized through legislation in order to make them
compulsory and empower the public with a judicial redress capacity.
The replacement of the Code on Access to Official Information in 1998
with a statutory Freedom of Information Act provides an example of
this transition. The distinction also supports the contention that formal
organizational status matters because there is no one single accountabil-
ity framework for all public bodies but a number of frameworks that
apply to the various layers of the Russian Doll Model (Figure 4.1). Even
where the same accountability mechanism exists across the spectrum
of autonomy, like parliamentary accountability, its utility is affected by
the specific characteristics of each distinct layer. Conversely, ministerial
blame-shifting capacity is also affected by the degree of delegation and
the specific variables of each organizational form.
The notion of blame-shifting introduces the problem of ‘many hands’
which suggests that as the number of organizations playing a role in the
delivery of public services increases (i.e. the chain of delegation becomes
longer and more complex), the harder it becomes to ‘discover anyone
whose contribution to the collective outcome seems significant enough
to warrant credit or blame for it’.17 For example, Figure 6.2 illustrates the
complexity of the delivery chain involved with the prevention of child
obesity that involves twenty-six organizations. Although this reflects the
twin-problems of ‘many hands’ and ‘many eyes’, it is important to note
that Figure 6.2 is a simplified version of the actual delivery chain to which
a number of other arm’s-length bodies could be added (e.g. OFCOM,
Food Standards Agency, Advertising Standards Agency, Momenta, and Big
Lottery Fund).
The problem of ‘many hands’ is compounded by the fact that the
positivity offset and negativity bias create a contextual incentive for actors
within the delivery chain to develop presentational, policy and agency
strategies to minimize (blame-reduction) or transfer (blame-shifting)
responsibility, and it is at this point that the notion of a ‘public service
bargain’ becomes relevant.18 The relationship between ministers and their
officials was historically based on an implicit arrangement or bargain in
which officials were expected to trade political activity and high salaries
for ‘relative anonymity, a trusted role at the heart of government and
174
National
Office of the Department for Department for

Department of Department for
Deputy Prime Education and Culture, Media and
Health Transport
Minister Skills Sport
Youth Sport
NICE Sport England
School Trust
Food Trust
Government Public Health
Office Observatories Sport England
Regional
Region
County Sport
Strategic Partnership
Health
Local Authority
Local School Sport
Authorities Partnerships
Local Strategic
Partnerships/ Primary Care
Children’s Trusts
Trusts
Sure Start
Delivery
Primary Care Leisure
NHS Trusts Early Years Schools
Contractors Facilities
Regulatory
Healthcare Audit
Ofsted
Commission Commission
175
Figure 6.2. Delivery chain for child obesity

Source: HC 801, Tackling Childhood Obesity: The First Steps, 30 February 2006
job security with generous pensions and honours’, and politicians were
expected to give up the right to hire and fire in return for ‘a lifetime of
loyal service from the best and the brightest the top universities could pro-
duce, with the highest ability to work the state machine and offer better
informed and more politically acute advice than anyone else could have
provided’.19 The ‘new’ public service bargain is quite different as senior
officials leading major public bodies have arguably traded their traditional
anonymity and guaranteed tenure for significantly higher salaries and
the possibility of being made scapegoats for errors for which they were
not totally responsible. The creation of executive agencies in particular
was associated with an explicit desire to make named officials directly
responsible for specific targets and create a new framework of incentives
and sanctions based on performance-related pay and the possibility of
dismissal for under-performance. In this context, it was noticeable that
the 2007 report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
into the failures of the RPA emphasized that although the chief execu-
tive had been dismissed for errors that were not solely of his making,
he had received a salary many times larger than his political master.20
Although this ‘new’ public service bargain was a central theme of new
public management and provides valuable insights into the politics of
accountability, it clearly sits uncomfortably with the precepts of the WM.
Blame-shifting is also a risky strategy for ministers working within a
constitutional configuration founded on the convention of ministerial
responsibility and ‘blame boomerangs’ may occur when parliament or
the public detect that blame is being unfairly shifted.
As Figure 6.3 suggests the capacity for credible blame-shifting is depen-
dent upon institutional structures (e.g. parliamentary vs. presidential
regimes, models of legislative oversight); the nature of delegation (e.g.
statutory vs. administrative delegation); an individual’s relationship with
the intended ‘blame shiftee’ (e.g. passive blame-acceptors as opposed
to reactive blame-deflectors; civil servant as opposed to public servant);
and the public perception of whether responsibility had actually been
delegated. As Gregory notes, ‘a vindictive public may not accept politi-
cians’ non-culpability, especially in areas of high salience . . . they [politi-
cians] usually find themselves coping with continuing credit deficits and
blame surfeits.’21 The occurrence of blame-boomerangs may also stimu-
late demands for even tighter forms of scrutiny to counter the perceived
risks of delegation despite the fact that this may well undermine the ben-
efits of delegation and lead to more instances of public bodies suffering
from MAD.
176
Is delegation
perceived
as cosmetic?
yes no
Do citizens
BLAME want to blame
REVERSION politicians?
yes no
Do
Blame-shiftees
BLAME accept blame?
DISPLACEMENT
yes no
Can
blame-shiftees
shift some or all of the
BLAME
blame back to the
SHIFTING
blame-shifters?
yes
no
Defensive risk management

BLAME SHARING OR (a mix of policy bias,
BLAME REVERSION presentational bias
and agency bias)
intended to achieve
BLAME DISSOLUTION
Figure 6.3. Playing the blame-game through delegation

177
Source: Hood, C., ‘The Risk Game and the Blame Game’, Government and Opposition, 37 (2002), 35
This point brings us back full circle to the challenge of achieving

accountable governance within the context of ‘many hands’. Kettl has
noted how the spread of horizontal relationships ‘muddies’ traditional
forms of upwards accountability.22 Considine and Bovens each in their
own way go further and argue that the shift from hierarchies to net-
works and markets has not only undermined or frustrated traditional
vertical hierarchical accountability relationships but also necessitates the
introduction of horizontal or networked forms of accountability that
acknowledge the extensive interdependence within contemporary deliv-
ery chains.23 However, a serious challenge confronts those who advocate
the construction of multi-centric accountability systems because they
must offer the capacity to encompass organizational complexity while
also being relatively simple and transparent. The great quality of parlia-
mentary accountability through the convention of individual ministerial
responsibility was (and to some degree still remains) its clarity and focus.
Put another way, promoting a pluralistic perspective risks making the
overall system weaker, vacuous, and more complex.
This chapter has so far argued that delegation seeks to locate certain
functions in an environment in which the accountability regime is less
intense than that applied to ministerial departments. Public bodies are
not unaccountable: they operate within a framework of multiple account-
abilities, some of which are ‘hard’ and some ‘soft’. The politics of account-
ability revolves around achieving a degree of balance or proportionality
between ensuring an acceptable level of democratic scrutiny while also
allowing the bodies to focus on their primary tasks. British scholars and
parliamentarians have generally argued that the balance needs to be
shifted in favour of scrutiny, while politicians and those serving within
public bodies generally disagree: ‘In fact we regard ourselves as account-
able to everybody, sometimes too many people.’24 In order to understand
this divergence of opinion, it is necessary to return to the critique of T3
that we set out in Chapter 1 (T3, Table 1.3). This atheoretical, Anglo-
centric descriptive–prescriptive normatively laden approach was concep-
tually anchored to a model of governing (i.e. the WM) which deified
the ministerial department and the convention of individual ministerial
responsibility. As the chain of delegation grew longer and more complex
throughout the twentieth century, so the capacity of the convention of
ministerial responsibility to legitimate state action became increasingly
problematic. The key point being, however, that the WM acted as a form
of conceptual bounded rationality: unlike their American and continental
178
colleagues, British scholars have generally focused their attention on leg-

islative accountability without considering the following issues in suffi-
cient detail:
1. The organizational impact of accountability overload and the need

to balance scrutiny with operational capacity;
2. The impact of the positivity offset and negativity bias within highly
majoritarian polities;
3. The existence of multiple accountabilities involving ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
mechanisms operating in a number of directions;
4. The aims or objectives of accountability processes plus potential
incompatibilities (linking to the notion of ‘multiple accountabilities
disorder’); and
5. The specific form of legislative oversight that parliament is intended
and resourced to fulfil.
In highlighting these issues, this chapter is not attempting to advance

a particular position regarding the accountability of public bodies. Its
contribution lies at three levels: its use of the less normative and more
sophisticated frameworks that have been developed beyond the UK; its
awareness of the problems of too much accountability in addition to too
little; and in its attempt to set out the range of accountability mechanisms
that exist and how they interrelate in order to balance the demands of
democratic accountability with operational efficiency. The next section
examines the nature and existence of multiple accountabilities in more
detail.
6.2. Multiple Accountabilities: A 360◦ View
A ‘360◦ view’ of accountability recognizes that although what is generally

termed ‘parliamentary’ or ‘legislative’ accountability forms the primary
method of scrutiny within democratic states, it coexists with a range
of secondary mechanisms or ‘auxiliary precautions’.25 The debate con-
cerning accountability and delegation is really, therefore, an argument
concerning the nature, strength, and utility of these mechanisms in light
of concerns regarding the powers of the legislature. However, as with most
issues concerning delegated governance in Britain, there is no one source
of unequivocal official information about:
179
1. the specific accountability framework surrounding public bodies;

2. why certain accountability mechanisms apply to some layers of the
Russian Doll Model but not others;
3. how the accountability methods and procedures have been designed;
4. the principles underlying this process; or
5. the intended interrelationship(s) between the multiple accountabili-
ties that exist.
Rhetorically, the positions of successive governments have been simple:

ministerial responsibility remains unchanged by delegation. And yet, the
convention of ministerial responsibility has clearly been altered in a num-
ber of ways and fusing together a model of scrutiny that is firmly focused
on elected ministers with a model of governance that has in recent years
embraced the concept of depoliticization is clearly problematic. The aim
of this section is simply to set out the existing framework of accountability
(as far as it is possible to ascertain) as it applies to each layer of the RDM
in the hope that this will shed further light on the accountability debate,
while also increasing our understanding of the interrelationship between
primary and secondary scrutiny mechanisms.
Table 6.1 usefully illustrates the existence and extent of a range of
accountability mechanisms as they apply across the spectrum of auton-
omy. However, adopting a tick-box representation of multiple account-
abilities also risks overstating the extent and utility of ‘hard’ scrutiny
mechanisms while also failing to acknowledge the existence and role of
‘soft’ (i.e. non-obligatory) but no less important forms of public account-
ability undertaken by many public bodies. The interrelationship between
agency, context, and structure is also a dimension of accountability
relationships that is beyond the grasp of an audit-exercise such as this.
However, Table 6.1 does highlight the existence of areas of uniformity and
partiality between forms of public bodies. The publication of the minutes
of meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, for
example, are a statutory requirement under the Bank of England Act 1998,
but no other bodies (statutory or non-statutory) have similar obligations.
The Financial Services Authority is also atypical because the Financial
Services and Markets Act was amended at the drafting stage to include,
among other measures, an obligation to hold an annual public meeting.
Table 6.1 also illustrates those areas, notably in relation to public
accountability safeguards, where scholars and parliamentary commit-
tees have argued for certain requirements that are currently ‘soft’ to be
made compulsory through legislation in order to empower the public
180
Table 6.1. Formal accountability frameworks
Layer Parliamentary Public Statutory/admin.

Degree of NAO PQs Select Publish annual Hold Publish Ombudsman User Appellate
ministerial committee report and public meeting watchdogs body
responsibility accounts meetings minutes
√ √ √ √ √
1. NMDs High √ √ √ √ X X √ Some X
2. EAs Medium √ √ √ √ X X X Some
3. SHAs Medium √ √ √ √ X X Some
√ Some Some
4. NDPBs Medium √ √ √ √ X X √ Some Some
5. PCs Low √ √ √ X X
√ Some X
6. ICB Very low X X X X X
7. PPPs Very low Some Some ? ? X X Some X X
181
vis-à-vis delegated governance in recognition of their unelected nature.26

It also raises issues about the relationship between primary and sec-
ondary forms of accountability and the degree to which parliament sits
at the apex of a range of scrutiny mechanisms.27 What is clear, however,
is that as the degree of delegation increases, and thereby the degree
of direct ministerial responsibility decreases, there is no concomitant
increase in the extent of auxiliary precautions in terms of public or statu-
tory/administrative safeguards. This is particularly relevant in relation to
PPPs where the actual accountability mechanisms are opaque, freedom of
information requests can be declined on the grounds of commercial con-
fidentiality, and the potential for blame-games between relevant actors is
extensive.
In line with the theory of delegation, the formal accountability require-
ments that are externally and regularly imposed on public bodies are min-
imal. The Cabinet Office’s guidance on the openness and accountability
of public bodies clearly states that ‘Annual reports and accounts are the
main vehicles by which departments and public bodies regularly inform
parliament and the public about their activities and expenditure.’28 The
critical issue then becomes the mechanisms through which the public and
their representatives can challenge or verify the content of that account
or scrutinize specific issues or incidents within and beyond this annual
cycle. As legislative scrutiny and oversight will form the main focus of the
next two sections, it is appropriate at this stage to focus on other forms of
accountability.
We saw in Chapter 3 that the Labour administrations during 1997–2007
did introduce measures to significantly empower the public or parliament
vis-à-vis the extended state. The measures contained in Quangos: Opening
the Doors (1998) were non-statutory guidance recommendations and as
such do not appear in Table 6.1. However, as the Lords’ Committee on
the Constitution found, a great number of public bodies do uphold these
recommendations and many go much further in terms of trying to cul-
tivate an ongoing dialogue with the public and particularly their service
users.29 The Food Standards Agency, Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Authority, and National Institute for Clinical Excellence, to mention just a
few, have gone to great lengths through deliberative measures (e.g. public
consultation exercises, user-polls, citizens’ councils, debates, conferences,
and communicative technologies) to take the views of the public ‘into
account’ within their decision-making processes. The critical issue, how-
ever, relates to whether these processes are being undertaken as a result
of ‘moral pushes’ or ‘external pulls’ and therefore the degree of latitude
182
enjoyed by public bodies in terms of maintaining these forms of dialogue

with the public when problems occur.
This concern is illustrated by the controversy surrounding the Quali-
fications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in 2002. During the summer,
a series of major problems occurred with the marking of A-Level exam-
ination papers that culminated in the Secretary of State for Education
dismissing the agency’s chief executive. However, in October 2002, the
QCA took the unprecedented decision to exclude all journalists from its
annual conference. This decision not only went against Cabinet Office
guidance but also flouted the conclusions of the QCA’s quinquennial
review (completed just months before the incident) that recommended
the agency be more open to the media in order to enhance its public
accountability. The QCA’s capacity to take this decision without requiring
ministerial approval underlined for many observers the risks of a soft-law
approach to public accountability and led to a number of recommenda-
tions in favour of a ‘hard’ accountability regime in which the discretion
of public bodies was reduced.30 The Labour Government’s rejection of
these recommendations, however, provides a critical glimpse into a num-
ber of broader issues and concerns regarding the politics of accountabil-
ity. As previous chapters have emphasized, from its nineteenth-century
origins, the role of the convention of ministerial responsibility was to
deliver an acceptable balance between open/accountable government and
strong/efficient government. Bagehot captured this role eloquently when
he wrote:
The incessant tyranny of Parliament over the public offices is prevented and can
only be prevented by the appointment of a Parliamentary head, connected by
close ties with the present Ministry and the ruling party in Parliament . . . the
Parliamentary head is a protecting machine. He and the friends he brings stand
between the department and the busybodies and crotchet-makers of the House
and the country.
The ‘protecting-machine’ phrase is particularly important for our con-

temporary analysis because it reveals the ‘efficient secret’ of the British
constitution that parliamentary scrutiny and independence are severely
compromised by the existence of a parliamentary majority that owes its
primary allegiance to the executive rather than the House of Commons.
The principles of the parliamentary state have therefore been corrupted
by the paradoxes of a constitutional system in which the power of par-
liament is generally a euphemism for executive power. The Labour Gov-
ernment could therefore reject the recommendations of PASC regarding
183
accountability by portraying the convention of ministerial responsibility

as a robust and effective form of accountability because it knew that
tight control of its large parliamentary majority would prevent the matter
being taken any further. At first glance, this interpretation appears to sup-
port the parliamentary decline thesis that has dominated British political
studies for some time.31 But to assess any organization’s performance,
it is necessary to understand the role ascribed to it in the first place
in order to avoid making unfair comparisons and conclusions. And yet,
within T3 there has been very little detailed consideration of the role of
the House of Commons vis-à-vis the state and how different interpreta-
tions and understandings lead to markedly different conclusions about
the nature and extent of parliamentary scrutiny. This stands in stark
contrast to T1 where explicit models of legislative oversight have been
conceptualized and assessed in order to provide a better understanding of
not only performance but also inbuilt obstacles to reform. It is also true
that although the perception that parliament is a ‘toothless watchdog’
pervades much of the literature there have been very few empirical inves-
tigations into the actual extent of parliamentary oversight as it relates
to delegated governance. It is with these two issues (models of oversight
and actual levels of scrutiny) that the next two sections are principally
concerned.
6.3. Police Patrols and Fire Alarms
Although a century divides the publication of Low’s The Governance of

England (1904) and Ward’s The English Constitution (2004), their conclu-
sions regarding the scrutiny capacity of the House of Commons vis-à-
vis the executive and bureaucracy are remarkably similar and although
Ward’s conclusion that the Commons is ‘puerile, pathetic and utterly
useless’ lacks the elegance and subtlety of Low and overstates the extent of
executive dominance, it does capture a long-standing concern regarding
the relationship between parliament and the executive. Throughout the
twentieth century, a series of authoritative texts charted the shifting of
power from parliament to the executive.32 However, this body of work
devoted little time to considering: the nature of the specific role which
British constitutional history had bestowed upon the Commons; the
model of legislative oversight being deployed by the Commons; the need
to balance the demands of democratic accountability against those of
operational delivery; the impact of the highly adversarial political culture
184
Table 6.2. Models of legislative oversight
Fire-alarm model Police-patrol model
Ad hoc Regular
Decentralized Centralized
Reactive Proactive
Passive Active
Ex post Ex ante and ex post
Particularistic Universal
Legislative intervention as last resort Legislative intervention as routine mechanism
Reliance on secondary scrutiny mechanisms Less reliance on secondary scrutiny mechanisms
Targeted scrutiny Fishing expeditions
Highly efficient (?) Less efficient (?)
Linked to the Whitehall view of the Linked to the Liberal view of the constitution
constitution
Elitist Popular
Thin model of democracy Thick model of democracy
High trust (?) Low trust (?)
and its negativity-bias; or the relationship between legislative and non-

legislative forms of scrutiny.
However, concerns regarding the growth of the bureaucracy, increasing
levels of delegation, and legislative oversight capacity were not unique
to Britain. By the end of the nineteenth century, the topography of
the American state was littered with hybrid bodies and ‘the abdication
hypothesis’ or ‘runaway-bureaucracy thesis’ became prevalent and sug-
gested that Congressional scrutiny or oversight of independent agencies
was lax and ineffective.33 The work of McCubbins and Schwartz, however,
challenged this thesis and instead suggested that what scholars had inter-
preted as a neglect of oversight was a preference for one form of oversight
over another less-effective form.34 They argued that Congress deployed
a ‘fire-alarm’ model of legislative scrutiny which reflected an ‘optimal
enforcement strategy’ in light of the available resources (time, technology,
cognitive capacity, staff, etc.). As Table 6.2 suggests, this model is based
on avoiding routine scrutiny exercises in favour of using societal ‘fire-
alarms’ in the form of secondary accountability mechanisms (judicial,
audit, public, administrative, media, etc.) in order to alert the legislature
to the existence of issues that may warrant investigation. ‘Instead of
sniffing for fires, Congress places fire-alarm boxes on street corners, builds
neighbourhood fire houses, and sometimes despatches its own hook-and-
ladder in response to an alarm.’35 The alternative to this model would
be the police-patrol method where instead of relying predominantly on
societal smoke-alarms to direct the legislature to problems, the legislature
185
undertakes a far more proactive stance in which they ‘patrol’ the bureau-
cracy through regular and detailed enquiries, irrespective of whether
detectors have suggested a problem exists, in order to detect and remedy
any serious failings, inefficiencies, or violations of legislative goals and, by
its surveillance, discouraging such behaviour.
The two models are not mutually exclusive. A legislature could adopt
either form of oversight or a combination of the two. This might take the
form of passing legislation that included formal and regular ‘police-patrol’
style mechanisms which instituted legislative scrutiny at a set point (e.g.
sunset clauses) or ‘fire-alarm’ measures to act as societal detectors or
safeguards (e.g. by inserting a statutory requirement for annual public
hearings, and parliamentary confirmation of appointments). However,
both models are clearly constructed on certain criteria that must be ful-
filled for either model to be seen as credible or effective. The fire-alarm
model is predicated on the legislature having the capacity and desire to
establish an environment in which secondary accountability mechanisms
can operate combined with effective linkages with those mechanisms. The
police-patrol model, by contrast, requires the legislature to be particularly
well-resourced in order to undertake routine enquiries that are unlikely
to uncover evidence of failings, corruption, or scandal. The preference of
legislators for the fire-alarm model of oversight is therefore related to sev-
eral issues that have been discussed above in the British context, notably
the need for proportionality, the existence of a negativity-bias, and the
potential for blame-games. Indeed, McCubbins and Schwartz combine
Mayhew’s re-election model with the blame-shirking model of Fiorina
to argue that members of a legislature will adopt a rational approach to
their scrutiny activity based upon maximizing the credit given by their
potential supporters and minimizing the time spent on activities that will
not yield a direct benefit in terms of media attention, political profile,
or damaging political opponents.36 From this perspective, the fire-alarm
model offers optimum efficiency on three levels.
First, in terms of practical resources, the police-patrol scrutiny is sub-
optimal as it involves the dedication of significant resources (particularly
time) in areas where no major problems may exist. Embarking on ‘fishing
expeditions’ of this nature is a waste of scant resources and incurs high
opportunity costs: legislators will receive scant support or credit from
potential supporters and the absence of significant failings, sleaze, or
scandal will reduce the prospect of media coverage. Under the fire-alarm
model, a legislator or legislative committee is unlikely to embark upon
scrutiny procedures, such as an official enquiry, unless a specific issue or
186
incident has been brought to their attention, in which case they can at
a minimum receive credit for taking up the issue, irrespective of the end
result:
So a unit of time spent on oversight is likely to yield more benefit for a congress-
man under a fire-alarm policy than under a police-patrol policy. As a result, a fire-
alarm policy enables congressmen to spend less time on oversight . . . or to spend
more time on more personally profitable oversight activities . . . Justly or unjustly,
time spent putting out visible fires gains more credit than the same time spent
sniffing for smoke.37
Second, the fire-alarm method is viewed as more efficient in terms of

scale. The inverse correlation between legislative resources and the size
and complexity of the state mean that in reality even the most exten-
sive police-patrol model will scrutinize only a tiny proportion of the
bodies that exist across the spectrum of autonomy (Figure 1.1). The fire-
alarm model is more targeted. Scrutiny can be focused on issues that
harm potential supporters and therefore offer opportunities for credit-
taking (the opposite of blame-shifting) for redressing grievances. Finally,
scrutinizing the bureaucracy is a resource-intensive exercise in terms of
costs (time, finances, goodwill, personnel, etc.). Some of these costs are
offset under the fire-alarm model because another party—a constituent,
pressure group, etc.—can in most cases alert members of the legislature
that a specific issue exists and for which they have received no acceptable
remedy through another route or procedure. Therefore, although the costs
of a fire-alarm system can be the same as a police-patrol system, much of
that cost is borne by citizens and interest groups who sound the alarm
rather than by legislators themselves. For these reasons, McCubbins and
Schwartz argued that Congress was not neglecting its oversight responsi-
bilities but simply favouring a specific form of oversight which was itself
the rational product of the political environment and context.
Scholars who decry the neglect of oversight have, we suggest, focussed on a single
form of oversight: they have looked only for police-patrol oversight, ignoring the
fire-alarm alternative—and therewith the major part of actual oversight activity.
Observing a neglect of police-patrol oversight, they have mistakenly concluded that
oversight is neglected.38
Despite its origin within American political science, the fire-alarm thesis
provides a powerful framework for understanding (or at least posing
distinct questions about) the politics of accountability in Britain. It does
not seek to deny the parliamentary decline thesis: the balance of power
187
has undoubtedly shifted from parliament to the executive. But the thesis
does suggest that to some degree those observers may have overempha-
sized the level or extent of scrutiny that parliament was ever intended
or expected to deliver, and by raising the bar so high artificially may
have exaggerated the expectations-capacity gap. The House of Commons
was simply never intended, expected, or resourced to adopt a police-
patrol model of scrutiny. This argument is implicit in the work of those
scholars who sought to re-orientate the parliamentary decline thesis in the
1950s and 1960s. Laski’s Reflections on the Constitution (1951), Morrison’s
Government and Parliament (1954), Jennings’ Parliament (1957), and most
notably Crick’s The Reform of Parliament (1964) recognized the executive’s
legitimate entitlement to govern while also acknowledging that the House
of Commons’ could and did enforce the accountability of ministers but
that it generally conserved its powers for issues of major public concern.
In recognizing a need for proportionality and suggesting that Parliament
had never been expected or resourced to assume a police-patrol model
of scrutiny, the view of these ‘moderate optimists’ was subtly distinct
from the Liberal tradition which dominated British political studies in the
twentieth century. Although the expectations-capacity gap was a theme
of this body of work, its awareness of the way the competing demands of
democratic accountability and operational efficiency had been balanced
through a fire-alarm model of oversight meant that the perceived gap was
not as pronounced as the parliamentary-decline thesis suggested.
It is in this context that the metaphor of icebergs and Parliament is
useful. Ministerial departments can be viewed as bureaucratic icebergs,
under which the greater part of the state structure operates in dele-
gated organizational forms largely beyond public view or parliamentary
oversight. The whole constitutional framework (culture, expectations,
resources, conventions, procedures, etc.) of the British state was designed
to ensure that the House of Commons adopted a passive rather than active
role in relation to the administration. The role of the Commons was and
remains today to hold ministers to account for the way in which they steer
the ship of state—venturing into the scrutiny of detailed administration
only in response to serious policy failures where the link between policy
and operations is unclear. The House of Commons is only supposed to
delve below the waterline in exceptional circumstances.
The fire-alarm thesis poses a range of distinct questions and provides
a conceptual framework or set of reference points within which the
accountability debate can be explored in more detail. When judged
against the expectations and intentions of the fire-alarm model, the
188
performance of Parliament in scrutinizing the bureaucracy may appear

more effective than generally thought. At the same time, the contrast
between the fire-alarm and police-patrol models could aid understanding
in relation to the nature of specific reforms that were implemented during
1997–2007. The fire-alarm thesis also pulls together many of the themes
and issues discussed in previous sections. The 360◦ view of accountability
clearly denotes the existence of many societal fire-alarms but leaves many
questions regarding their sensitivity and connectedness to the legisla-
ture unanswered. Furthermore, are fire-alarms that can be turned-off by
those they are intended to watch-over (i.e. ‘soft’ scrutiny mechanisms)
of any value? More broadly, the fire-alarm thesis raises questions about
the appropriateness of this model of oversight within a polity where the
legislative control mechanisms over both the executive and wider bureau-
cracy are more limited than those that exist in the American context.
Congress has a greater and more autonomous grip on resources, agency
appointments, and legislation; plus the capacity to affect political control
through the creation and protection of societal fire-alarms which, in turn,
helps ensure that executive decisions and bureaucratic behaviour will be
consistent with legislative preferences. Two critical questions flow out of
this line of enquiry. Does parliamentary scrutiny of delegated governance
fit most accurately with the fire alarm model? If so, to what degree does
Parliament sit at the apex of a broader system of societal fire alarms or
‘smoke-boxes’? These questions form the basis of next section.
6.4. Parliamentary Accountability
The parliamentary decline thesis suggests that in Westminster style

democracies executives dominate the legislature, parliamentary debate
is a theatrical façade, and parliamentary scrutiny of the executive and
bureaucracy is ineffective. As part of this book’s wider ambition to culti-
vate a more balanced and sophisticated approach to delegated governance
within British political studies, this chapter has drawn upon a theory
and framework devised in the American context in order to suggest that
the parliamentary decline thesis overlooks the fact that the House of
Commons was never intended, resourced, or expected to undertake a
detailed and proactive stance in relation to the bureaucracy: a fact that
artificially exaggerates the expectations–capacity gap. The relationship
between the executive and legislature was forged during the nineteenth
century on the basis of what could be termed a fire-alarm model of
189
accountability that is sensitive to the multiple demands placed on legis-

lators, the existence of resource limitations, and also the need to balance
democratic scrutiny against operational efficiency (especially in light of
the contextual negativity-bias).
The aims of this section are to (1) examine whether empirical evidence
supports the fire-alarm thesis; and (2) consider how the fire alarm thesis
deepens our understanding of the relationship between delegation and
accountability; and, from this, assess the degree to which Parliament sits
at the apex of a number of non-parliamentary scrutiny processes. The
critical finding of this chapter is that under the rubric of ‘modernization’
and ‘systematic scrutiny’ a number of reforms were implemented during
the 2001–05 Parliament in response to broader concerns regarding the bal-
ance of power between the executive and Parliament that sharpened the
House’s oversight capacity of delegated governance. In 2002, the Culture,
Media and Sport Committee declared that in relation to delegated public
bodies, ‘the desired modus operandi of the departmental committees has
shifted from “spotlight” to “floodlight”’—a claim that clearly resonates
with the fire-alarm/police patrol distinction made above.39 But in order
to assess the validity of this claim, it is necessary to examine the broader
relationship between Parliament and the executive during 1997–2007 and
then how specific reforms arising out of tensions in this relationship have
affected the Commons’ capacity to scrutinize the extended state.
Although a number of reforms were implemented during 1997–2001,
these were generally interpreted as speeding up the legislative process
and abolishing some of the Commons more antiquated procedures rather
than improving its capacity to scrutinize the executive and by the end
of New Labour’s first term, the 1997–2001 Parliament, ‘the programme
of [parliamentary] modernization, fairly inchoate at the best of times,
largely ran out of steam’.40 Several MPs argued that if the balance of
power had shifted at all since May 1997, then it was towards rather than
away from the executive, and this view was reinforced by a number of
highly critical reports by the Commons’ Liaison Committee.41 Outside
the Palace of Westminster, the Nuffield Foundation funded an Indepen-
dent Commission on Parliamentary Scrutiny, chaired by Lord Newton,
and the Conservative Party commissioned their own enquiry into how to
strengthen Parliament, chaired by Lord Norton. A central theme of both
of the commissions’ final reports was that parliamentary scrutiny had not
kept pace, in terms of breadth or scope, with the rapidly evolving British
state and the existence of widespread delegation. The opening page of the
Newton Commission emphasized how ‘the bulk of government activity
190
Table 6.3. Parliamentary scrutiny reforms (2001–05)
Area Reform
Parliamentary • The deadline for tabling oral parliamentary questions was reduced from
questions ten days to three.
• Answers to PQs now provided when Parliament is in recess.
• Written statements replaced ‘planted’ questions.
Select committees • Select committees adopted a framework of core tasks
• Scrutiny unit established to support select committees.
• Select committees empowered to establish subcommittees and
joint-enquiries with other committees on their own initiative.
• Comptroller and Auditor General appointed as the auditor of all
executive NDPBs.
• Committees empowered to exchange papers with the Scottish
Parliament and Welsh Assembly.
• Additional payments introduced for select committee chairmen.
Misc. • Prime Minister to appear before the Liaison Committee twice a year.
• Parliamentary vote on the war in Iraq.
• Ministers take questions on cross-cutting issues each week in
Westminster Hall.
is now carried out through arm’s-length executive agencies, quangos and

the like’ while the Norton Report stressed how attempts to ‘depoliticize’
certain issues had made the structure of the British state ‘more complex
and sophisticated’.42 The existence of widespread dissatisfaction within
and beyond Parliament on the executive–legislature balance of power,
combined with a relatively clear reform agenda, and the appointment of
a reform-minded Leader of the House led to the introduction of a package
of reforms during the first sessions of the 2001–05 Parliament that were
intended to strengthen its scrutiny capacity (Table 6.3).
The reforms to the select committee system are particularly relevant to
the study of delegation as the introduction of a set of ten core tasks in May
2002 was designed to respond to concerns that gaps had arisen in parlia-
mentary oversight and was intended to achieve ‘systematic scrutiny’ and
two tasks relate specifically to delegated governance (Table 6.4). Although
select committees have traditionally reacted against any sense of being
bound in relation to the focus of their enquiries, it is clear that the
House, via the Liaison Committee, has attempted to widen the focus of its
scrutiny beyond ministerial departments. The introduction of core tasks
can be interpreted as an attempt to adjust the balance between ‘police-
patrol’ and ‘fire-alarm’ mechanisms by creating a monitored expectation
that each select committee will dedicate at least some of its resources to
scrutinizing delegated public bodies within its respective sphere (irrespec-
tive of evidence of problems or issues of concern).
191
Table 6.4. Select committee core tasks
Objective A: To examine and comment on the policy of the department

Task 1 To examine policy proposals from the UK government and European Commission in
Green Papers, White Papers, draft guidance, etc. and to enquire further where the
Committee considers it appropriate.
Task 2 To identify and examine areas of emerging policy, or where existing policy is deficient,
make proposals.
Task 3 To conduct scrutiny of any published draft bill within the Committee’s responsibilities.
Task 4 To examine specific output from the department expressed in documents or other
decisions.
Objective B: To examine the expenditure of the department
Task 5 To examine the expenditure plans and out-turn of the department, its agencies, and
principal NDPBs.
Objective C: To examine the administration of the department
Task 6 To examine the department’s Public Service Agreements, the associated targets and the
statistical measurement employed, and report if appropriate.
Task 7 To monitor the work of the department’s Executive agencies, NDPBs, regulators, and
other associated public bodies.
Task 8 To scrutinize major appointments made by the department.
Task 9 To examine the implementation of legislation and major policy initiatives.
Objective D: To assist the House in debate and decision
Task 10 To produce reports which are suitable for debate in the House, including Westminster
Hall, or debating committees.
The introduction of core tasks was bolstered by the introduction of a

reporting cycle in which all select committees publish an annual report
demonstrating ‘how it has met each core task in the scrutiny of its
department’. These reports are then reviewed by the Liaison Committee
to provide an annual review of parliamentary scrutiny and make rec-
ommendations concerning any issues that have arisen. Other reforms
were designed to increase the capacity of select committees in fulfill-
ing the core tasks. These included the creation of a Scrutiny Unit to
provide a greater research and investigative support capacity for com-
mittees, and the introduction of an additional salary for select commit-
tee chairmen in order to foster parliamentary loyalty, create an alter-
native career path to ministerial office, and reduce the influence of the
whips.
In order to examine the degree to which these reforms affected the
nature of legislative oversight of delegated governance, a comprehensive
audit of select committee activity during the eight parliamentary ses-
sions during 1997–2005 was undertaken. The information from this audit
allows us to gauge the actual level of oversight as opposed to the perceived
lack of oversight. It also reveals how the disparity in terms of resources
192
Table 6.5. Select committee reports on broad delegated governance issues

(1997–2005)
Committee Reports
Public Fourth Report (2002–03) Government by Appointment, HC 165, Jul. 2003

Administration Third Report (2002–03) Ombudsmen, HC 448, Feb. 2003
Fifth Report (2000–01) Mapping the Quango State, HC 367, Mar. 2001
Third Report (1999–2000) Public Sector Ombudsmen, HC 612, Aug. 2000
Second Report (1999–2000) Appointments to NHS Bodies, HC 410, July
2000
Sixth Report (1998–99) Quangos, HC 209, Nov. 1999
First Report (1997–98) Public Appointments, HC 327, Feb. 1998
Treasury Seventh Report (2001–02) Parliamentary Accountability and Departments,
HC 340, Sept. 2002
Culture, Media and Sixth Report (1998–99) The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and
Sport its Quangos, HC 506, Jul. 1999
Education and Seventh Report (1999–2000) The Role of Private Sector Organisations in
Employment Public Education, HC 118, Jun. 2000
Northern Ireland First Report (1999–2000) Scrutiny of Non-Departmental Public Bodies in
Affairs Northern Ireland, HC 179, Feb. 2000
Environment, Seventh Report (2001–02) The Transport-related Executive Agencies of the
Transport and Dept. of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, HC 122, Mar. 2001
Regional Affairs
Health Second Report (2002–03) Foundation Trusts, HC 395, May 2003
First Report (2001–02) The Role of the Private Sector in the NHS, HC 308,
May 2002
Public Accounts HC 272 Good Practice in Performance Reporting in Executive Agencies and
NDPBs, 1999–2000
HC 525 Improving Service Delivery: The Role of Executive Agencies, 2002–03
between different scrutiny committees dictates the model of oversight

that is deployed. The audit also suggests that the nature of parliamentary
scrutiny has altered since the modernization reforms from 2002 onwards
as committees adopt new methods and approaches to fulfil the core tasks.
Finally, in terms of the organizational distribution of legislative oversight,
the audit suggests that a very small number of delegated public bodies
receive a disproportionate amount of attention. However, possibly the
most significant finding of this audit exercise relates to the sheer scale
and extent of parliamentary scrutiny that is far higher than would have
been suggested from a reading of the wider literature. The remainder of
this section substantiates these points in more detail and summarizes the
findings of this research.
As Table 6.5 illustrates, during 1997–2005, a number of select com-
mittees investigated broad issues connected with delegated governance.
However, the predominant focus of committee scrutiny was on spe-
cific public bodies and during the 8 audited sessions a total of 191
different organizations provided select committees with 3,735 witnesses
193
which led to the publication of 278 reports and 223 Minutes of Evidence
on the governance of specific public bodies (see Table 6.6).
However, although the overall statistics for the scrutiny of public bodies
may be higher than might have been expected, it is crucial to disaggregate
this data at this stage in order to reflect not just the asymmetrical nature
of parliamentary scrutiny of the extended state but also the manner in
which inequalities in resources distribution between committees facilitate
the deployment of different models of oversight (as discussed in Section
6.3 above). A clear demarcation exists between the nature and extent of
the scrutiny achieved by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) when
compared to all the other committees. As Table 6.7 illustrates, the PAC
is by far the most active committee in terms of scrutinizing delegated
governance—publishing over a third of the Commons’ total output of
committee reports on specific bodies during 1997–95 (94 out of 278).
This research suggests the PAC operates a police-patrol form of scrutiny
whereas all the other predominantly departmentally focused select com-
mittees undertake a fire-alarm model of oversight. The capacity of the PAC
to adopt a proactive role in relation to the bureaucracy reflects the fact
that it possesses three critical resources that other committees lack. Most
significant, the PAC is supported by the National Audit Office, which has
an annual budget of £80 million and employs around 800 accountants.
The NAO audits the accounts of all the public bodies in Layers 1–5 of the
Russian Doll Model and prepares a report for the NAO where problems
or irregularities are discovered. As the bottom row of Table 6.7 illustrates,
the NAO publishes around seventy ‘Reports on Accounts’ each session,
many of which are then selected by the PAC to become the topic of a
full enquiry. The NAO also undertakes a smaller number of ‘Value for
Money’ (VFM) enquiries that focus on broader issues of public governance
but frequently involve a detailed examination of specific public bodies.
Examples of VFM enquiries of this nature include the 2000 report on
the cancellation of the payment card project by the Benefits Agency and
the investigation of the London Underground PPP in 2001.43 The NAO
therefore provides the PAC with a powerful detector that combines police-
patrol (audit of annual accounts) and fire-alarm (VFM studies) modes of
oversight.
Moreover, should the PAC decide to respond to a signal from the NAO
that a serious problem exists and to launch its own enquiry, the com-
mittee enjoys two further resources. First, while ministers stand between
Parliament and the bureaucracy in terms of political accountability, the
situation is somewhat different in relation to financial accountability
194
Table 6.6. Select committee scrutiny of specific delegated public bodies (1997–2005)
Session Total
1997–98 1998–99 1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 2002–03 2003–04 2004–05
Reports 41 35 43 26 25 35 42 31 278
Minutes of 16 22 29 15 49 56 25 11 223
evidence
Witnesses 476 506 447 215 585 639 530 337 3,735
195
196
Table 6.7. PAC and NAO scrutiny of specific delegated public bodies (1997–2005)
Session Total
1997–98 1998–99 1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 2002–03 2003–04 2004–05
Public Accounts Committee

Reports 21 11 14 6 9 14 17 2 94
Minutes of evidence 2 5 0 4 1 7 0 6 25
Witnesses 67 103 57 35 91 133 62 28 576
National Audit Office
VFM reports 27 14 20 12 10 16 22 10 131
Reports on accounts 153 88 90 22 81 65 72 17 588
where a direct line of accountability exists. Permanent secretaries and

the chief executives of delegated public bodies, as Accounting Officers
and Additional Accounting Officers, respectively, have a personal respon-
sibility for the financial propriety and governance of their organizations.
As such, they are directly accountable to the PAC, and a minister could
not prevent their attendance. Second, the PAC enjoys a less tangible but
no less important resource in the form of enhanced independence and
political gravitas. A long-standing parliamentary convention dictates that
the committee is always chaired by an opposition MP while the appoint-
ment and position of the Director of the NAO, the Comptroller and
Auditor General, is protected from executive-influence by the Exchequer
and Audit Departments Act 1866 and the National Audit Act 1983. As a
result, the PAC is widely viewed as the most prestigious and capable of
the House of Commons’ committees, and if the various scrutiny reports
of the NAO on specific public bodies are added to those published by PAC,
the combined total is far in excess of those of all the other twenty or so
select committees put together.
This is not to say that the standard of oversight provided by the
NAO/PAC is straightforward. As the controversy surrounding the enquiry
into the ‘Partnerships for Health’ PPP revealed, the ‘clearance procedure’
by which a draft report is provided to the organization being scrutinized
leading to an opaque process of negotiation over its conclusions (without
informing the PAC what changes were made and why) has undermined
confidence in the independence of the NAO.44 Nevertheless, the PAC
enjoys a resource-base in terms of personnel that is huge when compared
to the fact that the other select committees have no more than six staff
(and they are expected to undertake a much broader array of functions).
In this context, the committees have little choice but to adopt a fire-alarm
strategy in which they focus their resources on major issues that have
been raised by constituents, judicial review decisions, interest groups,
the media, in ministerial announcements, answers to PQs, etc. (i.e. fire-
alarms). It is this responsive-mode of legislative oversight that dominates
the audit exercise and, to pull out just a few for examples, explains
the Defence Committee’s 1998 enquiry into the Defence Evaluation and
Research Agency, the Work and Pensions Committee’s 2000 enquiry into
the Child Support Agency, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s
2001 enquiry into the National Lottery Commission, and the Environ-
ment Committee’s enquiry into the Rural Payments Agency in 2003.
However, the balance between the fire-alarm and police-patrol models
of oversight did alter slightly as a result of the modernization reforms
197
Table 6.8. Select committee responses to core task 7
Committee Post-2002 commitment
Home Affairs Hold at least one single-evidence session with an NDPB within its remit
each session and aims to examine all of them within each Parliament.
Defence Scrutinize two agencies of the Ministry of Defence each session.
Science and Examine each of the research councils (NDPBs) at least once during each
Technology Parliament.
Education and Skills Take evidence from OFSTED every six months and publish an annual
report on the organization in addition to regularly examining the work
of the QCA, Learning and Skills Council and General Teaching Council.
Trade and Industry Hold regular ‘normally annually’ evidence sessions with the major
independent regulators.
Treasury Committee Continue and develop its regular reviews of HM Customs and Excise,
Inland Revenue Monetary Policy Committee/Bank of England, and
Financial Services Authority.
Transport Establish a ‘programme of rolling enquiry’ in relation to public bodies
and make public its intention to ‘take oral evidence from each of the
Department’s executive agencies at least once in each parliament’.
discussed above, and in this regard, it is significant that a number of

committees introduced formal and regular procedures for the scrutiny of
delegated public bodies in order to fulfil Core Task 7—‘To monitor the
work of the department’s Executive agencies, NDPBs, regulators and other
associated public bodies’—as shown in Table 6.8 (above). By the 2003–04
session, nineteen subcommittees had been established as a result of the
2001 changes to Standing Orders and in many cases their work focused on
Core Task 7. The Treasury Committee’s subcommittee, for example, con-
ducted a rolling-review of the Statistics Commission, National Savings,
Royal Mint, Office for National Statistics, and the UK Debt Management
Office. The use of subcommittees complemented a more flexible approach
to scrutiny in which committees and subcommittees frequently held one-
off evidence sessions with the Chairman or Chief Executive of a public
body that would then be published as a stand-alone Minutes of Evidence.
This provided an efficient way of holding a preliminary investigation that
could then be taken-on as a full enquiry if required. This explains why
although the number of full reports on specific public bodies remained
relatively constant between 1997–2001 and 2001–05 (145 and 133, respec-
tively), the number of independent Minutes of Evidence increased signif-
icantly during the same period (82 and 141).
This move to more flexible scrutiny procedures is also reflected in the
audit through an increase in the number of informal meetings between
committees and representatives of public bodies. These are viewed as
particularly useful where a committee is considering a specific topic for
198
an enquiry and the members wish to make themselves aware of the

relevant issues within an open and non-confrontational environment.
The introduction of Core Task 7 has also encouraged committees to
establish much closer working relationships between their committee
clerks and the Public Bodies Co-ordinator within their respective depart-
ments. There is now a much clearer expectation that the relevant select
committee(s) will be informed about plans to create, merge, or abolish
public bodies, and the publication of an annual report by each com-
mittee provides a method of identifying and pressurizing uncooperative
departments.
Finally, the audit reveals that the focus of parliamentary scrutiny is by
no means constant across the sphere of delegated governance, and a small
number of public bodies are the focus of high levels of scrutiny. This
is reflected in the fact that during 1997–2005 just eleven organizations
(3 per cent of the bodies identified in Table 4.2)—Strategic Rail Author-
ity, Bank of England/Monetary Policy Committee, BBC, Child Support
Agency, Financial Services Authority, OFSTED, HM Customs and Excise,
Inland Revenue, National Air Traffic Services, Office of National Statistics,
and the Prison Service—were the focus of 33 per cent of the reports and
38 per cent of the Minutes of Evidence published by select committees on
specific public bodies and provided over 20 per cent of all the witnesses
to appear before committees. In many ways, this pattern of scrutiny is
an expected consequence of a fire-alarm model as the most politically
salient bodies are likely to produce the most smoke. However, this raises
the issue of ‘observational equivalence’ that we discussed in Chapter 2
(Table 2.5) because an absence of smoke in terms of media or interest
group attention may reflect either that no problems exist or that major
problems are simply not being detected, which is in itself an argument in
favour of the police-patrol model.
This section has attempted to understand the nature and extent of par-
liamentary scrutiny in relation to delegated governance. It has employed
a distinction between two models of oversight and has shown that apart
from the PAC most select committees have little choice but to adopt a
fire-alarm strategy. As the Chairman of the PASC stated,
If the Government expects select committees to be able to hold regular scrutiny

sessions with each of the NDPBs which they cover then it needs to be disillusioned.
While it is no doubt convenient for the Government to maintain that the question
of quango accountability can be simply answered by the select committee system,
it is not an answer that is at all practical.45
199
The scale of delegated governance, and the multiple roles of MPs plus the
limited resources at their disposal, make the fire-alarm model an ‘optimal
enforcement strategy’. And yet, our research reveals that the actual level
of parliamentary scrutiny is far higher than might be expected under
the parliamentary decline thesis and recent reforms have encouraged
select committees to adopt a slightly more proactive stance in relation
to delegated governance that have involved new procedures and methods
of interaction. However, recent reforms to achieve a level of systematic
scrutiny that is more in-line with a police-patrol model of legislative
oversight have not been successful, and this is because the modernization
reforms of 2002 and 2003 did not amount to a radical or even significant
change to the resource-dependency framework between Parliament and
the executive. The Scrutiny Unit, for example, consists of just fifteen staff
and must support all the select committees in relation to their legislative
and scrutiny functions and the additional payment for select committee
chairmen was instituted at a far lower level than recommended by both
the Newton and Norton Commissions in 2001. Bagehot’s ‘efficient secret’
ensures that the executive can block or dilute reforms that may negatively
affect its governing capacity and this is exactly what has happened dur-
ing 1997–2007. Although the Commons deploys a fire-alarm model of
oversight, it is compromised by weaknesses in terms of both detectors and
effectors.46 Its lack of resources limits its capacity to impose amendments
to legislation that would create societal smoke alarms, as demonstrated
by the government’s rejection of tabled amendments to the Bank of
England Bill that would have strengthened public accountability, while
also making it difficult for the House of Commons to systematically and
coherently sit at the apex of the societal smoke alarms that do exist.47
Even where problems are detected and brought to the House’s attention,
its capacity to effect change in the face of executive obstruction is limited.
And yet, as the ‘moderate optimists’ noted above who sought to reframe
the parliamentary decline thesis in the 1950s and 1960s emphasized, the
House of Commons still wields great power as no government can afford
to take its parliamentary majority for granted, but the House uses this
power sparingly and generally only in relation to issues of major public
concern. This relates back to our attempt in this chapter to close slightly
the expectations-gap that exists in relation to parliamentary scrutiny
of the bureaucracy by emphasizing that the Commons has never been
expected, empowered, or resourced to fulfil a proactive role in relation to
the state and commentaries that judge its performance against such stan-
dards will inevitably be disappointed, while those who judge the House
200
against the role British constitutional history has ascribed to may be less
so. (Indeed, the publication of an explicit set of core tasks that is implicitly
based on a police-patrol model of oversight but is not accompanied by the
resources to fulfil them risks further widening the expectations-capacity
gap.) In short, the current situation can be interpreted as either reflecting a
dysfunctional polity or one that achieves a proportional balance between
democratic accountability and governance capacity. In order to develop
these points and locate them within the broader themes and arguments
of this book, it is useful to return to the theoretical pillars.
6.5. Theory
This chapter has examined accountability and delegation. It has chal-

lenged the dominant but false assumption of T3 that public bodies are
unaccountable and has instead developed a more sophisticated analy-
sis by drawing on theories and models from T1 and T2. The crux of
the accountability debate rests on finding a balance between ‘hard’ and
‘soft’ mechanisms that achieve an acceptable balance between democratic
accountability and governing capacity. In order to illustrate the com-
plexity of modern governance and its implications for accountability,
the first section examined the twin dilemmas of ‘many eyes’ and ‘many
hands’. This allowed us to explore the distinction between what have
been termed ‘moral pulls’ and ‘external pushes’ and this, by encouraging a
broad approach to the topic, challenged the widespread assumption that
accountability is always a ‘good thing’. This perspective was developed
through the third section’s ‘360◦ view’ of the accountability frameworks
surrounding the various layers in the Russian Doll Model.
In order to provide a framework through which the interrelationship
between parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of accountability
could be assessed and understood, the third section drew up on the work
of McCubbins and Schwartz and their models of legislative oversight.
This allowed us to construct a very specific argument: scholars who were
criticizing the level, extent, and nature of parliamentary accountability
of the wider bureaucracy were implicitly gauging the House of Commons
against a model and level of oversight that it had never been expected,
resourced, or empowered to achieve. The expectations-gap had therefore
been artificially inflated, and we sought to demonstrate this line or rea-
soning through an exhaustive audit of parliamentary scrutiny during the
two governments between 1997 and 2005. This suggested that, despite
201
the modernization reforms of 2002 and 2003, the resource framework in

which select committees operate (combined with the constituency and
legislative responsibilities of MPs) means that they have little option but
to adopt a fire-alarm model of oversight: ‘. . . given the scale of the task it
is simply not feasible for us systematically to review the entire operation
of the Department. All we can do is address those issues which seem to
us most urgent, or which would most obviously benefit from the type of
scrutiny we can bring to bear’.48 Public bodies are held to account through
a range of procedures (i.e. societal smoke alarms) but Parliament lacks the
capacity to sit at the apex of this system.
I’m afraid that there simply is not time for select committees to look at each and
every one of the quangos within their remit . . . [S]elect committees simply do not
have the time and resources to do what they already do, never mind having their
burdens added to. I regard this as disappointing but an acceptance of reality.49
In theoretical terms, it is difficult to tease apart our meso- and macro-

level perspectives (Table 2.1 above) because the WM provides the nor-
mative and empirical framework that has been ‘locked-in’ throughout
constitutional history. As Chapter 3 illustrated, the emergence of the
ministerial department and the convention of individual ministerial
responsibility to Parliament as core principles of the WM in the middle
of the nineteenth century has had long-term implications for British
politics and governance because it embedded certain assumptions about
the nature of the state, the role of the public, and the appropriate
balance between representative government and responsible government.
These ideas, which essentially perpetuated an elitist or shallow concep-
tion of democracy, became further entrenched as the balance of power
shifted from the legislature to the executive during the end of the nine-
teenth century. Although HI emphasizes stability and impediments to
reform, it does acknowledge that at certain critical junctures, the disparity
between governing principles and the actually existing reality may be so
stark that a ‘window of opportunity’ opens through which fundamental
change can be implemented. A governing crisis on its own is rarely
sufficient to stimulate change but must more commonly be accompa-
nied by an interpretation by the dominant political elite that a crisis
exists.
In this regard, the British polity has been extraordinary resilient and
where tensions have occurred, they have been addressed within the para-
meters of the WM or what might be called executive government rather
than being interpreted as crises requiring mega-constitutional change.
202
Therefore, although a constellation of variables came into line during the

summer of 2001 to create what could be termed a ‘window of opportu-
nity’ in relation to parliamentary modernization, this episode was never
interpreted by the political elite as a ‘crisis’ but simply one that demanded
some level of reform but within the boundaries of the WM. The resource-
dependency changed in favour of the legislature; but only very slightly.
This is not to overlook the existence of evolutionary and pragmatic
change to the accountability frameworks over time, but it is to acknowl-
edge the existence of a bounded rationality in constitutional terms.50
Indeed, the WM provides both a political and administrative rational-
ity that assuages arguments in favour of increased scrutiny. The former
emphasizes the political rationality of providing an elected government
with the capacity to implement its manifesto commitments with undue
meddling; the latter focuses attention on the need for public servants to
be able to focus on their core tasks. It is, however, important to recognize
that the research presented in this chapter supports our earlier contention
regarding the relationship between the WM and the MLP (Table 2.3). I
am not arguing that we have moved from the WM to the MLP but that
an increasingly diverse and multi-levelled (vertically and horizontally)
system of governance is developing within the boundaries of the WM. It
is for this reason that an increasing number of non-parliamentary modes
of accountability have developed but their relationship or interconnect-
edness within the contours of a parliamentary state are blurred. Fuzzy
accountability, in terms of its constitutional status, is a gradually more
significant element of British governance.
The findings of the chapter resonate with the central thesis of this book
because the frameworks for securing accountability offer little in terms of
clarity and consistency. Apart from short-term political factors related to
the passing of the relevant founding legislation, there is no logical reason
why specific public bodies, like the Financial Services Authority, should
have different accountability frameworks than any other delegated orga-
nization. Moreover, the convention of ministerial responsibility veils the
existence of a range of non-parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms, but there
has been little coherent thought in terms of the relationship between
the primary (i.e. parliamentary) form of accountability and secondary
forms. But as the state grows more complex and the public becomes
more confused about where responsibility lies for specific public bodies
and how this can be secured, the democratic consequences of delegation
in terms of declining levels of public trust in politicians and political
institutions is likely to increase (a point we return to in Chapter 10).
203
My argument here is quite specific and stands up apart from much of

the more normatively inspired literature on accountability because I am
not arguing for more (or indeed less) but simply for the creation of trans-
parent governance frameworks which provide clarity and consistency
across the sphere of delegated governance and explain exactly how each
layer of the state is held to account, and the principles on which different
frameworks have been applied in each case. As we shall see in Chapter 9,
devolution to the constituent elements of the UK since 1998 has added
further urgency to this need for clarity as the introduction of clearer
and in places stronger accountability regimes at the sub-national level
is likely to create a dynamic whereby the Westminster government is at
some point forced to either reform the sphere of delegated governance by
introducing a principled and transparent governance framework or justify
why a more opaque and muddled approach is appropriate at the national
level. The next chapter continues with emphasis on lines of respon-
sibility, the role of ministers, and the theme of ‘incoherent arbitrari-
ness’ through an examination of the topic of public appointments and
patronage.
Notes
1. Dubnick, M., ‘Seeking Salvation for Accountability’, paper presented at the

2002 Annual Meeting of APSA, Boston (2002).
2. HL 68. The Regulatory State: Ensuring Its Accountability, Sixth Report of the
House of Lords’ Select Committee on the Constitution, Session 2003–04,
p. 20.
3. Mulgan, R., ‘Accountability’, Public Administration, 78 (2000), 555–73;
Bovens, M., ‘Public Accountability’, in E. Ferlie, L. Lynee, and C. Pollitt
(eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Public Management (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005), p. 5.
4. Bovens, M., ‘Analysing and Assessing Public Accountability’, Eurogov Paper
No.C-06-01 (2006).
5. HL 68 The Regulatory State, op. cit., p. 20.
6. Ibid.
7. Waldegrave, W., The Reality of Reform and Accountability in Today’s Public
Service (London: Public Finance Foundation, 1993); Stewart, J., ‘Reply to
William Waldegrave’, in N. Flynn (ed.), A Reader: Change in the Civil Service
(London: Public Finance Foundation, 1994).
8. Koppell, J., ‘Pathologies of Accountability’, Public Administration Review, 65
(2005), p. 95.
204
9. Koppell (2005) op. cit.; see also Bundt, J., ‘Strategic Stewards: Managing
Accountability, Building Trust’, Journal of Public Administration Research and
Theory, 10 (2000), 757–77.
10. Koppell (2005) op. cit., p. 99.
11. Gregory, R., ‘Risk, Blame and Trust: Public Service Reform and Negativity
Bias’, paper presented at the IPSE Congress, Durban, 29 June to 4 July 2003.
12. See Hood, C., ‘The Risk Game and the Blame Game’, Government and Oppo-
sition, 37 (2002), 15–37; Anechiarico, F. and Jacobs, J., The Pursuit of Absolute
Integrity (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996).
13. Bovens (2005) op. cit.; Behn, R., Rethinking Democratic Accountability
(Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2001), p. 3.
14. Weaver, R., Automatic Government (Washington DC: Brookings Institute,
1988), p. 375.
15. Dubnick (2002) op. cit., p. 20.
16. Bovens (2006) op. cit., p. 1.
17. Thompson, D., Political Ethics and Public Office (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1987), p. 40; see also Thompson, D., ‘Moral Responsibility
of Public Officials: The Problem of many hands’, American Political Science
Review, 74 (1980), 905–16.
18. Hood (2002) op. cit.; Hood, C. and Rothstein, H., ‘Risk Regulation Under
Pressure: Problem Solving or Blame Shifting?’, Administration and Society, 33
(2001), 21–53.
19. Hood, C. and Lodge, C., ‘From Sir Humphrey to Sir Nigel: What Future for
the Public Service Bargain after Blairworld?’, Political Quarterly 77 (2006),
360–8 (at p. 360).
20. HC 107. The Rural Payments Agency and the Implementation of the Single
Payments Scheme, Third Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
21. Gregory (2003) op. cit., p. 15.
22. Kettl (2000: 494) quoted in Pollitt, The Essential Public Manager, p. 17.
23. Considine, M., ‘The End of the Line? Accountable Governance in the Age
of Networks, Partnerships and Joined-Up Services’, Governance, 15 (2002),
21–40; Bovens (2005) op. cit.
24. Baroness Young, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, HL 68-II
(2003) op. cit. p. 343.
25. HL 68 (2003) op. cit.
26. See, for example, Weir, S. and Hall, W., Ego-Trip: Extra-Governmental Organisa-
tion in the United Kingdom and their accountability (London: Charter 88, 1994);
and HC 209. Quangos, Sixth Report of the Public Administration Committee,
Session 1998–99.
27. Brazier, A., Parliament at the Apex: Parliamentary Scrutiny and Regulatory Bodies
(London: Hansard Society, 2003).
205
28. Cabinet Office, Public Bodies: A Guide for Departments, Chapter 8: Policy—
Openness and Accountability (London: Cabinet Office, June 2006), para 3.1.
29. HL 68 (2003) op. cit.
30. HC 209 (1998) op. cit.
31. Flinders, M., ‘Volcanic Politics’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 41/3
(2006), 385–407.
32. Flinders, M., ‘Analysing Reform: The House of Commons 2001–2005’, Polit-
ical Studies, 55 (2007), pp. 174–201.
33. For a review of this thesis, see Kiewiet, R. and McCubbins, M., The Logic of
Delegation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
34. McCubbins, M. and Schwartz, T., ‘Congressional Oversight Overlooked:
Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms’, American Journal of Political Science, 28
(1984), 165.
35. McCubbins and Schwartz (1984) op. cit., p. 166.
36. Mayhew, D., Congress: The Electoral Connection (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974); Fiorina, M., ‘Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms’, Public
Choice, 39 (1982), 33–66.
37. McCubbins and Schwartz (1984) op. cit., p. 168.
38. Ibid. p. 165.
39. HC 148. The Work of the Committee in 2002, Second Report of the Committee
on Culture Media and Sport, Session 2002–03, para 7.
40. Cowley, P. and Stuart, M., ‘Parliament’ Parliamentary Affairs, 54/2 (2001),
238–56 (at p. 238).
41. For a review of this body of work, see Flinders (2007) op. cit.
42. Hansard Society Commission on Parliamentary Scrutiny, The Challenge for
Parliament: Making Government Accountable (London: Hansard Society, 2001)
[The Newton Commission]; Norton, P., Strengthening Parliament: The Report
of the Commission to Strengthen Parliament (London: The Conservative Party,
2000).
43. HC 857. The Cancellation of the Benefit Payment Card Project, Session 1999–
2000; HC 302. The Financial Analysis of the London Underground PPP, Session
2000–01.
44. See Dispatches, Channel 4, 24 September 2007.
45. HC 192, p. xxxiii.
46. Hood, C., The Tools of Government (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1986).
47. See Hansard Society (2001) op. cit.; HL 68 (2003) op. cit.
48. HC 239 (2004) para 12.
49. HC 209 (1998) op. cit., memorandum 21.
50. Judge, D., ‘This is What Democracy Looks Like’, British Politics, 1 (2006),
367–96.
206
7
Patronage
with Matthew Denton
Since the beginning of the twentieth century and the huge growth
in the machinery of public administration, there has developed a
new kind of insidious patronage, just as reprehensible as a Jacksonian
‘spoils’ system.1
One of the key aims of this book is to challenge a number of common

preconceptions or myths concerning delegation and British governance.
This is achieved through an empirically accurate and conceptually refined
approach to the topic which is sensitive to the need for proportionality
and of the existence of certain trade-offs. The debate concerning internal
control is therefore not whether public bodies are ‘out of control’ or
‘under control’ but whether the mechanisms through which sponsor
departments seek to manage at a distance deliver an appropriate blend of
autonomy and control (Chapter 5). Public bodies are not unaccountable
but a debate does exist regarding the degree to which the existing frame-
works provide a level of democratic oversight that is proportionate with
the powers and responsibilities that have been delegated. This chapter
challenges the popular perception that public bodies are a rich patronage-
resource for ministers and that those serving on the boards of arm’s-length
bodies are overpaid and underworked. As we emphasized in the opening
chapter, delegation as it has been deployed and to some extent abused
in the past should not be confused with delegation as it is currently
operationalized, or how it might be used in the future.
Recent research on British government and governance, as well as
the wider literature on delegation and autonomy, has largely failed to
provide a detailed overview and analysis of recent reforms in the field
of patronage and public appointments. And yet this is an area where
207
Patronage
significant reforms have been implemented in recent years, reforms that

pose fundamental questions about the location of power and responsibil-
ity within the British state. This chapter therefore explores the principles
and practices of patronage and how they have evolved particularly since
1995 in Britain. The focus of this chapter is therefore on the ‘reach’ and
‘permeation’ of patronage in relation to delegated public bodies in Britain.
In this context, patronage is interpreted as a political resource or a risk-
reduction mechanism through which a degree of loyalty and control can
be achieved in an increasingly fragmented and balkanized state system.
And yet the core argument of this chapter is that there has been a rapid
shift in Britain from a patronage-based system to a public appointments
system. Since the mid-1990s, the discretion of ministers to make appoint-
ments to arm’s-length bodies has been severely diminished, and in some
areas removed completely, and in charting this process the chapter pro-
vides a case study in the evolution and adaptation of patronage over time
while also demonstrating spillover effects both horizontally (i.e. across
sectors) and vertically (i.e. between different levels of governance).
This chapter is divided into five sections. The first section focuses on
Daalder’s notion of ‘reach’ and suggests that in a refined form this pro-
vides a useful tool through which the nature and extent of reforms can be
dissected and gauged.2 It therefore provides a common thread which runs
throughout the chapter. The second section employs the notion of reach
to briefly trace the history of patronage and delegation in Britain. The
third section examines the introduction of an explicit and independently
regulated public appointments system in 1995 and how this represented a
significant shift from a patronage-based to a public appointments system.
The election of a Labour Government in May 1997 led to a series of further
reforms to the public appointments system that further affected (and in
some places removed) the reach of ministers and these are discussed in
the fourth section. The final section draws upon our theoretical pillars
in order to reflect not only upon the wider implications of the research
outlined in this chapter but also how it relates to the central ‘walking
without order’ thesis of this book.
7.1. Reach and Permeation
The terms ‘patronage’ and ‘public appointments’ are frequently seen

as synonymous but this usage is unhelpful as it confuses two dis-
tinct processes. Patronage appointments are those that can be made by
208
Patronage
Table 7.1. Differences between patronage and public appointments
Patronage appointments Public appointments
Private process Public process

Not advertised Advertised
Pre-interview informal contact No pre-interview contact
Single interviewee Competitive interview process
Ministerial discretion Independent element
Closed competition Open competition
Unregulated Regulated
Perceived as democratically illegitimate Perceived as democratically legitimate
Focused power Diffused power
Particularistic advantage Universal benefit
Covert politics Open politics
Instrument of favour Instrument of governance
ministers without any encumbrance in terms of due-process or trans-

parency. In reality, even patronage powers exist within a certain bounded
rationality which affects or limits ministerial freedoms, such as political
calculations or informal brokering. However, despite the existence of
informal limits on patronage appointments, the underlying variable is
one of centralized power in the hands of the executive. Ministers may
have to take certain factors into account, but the process is relatively
closed and secretive with no external rules or transparency requirements.
Public appointments, on the other hand, are made by ministers but
against certain explicit standards and frameworks with an independent
element to ensure that the public interest is not sacrificed to narrower
political interests (see Table 7.1). So the capacity of ministers to make the
final appointment remains but certain safeguards have been put in place
in order to ensure that appointments are made on merit and follow a
transparent, competitive recruitment process.
So the essential difference between a public appointment and patronage
is that the latter tends to be surrounded by secrecy. As Goldston notes,
The difference here lies in the absence of rules of procedure, with nominees appear-
ing if by magic. The result is the apparent lack of accountability for appointments.
Objections to patronage lie not merely in the vesting of arbitrary powers in the
hands of individuals, nor even in their possible abuse, but in the fact that the
public has no knowledge of the process itself.3
It is for this reason that patronage-based systems are commonly associated

with widespread corruption, particularly in southern Europe, Africa, and
parts of Asia.4 Although it is quite possible that ministers may deploy
209
Patronage
their patronage powers in the public interest, the absence of transparency

or an independent element creates the perception or suspicion that a
system may be exploited for private as opposed to public ends. In order
to understand and gauge the existence and interrelationship between
patronage and public appointments systems, Hans Daalder’s work on
political parties and particularly the notions of ‘reach’ and ‘permeation’
provides a useful framework. ‘Reach’ or ‘permeation’ simply refers to the
scope enjoyed by ministers in terms of the extent of their appointment
powers. However, on its own the notion of ‘reach’ risks oversimplifying
the existence of a far more complex and fragmented system (or number of
systems) and therefore some form of disaggregation of ministerial ‘reach’
is needed and this can be achieved on at least four dimensions:
1. formal versus informal powers;

2. pure versus constrained selectivity;
3. complete versus partial powers of appointment; and
4. paid versus unpaid appointments.
The formal/informal dimension seeks to recognize that a form of party

patronage may exist even in areas where the reach of the party in govern-
ment does not constitutionally exist. The Civil Service Commissioner’s
Recruitment Code, for example, recognizes that ‘ministers may have a
particular interest in appointments to certain posts’ and sets out a system
through which the overriding principle of appointment on merit and
the political neutrality of the civil service can theoretically be reconciled
with a role for ministers in the selection process.5 This delicate balance
is achieved through ministers being able to view and comment on can-
didates at both the long- and short-listing stages but not interview or
express a preference among them. In constitutional terms, the minister
has no formal ‘reach’ over civil service appointments and yet the Civil
Service Commissioner’s Recruitment Code clearly recognizes a legitimate
ministerial role and influence in appointments. At the same time it is
important to recognize that although the formal reach of ministers may
span several layers of delegated governance, and amount to several thou-
sand appointments each year, in reality ministers have neither the time
nor the inclination to play a role in more than a handful of the most
senior appointments. In sum then, even where ministers may have a
formal capacity (i.e. ‘reach’) they will frequently play no role; but in some
areas where they have no formal capacity (i.e. no ‘reach’) they may deploy
an informal control capacity.
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Patronage
The second dimension through which the notion of ‘reach’ can use-
fully be disaggregated relates to the freedom enjoyed by ministers when
making an appointment. A ‘pure’ form of reach indicates that ministers
are free to appoint at will without recourse to either procedural rules
or external scrutiny and is, therefore, most commonly associated with
patronage-based systems. Conversely, where ministers enjoy appointment
powers but must abide by certain procedures and external scrutiny mech-
anisms, their reach is best interpreted as ‘constrained’ and thus most
closely relates to what has been termed above as the public appointments
system. The benefit of disaggregating ministerial ‘reach’ into ‘pure’ or
‘constrained’ (i.e. less pure) forms is that this allows for the demarcation
of different appointment systems within and between different forms of
delegated public body.
The third dimension through which Daalder’s notion of ‘reach’ might
usefully be broken down exposes the fact that very often the reach of
ministers is not complete or uniform but is partial and fragmented. So,
for example, although the ‘reach’ of ministers may include appointments
to executive Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs) and public corpo-
rations, this does not necessarily mean that a single minister makes all
the appointments. In some cases appointments to the board of an arm’s-
length body are made by a number of ministers. The Board of OFCOM,
for example, consists of appointments made separately by the Secretary of
State for Media and Sport and also by the Secretary of State for Trade and
Industry. Over three and a half thousand appointments on the boards of
executive NDPBs and public corporations fall into this category. So the
‘reach’ of ministers might be complete, meaning that they make all the
appointments, or partial, thereby reflecting that some appointments are
made either by other ministers or by nominated authorities.
The final dimension that is worth reflecting upon in relation to the
‘reach’ of ministerial appointment powers relates to the balance between
paid and unpaid appointments. Of the 21,000 appointments to public
bodies that ministers are responsible for at the national level, around 80
per cent are unpaid positions and fewer than 200 appointees receive a
salary in excess of £50,000 per year. Contrary to the negative and largely
polemical media coverage, those serving on the boards of arm’s-length
bodies are most frequently dedicating their time and energy to the public
good for very little personal benefit. As the first report of the Committee
on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) noted in 1995, ‘most public appoint-
ments, far from being a reward, represent a considerable personal commit-
ment by the individuals appointed and often some financial sacrifice’.6
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Patronage
Understanding and disaggregating Daalder’s notion of reach is useful for

a number of reasons but not least because it allows observers to trace how
the nature and extent of ministerial appointment powers have shifted
over time. Section 7.2 provides a historical overview which accounts for
not only why the ‘reach’ of ministers is particularly great in Britain but
also why far-reaching reforms were implemented at two distinct historical
points.
7.2. Old Corruption, New Corruption
In terms of understanding the ‘reach’ of ministers and how this has

become increasingly constrained over time, the framework of histori-
cal institutionalism has much to offer. British constitutional history in
relation to patronage and public appointments is characterized by long
periods of very gradual or incremental change which are punctuated by
abrupt and far-reaching reforms. This section focuses on two critical junc-
tures that dramatically altered both the reach and the form of ministerial
appointment powers and can be interpreted as marking a shift from a
patronage-based to a public appointments system: first, the creation of
the Civil Service Commission in 1855, and second, the creation of the
Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA) in 1995. The
politics of public appointments in the intervening century and a half is
characterized by a refusal by governments to fetter their reach.
The establishment of the Civil Service Commission in 1855 represented
the high-point of a reform process that had since the end of the eigh-
teenth century been gradually abolishing the patronage of the monarch
and the number of sinecures in public office. By 1831, the politics of
economical reform, driven by the cost of war in North America and France
and the industrial revolution, had swept away many of the practices
which have since become encapsulated in the term ‘Old Corruption’.7 By
the 1840s, Treasury and Parliamentary control of public monies had been
achieved and the sinecures system on which so much Crown and min-
isterial patronage depended had been largely abolished. The creation of
a Civil Service Commission to assume responsibility for the recruitment,
training, and appointment of civil servants in 1855 following a recom-
mendation of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report two years earlier therefore
represented the logical (but no less significant) culmination of a longer
term process.8 The result was an administrative system that by 1866 was
not only free from corruption in the narrower sense but also substantially
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Patronage
free from nepotism. And if we return to Daalder’s notion of ‘reach’, what

is important about the creation of the Civil Service Commission in 1855
is that it represented a major reduction in the basic reach of ministers. Put
simply, due to concerns regarding corruption, nepotism, and inefficiency,
appointments to the civil service were taken out of the hands of ministers
and transferred to an independent appointments commission. However,
although institutional and procedural mechanisms were now in place
to prevent the ‘old corruption’, the reach of ministers was expanding
rapidly beyond the civil service in the sphere of delegated governance.9
Indeed, a perennial theme of the next 150 years of British consti-
tutional history concerned ministerial patronage to non-departmental
and arm’s-length bodies. Sir Ivor Jennings, for example, noted in
1938,
The greatest potential danger is neither in the central government nor in local
government, but in the numerous independent statutory authorities, which are
springing up like mushrooms under recent legislation. . . . [The greatest danger]
lies in the development of new governmental institutions outside the system of
democratic control.10
As Chapter 3 illustrated, the growth of arm’s-length bodies during the

twentieth century and the absence of any transparent appointment pro-
cedures created a concern that a form of ‘new corruption’ was emerging
based around the distribution of positions on public bodies in return for
political support or favours.11 By the mid-1970s, ministers were responsi-
ble for over 10,000 public sector appointments to a disparate penumbra
of NDPBs, nationalized industries, public corporations, and other arm’s-
length bodies. In terms of understanding the nature of that reach it is
useful to return to the four dimensions set out above. First the reach of
ministers in relation to arm’s-length bodies was relatively pure, that is,
they enjoyed total discretion in choosing and appointing an individual
and were unencumbered by procedural or institutional rules. As the min-
isters would be personally responsible for the actions of their appointees,
so the logic went, the convention of individual ministerial responsibil-
ity not only allowed but also actively encouraged ministers to deploy
their patronage powers while also interpreting calls for these powers to
be limited as unconstitutional. Second, there were no clear procedures
for making appointments, and practices varied greatly between depart-
ments and ministers. Third, the vast majority of these appointments were
unpaid. Finally, the reach of ministers was so extensive that in all but
the most senior appointments ministers could not play a personal role
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Patronage
in the appointment but would instead either select from a short-list of

candidates or simply sign off a nominee proposed by their department.
This reminds us of the fact that even where ministers may have a formal
capacity they will frequently delegate this role to their officials.
From 1855 to 1995, the politics of patronage and public appointments
was relative stable. There were no formal or explicit policies for deal-
ing with public sector appointments beyond the civil service and these
positions were largely regarded as private matters of ministerial patronage
rather than public appointments which demanded a transparent process.
Indeed, from the 1970s onwards there followed two decades in which
both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party adopted clientelist prac-
tices whereby public sector appointments were distributed as a means of
maintaining and rewarding political or electoral support. In this context,
the 1970s witnessed the over-representation of trade unions leaders on
the boards of public bodies, while the 1980s and early 1990s displayed a
trend in favour of pro-business appointees.12
The summer of 1995 can arguably be interpreted as a critical juncture
in the history of patronage and public appointments when a number
of factors conspired to create a ‘window of opportunity’ through which
far-reaching, even radical, reform could be implemented. First, the level
of public and parliamentary disquiet over the issue of patronage and
public appointments had become intense. This fed into and exacerbated
a broader decline in public trust in politicians and political institutions
and which had seen the Conservative Party dogged by accusations of
sleaze and corruption.13 Second, the Prime Minister, John Major, had
already been forced to respond to this political climate by announcing
no fewer than three reviews: an independent working party to exam-
ine the public appointments system; a review of appointments to all
public bodies by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and an
expansion of the remit of the recently established CSPL to include non-
elected public bodies. Finally, possibly the most important factor was
the Conservative Government’s awareness that after eighteen years in
office they were very unlikely to win the next general election. Reforms
to the public appointments system suddenly took on new meaning as
a tool through which they could limit the patronage powers of their
successors.
The CSPL’s first report was published in May 1995 and recommended
that ‘an Independent Public Appointments Commissioner be established
to regulate, monitor and report on the public appointments process’.14
This recommendation was subsequently accepted by the government and
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Patronage
the OCPA was duly established just six months later.15 Unlike the creation
of the Civil Service Commission in 1855, the creation of the OCPA did
not involve a reduction in the ‘reach’ of ministers, but instead affected
the nature of that reach by instituting a transparent and independently
regulated structure that fettered the discretion of ministers (i.e. from ‘pure’
reach to constrained selectivity). In this regard, it represented a stark
shift from a patronage-based system to a public appointments frame-
work (see Table 7.1). However, it is a central contention of this chapter
that the creation of the OCPA in 1995 represented a critical juncture
not just in terms of the Commissioner’s specific role and powers but
because it set in train a process or series of reforms. Put another way,
the creation of the OCPA was a significant departure from the British
political tradition which acted as a crack or a wedge that has been
expanded upon over time through a gradual process of extension, accre-
tion, logic-transfer, and constitutional momentum during the subsequent
decade.
7.3. Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments
Although the CSPL concluded that evidence of ministerial bias in pub-

lic appointments was ‘circumstantial and inconclusive’ the committee
did acknowledge that the public perception of bias was widespread and
warranted reform.16 Consequently, the OCPA was established in 1995
as a direct response to public concerns regarding ‘cronyism’, unaccount-
able ministerial patronage, and the absence of checks and balances. The
Commissioner for Public Appointments is appointed by the Queen under
the Public Appointments Order in Council 2002 and the OCPA is for-
mally an advisory NDPB of the Cabinet Office. It is this latter depart-
ment that is responsible for maintaining the Schedule to the Order in
Council that lists the bodies that fall within the remit of the Commis-
sioner for Public Appointments. Although the Order applies widely to
public appointments made by Scottish ministers and by the National
Assembly for Wales as well as to appointments made by UK ministers,
the Schedule to the Order is by no means complete in terms of public
bodies and a degree of uncertainty has always existed about the prin-
ciples for determining whether a public body is regulated by the OCPA
or not (see below). For those bodies listed, the aim of the OCPA is to
‘ensure a fair, open, transparent appointments process that produces a
quality outcome and can command public confidence’.17 In achieving
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Patronage
Table 7.2. OCPA’s principles for public appointments
1 Ministerial responsibility The ultimate responsibility for appointments rests with

ministers.
2 Merit All public appointments should be governed by the
overriding principle of selection based on merit, by the
well-informed choice of individuals, who through their
abilities, experience, and qualities match the needs of the
public body in question.
3 Independent scrutiny No appointment shall take place without first being
scrutinized by a panel which must include an
Independent Assessor.
4 Equal opportunities Departments should sustain programmes to promote and
deliver equal opportunities principles.
5 Probity Board members must be committed to the principles and
values of public service and perform their duties with
integrity.
6 Openness and transparency The principles of Open Government must be applied to the
appointments process, its workings must be made
transparent, and information must be provided about
appointments made.
7 Proportionality The appointments procedures need to be subject to the
principle of ‘proportionality’. That is, they should be
appropriate for the nature of the post and the size and
weight of its responsibilities.
this ambition the authoritative (mandatory) document is the OCPA Code

of Practice which sets out the rules governing appointments to public
bodies and seeks to uphold the OCPA’s Principles for Public Appointments
(see Table 7.2).
The OCPA Code of Practice therefore attempts to balance the need to
uphold the convention of ministerial responsibility while also ensuring
certain levels of transparency and good practice. It is for this reason, for
example, that ministers and senior civil servants are free to approach
candidates and invite them to apply for a certain position—a practice
known as ‘targeting’—but the position must also be openly advertised, the
role specification must be clear and publicly available, and all candidates,
irrespective of how they came to know about a specific public appoint-
ment, must fill in the same application form and be subject to the same
process. Should a situation occur that is not explicitly covered by the Code
of Practice or where a department wishes to depart from the prescribed
process, then the OCPA must be consulted in advance and the outcome
of the discussion duly recorded. Moreover, all interview panels must now
contain an independent assessor whose role is to ensure that the OCPA’s
principles for public appointments are upheld. As mentioned above in
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Patronage
relation to ‘complete versus partial’ reach, the founding legislation of

some public bodies stipulates that some organizations have a statutory
right to nominate individuals to the governing boards of some arm’s-
length bodies. Even in these cases although the jurisdiction of the OCPA
only covers ministerial appointments those made by nominating bodies
must conform to the Code of Practice. The Commissioner for Public
Appointments has six main duties:
1. To promote economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and equality of oppor-

tunity in the procedures for making appointments, exercise her func-
tions with the object of maintaining the principle of selection on
merit in relation to public appointments;
2. Prescribe and publish a Code of Practice on the interpretation and
application by appointing authorities of the principle of selection on
merit for making public appointments;
3. Audit appointment policies and practices pursued by appointing
authorities to establish whether the Code of Practice is being
observed;
4. Require appointing authorities to publish such summary informa-
tion as may be specified relating to selection for an appointment;
5. From time to time conduct an inquiry into the policies and practices
followed by an appointing authority in relation to any appointment
or description of appointment; and
6. Recruit and train independent assessors.
In order to fulfil these duties the commissioner oversees a rolling pro-

gramme of departmental audits to ensure that departments are following
the Code of Practice in addition to training independent assessors, com-
missioning research, maintaining and distributing best-practice guide-
lines, as well as investigating specific complaints. Complainants must first
raise their case with the department concerned in the first instance before
taking their complaint to the OCPA. In 2006–07, for example, depart-
ments received 109 formal complaints about appointment processes of
which just 8 were referred to the OCPA (6 of which were upheld).18 The
Commissioner has powers in the Code of Practice to publish a report
setting out where the Code has been departed from and this is widely
acknowledged as a powerful incentive to ministers and officials to heed
the Commissioner’s advice.19 This ‘naming and shaming’ capacity is
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Patronage
further complemented through the annual appearance of the Commis-

sioner before the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) in the
House of Commons.
As the CSPL emphasized in 2005, although the regulatory system for
making public sector appointments is still relatively new ‘[T]he system
is undoubtedly an improvement on the pre-existing arrangements of
unfettered ministerial patronage’,20 and it is worthwhile returning at this
stage to Daalder’s notion of ‘reach’ in order to gauge the actual impact
of this reform. In effect the OCPA principles attempted to rebalance a
number of competing interests and in doing so deliver both continu-
ity and change. The continuity is reflected in the fact that ministerial
responsibility remains the basis of the system. In this regard the ‘reach’
of ministers was not affected: ministers still enjoyed the power to make
appointments to a vast range of arm’s-length bodies; the balance between
paid and unpaid positions remains heavily in favour of the latter; and
the creation of the OCPA did not affect the balance between ministerial
and non-ministerial appointments to public bodies. The central change,
however, was in the nature of this ‘reach’ capacity: a shift from a very
‘pure’ form of reach (patronage) to one involving constrained selectivity in
terms of transparent and prescribed procedural requirements to ensure
that all appointees are appointed on merit irrespective of secondary party
political allegiances—they are ‘above the bar’ in Whitehall terminology.
This shift in emphasis was explicitly acknowledged and defended in
the first report of the CSPL when it maintained that although ministers
should be left with wide powers of appointment ‘It does not, however,
follow that Ministers should act with unfettered discretion.’ The Code
of Practice and imposition of Independent Assessors on all appointment
panels thereby closed-off clientelist practices whereby appointments are
distributed as a means of maintaining political or electoral support. Put
another way, individuals’ relationships with the governing party were
not a bar to them holding an appointment on a public body but they
must also demonstrate that they have the specific ‘abilities, experience,
and qualities’ needed to fill the vacancy in question. As noted above, the
introduction of an independently regulated public appointments system
was a significant departure from the previous practice of closed ministerial
patronage networks. The creation of the OCPA, however, did little to
sate the demands of reformers who wanted further limits placed on the
reach and nature of ministerial appointments and the Labour Party’s 1997
general election manifesto included a commitment to extend the remit of
the OCPA to all public bodies.21
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Patronage
7.4. New Labour and Public Appointments, 1997–2007
As noted above, the creation of the OCPA in 1995 marked a major depar-
ture from the previous patronage-based system for making appointments
to arm’s-length bodies. Although the creation of an independently regu-
lated system for making public appointments may not have altered the
reach or scope of ministers’ appointment powers, it certainly affected the
nature of that reach by fettering ministerial discretion. Despite the fact
that the initial organizational jurisdiction of the Commissioner was lim-
ited to the executive NDPBs listed on the Schedule to the founding Order
in Council, the creation of the OCPA can be interpreted as a significant
‘crack’ or ‘wedge’ that could be expanded over time through a gradual
process of extension, accretion, and spillover. And this is exactly what has
happened since the election of Labour in 1997: the reach of ministerial
appointment powers has reduced; the nature of those remaining powers
altered; and the role and jurisdiction of the OCPA has been increased.
This section first focuses on these reforms that have sought to widen and
deepen the regulatory framework; it then goes on to analyse the trajectory
of reform.
7.4.1. Widening and Deepening Regulation

In a measure fulfilling its manifesto commitment on public appoint-
ments, the Labour Government expanded the jurisdiction of the Com-
missioner to include ministerial appointments to nationalized industries,
public corporations, utility regulators, and advisory NDPBs from 1 Octo-
ber 1998, thereby bringing in an additional six and a half thousand
additional appointments within the scope of the OCPA and in doing
so changing the nature of ministerial reach in relation to those posts
from a very pure form to one of constrained selectivity.22 However, this
proved to be just the beginning of a series of significant reforms. In March
2000, the Commissioner for Public Appointments published a critical
report into allegations of clientelistic practices in relation to NHS appoint-
ments. Her report found that the figures since the 1997 General Election
revealed a large influx of appointees who were or had been politically
active on behalf of the Labour Party. Of the 343 local councillors who
were appointed to the boards of NHS Trusts and Authorities between
May 1997 and November 1999, 83 per cent (284) were members of the
Labour Party. In light of this the Commissioner, Dame Rennie Fritchie,
suggested,
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Patronage
The Audit reveals that although there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that
those who declare activity on behalf of the Labour Party are more successful at
interview than those who declare no political activity, they do seem to be more
successful than those of other political hues.23
She went on to conclude that the process for making public appointments
in the NHS had become politicized in a systematic way and recommended
that the public appointments process for the NHS should be reviewed
as a result. The Commissioner’s concerns were examined by the PASC
and their report concluded that ‘A more fundamental way of avoiding
accusations of political bias in the system of appointments to NHS bodies
might be to take Ministers out of the loop altogether.’24 The Committee
suggested that the Commissioner for Public Appointment’s inquiry (and
the debate that it had stimulated) should be used as a mechanism for fresh
thinking and floated the idea of creating an independent appointments
commission to assume responsibility for making appointments to arm’s-
length bodies in the health sector from ministers. The Government’s
response came in the form of the NHS Plan which stated:
The appointment of non-executive directors of trusts and health authorities will

pass to a new arm’s-length body. For the last decade the power to appoint all 3000
non-executive directors of NHS Trusts and health authorities has rested with the
Secretary of State. In future all appointments to these NHS boards will be under-
taken by a new NHS Appointments Commission, not ministers. The Appointments
Commission will report annually to Parliament on its performance and progress.25
The NHS Appointments Commission, itself a Special Health Authority,

was established on 1 April 2001 and assumed responsibility for making all
appointments to health-related arm’s-length bodies. The important aspect
of the NHS Appointments Commission’s role is that it not only controls
the process for making appointments (as the OCPA does for other public
appointments) but also makes the final appointment (i.e. it has plenipo-
tentiary powers). The link between senior public appointments and the
convention of individual ministerial responsibility was therefore broken
in the sphere of health and this marked a significant reduction in the
‘reach’ of ministers. Moreover around this time the Labour Government
established a number of other independent appointment commissions
that further constrained and reduced the reach of ministers, such as the
Independent House of Lords Appointments Commission (established in
2000), to which passed the Prime Minister’s power to recommend to the
Queen the appointment of non-party political members of the second
chamber; and the Judicial Appointments Commission (established in
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Patronage
2006), which assumed responsibility for the selection and appointment

of judges from ministers.
Overall, the creation of the OCPA marked the beginning rather than the
end of a period of rapid reform of patronage in Britain. The jurisdiction
of the OCPA has expanded from its original focus solely on ministerial
appointments to executive NDPBs to encompass public corporations,
nationalized industries, advisory NDPBs and some non-ministerial depart-
ments (in 1998), and then all ministerial reappointments (July 2002). The
jurisdiction of the Commission for Judicial Appointments was expanded
in July 2004 to include appointments to all tribunal NDPBs, the NHS
Appointments Commission has provided recruitment services to a num-
ber of government departments and professional regulatory bodies, and
in 2005 the remit of the House of Lords Appointments Commission was
extended to include vetting all nominations for public honours made by
the Prime Minister. The incremental fettering and reduction in ministerial
appointment powers from 1995 to 2002 is set out in Table 7.3.
So if we return, once again, to Daalder’s notion of ‘reach’ it is clear
from Table 7.3 that two significant developments took place between
Table 7.3. Patronage to public appointments in Britain: constraining ministerial

reach 1995–2005
Layers of delegated governance 1995 1998 2001 2002 2007
√ √ √ √
1. Non-ministerial departmentsa X
√ √ √ √ √
2. Executive agenciesb √√ √√ √√
3. Special health authorities X
√ X
√ √ √ √
4. Executive NDPBs √ √ √ √
5. Public corporations X √ √ √ √
6. Central Bankc X √ √ √
7. Public–private partnershipsd X X √ √
Ministerial reappointmentse X X X √√
In addition to Tribunal NDPBs f X X X
√√ X
√√ √√
Judicial appointments X X √√ √√ √√
House of Lordsg X X
√
Key: X Pure patronage (i.e. no constraints on ministerial reach); Public appointment (i.e. independently
√√
regulated appointment on merit); Appointment Commission (i.e. the power of appointment has moved
completely from ministers).
a
Only in relation to the utility regulators.
b
The designation of appointments to executive agencies as public appointments is based on the fact that the Civil
Service Commission still provides ministers with some role in the appointment process.
c
Since 1998, the House of Commons’ Treasury Select Committee has held confirmation hearings for all appointees
to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England.
d
The OCPA regulates appointments to PPPs but only where each project is formally defined by the Office of
National Statistics as being part of the public sector.
e
The jurisdiction of the OCPA was increased to include all ministerial reappointments from July 2002.
f
The Judicial Appointments Commission became responsible for all tribunal NDPB appointments from July 2004.
g
Non-political appointments only.
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Patronage
1997 and 2005. First, the freedom and discretion enjoyed by minis-
ters in making public sector appointments was further reduced by the
extension of the remit of the OCPA. Put another way, the areas where
ministers enjoyed ‘pure’ powers (i.e. unfettered patronage powers) shrank
as the jurisdiction of the OCPA expanded. The second and arguably
more important development was the actual delegation of appointment
powers away from ministers to new independent appointments com-
missions. The NHS Appointments Commission was a particularly stark
departure from the constitutional norm as for the first time ministers at
the Department of Health would be constitutionally responsible for the
actions of public servants leading arm’s-length bodies that they had not
appointed.
However, despite the breadth and extent of these reforms, the issue of
patronage—or ‘Tony’s cronies’ as the media preferred to label the issue—
remained a highly salient political issue.26 Even where the Labour Party
had gone to great lengths to implement an explicit public appointments
system where the discretion of ministers was clearly limited and in some
cases removed completely, these measures tended to fuel the suspicion
that corrupt practices were ultimately still at work. The nomination of
the ‘people’s peers’, for example, by the House of Lords Appointments
Commission in April 2001 and May 2004 was met by howls of derision
and accusations that the lists represented little more than ‘a roll call of
establishment figures’,27 while the Conservative Party refused to be repre-
sented on the scrutiny panel that was created to oversee the appointment
of the BBC Chairman in July 2004.
Beyond the public perception and party-political point scoring over
specific appointments lay a deeper more fundamental issue: the rapid
programme of reforms that had been implemented by the two Labour
Governments since 1997 had largely been ad hoc reactions to specific
incidents or accusations, the creation of the NHS Appointments Com-
mission being a case in point. This process had not, therefore, been
accompanied by any strategic thinking. How could the role and powers
of independent appointment commissions be reconciled with the con-
vention of ministerial responsibility? If the logic of taking appointment
powers away from ministers was appropriate in relation to health, on
what basis was it not also appropriate for other sectors? Moreover, the
makeshift and unplanned nature of the reforms was visible in the fact that
there remained a number of ‘hidden corners’ where a degree of opacity
surrounded the system of appointment to be followed. The following
subsection considers such questions using notions of momentum, logic,
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Patronage
and spillover to analyse the trajectory of reform of the appointments

system.
THE TRAJECTORY OF REFORM: MOMENTUM, LOGIC,

AND SPILLOVER
As noted above, although the creation of the OCPA in 1995 and sub-
sequent developments can be interpreted as a decisive shift from a
patronage-based system to a public appointments framework, this process
has never been grounded in any fundamental or explicit rationale. Instead
incremental reforms have been introduced in response to specific inci-
dents or accusations. In this regard the evolution of the public appoint-
ments system since 1995 fits in with the ‘walking without order’ thesis of
this book. The main problem with this approach is that governance frame-
works tend to become confused, blurred, and inconsistent. Moreover,
the ad hoc nature of developments can often reflect a lack of strategic
capacity or long-term planning and reforms that are implemented in
one part of the system, without any broader analysis of the potential
impact of that reform on the system as a whole, may well develop a
reform momentum in which the logic that has been applied to one sector
is applied more widely. It is exactly these issues of momentum, logic,
and spillover that are dominating debates in Britain about the role and
capacity of ministers in relation to public appointments. The Labour Gov-
ernment has come under sustained pressure since 2003 not only to inject
a greater degree of clarity and consistency within the public appointments
system as a whole but also to extend upon the logic that led to the
introduction of the NHS Appointments Commission and ‘take ministers
out of the loop’ in relation to public appointments across the public
sector.
In June 2003, the PASC published a report entitled Government by
Appointment: Opening Up the Patronage State that not only attempted to
add a degree of coherency to the system but also demonstrated the
momentum that had gathered behind the reform process and how this
was tied, in some part, to the obvious inconsistencies in the Labour Party’s
own position on public appointments.28 In terms of adding coherency
to the system the Committee concluded that the ‘OCPA’s writ does not
run everywhere. Nor does there seem to be any convincing rationale to
explain why some bodies are free from direct regulation and some are
covered’29 and it therefore called for a fundamental review of all public
bodies and a case-by-case review of whether each body should in future
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Patronage
Table 7.4. Government by appointment: report and response
Parliamentary recommendationa Government responseb
‘ . . . that the CPA should report to Parliament the Not accepted. ‘The Government does not
list of public bodies that she considers should accept the recommendation that there
come within her remit; and there should be an should be parliamentary approval of the
opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of and list of public bodies as set out in the
approval of the list, possibly through a select Schedule’ (p. 2).
committee’ (para 42).
‘ . . . that the CPA should be given formal Not accepted. ‘The Government considers
whistle-blower powers to report material the current powers of the Commissioner
non-compliance with the Code of Practice by to be effective’ (p. 5).
any department, minister or official. It is for
discussion whether the Commissioner should
report such breaches to the First Civil Service
Commissioner or to another body such as a
Parliamentary committee’ (para. 96).
‘ . . . that the OCPA should be funded through Not accepted. ‘The Government believes
the parliamentary vote with the Commissioner that the present arrangements work well’
approved by Parliament and reporting to it, (p. 6).
and that the Office should be housed and
staffed separately from the executive’
(para 101).
‘ . . . that ministers should agree a list of key Not accepted. ‘Existing arrangements allow
appointments with relevant select committees for post-hoc scrutiny of appointments. This
and notify them of the names of proposed can and does involve inviting a successful
appointees for these posts as they arise. candidate to appear before a select
Committees could decide, if they chose to do committee for a discussion of personal or
so, to hold a meeting with these proposed policy approach (either before or after
appointees, and would be able to enter a taking up the post). Committees can also
Letter of Reservation as a result of such a seek advance notice of appointments so
hearing in any case where there was a that they can arrange their programmes
decision to do so. In such circumstances the sensibly’ (p. 6).
competition for the post would be re-opened’
(para 10).
‘ . . . that the Government consult widely on the Not accepted. ‘The Government believes that
constitutional and administrative it would be immensely difficult for a single
arrangements for a Public Appointments body to cope with the hugely diverse
Commission, with a view to making the range of NDPBs that exist, and that
Commission fully accountable to Parliament individual departments should continue to
for its establishment, operation and reporting’ be responsible for appointments to the
(para 211). public bodies they sponsor’ (p. 10).
a
Ibid.
b
Cm. 6056 Government Response to the Public Administration Committee’s Fourth Report of Session 2002–2003
‘Government by Appointment: Opening Up the Patronage State’.
be listed in the OCPA’s schedule. However, although the Government

was willing to accept this recommendation it was less inclined to accept
the five broader recommendations by PASC that were clearly designed to
markedly shift the balance of power between the executive, on one side,
and the OCPA and the House of Commons, on the other (see Table 7.4).
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Patronage
Many of the recommendations set out in Table 7.4 were clearly attempts
to develop or formalize reforms that had been implemented since 2001.
For example, the suggestion regarding a Public Appointments Commis-
sion was a spillover from the Government’s own decision to create an
NHS Appointments Commission; and the recommendation that the CPA
should be given formal whistle-blowing powers to report material non-
compliance with the Code of Practice had already been set as precedent
in Scotland under sections 7 and 8 of the Public Appointments and Public
Bodies (Scotland) Act 2003 (see Chapter 9). However, what is noticeable
about the PASC report was its shift in focus from emphasizing the imposi-
tion and regulation of procedures to ensure that ministerial appointments
were made on merit to an emphasis on the creation of a new institu-
tional framework that would remove ministers from making individual
appointments altogether, that is, reducing the ‘reach’ of ministers instead
of purely fettering ministerial discretion. Although the Government was
able to reject the five broadest recommendations of the PASC, pressure for
further reform of the system did not abate. Of particular significance was
the 2003–4 annual report of the Commissioner for Public Appointments
in which she publicly criticized a number of Whitehall departments for
showing ministers the short-list of candidates that had been drawn up for
a small number of senior public appointments beyond the civil service.30
The permanent secretaries involved had maintained that this practice was
both compatible with the Code of Practice and necessary in light of the
convention of individual ministerial responsibility. The Head of the Civil
Service, when drawn into the debate, stated:
It is of course the Secretary of State to whom, in most cases, Parliament has

assigned ultimate responsibility for the function to be carried out by the appointee.
Of course we must guard rigorously against cronyism, but to build into the process
a complete disconnection between the Secretary of State and the selection process
may strike at the heart of the role that Parliament has given the Secretary of State.31
The Commissioner for Public Appointments, however, suggested that

unrecorded involvement of a minister in the middle of an appointments
process could be interpreted as political interference or personal prefer-
ence and noted:
I am not prepared to agree to this addition to the process on its own, I would
be prepared to explore whether there should be a remodelling or recategorisation
of public bodies, which could identify some high-profile chair and deputy chair
posts on which ministers would want to be given added assurance, and where
appropriate arrangements could be set up in an open and transparent way.32
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Patronage
Consequently, the issue of the public appointments framework in general

and the role of ministers in a small number of high-profile public appoint-
ments became a topic of the tenth inquiry by the CSPL, the conclusions
and proposals of which represented yet another attempt to further limit
both the reach and the purity of ministerial appointment powers. The rec-
ommendations of the Committee echoed those of PASC. It recommended
that the Public Appointments Order in Council 2002 should be amended
to allow the creation of a Board of Public Appointments Commissioners,
chaired by a First Public Appointments Commissioner. The committee
also recommended that the OCPA Code of Practice be redrafted to recog-
nize but make open and transparent a legitimate role for ministers at the
short-listing stage in a small number of ‘starred’ appointments. Finally,
in light of a small number of occasions where ministers had disregarded
or ignored the OCPA Code of Practice the Committee recommended
that the Public Appointments Order in Council 2002 should also be
amended in line with sections 7 and 8 of the Public Appointments and
Public Bodies (Scotland) Act 2003 to provide the First Commissioner for
Public Appointments with the reserve power to direct ministers to delay
making an appointment until Parliament has considered the case where
the Commissioner feels the Code has not been complied with.
Overall the CSPL’s tenth report represented an attempt to formalize a
wider trend in recent years towards subjecting the most senior public
appointments to a closer form of scrutiny. It also marked a further attempt
to reduce both the scope and the purity of ministerial powers in relation
to public sector appointments. The government’s response, however, was
not sympathetic and rejected the majority of the committee’s proposals.33
Although a number of secondary recommendations were accepted, the
central message emanating from the government’s reply was that for the
time being ministers were not willing to cede to demands for further
limits on, or reductions in, their reach. This stance was not exclusively
governmental and a number of external commentators suggested that the
current system had in fact become overly bureaucratic and too heavily
regulated. Lord King, a member of the original CSPL (i.e. the Nolan
Committee), told the PASC that
One of the things which has worried me since is that these rules have become
tighter and tighter around public appointments and they are always described as
the Nolan rules, whereas actually we on the Nolan Committee made it very clear
that there should be discretion for Ministers, but that Ministers then had to take
responsibility.34
226
Patronage
This point reintroduces the themes of proportionality and balance to our

account of reforms to the public appointments system. Demands for a
reduction in the reach or purity of ministerial appointment capacity are
essentially demanding a redistribution of power within the constitutional
configuration. In this sense, a balance has to be achieved between guard-
ing against corruption, nepotism, and patronage but without fettering the
governing capacity of ministers. This chapter has demonstrated a shift in
the balance of power, characterized as a movement from a patronage-
based to public appointments system, since 2005. But as we have sought
to emphasize, this shift occurred in a manner that was typically British in
terms of being ad hoc, unprincipled, and bereft of clarity or consistency.
This fact was underlined by the creation and role of the NHS Appoint-
ments Commission which remains difficult to reconcile with the theory
of ministerial responsibility and the continuing role of ministers in other
departments.35 In many ways this capricious and arbitrary approach to
reform sat comfortably with the government’s broader approach to con-
stitutional reform which, as many scholars have recognized, had seen the
introduction of a wide range of measures without any explicit statement
on the principles underlying this process or vision of what the executive
was attempting to achieve. As Marquand remarked,
It is very British, this [constitutional] revolution. It is a revolution without a theory.

It is the messy, muddled work of practical men and women, unintellectual when
not positively anti-intellectual . . . responding piecemeal and ad hoc to conflicting
pressures—a revolution of sleepwalkers who don’t quite know where they are
going or why.36
In the summer of 2007, one of the first acts of the new Prime Minister,
Gordon Brown, was to respond to these criticisms by publishing a
green paper—The Governance of Britain—on the nature of the British
constitution.37 The public appointments system, particularly complaints
regarding anomalies in procedures and relative weakness of the House of
Commons’ scrutiny capacity, formed a central element of this document.
In relation to the role of the Commons, the government suggested that
‘the time is right to go further and seek to involve Parliament in the
appointment of key public officials’ and proposed two distinct reforms.38
First, a number of senior public appointments that do not come within
the jurisdiction of the Commissioner for Public Appointments—mainly
concerning appointments within the administrative hinterland of the
Russian Doll Model–like ombudsmen or inspectorates (see Chapter 4)—
would become subject to pre-appointment hearings with the relevant
227
Patronage
select committee. The hearing would not be binding but in light of the
committee’s view the minister would decide whether to proceed with
the appointment. Second, for a small number of senior appointments
that do fall within the jurisdiction of the commissioner—like the chair-
men of the utility regulators or Bank of England—once the appointment
has been approved by ministers, the relevant select committee will be
invited to convene a hearing with the individual prior to the individual
actually taking up the post. Although specific details of which public
appointments will fall under which procedures will be decided by the
government in consultation with the Liaison Committee, the proposals
represent a potentially significant development in the politics of public
appointments. In addition to seeking to shift the balance of power in
favour of the legislature the green paper also signalled a desire to address
the disjointed manner in which reforms had previously been led on a
department level and to this end announced a review of all appointments
processes and particularly the powers and jurisdiction of OCP and the
NHS Appointments Commission.39 Overall, since 1995 there has been
a comprehensive shift, albeit somewhat chaotic and ad hoc, from a
patronage-based system to an independently regulated public appoint-
ments framework. If we return, once more, to Daalder’s notion of reach
we can see that the capacity of ministers has been affected not just by
a fettering of ministerial discretion, through both the OCPA Code of
Practice and the role of independent assessors on every panel, but also
through a reduction in the actual scope of ministers’ appointment powers
in some areas, most notably in relation to health. Section 7.5 reflects
on the findings of this chapter through the theoretical lenses outlined
in Chapter 2 and then considers how it has contributed to the broader
‘walking without order’ thesis.
7.5. Theory
This chapter has attempted to undermine the popular perception that

senior appointments to public bodies are a patronage-resource of minis-
ters. Although this was the case for much of the twentieth century, recent
reforms from 1995 onwards have affected the reach and nature of min-
isterial appointment powers. Senior public appointments predominantly
involve no remuneration above basic expenses and even where a pro-rata
salary is attached to a position, this rarely reflects the actual amount of
commitment, in terms of time and energy, that this individual will be
228
Patronage
expected to dedicate to the position. Public bodies therefore provide an

arena through which individuals who are disinterested in party politics
can contribute to the public good. Indeed, the nature of appointment
facilitates the pro-active recruitment of individuals from sections of soci-
ety that are under-represented through conventional political processes.
This capacity has been drawn upon by Labour Governments through
their commitment to ensure that the appointments system reflects the
nature of modern society by achieving a proportionate balance in terms
of gender, ethnic background, and disability.40
As the quote at the head of this chapter suggests, the transition from
a patronage to a public appointments system represents a stark departure
from the British constitutional culture that tended to adopt a ‘winner
takes all’ mentality at the national level which viewed appointments as
part of a ‘spoils system’. This leads us into a discussion regarding the
contemporary relevance of the WM and particularly how the reforms
outlined in this chapter may have eviscerated certain elements of this
governing philosophy. In this regard, recent measures have reduced or at
least frustrated the nature of certain ministerial powers. Attempts have
been made to ‘depoliticize’ elements of the appointments process either
procedurally (i.e. the OCPA) or by taking decisions out of the hands of
politicians (NHS Appointments Commission). In this sense once cen-
tralized powers have been ‘unbundled’. If we compare and contrast the
two columns in Table 2.3, it is relatively clear that core characteristics
of the public appointments system—a centrifugal dynamic, unravelled
institutional structure, fuzzy lines of accountability, multilevel bargaining
or negotiation, and increasingly depoliticized modes of governance—are
reflected in the second column (i.e. the multilevel polity) rather than the
first. And yet it is also clear that core elements of the WM provide the
foundations of the public appointments system as it currently operates. As
Table 7.1 indicates, the OCPA’s Principles for Public Appointments states
that ‘The ultimate responsibility for appointments rests with ministers’
and yet reconciling this with changes to the system that now in some
areas involve ministers being held to account for the actions of officials
they did not appoint is clearly anomalous. This point reintroduces the
argument we have sought to demonstrate at several points throughout
this book: those scholars who have written of a transition from the WM to
a multilevel polity or system of ‘multilevel governance’ misinterpret the
complexity of a situation which is more accurately described as the evolu-
tion of a multilevel polity within the framework of a WM. It is the grating
and tensions that accrue from attempts to operate a bi-constitutional
229
Patronage
system within a unitary system that account for many of the challenges
of contemporary British politics and governance.41
And yet although our macro-political perspective allows us to tease
apart the changing nature of governance and the existence of concurrent
frameworks, it provides few insights into the timing of change and it
is in regard to this issue that our meso-political approach contributes
to our understanding. HI emphasizes the influence of history in terms
of cultures, traditions, governing ideas, and decisions and how these
elements tend to establish a path dependency or bounded rationality
that often militates against change. As mentioned above, the capacity
of ministers to appoint friends, relatives, or those owed favours was a
hallmark of the pre-democratic ‘club government’. During the mid-1990s,
a number of factors conspired to form a critical juncture, as had previously
occurred in 1855, at which point established assumptions regarding the
legitimate distribution of power in relation to public appointments were
reconsidered and significant reforms enacted. The impact of this abrupt
and sudden change went beyond introducing independent regulation and
increasing transparency and into the realm of ideas.
As Chapter 2 noted, a criticism of HI is that it tends to overlook the
existence of gradual and incremental changes that, while not dramatic
in their own right, may over time significantly affect the nature and
distribution of power. As a result, the research in this chapter has sought
to emphasize that the initial reforms of the 1990s provided a crack or
a wedge through which initial concessions could be augmented and
developed. Moreover, once the logic of conceding ministerial powers in
one sector was accepted, it became very difficult for ministers to argue
that the same logic was not equally applicable elsewhere. The history
of the politics of public appointments in the twenty-first century has
therefore involved the gradual but constant chipping away of ministerial
powers, a process which culminated, for the purpose of this book, in the
reforms set out in the government’s The Governance of Britain document of
July 2007.
The detailed proposals outlined in this document allow us to reintro-
duce our third theoretical perspective—PAT. In essence, PAT is a very sim-
ple institutional framework and one of the few benefits of the patronage-
based system that existed for much of the twentieth century was that
it provided great clarity: ministers made public appointments and they
were free to appoint whom they chose as they would have to defend
their decisions and the subsequent actions of those individuals in the
legislature. When viewed through the lens of PAT, the direction in which
230
Patronage
the current public appointments system is evolving risks creating a system

of multiple-principals (see Table 2.5). This will involve the ministers, inde-
pendent appointments commission, and possibly the relevant scrutiny
committee in the House of Commons. Lines of external accountability
and internal control may become blurred in situations in which an
appointment is made by an independent commission against the wishes
of the minister (who will be constitutionally responsible for that person)
or where a minister decides to proceed with an appointment against the
recommendations of the respective select committee after a confirmation
hearing with the individual.
In relation to the role of select committees, the criticism relating to the
implicit ‘rationality’ of PAT is relevant. The idea that either the agent or
the principal will operate in a ‘rational’ manner is highly dependant on
how each actor views its respective interests. The proposed framework for
confirmation hearings assumes that members of a select committee will
adopt a rational perspective in which they focus on whether the candidate
has the requisite mixtures of skills and experience to fulfil the responsi-
bilities of the appointment. However, as many observers, including the
Commissioner for Public Appointments, have pointed out, the highly
adversarial and partisan political environment at Westminster is arguably
more likely to lead to a situation in which confirmation hearings are used
by opposition MPs to embroil the candidate in party politics. Although
this has not occurred in relation to the Treasury Committee’s scrutiny
of appointments to the Monetary Policy Committee, the danger of such a
situation occurring should the Commons secure formal powers in relation
to a wider range of positions is twofold: first, a politicization of posts that
had previously been viewed as independent may occur; and consequently,
potential candidates for public appointments may well be dissuaded from
applying by the prospect of having to appear before a select committee as
part of that process.
Overall the topic of public appointments provides a critical case of
the ‘walking without order’ argument that this book presents. Different
mechanisms and regulators, each with varying powers and roles, oversee
appointments to different layers of the Russian Doll Model. The reach
of ministers has been fettered in some areas, and curtailed completely
in others; but even where transparent procedures and independent reg-
ulators have been introduced a degree of confusion surrounds both the
‘legitimate’ role of ministers and why the logic that led ministers to divest
themselves of appointment powers in some sectors is not equally appro-
priate elsewhere. The maze of procedures and conventions for making
231
Patronage
public appointments beyond the Russian Doll Model in the administra-

tive hinterland of independent parliamentary bodies, statutory bodies
and inspectorates, and ‘floating’ or ‘unrecognized’ bodies is inconceivable.
And yet at the root of this confused and complex patchwork of gover-
nance processes lies a very specific and very ‘British’ governing mentality
which eschews the need for principles and explicit frameworks through a
misplaced faith in its capacity for ‘muddling through’.
In this context the government’s The Governance of Britain green paper
of July 2007 is significant as it recognized the need to review the system as
a whole and inject a greater degree of clarity and consistency. It is exactly
these two elements—clarity and consistency—that the PASC, CSPL, and
OCPA have been demanding since 2001. The prospects for reform are,
however, conditioned to a great extent by the complexity of the extant
structures, a point that takes us back to the government’s response to the
PASC report on public appointments in December 2003. The government
conceded that there was a need to undertake a fundamental review of all
delegated public bodies that operated under the auspices of a ministerial
department irrespective of their formal organization status and that this
would form part of a two-part process whereby the results of the review
would provide the basis of a case-by-case review of the bodies listed on
the OCPA’s Order in Council.42 But nearly four years later the review
remains incomplete due to the complexity uncovered by officials and
the arguments that have ensued regarding the (re)classification of bodies.
This chapter’s focus on patronage and public appointments has, however,
touched upon an increasingly central element of the politics of delegation
by identifying contrasting processes of politicization and depoliticization.
It is to these processes and the principles, strategies, and tactics that
underpin them that we now turn.
Notes
1. Goldston, R., ‘Patronage in British Government’, Parliamentary Affairs, 30

(1977), 82.
2. Daalder, H., ‘Parties, Elites and Political Developments in Western Europe’,
in J. LaPalombra and M. Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political Develop-
ment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
3. Goldston (1977) op. cit. 80.
4. Hyslop, J., ‘Political Corruption’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31
(2005), 773–89; Le Billon, P., ‘Corruption, Reconstruction and Oil Gover-
nance in Iraq’, Third World Quarterly, 26 (2005), 685–703; Mwenda, A. and
232
Patronage
Tangri, R., ‘Patronage Politics, Donor Reforms, and Regime Consolidation

in Uganda’, African Affairs, (2005), 449–67; Zafarullah, H. and Siddiquee,
N., ‘Dissecting Public Sector Corruption in Bangladesh’, Public Organization
Review, 1 (2001), 465–86; Szeftel, M., ‘Eat With Us: Managing Patronage and
Corruption under Zambia’s Three Republics, 1964–99’, Journal of Contempo-
rary African Studies, 18 (2000), 207–24.
5. Civil Service Recruitment Code, 5th edn. (March 2004), paras 2.52–2.59.
6. Cm. 2850 (1995) First Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, para
21.
7. See Harling, P., The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’: The Politics of Economical
Reform in Britain, 1779–1846 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
8. Chapman, R., Civil Service Commission 1855–1991 (London: Frank Cass,
2004).
9. See Cobbett, W., Rural Rides (London, 1853).
10. Jennings, I., ‘Corruption and the Public Service’, Public Administration, 9
(1938), 42.
11. Doig, A., ‘Public Bodies and Ministerial Patronage’, Parliamentary Affairs, 30
(1978), 86–94; Goldston, Patronage in British Government, 93.
12. See Holland, P. and Fallon, M., The Quango Explosion (London: Conservative
Political Centre, 1978); Stott, T., ‘Snouts in the Trough: The Politics of
Quangos’, Parliamentary Affairs, 48 (1995), 323–40.
13. Ridley, F. and Doig, A., Sleaze (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
14. Cm. 2850, First Report, 76–7.
15. Cm. 2931 (1995) The Government’s Response to the First Report of the Committee
on Standards in Public Life.
16. Cm. 2850, First Report, 70.
17. OCPA, Code of Practice on Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies, (2005),
5–6.
18. OCPA, Twelfth Annual Report, 2006–2007 (2007), pp. 39, 45.
19. Cm. 6407 (2005) Getting the Balance Right. Tenth Report of the Committee
on Standards in Public Life, 38.
20. Ibid. p. 21.
21. See Wright, A., Beyond the Patronage State, Fabian Society Pamphlet No.
569 (London: Fabian Society, 1995); Demos, Modernising Public Appointments
(London: Demos, 1995).
22. OCPA, Third Annual Report, 1997–1998 (1998), 5.
23. OCPA, Public Appointments to NHS Trusts and Health Authorities, (2000), 6.
24. HC 410, Appointments to NHS Bodies: Report of the Commissioner for Public
Appointments, Public Administration Select Committee, Session 1999–2000,
49.
25. Cm. 4818 (2000) The NHS Plan, para 6.54.
26. Doig, A., McIvor, S., and Moran, J., ‘A World Desperately Seeking Scandal?
New Labour and Tony’s Cronies’, Parliamentary Affairs, 2 (1999), 677–87.
233
Patronage
27. The Guardian, ‘Cronyism Alert on Plan for More People’s Peers’, 10
November 2003.
28. HC 165, Government by Appointment: Opening Up the Patronage State, Fourth
Report of the Public Administration Select Committee, Session 2002–2003.
29. Ibid. para 19.
30. OCPA (2004) Ninth Annual Report, 2003–2004.
31. Cm. 6407 (2005) op. cit. 33.
32. OCPA (2004) op. cit. 3.
33. Cm. 6723 (2005) The Government’s Response to the Tenth Report of the Commit-
tee on Standards in Public Life, 2–3.
34. Oral evidence taken before the Public Administration Select Committee, 16
March 2006, HC 884 iii.
35. With effect from 1 October 2006 the NHS Appointments Commission
became a NDPB and was renamed the Appointments Commission. It may
now undertake work for a range of departments and professional regulatory
bodies.
36. Marquand, David, ‘Populism or Pluralism? New Labour and the Constitu-
tion’, Mishcon Lecture, University College London (1999).
37. Cm. 7170 (2007) The Governance of Britain.
38. Ibid. p. 28.
39. Ibid. p. 30.
40. See Cabinet Office, Public Bodies: Opening Up Public Appointments 2002–2005
(2002).
41. See Flinders, M. and Curry, D., ‘Bi-Constitutionalism’, Parliamentary Affairs,
61/1 (2008), 1–25.
42. ‘The variety and complexity of public bodies sponsored by central govern-
ment departments supports the need for a review of their definition and
scope’, Cm. 6056 (2003) op. cit. 1.
234
8
Depoliticization
Depoliticization is the oldest task of politics.1
In arguing that the British state is ‘walking without order’, this book has
sought to make a very specific argument concerning the administrative
and political consequences of far-reaching but unplanned, unregulated,
and unprincipled bureaucratic delegation. This chapter contributes a fur-
ther dimension to this argument by examining the concept of depoliti-
cization, thereby allowing us to locate the topic of delegated governance
within a number of broader socio-political issues. In recent years, the
concept of depoliticization has become something of an administrative
fashion and so fervent has the apparent wave of enthusiasm been that
the European Policy Forum described ‘the depoliticization of many gov-
ernment decisions’ as ‘one of the most promising developments since the
last war’ and in 2000 Demos published a briefing paper entitled Getting
to Grips with Depoliticisation.2 At the global level, the World Bank has
advocated large-scale depoliticization as a central aspect of building state
capacity and market confidence, while the United Nations organizes con-
ferences and seminars with such themes as ‘depoliticizing the civil service’
and (as Chapter 9 will show) at the supranational level depoliticization
continues to form a key strand of debates within the European Union. In
America a former Vice-President of the Board of the Federal Reserve asks
‘Is Government too political?’, while on the opposite side of the globe an
Australian think-tank argues that the role of government is to ‘depoliticize
much of life, make it less amenable to public dispute’.3 Of particular
significance, however, is the fact that depoliticization has formed a central
element of New Labour’s statecraft since 1997. As the Secretary of State for
Constitutional Affairs outlined in 2003,
235
Depoliticization
What governs our approach is a clear desire to place power where it should be:
increasingly not with politicians, but with those best fitted in different ways to
deploy it. Interest rates are not set by politicians in the Treasury but by the
Bank of England. Minimum wages are not determined in the DTI, but by the
Low Pay Commission. Membership of the House of Lords will be determined
not in Downing Street but in an independent Appointments Commission. This
depoliticising of key decision-making is a vital element in bringing power closer
to the people.4
Depoliticization has therefore formed a, if not the, central element within

the logic of delegation in recent years and was deployed by members of
the government to justify the delegation of responsibilities to a number
of arm’s-length bodies across a number of policy areas (e.g. health, food,
economics, employment, education, constitutional reform, transport).5
However, the relationship between democracy, depoliticization, and del-
egation exhibits a curious paradox. Evidence of rising levels of public
disenchantment and distrust in relation to politicians, political processes,
and political institutions has led to the promotion of depoliticization as a
way of circumventing conventional politics. At the same time, increas-
ingly sophisticated technological breakthroughs have led to questions
regarding the decision-making capacity of ministers and civil servants,
a point made forcefully by a King’s Fund report:
Medicine today is such a complex and sophisticated science that one is forced to
speculate whether it has outgrown its ability to be managed by political processes.
This is a challenging issue in a society where the relationship between the state,
civil society and the citizen is being redrawn.6
However, shrinking the sphere of direct political control and locating func-
tions beyond the sphere of conventional politics can also be interpreted as
a rather perplexing response to the challenges of rebuilding representative
democracy. In delimiting a sphere of ‘conventional politics’, depoliticiza-
tion also forces us to reflect on how we interpret and define the boundaries
of the political, how dominant rationalities may seek to impose certain
jurisdictional boundaries, and how society might seek to control the
existence of ‘fugitive power’. The study of depoliticization therefore has a
clear relationship with many themes that have already been raised and
examined in this book—such as the history of the state (Chapter 3);
the structure of the state (Chapter 4); and concerns regarding control
(Chapter 5), accountability (Chapter 6), and patronage (Chapter 7). I do
not intend to return to these issues in this chapter but instead seek to
show how the twin processes of politicization and depoliticization have
236
Depoliticization
in recent decades led to a state structure that is markedly and increasingly

toroidal in structure (i.e. donut shaped) as centripetal and centrifugal
pressures have located new and established functions and responsibilities
within the outer layers of the state.
In order to make this argument this chapter is divided into five sec-
tions. Injecting a degree of conceptual clarity into the debate concerning
depoliticization forms the focus of the first section. The second section
adopts Hay’s work on politics and public participation as a framework
or heuristic tool through which it is possible to comprehend and to
some degree map processes of depoliticization and politicization. Hav-
ing emphasized the existence of ongoing processes of depoliticization
and politicization, the third section examines Moran’s work on hyper-
politicization and hyper-innovation through Hay’s theoretical/conceptual
framework. Not only does this allow us to plot the shifting contours
of the state as various sectors are at various times brought within or
located beyond the sphere of direct ministerial control and party politics,
but it also illustrates the link between political cultures, the power of
elites, and the evolution of the state. It also sensitizes us to the fact
that depoliticization encompasses a far wider range of social relation-
ships than those governed by institutional structures alone. Therefore,
the fourth section seeks to contribute to the wider literature by giving
the concept greater discriminating power through taxonomical infold-
ing in the sense of an orderly and graded series of refined categories
(within a framework that exposes interrelationships, change, and com-
plementarity), thereby providing the basis for collecting and comparing
adequately precise information. This framework poses a number of dis-
tinctive questions about the evolution of the state, models of democ-
racy, and the capacity of politicians which are then located within the
three theoretical pillars that flow throughout this book in the final
section.
8.1. Definition and Rationale
Although the concept of depoliticization has existed for some time as an

important theme in a range of disciplines in definitional terms the wider
literature is largely barren.7 Consequently, this section is not so much
about conceptualization but re-conceptualization: it attempts to provide
a coherent understanding and analytical framework for a concept that is
already in widespread use. Contemporary scholars who have employed
237
Depoliticization
the concept as a central element of their work, such as Carl Boggs, Mary
Douglas, and Philip Petit, write with a fluidity and verve that clearly
denotes some kind of shared understanding or constellation of values
and processes yet never seeks to explicate the core essence of the term.8
However, an analysis of the wider literature allows us to harvest a number
of shared values and processes and through these processes produce a set
of six common themes:
1. the role and power of a dominant rationality;

2. shifts in political reasoning and conceptions of legitimacy;
3. the process of placing at one-remove the political character of
decision-making;
4. the reallocation of functions and responsibilities to independent
bodies or panels of experts;
5. the exclusion of politics through the adoption of ‘rational’ practices;
and
6. political exhaustion which feeds loss of confidence and a resignation
to fate.
Synthesizing these core themes leads us to define depoliticization as the

range of tools, mechanisms, and institutions through which politicians
can attempt to move to an indirect governing relationship and/or seek to
persuade the demos that they can no longer be reasonably held responsi-
ble for a certain issue, policy field, or specific decision.9
It is important at this point to emphasize that the concept of depoliti-
cization is not intended to suggest that a given topic, issue, or process is
any less political but it is merely highlighting a change in relation to the
arena or processes through which decisions are either taken or avoided.
This is a central point. Although the form of politics changes or the issue
is subject to an altered governance structure the issue becomes no less
political in terms of its impact on society. Frequently, the processes or
procedures that are commonly referred to under the rubric of depoliticiza-
tion might therefore more accurately be described as ‘arena-shifting’.10
Indeed, a unifying feature of the wider literature is that none of it seeks
to suggest that any of the issues under analysis became any less ‘political’
through the application of depoliticization tactics. Depoliticization, as a
concept, therefore employs a very narrow interpretation of ‘the political’
that largely refers to the institutions and individuals commonly associated
with representative democracy (i.e. the Governmental Sphere discussed
below).
238
Depoliticization
Following on from this, the retention of an indirect governing relationship

is, however, a critical caveat within the concept of depoliticization.11
It is politicians who make decisions about what functions should be
‘depoliticized’, and the subsequent selection of appropriate tactics and
tools. Politicians also commonly retain significant indirect control mech-
anisms (e.g. appointments), reserve powers (e.g. immediate authority in
certain situations), or discretion (e.g. the creative interpretation of rules).
Moreover, it is politicians who may from time to time face pressures
to either justify their choices or (re-)politicize certain issues in terms of
adopting a direct governing relationship. This encourages us to reflect on
the perceived benefits of depoliticization. Why would politicians adopt
a strategy whereby they must invest significant resources in establishing
and publicly justifying a mode of governance in which their role is down-
graded? Table 8.1 provides a list of the main reasons given by advocates
of depoliticization that have been harvested from three sources: (1) the
official publications, parliamentary reports, and ministerial speeches sur-
rounding the creation of independent bodies which were explicitly based
on a need to limit the role of politicians; (2) a number of documents that
have recently recommended the depoliticization of school-age education
and the National Health Service;12 and (3) the arguments put forward by
scholars who advocate depoliticization.13
To recap, ‘politicized’ modes of governance in this context appear to
be most commonly characterized by the principles of direct state inter-
vention, management, and control of the economy and society, whereas
‘depoliticized’ modes of governance generally represent the adoption of a
relationship (institutional, procedural, or ideological) that seeks to estab-
lish some sort of area of separation between politicians and certain policy
fields.
As the quote at the head of this chapter suggests, Ranciere believes
that politics is, at base, a conflict between parties competing to insti-
tute different forms of depoliticization, but their inability to eliminate
conflict and social division means that there are actually two funda-
mental and opposed forms of politics: one depoliticizing and the other
repoliticizing.14 Politics is thus constituted through an essential tension
between depoliticizing and repoliticizing tendencies as competing elites
seek to shift certain issues either within or beyond the boundaries of
conventional visible politics. However, suggesting a distinction between
politicized and depoliticized forms of governance risks suggesting a binary
distinction that is a crude characterization of a complex relationship.
239
Depoliticization
Table 8.1. Perceived benefits of depoliticization
Perceived benefit Logic
Reduce partisanship Depoliticization would institute a degree of space or distance

between specific policy fields and the adversarial sphere of party
politics.
Foster reasoned debate Reducing partisanship could facilitate a mature public debate over
critical issues (e.g. resource allocation, priority setting, public
participation) in a way that is not possible within the sphere of
party politics.
Avoid guilt by The capacity to establish a direct dialogue with the public and
association service users would help prevent the institutional ‘guilt by
association’ that currently occurs in which those working within the
public sector are negatively affected (e.g. accusations of
party-political bias, media manipulation, general suspicion of
success stories) by the widespread lack of trust in politicians.
Improve public Minimizing ‘guilt by association’ while also creating space for
understanding reasoned debate could play a role in improving public
understanding about the role and pressures on the state which
may, over time, play a role in cultivating more realistic public
expectations about what the state can deliver.
Foster stability Creating space between policy areas and party politics would also
allow a reform-weary public sector to function without an ongoing
process of reform or frequent knee-jerk reactions to specific
incidents or reports in the media.
Prioritize delivery Increased stability would also lead to a move away from a focus on
external political expectations, responsiveness, and media
management towards a focus on quality and service development.
Strengthen leadership A permanent and identifiable leadership can be constructed that
transcends the electoral cycle.
Long-term capacity Corporate governance frameworks and targets could be designed
without the pressure to deliver within the electoral cycle.
Demonstrate credible By removing issues from the grasp of politicians, depoliticization
commitment capacity theoretically injects stability, thereby increasing market confidence
regarding the credibility of policymaking.
Increase strategic The adoption of an indirect governing relationship provides a way
capacity of reducing political overload that may (in some circumstances)
empower ministers with a greater strategic capacity.
Inject expertise Depoliticization facilitates professional leadership in areas that
require esoteric skills and knowledge.
Depoliticization commonly refers to a rebalancing or a shift in the nature

of governance relationships that is a matter of degree—not a move from
land to sea but from cave to mountain or valley to plateau. Examining
the way politics is understood and participation takes place therefore
provides a way of teasing apart complex questions concerning politicized
and depoliticized modes of governance, how they may interrelate, and
what factors are likely to generate demands for repoliticization. This may
240
Depoliticization
deepen our understanding of interpretive tensions in which the same

process is viewed as being at one and the same time both politicizing
and depoliticizing. It may also allow us to discriminate or differentiate
between different forms of depoliticization. In order to develop this point
in more detail it is useful to examine Hay’s work on politics, participation,
and politicization.
8.2. Spheres of Political Engagement
In Why We Hate Politics Colin Hay challenges the vast expanse of estab-
lished literature on political apathy and declining levels of public trust in
politicians and political institutions. He argues that scholars have overem-
phasized demand-side explanatory variables that focus on the public while
underemphasizing supply-side variables which focus on the behaviour and
rationalities of politicians. In essence, Hay outlines a process in which the
realm of formal political deliberation has been diminished and denuded
by a range of processes which, taken together, may aid our understanding
of public disengagement. It is exactly this process of abandonment, and
the loss of confidence that comes with it, which forms the critical links
between (1) Hay’s analysis of public disenchantment with politics; (2) the
focus on depoliticization in this chapter; and (3) the broader topic of dele-
gated governance with which this book is principally concerned. There is
also a clear link between Hay’s conceptual framework for understanding
politicization and depoliticization and that set out in earlier chapters
of this book (specifically Chapter 4). Hay adopts a broad approach to
politics, defining it as ‘the realm of contingency and deliberation’.15 This
is differentiated into three arenas: (1) the governmental arena; (2) the
public but non-governmental arena; and (3) the private sphere. Beyond
this exists a ‘realm of necessity’ where fate and human nature rule in the
absence of any capacity for human agency. Each of these three spheres is
seen to be politicized to a lesser extent than the preceding one. Issues can
therefore, in Hay’s framework, be politicized and depoliticized in one of
three ways (see Figure 8.1).
Politicization 1: promotion from the realm of necessity to the private

sphere.
Politicization 2: promotion from the private sphere to the public sphere.
Politicization 3: promotion from the public sphere to the governmental
sphere.
241
Depoliticization
Governmental
sphere
Realm of necessity (‘non-political’) Public sphere
Private sphere
Depoliticization 1
Politicization 3
Depoliticization 2 Politicization 2
Depoliticization 3 Politicization 1
Figure 8.1. Politicization and depoliticization(s)

Source: Hay (2007: 87).
Depoliticization 1: demotion from the governmental to the public

sphere.
Depoliticization 2: demotion from the public to the private sphere.
Depoliticization 3: demotion from the private sphere to the realm of
necessity.
There exists a clear relationship between Hay’s schema and that set out
in the form of the Russian Doll Model in Chapter 4. It is not a perfect fit.
But Hay is working within a broader intellectual terrain into which the
study of delegated governance can be located. Indeed, a close examination
of Hay’s work confirms that the ‘Governmental Sphere’ relates to what
Figure 4.1 divides into the core executive and ministerial departments.
Hay emphasizes that a critical form of depoliticization involves the demo-
tion of responsibilities from the governmental sphere into the public
sphere through the creation of quasi-autonomous public bodies and as
such his ‘Public Sphere’ would encompass what we refer to throughout
this book as delegated governance. The specific boundary between the
‘Public Sphere’ and the ‘Private Sphere’ is, like reality, slightly opaque. It
242
Depoliticization
is, however, within the margins of Hay’s framework to avoid unnecessary

debate and simply agree for the purposes of this book that many of
organizations within the administrative hinterland of Figure 4.1 exist
within the ‘Private Sphere’ (albeit on the inner margins). Indeed, denoting
the hinterland as such illuminates a subtle yet essential point that is often
misunderstood or overlooked within the wider literature: the ‘Private
Sphere’ is not a synonym for the ‘Private Sector’. This is an important
distinction. Although delegation may well involve an enhanced role for
market-based and market-driven actors, the ‘Private Sphere’ is principally
designed to embrace a complex range of highly political relationships
where either by design or by chance (contingency or fate) they exist to
a great extent beyond the realm of conventional party politics (a point illus-
trated below in relation to professional self-regulatory bodies). Whereas
the delegation of tasks from the ‘governmental’ to the ‘public’ sphere
involves the diminution of direct political control capacity, entry to or
existence within the ‘Private Sphere’ denotes either a severing in the chain
of delegation from ministers (Depoliticization 2) or that although some
capacity for human agency and social control is recognized the issue is
not viewed as one that is appropriate for direct (‘Governmental Sphere’)
or indirect (‘Public Sphere’) ministerial control.
These distinctions reframe our earlier point that the concept of
‘depoliticization’ is not actually suggesting that an issue or topic has
become any less political as a result of the processes this concept
embraces. It does, however, raise awareness of the changing role of politi-
cians, the relocation of decision-making capacities (i.e. arena-shifting),
and changes to dominant modes of governance. In this sense, the con-
cept of ‘depoliticization’ consciously employs a rather narrow view of
politics (as direct conventional party politics) in order to (1) delineate
where politicians have sought to limit or deny their capacity for action
and (2) expose the tactics and tools through which this is achieved.
In this sense, there exists a two-way complementarity between Hay’s
framework and the Russian Doll Model. By delayering the British state,
the Russian Doll Model adds to Hay’s framework by providing a more
sophisticated account of the options and gradations that exist and in
so doing poses questions about where on the spectrum of autonomy a
function would have to be located for it to be interpreted as having been
‘depoliticized’. Hay’s work adds to the Russian Doll Model by empha-
sizing the dynamic nature of ongoing depoliticizing and politicizing
processes.
243
Depoliticization
8.3. Politicization
As noted in the introduction, it is depoliticization that has been the topic

of intense debate in both the practitioner and the scholarly community
and one of the potential benefits of Hay’s framework is that it provides a
sense of balance through outlining processes or stages of both politiciza-
tion and depoliticization. Type 1 Politicization occurs when issues become
the subject of deliberation, decision-making, and human agency where
previously they were not. As Hay emphasizes, ‘the most basic form of
depoliticization is associated with the extension of the capacity for human
influence and deliberation which comes with disavowing the prior assign-
ment of an issue—or issue domain—to the realm of fate or necessity’.16
Therefore in increasing the capacity for human agency, in areas such as
human embryology and fertility or xenotransplantation, modern science
has proved politicizing.
An issue may be further politicized (Type 2 Politicization) when it leaves
the private sphere and enters the public sphere in terms of becoming
the topic of public debate or becomes subject to public rules and regu-
lations. Feminist attempts to redefine the boundaries of ‘the political’ to
encompass relationships, rituals, and processes connected with the family
would in this framework be interpreted as a form of politicization, as
would a local community group that accepted a small amount of public
funding and through this became bound to provide a formal account of
how that money was used. However, should an issue become the topic
of intense and widespread public debate its political saliency may lead
to its promotion from the public sphere into the governmental sphere
(Type 3 Politicization). This may involve the introduction of new laws, reg-
ulations, or institutional units under the direct control of ministers with
explicit responsibility for that issue. The creation of various lead units
within the Cabinet Office (focused on issues including social exclusion,
teenage pregnancy, women’s issues) provides an example of this process.
Moran’s work on hyper-politicization and hyper-innovation in the sphere
of regulatory politics provides an arena in which to exhibit the value of
Hay’s framework.17
As Chapter 3 demonstrated, the middle of the nineteenth century was
a critical period in Britain’s constitutional history: it was a time of social,
economic, and political upheaval in which new political actors sought to
exert themselves and established elites sought to protect their position.
Existing understandings regarding the boundaries and responsibilities of
the state were challenged under the twin pressures of industrialization and
244
Depoliticization
democratization. This is a critical point. Moran argues that until the 1830s
dominant constitutional orientation had been forged very much around
the Peelite view which manifested itself in a preference for informality,
insider status, autonomy, an aversion to legal controls, a preference for
high-trust relationships, the transmission of knowledge through expe-
rience and osmosis, and strong reservations about the value of public
participation in the affairs of the state (see Table 2.3). British government
was, in short, characterized by a highly elitist, pre-democratic form of
‘club government’.18 As Marqaund notes,
The atmosphere of British government was that of a club, whose members trusted
each other to observe the spirit of the club rules; the notion that the principles
underlying the rules should be clearly defined and publicly proclaimed was pro-
foundly alien.19
It was exactly this mode of governing—the ‘good chaps theory of

government’20 —which industrialization and democratization sought to
challenge and as a result areas of industry, economics, and the professions
which had previously been viewed as beyond the realm of partisan politics
were suddenly thrust within the sphere of public contestation (Type 2
Politicization). Industrialization demanded a state infrastructure that was
stable, efficient, and reliable, and had the capacity to supply an educated
and relatively healthy workforce, while democratization required the state
to operate in a less autonomous and secretive manner while also strength-
ening its regulatory capacity in order to protect the public. The middle
of the nineteenth century therefore witnessed a clash of what we might
label ‘mega-constitutional orientations’ by which we mean ‘an agreement
on the identity and fundamental principles of the body politic’.21 Orienta-
tions such as these may be explicit in the form of a codified constitution or
exist in a more implicit and cryptic form through conventions, standard-
operating procedures, and historical precedent. However, whether explicit
or implicit the mega-constitutional orientation of a polity is likely to
be embedded within the dominant political culture of a regime which
itself inculcates and prioritizes certain values and judgements. Mega-
constitutional politics therefore focuses on debates concerning the basic
foundations, framework, or ‘rules of the game’ that, in turn, set cer-
tain parameters—a form of constitutional bounded rationality—within
which secondary constitutional arguments are based.22 The second half
of the nineteenth century represented a period of mega-constitutional
politics in which the existing orientation (i.e. the Peelite view which
favoured ‘club government’) was challenged by an alternative model with
245
Depoliticization
diametrically opposed values and priorities (i.e. the Whig view which
favoured representative government). However, what is critical in terms
of the thesis of this book is that this clash of orientations was not resolved
through a simple transition from one orientation to another—from pre-
democratic values to democratic values—but through a more complex
process: bi-constitutionality. This involved a strategy through which ‘club
government’ could be retained but within a framework of representative
democracy, thereby limiting the impact of popular democracy. As Moran
notes:
That strategy involved the depoliticization of key domains, in the sense of remov-
ing them from the spheres of partisan, electorally influenced politics, and replacing
these potentially democratic forces with the routines of low politics. In this way,
governing issues were converted into grist for the mill of specialized elites. The
exhaustion of that strategy has produced hyper-politicization.23
This shifting or distancing from party politics and the direct control
capacity of ministers took two forms. The first was discussed in some
length during Chapter 3 and involved the creation of large numbers
of independent commissions or ‘non-departmental organizations’ oper-
ating loosely under the auspices of a parent department. The Civil
Service Commission’s establishment in 1855, for example, was clearly
based on Gladstonian arguments concerning the need to depoliticize the
civil service by removing ministerial patronage and introducing open-
recruitment and promotion on merit. The second and less-celebrated
form of depoliticization involved the delegation of public responsibilities
to independent professional self-regulatory bodies. Legislation and Royal
Charters conferred self-governing occupations with regulatory rights and
responsibilities concerning entry to the profession and the control of
its members. The benefit for the state was that it could legitimately
claim to have brought forward measures to protect the public interest
in specific sectors but in a way that would both harness the exper-
tise of specialists and relieve ministers into the minutiae of day-to-day
regulatory affairs. For the professions formal state recognition guaran-
teed their independence while also buttressing their traditional pow-
ers through legal foundation. Moreover, although these organizations
were deploying powers originally derived from Parliament, state involve-
ment in the details of regulation or legislative scrutiny was rare. From
the Apothecaries Act of 1815, this basic model of depoliticized state
recognition was extended to incorporate both the ancient and new
professions.24
246
Depoliticization
As Moran demonstrates in detail, this form of professional self-

regulation facilitated the maintenance of a ‘club government’ mode of
operation by maintaining informality, high-trust relationships, the inter-
nalization of cultural norms, and a distaste for legal controls or sanctions.
Even when external state-sponsored regulatory mechanisms were intro-
duced, as happened with the creation of inspectorates for the factories,
railways, and chemical producers in 1833, 1841, and 1863 respectively,
the approach was one of negotiated compliance and cooperation which
reflected a disinclination to prosecute offenders and was underpinned by
an acute but not entirely accidental lack of resources. Bi-constitutionality
therefore allowed a pre-democratic MCO to be embedded within an evolv-
ing model of popular democratic politics. And yet for much of the twenti-
eth century, despite successive extensions of the franchise and the rise of
the Labour movement, professional self-regulation continued to operate
within the private sphere. This is a critical point. Until the 1970s a credible
argument could be maintained that a depoliticized mode of governance
for large areas of socio-economic terrain was not only appropriate but also
working effectively and therefore, politicization in the form of external
regulatory controls, direct ministerial control, increased parliamentary
scrutiny, or greater public participation was not required.
Since the 1970s, however, a process of politicization has occurred in
which the government has responded to a number of pressures by relo-
cating certain regulatory responsibilities and powers within new arm’s-
length organizations that are independent of the professions they regu-
late. This ‘constitutionalization of self-regulation’ has been driven by a
range of factors but possibly the most significant has been the series of
scandals and incidents which have since the 1980s undermined public
confidence in professional self-regulation and have forced successive gov-
ernments to intervene (or at least threaten to intervene) in sectors that
were previously viewed as beyond the scope of party politics.25 The Finan-
cial Services Authority, Accountancy Foundation, Solicitors Regulatory
Authority, Bar Standards Board, to name just a few examples, were created
to take over regulatory responsibilities previously undertaken by profes-
sional self-regulatory bodies (the Bank of England, Accountings Standards
Committee, Law Society, and Bar Council, respectively). Moran argues
that this ‘crisis of club government’ led to hyper-politicization and hyper-
innovation: hyper-politicization in terms of a rapid and significant exten-
sion in the jurisdiction of the state into areas that had previously been
depoliticized; hyper-innovation in terms of the creation of complex and
extemporized regulatory structures. Politicization represented an attempt
247
Depoliticization
to impose an alternative MCO on the professions: one that would offer

greater safeguards for the public interest by increasing the degree of lay
representation and imposing modern democratic values through explicit
requirements concerning transparency, public participation, independent
review, and scrutiny.
Ideologically, regulatory issues were constructed as belonging to the domain of

technicalities and of the market. These stratagems failed. This part of the quango
world were drawn inexorably into an increasingly open, partisan and juridified
world.26
In addition to the ‘crisis of club government’ brought about by a series

of scandals, the government’s recognition of the economic significance of
specific sectors has also led to a process of politicization. In the field of
sport, for example, the traditional autonomy enjoyed by the individ-
ual sporting bodies (e.g. Fell Running Association, British Swimming
Association) has changed significantly during the 1990s. Recognition of
the financial contribution of sport plus an awareness that sport could
contribute to broad cross-governmental initiatives (e.g. social exclusion,
reducing obesity, improving mental health) has led the government to
increase its directive capacity. Sport England and UK Sport were estab-
lished in 1997 to implement a national strategy for sport and improve
elite performance. Critically, in order to receive either funding from the
Treasury or grants from the Big Lottery Fund, individual sporting bod-
ies must demonstrate the capacity to administer the monies while also
agreeing to adopt a range of targets and policies. Preparations for the
2012 Olympic Games, for example, have led to accusations of unwar-
ranted politicization and government intervention. The decision of UK
Sport in May 2007 to establish its own interim governing bodies for
some sports, including basketball, boxing, and weightlifting, because the
existing governing bodies for these sports were deemed insufficiently
developed to manage government funding, was criticized as amounting to
state control of sport. Lord Moynihan, the British Olympic Association’s
Chairman, described ‘Government micro-managing of any part of the
project, whether it is the Olympic Delivery Authority, London Organising
Committee or the governing bodies’ as the biggest threat to the Olympic
project as a whole.27
Moran’s work on (nineteenth century) depoliticization and (late twen-
tieth century) politicization in the sphere of regulatory politics is impor-
tant for a number of reasons. Most significantly it reveals that the ‘new
regulatory state’ which is so often identified with the rise of neutral
248
Depoliticization
non-majoritarian institutions has actually exposed hitherto non-political

domains to the power of elected politicians. Recent reforms have involved
coexistent processes of politicization and depoliticization. However, if
we examine Moran’s work through Hay’s framework (Figure 8.1) we see
that the degree of politicization has been bounded. It has predominantly
involved a shift from the private sphere to the public sphere (i.e. Politi-
cization 2). The degree of increased state capacity or control has been
limited rather than complete and indirect rather than direct and as such
the sphere of delegated governance (Hay’s public sphere) has not only
grown significantly but also become more complex (as Moran’s research
powerfully illustrates).
Couched in the language of the two scholars whose work has domi-
nated the preceding sections, the primary focus of Hay’s work (Depoliti-
cization 1) and that of Moran’s work (Politicization 2) both converge at the
same point: the sphere of delegated governance. This confluence demon-
strates the pervasiveness of the logic of delegation in recent decades. Suc-
cessive governments have been intent on ‘unbundling’ or ‘unravelling’
the state in order to create a more streamlined and policy-focused gov-
ernmental sphere while at the same time responding to public demands
for state intervention through tools of governance located beyond the
centre. The drivers or motivations behind these processes were, however,
quite different. The logic of new public management and public choice
theory made politicians enthusiastic to depoliticize functions but on the
whole reluctant to politicize. And yet we know very little about the ways
in which politicians seek to depoliticize certain issues or the way different
forms of depoliticization may complement each other. This is the task to
which we now turn.
8.4. Depoliticization
The preceding sections have argued that the twin forces of both politi-
cization and depoliticization have, in their own ways, contributed to an
increase in the scale and complexity of the sphere of delegated governance
in recent decades. The aim of this section is to give the concept of depoliti-
cization greater discriminating power through taxonomical infolding in
the sense of an orderly and graded series of refined categories (within a
framework that exposes interrelationships, change, and complementar-
ity), thereby providing the basis for collecting and comparing adequately
precise information.
249
250
Depoliticization
Principled commitment to
depoliticization?
}
Macro-political level
No Yes
Tactical choice
Institutional Rule-based Preference-shaping } Meso-political

level
}
department
Non-ministerial
public body
departmental
Non-
statutory body
Independent
exchange rate
External e.g.
Golden Rule
Internal e.g.
Globalization
Neoliberalism
management
New public
Micro-
political level
EXAMPLES
Figure 8.2. Flow chart of depoliticization choices

Depoliticization
It is possible to suggest that depoliticization has three elements. First, at

the core of any depoliticization tactic is an acceptance that the principle
(macro-political level) of depoliticization is an appropriate one for govern-
ments to pursue through the policymaking process. Second, the principle
of depoliticization should be distinguished from the tactic (meso-political
level) used to realize this goal at any one moment. The word ‘tactic’
has been selected over ‘strategy’ as it suggests a less rational and more
instrumental approach. As we shall see below, there are different tactics
for implementing the objective of depoliticization and these can vary
across time and space, even when acceptance of the principle remains
constant. Finally, as already noted, the principle and tactics of depoliti-
cization will be ‘supported’ by a particular tool or form (micro-political
level). These policy supports are likely to be the most transient part of a
depoliticization tactic, ‘pulled in’ to operationalize a particular technique
and then discontinued in the event of implementation failure. However,
there may be cases when the link between a particular depoliticization
tactic and its policy support may be so tight that failure in the latter
may lead to a discrediting of the former. These three elements or levels
of depoliticization are set out in Figure 8.2.
Once the principle of depoliticization has been adopted in a particular
policy area a choice has to be made concerning the most appropriate
tactic, or mixture of tactics, to employ. This chapter offers three distinct
depoliticization tactics (see Table 8.2).
8.4.1. Institutional Depoliticization

Institutional depoliticization focuses on structures. Although the purest
form of institutional depoliticization is privatization, where the state
absolves itself completely of responsibility for a specific policy field or sec-
tor, its most common variant involves the creation of a quasi-autonomous
body to insulate decision-making from political influence. The politics of
privatization during the second half of the twentieth century reveals the
ebb and flow of politicization and depoliticization strategies. The decade
immediately after the Second World War was an era of politicization as
many sectors of the economy were brought within the realm of govern-
ment control (Politicization 2). However, although politicians were self-
confident in their capacity to steer and direct the economy, the extent
of this politicization was tempered (i.e. it did not generally involve Politi-
cization 3) due to an awareness that commercial and specialist enterprises
may be negatively affected by the culture and demands of party politics.
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Depoliticization
Table 8.2. Depoliticization tactics
Tactic Form Example
Institutional Principal–agent relationship created between Police Complaints

minister and ‘independent’ agency. Commission
Rule-based The adoption of explicit rules into the Exchange rate mechanism
decision-making process.
Preference-shaping The espousal of a rhetorical position that seeks Globalization
to portray certain issues as beyond the
control of national politicians.
Source: Buller and Flinders (2006).
As this confidence waned in the 1970s a preference for depoliticization

developed and was implemented during the 1980s. This process has been
documented extensively elsewhere and it is sufficient here to acknowledge
that although the Conservative Governments of the period may have
preferred to institute a pure form of institutional depoliticization in which
previously state-directed responsibilities were transferred to the private
sphere, the need to retain some element of control capacity led them to
introduce a weaker form of quasi-privatization.
This involved a two-tier depoliticization strategy in which many indus-
tries (gas, electric, water, etc.) were demoted from the public to the pri-
vate sphere (Depoliticization 2) alongside a process of Depoliticization 1 in
which ministerial powers were transferred from the governmental sphere
to independent regulatory bodies operating within the public sector but
beyond direct political direction. This transition reflected a degree of con-
tinuity and change: continuity in terms of a preference for institutional
depoliticization and delegation but a change in terms of the tools used
to govern at a distance (from nationalized industries to regulation). And
yet the combination of indirect ministerial control capacity (via regula-
tors) plus reserve powers which facilitate direct ministerial intervention
in certain circumstances might lead some commentators to question
whether ‘depoliticization’ is an appropriate expression. The decision of
the Secretary of State for Transport in October 2001 to place Railtrack
in administration and resume direct control of the railway infrastructure
could be seen as symptomatic of this concern. These events could, how-
ever, be interpreted quite differently, not as an example of the weakness of
the concept but of its complexity and the intricate relationship between
politicizing and depoliticizing movements. The political intervention did
not represent a loss of faith in the principle of depoliticization (first
level, Figure 8.2) or institutional depoliticization as an appropriate tactic
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Depoliticization
(second level) but a temporary repoliticization in order to institute a

different tactic as the delivery tool. This saw the rapid re-delegation
of responsibility from ministers to a public interest company, Network
Rail.28 However, the fact that the minister had the capacity to intervene
and felt he had little choice but to intervene does intimate a certain
tension between the deployment of depoliticization tactics within a frame-
work of representative democracy that is founded on the responsibility of
ministers to Parliament.
8.4.2. Rule-Based Depoliticization

Rule-based depoliticization involves the adoption of a policy that builds
explicit rules into the decision-making process that constrain the need
for political discretion. Faced with constant demands for action, a public
commitment to ‘tie one’s hands’ in this way can help insulate politicians
from societal pressure.29 Such rules should be designed so as to be as
neutral and universal as possible. Rules that discriminate (or are thought
to discriminate) in favour of certain groups or against others are likely
to generate a sense of iniquity and provoke societal protest, leading to
constraints on elite action. However, once set up, policy implementation
can be reduced to the ‘technical’ task of monitoring and occasionally
adjusting these targets with little or no need for political negotiation.
Some of the most prominent examples of rule-based depoliticization tac-
tics can be found in relation to monetary policy. These include Britain’s
membership of the Gold Standard in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century which believed that adherence to an exchange rate target within
an explicit system would regulate the economy with little need for politi-
cal intervention. Monetarism in the 1970s with its emphasis on rules con-
cerning levels of growth, interest rates, and public expenditure provides
a more recent example. From a governing perspective, the attraction of
not having an incomes policy was that it nullified the need for direct and
continuous political negotiations with trade unions. In this sense, whole
areas of economic policy could be depoliticized.
The experience of ‘Black Wednesday’ when Britain dropped out of the
Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 led to increased scepticism concern-
ing the utility of rule-based techniques in the area of monetary policy
in recent years. While the Treasury still attempts to constrain public
expectations through the employment of targets, since 1997 these have
been accompanied by tools of institutional depoliticization in the form
of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England which is
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Depoliticization
now responsible for achieving inflation targets.30 Gordon Brown, when

Chancellor of the Exchequer, also instituted two rules (the Golden Rule
and the Sustainable Investment Rule) to limit political discretion in
relation to monetary policy. However, as with institutional forms of
depoliticization, whether rule-based systems should be viewed as amount-
ing to a ‘depoliticization’ of responsibilities is contested. As the his-
tory of monetary policy shows, few rule-systems operate as automati-
cally or benignly as the theory on which they are based would sug-
gest. Politicians can frequently manipulate rule-based systems through
creative (re)interpretation of certain elements. Brown’s decision in July
2005 to redefine the beginning of the current economic cycle in order
to allow the government to borrow an additional £7 billion without
breaking the Golden Rule was, for example, greeted with accusations
that the decision had undermined the financial credibility of the rule-
based system and led to demands that an arm’s-length body be created
to supervise the conduct of fiscal policy in the future (i.e. institutional
depoliticization).31
However, even where rule-based systems are introduced and placed
within the jurisdiction of an independent body, the residual responsi-
bility of ministers can still lead to informal and formal intervention.
Two brief examples underline this point. The belated decision of the
Bank of England to offer financial assistance to the Northern Rock Bank
in September 2007 arguably provides an example of informal political
pressure being exerted over a formally independent institution. After
initially refusing to provide short-term liquidity, the Governor of the Bank
of England decided to offer over £10 billion to stabilize Northern Rock’s
situation. This was interpreted as a humiliating U-turn due to intense
political pressure by many commentators.32 In terms of formal interven-
tion, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)
provides a case in point. NICE was established in 1999 to administer a
rule-based system for decisions regarding the availability of drugs in the
NHS. This rule-based system was designed to reduce the role of ministers
and ensure that decisions were based solely on clinical performance and
evidence. However, the vulnerability of institutional and rule-based forms
of depoliticization when they were operating within a system founded
on the responsibility of ministers was exposed in November 2005 when
the Secretary of State for Health responded to public and media pressure
by intervening in the decision-making system and announcing that the
anti-cancer drug Herceptin would be made available to any women who
needed it.
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Depoliticization
The creation, role, and experience of NICE allow us to develop a number

of themes and issues that have been discussed above. The rationale for
NICE was clearly based on a form of ‘scientization’ (see below) in which
a model of governance is adopted in which scientists, not politicians,
are viewed as best able to make critical decisions due to the scientific or
technical nature of the task. This created a buffer-zone or blame-shifting
capacity through which ministers could attempt to deflect the ramifica-
tions of unpopular decisions. And yet although decisions were transferred
from Hay’s Governmental Sphere to the Public Sphere they became no
less political in terms of their impact on the public. Furthermore, the exis-
tence of spending restraints on NHS Trusts combined with NICE’s role of
assessing clinical performance relative to the cost of the medication meant
that the institute was implicitly making decisions within a politically set
frame of financial limits. This led the think-tank Civitas to claim that the
role of NICE has always been to impose ‘a covertly politicised system of
rationing’.33 Finally, the depoliticized role of NICE within a parliamentary
state founded on the responsibility of ministers clearly places pressure
on the relationship between arm’s-length bodies and ministers when an
issue becomes politically salient. The public will still look to ministers
irrespective of delegation. In order to elude this tension and reduce
public expectations regarding their capacity, politicians have increasingly
resorted to a preference-shaping form of depoliticization in which they
seek to emphasize a lack of contingency or ‘logic of no alternative’.
8.4.3. Preference-Shaping Depoliticization

The final form of depoliticization discussed in this section involves the
invocation of preference-shaping through recourse to ideological, reli-
gious, ritualistic, discursive, or rhetorical claims in order to justify a
political position that a certain issue or function does, or should, lie
beyond the scope of politics or the capacity for state control. Preference-
shaping as a form of depoliticization has clear connections with Douglas’s
work on cultural theory, risk, and depoliticization, in which she shows
how a dominant rationality can be (silently) constructed in which
certain factors, options, or possibilities can be systematically deleted
from public discourse and normative judgements presented as neutral
rationality.34 Marcussen goes further and argues that certain sectors,
like central banking policy, have transcended depoliticization to the
point where they have become apoliticized in that there is no longer a
debate about even the principle of depoliticization and it is difficult to
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Depoliticization
foresee a situation in which politicians would seek to move back to a

direct mode of governance.35 Consequently, a process of ‘scientization’
has, in Marcussen’s view, allowed some policy areas to almost transcend
politics through their redefinition as technical issues to be directed by
experts. Apoliticization therefore signifies a shift in authoritative status
and a process in which the scientific knowledge of ‘experts’ is preferred to
the electoral legitimacy of politicians.
Preference-shaping is therefore concerned with the role and influence of
ideas and rationality and specifically the ways a politician may attempt to
renounce political agency. It focuses on the containment or destruction
of an open, deliberative political field usually under the imprimatur of
a scientific, rational, technical, or moral imperative (i.e. essentialism).
Once an essentialist identity (e.g. neoliberalism, neoconservatism, new
public management) has been disseminated, there can be no politics,
since alternative perspectives have been rendered illegitimate. From this
essential order exclusive notions of balance, objectivity, and morality are
generated which provide a discursive framework for the neutralization or
obsolescence of political debate. This deifies the notion of technocratic
managerial processes while at the same time pejoratively associating the
concept of politics with corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence.36 As
such, Marcussen’s belief that a dominant discourse has created a consen-
sus that politicians should not intervene in the sphere of central banking
and that anyone arguing against this position is immediately labelled as
‘irrational’ resonates with the work of Habermas on the depoliticization
of the public sphere, where
The depoliticization of the mass of the population and the decline of the public
realm as a political institution are components of a system of domination that
tends to exclude practical questions from public discussion.37
The benefit of depoliticization through preference-shaping is that it

involves investing no structural (institutional depoliticization) or legal
(rule-based depoliticization) capital. In essence a stance is adopted in
which a preference-shaping position is employed to justify a refusal to
intervene or regulate a certain issue. This tactic may involve the construc-
tion of a position in which the availability of a political choice is denied in
favour of either an insistence that a certain issue is beyond the domain of
political control or that a single rational and technically correct solution
to a specific problem exists.
Numerous studies can be located within the parameters of preference-
shaping depoliticization and it is sufficient here to highlight two
256
Depoliticization
examples. First, the work of scholars including Storey, Epstein, and Wodak
on international institutions reveals that officials discursively construct
debates and draft documents that depict pre-agreed normative policy
choices as either neutral expert opinion or purely technical exercises
in order to deny the existence of choice and close down debate.38 The
second example focuses on the work of political scientists and sociolo-
gists who have examined the discursive construction and discourse of
globalization.39 They argue that national politicians increasingly appeal
to the image of globalization as a non-negotiable external economic
constraint in order to deny the existence of choice at the national level.
As such, a specific theory of globalization has, they suggest, been pro-
pounded in order to neutralize the potentially damaging political con-
sequences of policy choices where national politicians did in fact enjoy
some degree of policy flexibility but for which they wished to abdicate
or transfer responsibility beyond the domestic polity. It is in this vein
that Bourdieu wrote, ‘[T]he term “globalisation” suggests the inevitability
of economic laws. This masks the political reality. It is an altogether
paradoxical reality which relies upon a politics of depoliticisation.’40
The significant aspect of this third tactic is that it relies on the dis-
semination of normative beliefs that may be extremely powerful even
though the empirical evidence on which they are based is inconclusive—
the creation of what could be termed an atmythsphere.
. . . in theoretical and, perhaps more importantly, empirical terms, the crude ‘busi-
ness school’ globalisation thesis has been exposed for the myth that it undoubtedly
is. Yet, in terms of political rhetoric, it continues to exert a powerful influence.41
The preference-shaping tactic is, therefore, potentially far-reaching in that

it attempts to refine and change public expectations about both the
capacity of the state and the responsibilities of politicians. The frame-
work set out in Figure 8.2 is analogous to Hall’s distinction between
basic instruments (micro-political level or ‘tools’ in our analysis), basic
techniques (meso-political level or ‘tactic’), and paradigms (macro-political
level or ‘principle’).42 Indeed, Hall’s analysis of policy learning and change
complements much of what has been suggested above—first- and second-
order changes (tools and tactics) do not necessarily involve third-order
(principle or paradigmatic) change. Politicians may, we have argued,
retain a principled commitment to depoliticization while adopting new
tactics and/or tools to operationalize this commitment. At the same time,
the replacement of a particular tool supporting depoliticization is not the
same as saying that there has been a change in the tactic more generally.
257
Depoliticization
Key Tactic Tool

A Agent Institutional Monetary Policy Committee
B Structure Rule-based Golden Rule
C Context Preference-shaping Globalization
Figure 8.3. Interdependent depoliticization tactics: context, agency, and structure

in monetary policy
The principle and tactical approach to depoliticization may stay the same:
what is needed is a new tool at the micro-level to ‘operationalize’ these
constant governing calculations.
However, the explication of three distinct depoliticization tactics risks
oversimplifying the complexity of modern governance. The three tactics
discussed above represent a preliminary attempt to specify different forms
of depoliticization and a government may pursue a number of different
depoliticization tactics at any one time, with the preference-shaping tactic
providing a macro-political context or rationale; the rule-based tactic oper-
ating at the meso-political level and within a certain policy area; and the
institutional tool operating at the micro-political level and in response to
specific incidents or demands, although in reality, each of these tactics is
unlikely to be confined to one level and one level only. Figure 8.3 outlines
this interrelationship in relation to monetary policy.
Clearly, the borders in the depoliticization flow chart set out in
Figure 8.2 can only be drawn fairly loosely and although it may be
possible to subdivide the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels into a greater
number of slices, we concur with Sartori that ‘three slices are sufficient
for the purposes of logical analysis’.43 This framework can be used to
tease apart the interrelationship between emerging processes and forms
of depoliticization, the augmenting topography of delegated governance,
and different forms of power. Indeed, there are clear correlations between
the three depoliticization tactics outlined above and Lukes’s seminal
258
Depoliticization
work on power. ‘Decision-making’ power is clearly related to institutional

depoliticization as decision-making capacities are transferred to ‘inde-
pendent’ public bodies, whereas Lukes’s ‘Non–decision-making’ power is
clearly related to rule-based depoliticization in that politicians agree to
abide by set frameworks and therefore forego or significantly diminish
their discretion.44 Lukes’s ‘third-face’ or ‘radical view’, which involves
power being retained and controlled through processes of thought con-
trol, resonates with preference-shaping depoliticization. Referring to Lukes’s
scholarship on power usefully encourages us to assert that the value and
potential of depoliticization as a concept of political analysis stem from
the fact that it provokes new questions about the political realm and the
evolution of the public sphere; it may help explain new forms of statecraft
and governmentality while also lifting the veil of political power beyond
the state.45 It also raises a number of questions about the three theoretical
pillars on which this book is based.
8.5. Depoliticization and Theory
This chapter has examined the concept of depoliticization as part of this

book’s wider focus on the politics of delegated governance. In doing so,
it has drawn upon Hay’s work on forms of political participation and
Moran’s analysis of the politicization of formerly depoliticized regulatory
spheres. This has allowed us to observe the dynamics of politicizing and
depoliticizing trends over time in addition to theorizing about delegated
governance as it sits between the governmental and private spheres. In
addition, this chapter’s attempt to tease apart the concept of depoliti-
cization into its various layers (principles, tactics, and tools) allowed us
to understand how the act of delegation is reinforced or buttressed by
complementary forms of depoliticization which attempt to explain and
rationalize the displacement of certain powers away from politicians. Use
of the term ‘depoliticization’ is, however, better understood not in terms
of abandonment to pessimism and fate but as making a claim that public
support for a specific mode of governing is waning and a new model based
around different notion of legitimacy is emerging: not the end of politics
but politics by other means. And yet this process closes down public space
for deliberation and contestation. However, we will return to the link
between public disenchantment, depoliticization, and democracy in the
conclusion (Chapter 10), and in this section we will focus on two aims: (1)
to re-engage with some of the theories outlined in the second chapter and
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Depoliticization
(2) to illustrate the connection between depoliticization and the ‘walking

without order’ thesis.
Much of this chapter chimes with the insights and themes of historical
institutionalism. This approach defines institutions not solely in terms
of structures and organizations but also in terms of rules, traditions,
operating procedures, and standards that feed into a concern with how
power is embedded in institutional configurations and an awareness of
the interaction between individuals and institutions. It therefore pro-
vides a set of theoretical ideas and hypotheses concerning the relations
between institutional characteristics, political agency, performance, and
change that point towards why institutions and institutional configu-
rations emerge, are maintained, and change. The central claim of HI is
that history matters; decisions made when an institution is established or
policy formulated have a constraining effect on future action. Put another
way, choices at a decisive point, or T1, establish a framework, funnel, or
channel that is likely to augment the recurrence of a specific pattern in
the future (T2).
The pattern established at T1 in this case was a system that we have
referred to as ‘bi-constitutionality’. This involved the preservation and
protection of the culture and values of a pre-democratic age through vari-
ous forms of delegation but within a broader framework of a modern rep-
resentative democracy. In this manner, ‘club government’ was insulated
from the effects of popular democratization. In politico-administrative
terms, the nineteenth century witnessed not a simple binary transi-
tion from one mega-constitutional orientation to another (i.e. Peelite
to Whig), but the creation of a more complex layering of orientations.
Once established, this pattern of governance proved incredibly resilient
to external reform demand. However, as this chapter and others have
shown, during the final decades of the twentieth century, a number of
factors conspired to stimulate the ‘colonization’ of previously depoliti-
cized spheres (e.g. the professions), place limits on the powers of ministers
(e.g. patronage), and impose democratic values (e.g. transparency) on
delegated bodies. These changes, however, did not equate to a ‘critical
juncture’ in terms of a fundamental shift in the nature of governance
because the level of politicization, where it occurred, was limited (i.e.
Politicization 2) and involved the maintenance of a significant degree of
professional autonomy.
This system of bi-constitutionality was facilitated to a great degree by
another continuing theme that has been evident throughout this chapter
and highlighted throughout the course of this book: the lack of an explicit
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Depoliticization
administrative theory. The evolution of the state was based on expedi-

ence, ‘ad hoccery’, and precedent, and had no pretence to schematic
ideological or theoretical foundations.46 Operating procedures were coded
and transmitted through tacit understandings rather than statute or writ-
ten constitutions. This ‘back of an envelope’ approach provided great
flexibility and provided for the parallel coexistence of quite different con-
stitutional orientations: a pre-democratic orientation operating largely
beyond the public eye within the sphere of delegated governance and
a democratic version within the governmental sphere.47 The role of the
WM was in many ways to act as a democratic cloak that could obscure the
existence of depoliticization while also providing a legitimating narrative.
And yet this lack of governing principles in relation to the structure of the
state also explains the ‘hyper-innovation’ emphasized by Moran whereby
new bodies and organizations have been created in a frequently informal
and continuously extemporized manner.
In this sense, one of the most significant aspects of New Labour’s
approach to governing is that they have made explicit what has always
previously been an implicit element of the British constitution. In argu-
ing that their approach has been rooted in the desire to place power
‘increasingly not with politicians’, the government has not only being
candid about the role of depoliticization but also adopted a normative
position that this is a valid and superior mode of governance. As such they
have stimulated a discussion regarding the contemporary relevance of the
WM, the role of politicians, and the limits of this process. If we reflect on
Table 2.3, it is clear that not only does depoliticization appear incompati-
ble with the tenets and emphasis of the WM but it also has the potential
to radically alter the nature of resource-dependencies within the chain of
delegation. In terms of conceptual ‘fit’, a number of reasons exist to locate
depoliticization as an issue which leads us towards an understanding of
the British state as a multilevel polity. Indeed, considering depoliticiza-
tion through the lens of multilevel governance (Table 2.2) injects new
perspectives and questions which contribute to our understanding and
the analytical leverage of the concept.
Considering evolving frameworks of multilevel governance reveals that
from a vertical perspective depoliticization and politicization may actually
take place concurrently. The simple transfer of functions and responsi-
bilities to the European Union from member states offers an example
of this conundrum. The role of the Council of Ministers and the grow-
ing scrutiny powers of the European Parliament might suggest that the
upward transfer of responsibilities to the European Union should not
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Depoliticization
be perceived as ‘depoliticization’ as the functions are being moved to

another ‘politicized’ environment. However, the impact of this process
may well be interpreted as one of depoliticization for the nation state
as national politicians have arguably lost a degree of direct control over
those functions. Even if functions are transferred to the European Union
there is reason to doubt that this should immediately be interpreted as
a politicized environment. The research of Hix on the ‘new governance
agenda’ leads him to conclude that ‘The EU is transforming politics and
government at the European and national levels into a system of multi-
level, non-hierarchichal, deliberative and apolitical governance via a com-
plex web of public/private networks and quasi-autonomous agencies’.48
Chalmers similarly concludes that ‘Transnational depoliticization is a
growing phenomenon, but its crucible is the European Union’.49
Multilevel governance also encourages us to look across levels of gov-
ernment and governance in order to gauge the nature and extent of
relationship (i.e. a horizontal perspective). This, when combined with
the delayered approach of the Russian Doll Model, poses questions about
where exactly on the spectrum of autonomy a responsibility would have
to be located for it to be depoliticized. Debates regarding the governance
of the NHS provide an illustrative case study of this issue. The proposal
for depoliticizing the NHS through the creation of an independent board
with a high degree of autonomy from elected politicians is not a new idea
and has been considered a number of times, notably in 1944, 1956, 1979,
1983, and 1994.50 The Labour Government’s rhetorical commitment to
depoliticization encouraged the idea to resurface with increased vigour
in 2003 when the King’s Fund published A New Relationship between Gov-
ernment and the NHS. Over the next three years similar proposals for the
depoliticization of the NHS were made by the British Medical Association,
the Conservative Party, and a number of government ministers.51 These
proposals were united by the shared view that
. . . the NHS will never be able to modernise and change while it is operating in
a highly charged political environment where every change can be labelled as a
‘cut’ [and] every operational fault can be blamed on ministers. In British politics,
any service that is led by politicians is a legitimate target for attack by opposition
parties who want to demonstrate a government’s incompetence.52
However, in terms of horizontal governance there was no agreement

between these reports concerning the specific organizational form that
would be necessary to institute an acceptable degree of depoliticization.
However, the fact that the proposals included the NHS being reconstituted
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Depoliticization
as either a special health authority (Layer 3), executive NDPB (Layer 4), or
public corporation (Level 5) underlines the point that depoliticization was
recommended as a process through which the role of ministers would be
significantly diminished rather than eliminated (Depoliticization 1). The
politics would in this sense remain but would be undertaken within a
different context.
Finally, the example of the NHS provides possibly the clearest exam-
ple of the relationship between depoliticization and the wider ‘walking
without order’ thesis of this book. This is because the arguments in
favour of an independent NHS were an example of logical spillover arising
from the government’s own statements and the introduction of similar
reforms in similar policy fields. The British Medical Journal seized upon this
link:
If the NHS—the 33rd largest economy in the world—is to stop being a political
football kicked from one party’s version of an internal market to another’s, it
needs to be protected from party politics. An independent NHS Authority . . . could
do this. Gordon Brown’s first act as Chancellor was to give the Bank of England
independence to set interest rates. His first as Prime Minister should be to give
independence to the NHS.53
The unprincipled, unplanned, and incoherent basis of the British state

was therefore exposed when the government rejected these proposals but
was unable to provide a clear rationale for why depoliticization has been
viewed as appropriate for some sectors but not others. In April 2007 the
Prime Minister told the King’s Fund that he was ‘wary’ of the proposals
for an independent NHS Board because he disagreed with the notion that
‘politicians can transfer power over to someone else who takes decisions
objectively as opposed to us who are so immersed in subjectivity or
wrong-headedness and all the rest of it’.54 Two months later the Secretary
of State for Health delivered a speech on the NHS in which she rejected
the idea that issues could be solved by increasing independence and
limiting the role of ministers. The lack of clear and coherent governing
principles was further underlined when the minister proceeded to outline
(in the same speech) how her predecessor, Alan Milburn, had created
NICE which ‘took power away from politicians and placed it in the hands
of clinicians—and is now the envy of the world’.55 The situation regarding
the government’s position on depoliticization became even more unclear
when the Secretary of State for Education announced in September 2007
that a decision had been taken to abolish the Qualifications and Curricu-
lum Authority and transfer responsibility for regulating examinations to
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Depoliticization
a new ‘completely independent’ body that would be accountable not to

ministers but to Parliament.56
This decision suggests that the arguments in favour of monetary inde-
pendence are equally applicable to many other areas of government
policy but the Labour Government has been unable to explain why
depoliticization has been accepted as a legitimate model of governance
in some sectors but not others. This has resulted in a typically British
patchwork of asymmetrical depoliticization that is reminiscent of Hooghe
and Marks’ characterization of Type II multilevel governance as a ‘marble-
cake’ (Table 2.2). Considering depoliticization and politicization vis-à-vis
multilevel governance directs us away from our focus at the national level.
The movement of roles and responsibilities above and below the nation
state provides counterpoints to the themes and issues we have examined
at the national level. More precisely, a key argument of campaigners for
devolution to Scotland and Wales in the 1980s and 1990s focused on
the need to establish new democratic arenas that could scrutinize and
deconstruct the large numbers of sub-national quasi-autonomous public
bodies that had been established to govern in each region. For quite
different reasons the sphere of delegated governance was equally dense
and complex in Northern Ireland but devolution alongside the peace
agreement brought with it the first opportunity for a fundamental review
of the governance of the province for decades. Above the nation state the
gradual accretion of functions and responsibilities within the EU has led
to intense debates concerning the nature of contemporary governance
that contribute new perspectives to debates concerning modes of legisla-
tive scrutiny, models of democracy, and the merits of depoliticization that
have been taking place at the national level. For these reasons, Chapter 9
focuses on the politics of delegated governance above and below the
British nation state.
Notes
1. Ranciere, J., On the Shores of Politics (London: Verso, 1995), p. 19.

2. Demos, Getting to Grips with Depoliticization (London: Demos, 2000), p. 11.
3. Blinder, A., ‘Is Government Too Political?’, Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. (1997),
115–26; Johns, G., Government and Civil Society (Canberra: Institute of Public
Affairs, 2002).
4. Falconer, Lord, Speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, London,
2003.
264
Depoliticization
5. Flinders, M. and Buller, J., ‘Depoliticization, Democracy and Arena Shifting’,

in P. Lægreid and T. Christensen (eds.), Autonomy and Regulation: Coping with
Agencies in the Modern State (London: Edward Elgar, 2006).
6. Edwards, B., An Independent NHS: A Review of the Options (London: Nuffield
Trust, 2007), p. 23.
7. For a review of the literature, see Flinders, M. and Buller, J., ‘Depoliticisation:
Principles, Tactics and Tools’, British Politics, 1/3 (2006), 1–26.
8. Boggs, C., The End of Politics (New York: Guildford Press, 2000); Douglas, M.,
‘The Depoliticisation of Risk’ in Implicit Meanings (London: Routledge, 1999);
Pettit, P., ‘Depoliticizing Democracy’, Ration Juris, 17 (2004), 52–65.
9. Taken from Flinders and Buller (2006) op. cit. pp. 3–4.
10. ‘You seem to be saying basically that there is a “depoliticization” of many
government decisions and that is at the heart of what you are welcom-
ing. . . . But is it not the case that what is happening really is that decisions
are being moved to a different arena? It is a non-elected political arena.’
HC 686-ii Public Administration Select Committee, Minutes of Evidence
14 March 2002, Q. 141.
11. Burnham, Peter, ‘New Labour and the Politics of Depoliticisation’, British
Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3/2 (2001), 127–49.
12. Furedi, F. et al., Corruption of the Curriculum (London: Civitas, 2007); British
Medical Association, A Rational Way Forward for the NHS in England (London:
BMA, 2007); Edwards, B., An Independent NHS: A Review of the Options
(London: Nuffield Trust, 2007).
13. Pettit, P., ‘Deliberative Democracy and the Case for Depoliticising Govern-
ment’, University of NSW Law Journal, 24 (2001), 724–36; Pettit, P., ‘Depoliti-
cizing Democracy’, Ration Juris, 17 (2004), 52–65; Blinder (1997) op. cit.
14. Ranciere, J., On the Shores of Politics (London: Verso, 1995), p. 19.
15. Hay, C., Why We Hate Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), p. 79.
16. Ibid. 81.
17. Moran, M., The British Regulatory State (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003).
18. Ibid. 38–66.
19. Marquand, D., The Unprincipled Society (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988),
p. 178.
20. See Hennessy, P., The Hidden Wiring (London: Gollancz, 1995).
21. Russell, P. H., Constitutional Odyssey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1992).
22. See Flinders, M. and Curry, D., ‘Biconstitutionality’, Parliamentary Affairs,
61/1 (2008), 1–30.
23. Moran (2003) op. cit., 125.
24. Doctors 1858, chartered accountants 1880, surveyors 1881, actuaries 1884,
chemists 1885, patent agents 1891, civil engineers 1818, architects 1837,
pharmacists 1841, mechanical engineers 1847.
265
Depoliticization
25. Black, J., ‘Constitutionalising Self-Regulation’, Modern Law Review, 59 (1996),

24–55.
26. Moran (2003) op. cit., 139.
27. Goodbody, J., ‘Moynihan Wary of State Control’, The Times 23 May 2007.
28. Jupe, R., ‘Public (Interest) or (Private) Gain? The Curious Case of Network
Rail’s Status’, Journal of Law and Society, 43 (2007), 244–65.
29. Giavazzi, F. and Pagano, M., ‘The Advantage of Tying One’s Hands’, European
Economic Review, 32 (1988), 1055–82.
30. Balls, E. and O’Donnell, G., Reforming Britain’s Economic and Financial Policy
(London: Palgrave, 2002).
31. Giles, C., ‘City Frowns on Chancellor’s Bending of the Golden Rule’, The
Financial Times, 19 August 2005; Osborne, G., ‘Achieving Lower, Simpler
Taxes’, Speech to the Social Market Foundation, 7 September 2005.
32. HC 999-I Treasury Committee, Session 2006–2007, Minutes of Evidence, 20
September 2007.
33. Civitas, England Versus Scotland: Does More Money Equal Better Health?
(London: Civitas), p. 24.
34. Douglas, M., ‘The Depoliticisation of Risk’ in Implicit Meanings (London:
Routledge, 1999).
35. Marcussen, M., ‘Transcending Politics’, in P. Lægreid and T. Christensen
(eds.), Autonomy and Regulation: Coping with Agencies in the Modern State
(London: Edward Elgar, 2006).
36. We are indebted to the advice of Sean Hosking on these points.
37. Habermas, J., ‘The Scientization of Politics and Public Opinion’, in
W. Outhwaite (ed.), The Habermas Reader (London: Polity Press, 1996), p. 62.
38. Storey, A., ‘Depoliticising Development: Promoting Choiceless
Democracies’, Paper from the ‘Whose Rules Rule? The IMF and World
Bank at 60’, Dublin, 2004; Wodak, R., ‘Recontextualization and the
Transformation of Meanings’, in S. Sanagi and M. Coulthard (eds.),
Discourse and Social Life (Harlow: Longman, 2000); Epstein, R., ‘International
Institutions and the Depoliticization of Economic Policy in Post-Communist
Europe’, ECPR Conference, Turin 2002.
39. See, for example, Hay, C. and Rosamond, B., ‘Globalisation, European
Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’,
Journal of European Public Policy, 9 (2002), 147–67.
40. Bourdieu, P., ‘The Politics of Globalization’, Le Monde 24 January 2002.
41. Hay, C. and Watson, M., ‘The Discourse of Globalisation and the Logic of
No Alternative’, Policy & Politics, 31 (2003), 289–305 (291).
42. Hall, P., ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State’, Comparative
Politics, 25 (1993), 175–96.
43. Sartori, G., ‘Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics’, American
Political Science Review, 64 (1970), 1033–53.
44. Lukes, S., Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974).
266
Depoliticization
45. A phrase taken from Rose, N. and Miller, P., ‘Political Power Beyond the
State: Problematics of Government’, British Journal of Sociology, 43 (1992),
173–205.
46. Hennessy, P., ‘Harvesting the Cupboards’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 4 (1994), 203–19.
47. Hennessy, P. and Coates, S., The Back of an Envelope (Strathclyde Analysis
Paper No.5, 1991).
48. Hix, S., ‘The Study of the EU II’, Journal of European Public Policy, 5 (1998), 54.
49. Chalmers, D., ‘Risk, Anxiety and the European Mediation of the Politics of
Life’, European Law Review, 30 (2005), 1.
50. See Edwards, B. and Fall, M., The Executive Years of the NHS (Oxon: Radcliffe
Publishing, 1995).
51. British Medical Association, A Rational Way Forward, 20: ‘In order to separate
national politics from the day-to-day running of the NHS, an independent
board of governors for the NHS should be established, appointed by and
accountable to Parliament.’; Purnell, J., The Guardian 23 September 2006;
Burnham, A., A Health Constitutional (London: Progress, 2006); Cameron,
D., Speech to the King’s Fund, 9 October 2006; Public Services Improvement
Policy Group, The National Health Service: Delivering Our Commitment
(London: Conservative Party, 2007).
52. Edwards, B., An Independent NHS: A Review of the Options (London: Nuffield
Trust, 2007).
53. Godlee, F., ‘Time to Leave Home’, British Medical Journal, 332 (April 2006).
54. Tony Blair, Speech to the King’s Fund, 30 April 2007.
55. Hewitt, P., Speech to the London School of Economics, 14 June 2007.
56. See Riddell, P., ‘Independence Is the Way to Win Friends’, The Times
27 September 2007.
267
9
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Devolution . . . offers another prospect for the extension of democratic

control into quangodom.1
This chapter adds a territorial dimension to the ‘walking without order’

thesis by examining how recent shifts in responsibilities upwards to the
European Union (EU) and downwards to new democratic frameworks in
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (N.I.) have led to changes in the
way arm’s-length public bodies are governed. Research of this nature is
critical for a number of reasons. First, although there is now a burgeoning
literature on the asymmetrical nature of devolution within the UK, very
little of this material has focused on the topic of delegated governance.
Moreover, studies that have examined the interrelationship between
devolution and delegated governance have tended to either raise the issue
of delegation as an aside or secondary aspect of other political phenomena
or have focused on just one region post-devolution and have therefore
failed to consider the existence of common trajectories or examples of
spillover.2 The situation within European studies, however, is quite dif-
ferent. The study of independent European agencies as a critical element
of supranational state-building and state capacity represents a major sub-
field of the discipline. Consequently, there exists an impressive body of
work on the role of delegation, the governance of arm’s-length bodies, and
the notion of depoliticization. Concerns regarding a democratic deficit
within the EU have also led to a fairly detailed and vibrant literature that
considers different models or forms of democracy and how widespread
delegation may in fact be quite compatible with specific forms of elite
democracy. These arguments and theories have not, however, permeated
across into the fields of public administration or British politics and syn-
ergizing these respective academic fields is one of the aims of this chapter.
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The relationship between delegated governance and models of democ-

racy feeds into another reason why this chapter is so important to
the broader claims of this book—proponents of devolution to Scotland,
Wales, and N.I. in the mid-1990s argued that it would assuage concerns
regarding accountability, control, and patronage in relation to public
bodies and it was in this vein that Hirst suggested, ‘regional govern-
ments could take over the responsibility for rendering key quangos more
accountable’.3 Finally, the large-scale transfer of functions and responsi-
bilities above and below the nation state needs to be located within the
broader ‘walking without order’ thesis that this book seeks to promote.
How, in particular, have the boundaries of the state been redrawn as
a result of devolution and does this suggest a continuation of ad hoc,
arbitrary, and pragmatic reform or is there evidence to suggest a prin-
cipled underpinning to this process, possibly even the beginning of an
explicit administrative theory or ideology within specific regions of the
UK.
In order to explore these issues, this chapter is divided into five sec-
tions. Each of the first three sections examines the sphere of delegated
governance in Scotland, Wales, and N.I., respectively. The fourth section
examines the use of delegation within the EU and particularly how the
role of independent European agencies has formed a critical component
of wider debates concerning the nature of democracy at the supranational
level. The final section reintroduces the three theoretical pillars of this
book in order to deepen our understanding of delegated governance
above and below the nation state. It is particularly concerned with (1)
identifying common themes and exploring the degree to which devo-
lution has in fact led to either a reduction in the sphere of delegated
governance or the imposition of tighter or more transparent accountabil-
ity, control, or appointment frameworks; (2) considering the likelihood
of spill-back or spillover between and across territories; and (3) how we
might draw upon debates that have developed within the discipline of
European studies concerning the nature of democracy to deepen our
understanding of the democratic consequences of delegation for British
politics.
9.1. Scotland
As the work of scholars including Jeffrey and Willson demonstrates,

delegated governance has for centuries played a major role in Scottish
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public administration.4 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,

geographical and political factors conspired to ensure that appointed pub-
lic bodies remained dominant elements of Scottish politics. The ‘tartan
fringe’ provided a mechanism through which London-based politicians
could seek to not only consolidate their implementation powers but also
weaken and circumnavigate locally elected councillors.5 The number and
role of delegated public bodies formed a key element of the devolu-
tion debate during the 1970s. Proponents suggested that a new Scottish
assembly would be able to curtail the patronage powers of Westminster-
based ministers and ensure that Scottish interests were represented on
the boards of public bodies and that a system of scrutiny committees
would be able to hold Scottish public bodies to account in a way that
was not possible through the House of Commons.6 Although the refer-
endum of March 1979 on Scottish devolution was unsuccessful, the argu-
ments regarding the need for a new regional framework of democracy in
Scotland to scrutinize and legitimate the role of delegated public bodies
did not recede and came to the fore once more during the debate on devo-
lution during the mid-1990s. Indeed, the main planning and consultation
body on devolution, the Scottish Constitutional Convention, repeatedly
highlighted the issue of delegation in order to emphasize the perceived
benefits of devolution.
The purpose of electing a Scottish Parliament is to give a representative say to the

people of Scotland over the way in which their affairs are run. That is in itself
a fundamental democratic principle. But it is also one the need for which has
gained added force in recent years because of the steady transfer of important areas
of government from elected representatives to unelected and unrepresentative
appointed bodies, commonly known as quangos. . . . The Convention expects the
Scottish Parliament to attach a high priority to reversing this anti-democratic
trend. The parliament will accordingly have power to examine the role of quangos
operating in Scotland, and to bring their activities under democratic control where
it is considered necessary. It will also have powers to ensure that where such bodies
remain they will be subject to greater accountability and accessibility.7
The positive referendum result in favour of Scottish devolution in

September 1997 led to the Scotland Act 1998 and the transfer of respon-
sibility for 198 public bodies from the Scottish Office to the new Scottish
Parliament and Executive (see Table 9.1).8
However, ‘Quango-culling did not feature in the Executive’s initial
legislative programme’ and public bodies remained a relatively constant
topic of political debate.9 The Scottish National Party, for example,
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Table 9.1. Delegated governance in Scotland 1998 and 2007:

bodies, personnel, expenditure
Type of 1998 2007 Percentage

delegation change
Executive NDPBs 36 33
Advisory NDPBs 65 46
Tribunal NDPBs 36 38
Public corporations 3 4
Nationalized industries 3 0
NHS bodies 55 23
Total bodies 198 144 −27
Total personnel 157,200 179,500 +14
Total annual expenditure (£M) 4,121 10,458 +154
adopted a particularly strident approach and in 1999 demanded a ‘cull’

of public bodies and made repeated accusations of party political patron-
age in relation to high-profile ministerial appointments. However, it was
not until January 2001 that the Scottish Executive published a com-
prehensive consultation document on delegated governance—Review of
Public Bodies: A Discussion Paper—which highlighted that Scottish pub-
lic bodies had a combined annual expenditure of around £6.5 billion
and that Scottish Ministers were responsible for around 3,500 appoint-
ments. The review acknowledged that ‘It could be argued that the
infrastructure of devolved government has not yet caught up with
the profound changes in the political climate in Scotland that devo-
lution has wrought’, and proceeded to set out the Executive’s inten-
tion to abolish a significant number of public bodies and ensure that
those that continued to operate do so within a transparent governance
framework.10
The results of this consultation exercise and the Scottish Executive’s
plans for reform were published in June 2001—Public Bodies: Proposals
for Change.11 In a manner reminiscent of the foreword to the Labour
Government’s 1998 review and reform document—Quangos: Opening the
Doors—the introduction to the Scottish Executive’s reform plans was far
more balanced about the advantages and disadvantages of delegation
than much of the near hysterical anti-delegatory polemics that had pre-
ceded it. However, the headline phrase of the document and its associated
press releases stated, ‘A third to go, a third to be reviewed with intent
to abolish, the remainder—fewer, fitter and fairer. That is our action on
quangos.’12 A detailed analysis of the Scottish Executive’s plans reveals a
far less dramatic programme of reform which is in many ways similar to
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the ‘cosmetic pruning’ that occurred after the 1980 Pliatzky Report (see
Chapter 3). The candidates for abolition were largely token sacrifices and
relatively minor bodies [e.g. Fisheries (Electricity) Committee, Ancient
Monuments Board for Scotland, Scottish Valuation and Rating Council].
In many cases, the claim of abolition was somewhat disingenuous as a sig-
nificant number of public bodies were simply reclassified (Scottish Homes)
or amalgamated (three public corporations into one, forty-three health
boards into fifteen). The Scottish Agricultural and Biological Research
Institutes continue to operate autonomously but are simply no longer
classified as executive NDPBs.13
The implicit outcome of the Scottish Executive’s review of public bodies
was that there was to be no wholesale abolition or reform of the sphere
of delegated governance. A few minor bodies were abolished and oth-
ers amalgamated into a smaller number of larger bodies but there was
certainly no centripetal dynamic in favour of taking functions back into
departments of the Scottish Executive. Indeed, the critical elements of
the review lie not in relation to abolition but in relation to reform of
the frameworks within which delegated public bodies would in future
operate. Three reforms are especially critical in relation to the ‘walking
without order’ thesis developed in this book and involve (1) the establish-
ment of a set of principles that would be used both to provide a rationale
for the sphere of delegated governance in Scotland and as a framework
to test proposals to create new public bodies; (2) reforms to empower the
legislature vis-à-vis delegated public bodies; and (3) the establishment of
a Commissioner for Public Appointments in Scotland (CPAS) with more
robust powers than its Westminster counterpart.
The principles adopted by the Scottish Executive governing the reten-
tion and creation of public bodies represent a significant step under-
pinning the sphere of delegated governance with a principled basis
(Table 9.2). Principles are by their nature vague and imprecise but to raise
this point does not undermine the benefit or originality of attempting
to specify an underlying rationale for the role and creation of public
bodies in Scotland. Moreover, the utility of the statement of principles
is underpinned by the second key reform which places a duty on Scottish
ministers to formally inform the Scottish Parliament of any plans to
create new public bodies. In informing the Scottish Parliament of their
plans to create a new body ministers must explain the rationale for that
organization with reference to the nine principles set out in Table 9.2.
Tying decisions to delegate responsibilities beyond the departmental core
to a formal and transparent legislative process is likely to encourage
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Table 9.2. Principles adopted by the Scottish Executive for the retention and
creation of Scottish public bodies
Principle
1 The Scottish Ministers must be, and must be seen to be, directly accountable to the
Scottish Parliament for the overall policy and strategic framework within which all
devolved functions are carried out.
2 Arm’s-length public bodies do have an important role to play in the governance of
devolved Scotland.
3 Where there is a very strong argument for ministers remaining directly accountable
to Parliament for the execution of the function the presumption should be that it
must be carried out within the executive (either within the core or by an executive
agency). In these circumstances interposing an unnecessary barrier between
ministers and those carrying out the function conflicts with the principle of direct
accountability.
4 If it is clear that ministers should be distanced from a function for some reason they
should not necessarily be held responsible for the manner of its execution, provided
that they have given clear strategic direction to those expected to carry it out.
5 The mechanisms for carrying out executive functions on behalf of ministers or for
providing advice to them must be fit for purpose relative to the scale, complexity,
and significance of the function, and as flexible and transparent as circumstances
allow.
6 A public body should only remain in existence if it has a distinct role to play and
distinct functions to perform.
7 Every public body must be clearly and appropriately accountable to ministers and
the people whom they serve for the functions they perform. There must be clarity
about what the body itself is responsible for doing.
8 Every public body must be able to work in a joined up way with other
organizations and be able to draw new people into the processes of government in
the widest sense.
9 Every public body must be properly run, efficiently and effectively, and deliver
value for money.
ministers and their officials to reflect carefully on the need for a new
organization and maintain a comprehensive register of the organizations
that already exist in order to avoid legislative criticisms of jurisdictional
overlap. Devolution has therefore led to the imposition of new procedures
that limit the flexibility of members of the Scottish Executive to create
new bodies with the intention of avoiding the ‘institutionalitis’ that is
often problematic at the national level.
The final significant area of reform lies in the sphere of public appoint-
ments. Prior to devolution, appointments to Scottish public bodies
were regulated by the UK Commissioner for Public Appointments (see
Chapter 7). However, devolution offered the new Scottish political insti-
tutions the opportunity to develop their own system of regulation, and
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the Public Appointments and Public Bodies Act (Scotland) 2003 established a
separate CPAS.14 There are four important differences between the regula-
tory framework for public appointments under this legislation compared
with UK-wide system that was outlined in Chapter 7. First, in order
to ensure that the CPAS is independent of the Scottish Executive, they
are appointed by the Crown on the advice and recommendation of the
Scottish Parliament (rather than the executive). This makes the CPAS an
independent parliamentary body (Fig. 4.1) rather than an advisory NDPB
of the Cabinet Office as is the case of the Office of the Commissioner
for Public Appointments in London. Second, the independence of the
regulatory framework is further strengthened through the CPAS’s power
to inform the Scottish Parliament if the Code of Practice for Ministerial
Appointments has been breached, and (third) this whistle-blowing role is
reinforced by the CPAS’s power to direct Scottish ministers to delay mak-
ing the appointment in question until the Scottish Parliament has been
able to consider the case. Fourth, the Scottish Commissioner also has sole
responsibility for appointing, training, and evaluating the performance of
Independent Assessors, with Scottish Executive departments not being
able to recruit and train their own Independent Assessors (unlike in
Whitehall).
This brief review of the interplay between devolution and delegated
governance in Scotland allows us to draw out a number of significant
themes of issues. Devolution has not led to a ‘bonfire on quangos’.
Quasi-governance is fundamental to any analysis of politics in most
advanced industrial countries as it is now an integral layer of mod-
ern governance that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, is unlikely to
be dismantled by any future government. In this context, the October
2007 announcement by the newly elected Scottish National Party of
its intention to ‘simplify the public service landscape’ by abolishing 25
per cent of the public bodies in Scotland risks belaying a degree of
political naiveté about the complexity of modern governance. A decade
after devolution was introduced Scotland remains a delegated state. Of
the public sector workforce at the regional level (i.e. not employed by
Scottish local authorities) fewer than 3 per cent (4,300 people) work
in core departments, while over 6 per cent work in agencies (11,800),
7 per cent in executive NDPBs (13,300), 13 per cent in public corpora-
tions (23,100), and 70 per cent in arm’s-length NHS bodies (127,000).15
Moreover, fifty-five percent of the Scottish Executive’s annual budget
(10.458 of £20.1 billion) is distributed through the sphere of delegated
governance.
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The significance of devolution in relation to delegated governance in

Scotland rests not with structural abolition or centripetal drift but in the
creation of new democratic processes and administrative procedures that
have sought to locate delegation within a transparent framework. The
publication of an explicit statement of principles for delegation that is
tied to a new procedure for accounting to the legislature where plans are
being considered to establish a new body marks a clear departure from
the British political tradition. Indeed, it is exactly a statement of this
nature that the PASC has sought to encourage the British government
to set down and publish (albeit unsuccessfully) since 1997 (see Chapters
3 and 4). The powers of the CPAS are more extensive and robust than
those enjoyed by their British counterpart, a fact that has not been unno-
ticed and has led to a range of constitutional stakeholders (including the
PASC, CSPL, and former Public Appointments Commissioners) seeking
to lobby the government at Westminster in favour of reforming the
OCPA’s powers in line with those of the Scottish Commissioner for Public
Appointments.16 Although the government has so far rejected these rec-
ommendations, the existence of a regulator in Scotland with greater pow-
ers than their national counterpart has clearly created an anomaly. In time
this pressure is likely to build to the point which the government is forced
to respond either by increasing the power of the UK-wide Commissioner
for Public Appointments or by explaining why a different framework of
governance is appropriate for ministerial appointments in Scotland but
not UK as a whole. A final modification to the sphere of delegated gov-
ernance that has been brought about through devolution and fits clearly
within our argument about greater transparency is that there is now a
much more accessible and regularly updated (daily) database on Scottish
public bodies.17 This provides a ‘directory of governance’ which resembles
the document that the PASC recommended the Cabinet Office establish in
their 1998 report.18 Not only does this provide members of the Scottish
Executive (and their officials) and members of the Scottish Parliament
with a very clear source of information about the structure of the Scottish
state beyond the core which can then inform public policymaking and
legislative scrutiny but it also fulfils a much broader role in relation to
public accountability. Members of the public have one point of access
about where responsibility lies for specific public services, and very clear
information on who is managing these organizations, on behalf of which
minister, and how they can make contact with the body. Section 9.2
examines developments in Wales post-devolution and whether similar
reform trajectories can be identified.
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9.2. Wales
As Ashworth and her colleagues note, ‘Whilst devolution has primar-

ily been presented as a response to a growing national identity in
Scotland . . . in Wales it is viewed as a solution to a perceived “demo-
cratic deficit”.’19 In the pre-devolution era, delegated governance had for
decades been the core institutional unit of public administration in Wales,
overshadowing the functions performed by elected local authorities.20
As Jones notes, this helped develop distinctively Welsh administrative
structures: ‘In no small degree the emergence of a Welsh administrative
identity has been based upon distinctly Welsh quangos starting with the
Central Welsh Examination Board in 1890 and followed by the Welsh
Health Insurance Commission.’21 However, by the end of the twentieth
century, as in Scotland, delegation to arm’s-length public bodies was
largely interpreted as a process through which Conservative ministers
in Westminster could circumnavigate Labour Party-controlled local and
regional councils in Wales.22 At the same time a number of high-profile
incidents, like those surrounding the Welsh Development Agency, served
to focus attention on the control and accountability frameworks sur-
rounding public bodies.23 Devolution was therefore widely viewed as
a suitable mechanism through which the size and scale of the much-
maligned but little-understood ‘quango state’ could be reduced.
In July 1997, the Labour Government published a white paper on Welsh
devolution—A Voice for Wales—which stated that ‘unelected bodies will
be reduced in number and brought under full democratic control and
scrutiny’.24 Consequently, the Government of Wales Act 1998 gave the
Assembly ‘power to amend primary legislation by Order so as to restruc-
ture certain Assembly Sponsored Public Bodies (ASPBs) by transferring
functions to other quangos, local government or the Assembly, or by
abolishing functions or whole quangos’.25 Prior to the establishment of
the Assembly, the Health Promotion Authority for Wales and the Welsh
Health Common Services Authority were abolished and their functions
transferred to the Welsh Office. In his statement to the House of Com-
mons the Secretary of State for Wales stated:
Unelected bodies will be reduced in number before the Assembly is established,

and placed under proper democratic control and scrutiny once the assembly is in
place. No longer will our key public services lie in the hands of political appointees
operating in secret and accountable to no one in Wales.26
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Table 9.3. Executive assembly sponsored public bodies in 1998
Body Staff Annual govt. funding

(million pounds)
Arts Council of Wales 69 14.3

Cardiff Bay Development Corporation 101 47.9
Countryside Council for Wales 343 23.2
Development Board for Rural Wales 88 9.5
Further Education Funding Council for Wales 49 183
Housing for Wales 67 82.1
Higher Education Funding Council for Wales 28 233.8
National Library of Wales 210 5.2
National Museums and Galleries of Wales 465 12.3
Qualifications, Curriculum and Assessment Authority for 54 8.5
Wales
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments 31 1.4
for Wales
Sports Council for Wales 155 6.6
Wales Tourist Board 112 15.1
Welsh Development Agency 337 88.1
Welsh Language Board 30 5.8
Land Authority for Wales 50 2
Residuary Body for Wales 4 0
Welsh National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health 24 1
Visiting
Totals—18 Executive ASPBs 2,215 742.9
Consequently, devolution saw the transfer of responsibility from the

Welsh Office in London to the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff of fifteen Exec-
utive ASPBs, eighteen Advisory ASPBs, and five Tribunals (see Table 9.3).
However, as with Scotland, the first years of devolved administration
in Wales did not involve the wholesale abolition of delegated public
bodies. Indeed, four years after the establishment of the Welsh Assem-
bly, Llew Smith MP told the Commission on the Powers and Elec-
toral Arrangements of the National Assembly for Wales (the Richard
Commission) that
Just about the only reason given for establishing the Welsh Assembly was that
Wales had become a quango state? It was necessary to rectify that wrong by making
what was called a ‘bonfire on quangos’ . . . there are now just as many quangos
in Wales as when the Assembly was first set up. Moreover the amalgamation
of quangos and formation of bodies such as the ELWa [National Council for
Education and Learning for Wales] and mean that the quango state is even more
powerful. The only reason for a Welsh Assembly was to make a bonfire of the
quangos, but no one has struck a match yet.27
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The main structural reforms of the sphere of delegated governance in

Wales for the first five years of devolved government were primarily
focused on amalgamation rather than abolition. Education and Learning
in Wales (ELWa), for example, was created in 2002 through the merger of
four training and enterprise councils and the Further Education Funding
Council for Wales. The Cardiff Bay Development Corporation was dis-
solved in March 2000 but many of its responsibilities had already been
transferred to either the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) (which itself
had subsumed the Development Board for Rural Wales and the Land
Authority for Wales) or the Countryside Council for Wales. However,
unlike Scotland, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) did not launch
a public consultation exercise or review of the structure of delegated
governance in the region as a whole but instead amended the existing
organization-specific five-year review process.28 The WAG’s Plan for Wales
2001 promised to review each executive ASPB by 2003–4 through strategic
reviews in order to ensure that ‘they are necessary, effective, and efficient’
and by February 2004 reviews of the WDA, Countryside Council for
Wales, National Museum and Galleries of Wales, Welsh Language Board,
National Library of Wales, and Wales Tourist Board had been completed
and discussed by the full Assembly at plenary debates—each of which
had resulted in unanimous support for continuing existence and role of
these public bodies. The main focus of the WAG had been on improving
the strategic governance of ASPBs rather than abolition. In June 2004, for
example, the Finance Minister had told the Cabinet that they ‘needed
to consider how we can improve and strengthen the process of giving
strategic direction to ASPBs’.29
It therefore came as something of a shock when the First Minister,
Rhodri Morgan, made a statement on public services in Wales the fol-
lowing month in which he stated that the ‘time had come to move the
devolution project onwards and upwards . . . starting with the announce-
ment that we intend to incorporate major executive quangos directly
into the Assembly Government’.30 He went on to announce that the
WDA, Wales Tourist Board, and ELWa would be abolished by 1 April
2006 and their responsibilities taken back within the Welsh minister-
ial departments. This announcement came without prior consultation
and took officials and opposition parties by surprise. The organizations
concerned were informed by telephone just minutes before the offi-
cial announcement (prompting the WDA’s Chief Executive to resign
on the spot).31 These three public bodies employ over 1,600 staff and
have a combined annual expenditure of nearly £1 billion—nearly two
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thirds of the total staff and annual expenditure of delegated governance

in Wales. The First Minister went on to emphasize that
The shape of the Assembly Government will become more governmental, because
merging the staff currently employed by the quangos with our existing depart-
ments will give us far more firepower, more critical mass, and more ability to
generate distinct Wales-oriented policies. There will be more opportunities for staff
to specialise in policy areas in their careers and less of a false distinction between
making policy and implementing it.32
In August 2004 the Permanent Secretary, Sir Jon Shortridge, wrote to the
remaining ASPBs setting out the basis on whether they too would be
integrated within WAG. The government’s presumption was that ‘Where
such bodies undertake functions which are essentially governmental in
character, in that they set or lead on an aspect of public policy or policy
delivery, they should be merged with the administration’33 Sir Jon added
that there would be only three exceptions to this rule:
1. Where such bodies audit or regulate Assembly Government or are

quasi-judicial in much of their work.
2. Where such bodies take decisions that are better kept at arm’s-length
from the government.
3. Where such bodies undertake functions or exercise professional
judgements which are clearly non-governmental in character.
Using these criteria the First Minister announced in November 2004

that five more ASPBs—Welsh Language Board; Qualifications, Curriculum
and Assessment Authority for Wales; Health Professions Wales; Arts Coun-
cil of Wales; and Sports Council for Wales—would be abolished and their
functions taken back within governmental structures. The programme of
ASPB abolitions had therefore been extended to encompass eight of the
fourteen executive public bodies operating under the auspices of the WAG
and Assembly of Wales. Devolution in this region has therefore resulted
in a clear preference for reabsorbtion and centripetal drift that is markedly
different from the reform process adopted in Scotland. However, this
process has not been accompanied by any detailed public consultation
process or detailed rationale for the WAG’s decisions. This may explain the
high-profile backlash which the government has experienced in relation
to these measures. Exploring some of the issues raised by opponents to
abolishing public bodies provides empirical examples of many of the
issues to do with accountability and depoliticization that have been exam-
ined in this book.
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In terms of accountability, the plans to abolish public bodies have been

located within an ideational context which presumes that ministerial
departments are more accountable than delegated public bodies (a view
that was questioned in Chapter 6). However, the Liberal Democrat Leader
in the Welsh Assembly has challenged this position by explaining that the
scrutiny committees of the Assembly had been able to scrutinize ASPBs
but in a constructive manner which did not degenerate into party political
point scoring, a position broadly supported by the Richard Commission of
March 2004.34 Academic research on the accountability of public bodies
in Wales post-devolution has similarly concluded that the volume and
quality of legislative scrutiny (in this case via parliamentary questions)
have been improved significantly.35 The risk of centralizing functions is
that they would become (re-)politicized which would lead to a reduction
rather than an increase in the level of constructive scrutiny.36 This point
was developed by Professor Kevin Morgan who had led the ‘Yes’ campaign
in 1997:
We are told that the abolition of the quangos will make their functions more
accountable. But accountable to whom? To politicians in the Assembly or to
the wider electorate and civil society? Quangos like the WDA have been held
accountable in a whole series of ways—through their board, through targets set out
in the remit letter from the sponsoring minister and, most visibly, through public
scrutiny before the Assembly subject committees. This stands in stark contrast to
the degree of public accountability of bodies which have been absorbed into the
Assembly, like Wales Trade International for example, which has been subject to
less public scrutiny since it left the WDA.37
The perspective raised by Morgan chimes with the 360◦ approach to

accountability we developed in Chapter 6. The reabsorbtion of public
bodies in Wales may result in a narrowing of accountability as the
inevitable consequence of a process of politicization or what we might
more precisely label Politicization 3—public sphere to governmental
sphere—under the framework set out in Figure 8.1. Following on from
this, the labelling of the WAG’s approach as one of politicization might
be expected to produce powerful counter-arguments in favour of depoliti-
cization. This is exactly what has occurred in Wales during 2005–7 as
several abolition candidates have launched high-profile campaigns to
retain their independence from politicians. The Arts Council of Wales
in particular has undertaken a vigorous campaign to defend its status
as an arm’s-length body. Its response to the WAG’s plans noted, ‘the
arts are characteristics fundamentally non-governmental in character,
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Table 9.4. Executive ASPBs in Wales, 1998, 2004, and Post-2008 proposals
Number Staff Annual govt. Funding

(million pounds)
1998 18 2,215 742.9

2004 14 4,459 1,225.7
Planned post-2008 6 2,540 603.7
Percentage change (1998–2008 plans) −66 +14 −19
Statistics calculated from National Assembly for Wales (September 2004) Assembly Sponsored Public
Bodies, Members Briefing Paper, 04/0020; National Assembly for Wales (September 2004) The Reform
of Assembly Sponsored Public Bodies, Members Briefing Paper, 04/0021.
although in the course of their work they often serve the Government’s
objectives. Arts and Government are best served by retaining an arm’s-
length relationship.’38 The WAG’s plans in relation to cultural public
bodies have, however, been restrained by the fact that Schedule 4 of
the Government of Wales Act prevents it from abolishing ASPBs that were
originally established by Royal Charter (which includes the Arts Council
of Wales along with the National Library of Wales, National Museums
and Galleries of Wales, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical
Monuments for Wales, and the Sports Council for Wales). As a result, the
Welsh executive’s plans for abolition have had to be recast in the form of
a new governance structure for the Arts Council of Wales and the Sports
Council for Wales in which the arm in the arm’s-length relationship is
much shorter.
The current situation in Wales remains confusing, with the WAG forced
to announce that some public bodies will in fact not be abolished while
also delaying the merger of some organizations, like the Welsh Language
Board, in order for detailed consultations to be completed. Table 9.4,
however, provides an audit based on the WAG’s plans to abolish the
eight ASPBs detailed above in order to provide a sense of the trajectory
of delegated governance in Wales.
The situation in Wales has therefore been distinctly different from the
trajectory followed in Scotland in two key ways: (1) there has been no
clear statement or consultation on the role of delegated public bodies in
a modern democracy; and (2) the WAG has unilaterally decided that a
delegated state structure is a ‘flawed system’ which should to a greater
or lesser extent be centralized. And yet the fragility of this governing
philosophy is exposed by the fact that while rhetorically emphasizing
this position the very same government was authorizing the creation of
new public bodies, including the Wales Centre for Health, which became
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operational in April 2005. Cracks in the governing philosophy are also

apparent in the confusion that surrounds why exactly the remaining
six ASPBs have been granted a reprieve as opposed to any of the other
eight bodies that have been targeted for abolition. Indeed, it has been
suggested that the roots of this reform process and particularly the timing
and manner of its announcement lie not in any shift in the ideological
underpinning of the WAG’s statecraft but in a more instrumental need to
counter widespread criticism of the First Minister’s leadership following
his apparent volte-face away from supporting the Richard Commission’s
recommendations.39
9.3. Northern Ireland
Carmichael and Knox correctly note that for much of the twentieth
century N.I. was ‘a quango state in extremis’.40 This was a result of
a complex range of factors which derived from sectarian conflict and
intercommunity tension. Evidence of widespread discrimination against
the Catholic population in the province through majoritarian political
structures created a preference for appointed and arm’s-length public
bodies within the administrative structure. This is a critical point. The
deployment of appointed semi-state bodies in N.I. provided a way of pro-
tecting and ensuring certain democratic principles, such as representation
and openness. Delegation was not, therefore, interpreted as a threat to
democracy but as a mode of governance through which the tyranny of the
majority could be avoided. It is in this sense that Morison has emphasized
the ‘ingenuity’ that has been displayed within the architecture of the
Northern Irish state. Public bodies allowed functions and responsibilities
to be removed from the political process and placed in the hands of boards
of individuals who reflected the religious composition of that society.
This provided power, capacity, and participation to a significant section
of society who would have been disempowered under more ‘democratic’
methods. He maintains, ‘. . . the quango remains a potentially more demo-
cratic mechanism than a straightforward election in an unevenly divided
and polarised society.’41
The roots of this ingenious architecture lie unsurprisingly in the trou-
bled history of N.I. and although it is beyond the bounds of this section to
provide an authoritative account of the decision of the Stormont govern-
ment in 1969 to commission Sir Patrick Macrory to examine the future
of local government provides an expedient starting point because his
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recommendations weighed heavily in favour of the use of single-purpose

appointed bodies that would be accountable to Stormont.42 The deterio-
rating situation of civil unrest during the early 1970s and the imposition
of Direct Rule in March 1972 strengthened the move towards functional
modes of decentralization through delegated forms of governance. The
final decades of the century saw the creation of a sophisticated and
complex architecture of delegated governance, directed from Whitehall,
alongside an eviscerated structure of local government with responsibility
for just 4.4 per cent of the public budget (£340 million).
The signing of the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 is set out
as a plan for devolved government in N.I. It involved a multilevel and
complex set of institutions, many of which were quasi-autonomous in
terms of their relationship with elected politicians. However, reviewing
the structure of N.I.’s bureaucracy and particularly the balance between
elected and unelected forms of governance formed a key element of
the peace process. To this end, the new Secretary of State for N.I., Mo
Mowlam, used her ‘First 100 Days’ speech to emphasize that ‘We [the
Labour government] want to see new democratic institutions in Northern
Ireland. . . . People here have missed out for far too long on an accountable
and democratic system of government’. The restoration of devolution
to the province after a quarter of a century of direct rule clearly raised
complex questions not just about the structure of the state but also about
the principles that should underpin a modern democracy and how they
might be incorporated within the plans for democratic and constitutional
renewal.
In order to assess these questions, the N.I. Executive launched a funda-
mental review of public administration (RPANI) in June 2002 (following
the suspension of devolution, the RPANI was taken forward under Direct
Rule but with an ongoing dialogue with the main political parties). The
review was the first major examination of the bureaucracy in over thirty
years and took place against a general acceptance that N.I. was an over-
governed country with a dense and tangled bureaucratic system that was
administratively inefficient and democratically opaque. Table 9.5 sets out
the structure of delegated governance in N.I. at the point at which power
was devolved to the Assembly and Executive in December 1999.
In addition to the executive bodies set out in Table 9.5, there were
sixteen advisory NDPBs, one ‘regulatory’ NDPB (the N.I. Certification
Office), eleven tribunal NDPBs (many with de facto executive and reg-
ulatory functions such as the N.I. Parades Commission), four quasi-
autonomous trust ports (Belfast, Warrenpoint, Londonderry, Coleraine),
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Table 9.5. Delegated governance in Northern Ireland, 1999–2008
Organizational form Number Total staff Total budget (million pounds)
Executive agencies 16 14,017 746

Executive NDPBs 54 29,973 3,856
Total 70 43,990 4,602
Current post-review of public administration plans, 2008
Executive agencies 8 13,667 731
Executive NDPBs 42 27,757 3,789
Total 50 41,424 4,520
Percentage change −30 −5.8 −1.8
Note: Calculations derived from RPA (2003) Organisation Charts: Final Version; RPA (2006) Better
Government for Northern Ireland: Final Decisions of the Review of Public Administration in Northern
Ireland, Annex D.
a number of ‘independent statutory bodies’ (such as the Office of

the Social Fund Commissioner), several government-established and -
funded companies with charitable status (Community Relations Coun-
cil), six North–South Implementation Bodies (Waterways Ireland, Food
Safety Promotion Board, Trade and Business Development Board, EU
Programmes Body, North/South Language Body, and the Irish Lights
Commission), and numerous ‘hybrid’ bodies (such as the Ulster-Scots
Agency and Foras na Gaeile). In terms of patronage and public appoint-
ments, devolution saw responsibility for making over 2,000 public
appointments shifted from Whitehall to Stormont. To put the statis-
tics in Table 9.5 in context, 61 per cent of the N.I. civil services
are based within executive agencies and the combined expenditure
of executive agencies and executive NDPBs accounts for over half of
the province’s annual public budget. When the fact that the RPANI’s
mapping exercise discovered eighty-four public bodies in addition to
those outlined in Table 9.5 is taken into account, it is unsurprising
that the administrative arrangements for such a relatively small popu-
lation (1.5 million compared to 5.05 million in Scotland and 2.92 mil-
lion in Wales) were widely viewed as inefficient and mystifying to the
public.
The aim of the RPANI was to design a simplified public sector. The
structure and process of the RPANI is detailed online and it is sufficient
here to note that it began with a detailed mapping exercise which sought
to understand not only the empirical structure of the state but also the
rationale on why certain services had been delegated, and the nature of
relationships that currently existed (including funding and accountability
structures).43 A detailed consultation document was then published and
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widely distributed in October 2003 in which five core options for reform
were discussed. March 2006 saw the culmination of this process with the
publication of a final report setting out an agenda for change based upon
the introduction of a two-tier model of public administration involv-
ing central departments and a reduced number of public bodies and a
strengthened but rationalized (reduced in number from 26 to 7) tier of
local councils.44 The recommendations were immediately accepted by the
Secretary of State for N.I.45
As a result the number of executive public bodies will be significantly
reduced but despite ministerial pronouncements stating that the number
of ‘quangos’ will have been reduced by 51 per cent, a detailed analysis
of the recommendations reveals that the actual emphasis of the reform
programme is very much upon merger rather than upon abolition. As
such, although the number of executive agencies will fall by 50 per
cent (16 to 8) with the amalgamation of eight agencies into just two
(an Environment Agency and a Land and Property Services Agency) and
the functions of two more reabsorbed into executive departments, the
actual impact of these measures is negligible in terms of their impact in
terms of expenditure of personnel (Table 9.5). A similar pattern emerges
in relation to the plans for the reform of executive NDPBs. Although
the number of these bodies will be reduced by around a third, this
reduction is largely achieved through mergers, ‘cosmetic pruning’, and
what might be termed ‘reallocation’. The main mergers involve the four
health and social services boards being amalgamated into a new Health
and Social Services Authority, and the five Education and Library Boards
being amalgamated into a single Education and Skills Authority and a
Library Authority. In terms of ‘cosmetic pruning’, the review has identified
twelve relatively small and arguably outdated bodies none of which—
apart from Enterprise Ulster and the Fire Authority—employed more than
thirty staff for abolition. There is also a second category of executive
public bodies which will in fact be abolished only to be immediately
reincarnated in an alternative delegated form. Examples include the Cen-
tral Services Agency, Education Council for Nursing and Midwifery, and
the Medical and Dental Training Agency, the functions of which will all
be incorporated within the new arm’s-length Health and Social Services
Authority.
Although some ‘non-core’ functions of other executive NDPBs (includ-
ing Invest N.I., Arts Council, Sports Council, and Housing Executive) will
transfer to the new local authorities, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that
the actual result of the RPANI represents more continuity than change in
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relation to delegation. As noted above, an audit of the number of execu-

tive NDPBs that will actually be abolished, as opposed to their functions
being subsumed within other forms of delegated governance or ‘super-
quangos’, we find only twelve examples of pure abolition. This finding
chimes with the conclusion of Orr who stated, ‘For those hoping for an
end to quangos following devolution there is disappointment. Though
bonfires were promised, as institutions NDPBs have proved remarkably
flame-resistant.’46 As Table 9.5 illustrates, although the review has led to
a 30 per cent reduction in the number of executive bodies, the results
in personnel and budgetary terms are far less impressive (at -5.8 and
1.8 per cent, respectively). The RPANI can in many ways be interpreted
as further refinement of the hub-model of government (Chapter 1) as a
small departmental core will in the future be expected to govern via a
streamlined structure of delegated arms of the state. This was acknowl-
edged in the review’s implementation plans which highlighted that sev-
eral departments (notably the Department of Health, Social Services, and
Public Safety) will become considerably smaller as functions are moved to
the new integrated arm’s-length authorities.
The post-devolution approach to statecraft in N.I. is therefore quite dis-
tinct from that being adopted in Wales. In this regard what each of these
brief reviews of the impact of devolution on delegated governance in
Wales, Scotland, and N.I. demonstrates is that devolution has unleashed
a different dynamic in each region and it is difficult to tease out common
themes or issues and it is worth reflecting on this in a little more detail
before we move on to examine delegation above the nation state. If we
examine the nature and extent of the reform processes in each region it
is possible to argue that the approaches adopted by Scotland and Wales
represent opposing poles of a continuum, with the mode of governance
adopted in N.I. being located somewhere towards the end of the spectrum
(see Table 9.6)
Table 9.6. Devolution and delegation 1998–2008: comparative analysis
Scotland Northern Ireland Wales
Public consultation/formal review Yes Yes No

Publication of a set of principles Yes No No
Formally enhanced role for the Yes No No
regional legislature
Large-scale abolition No No Yes (planned)
Nature of the state in the region Delegated Delegated Increasingly centralized
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Devolution clearly provided a distinct shift in the distribution of

resources and the capacity for executive action. It provided an opportu-
nity to reflect on the distribution of responsibilities, the structure of the
state, and the balance between independence and control. And yet the
manner in which this opportunity for reflection was managed differed
greatly between the regions. In Scotland, a broad consultation on the role
of public bodies led to a formal reform statement and the publication
of a set of governing principles with the potential to inject a greater
degree of clarity and consistency into the structure of the state. In N.I.,
the complex socio-political history of the province meant that the role
of public bodies formed part of a broader review of the administrative
structure as a whole. However, in both Scotland and N.I. these reviews
did not lead to a ‘bonfire on quangos’. Indeed, the logic of delegation was
accepted alongside an accepted need to rationalize the existing structure—
a ‘timely tidying up, modernizing exercise’—and clarify and tighten the
relationship between elected and unelected modes of governance.47 In
Wales, by contrast, the reform trajectory appears to have rejected the logic
of delegation and is seeking to reabsorb the responsibilities of the majority
of its ASPBs back within the executive department of the WAG. Only
time will tell whether the reality of public sector reform in Wales matches
the populist rhetoric of the First Minister, but it is undoubtedly clear that
devolution has accelerated the asymmetrical nature of the British state
in an increasingly complex manner. There is no one pattern or structure
of delegated governance but several, and yet we know very little about
how delegated organizational forms interact with similar bodies at the
national, supranational, or global level. Section 9.4 develops this theme
by examining delegated governance within the EU.
9.4. The European Union
The creation of a sphere of delegated governance above the nation

state provides a critical perspective on long-standing concerns regarding
accountability, control, and patronage. The history and role of European
regulatory agencies (ERAs) has been well-documented and it is sufficient
here to note that the sphere of delegated governance has expanded grad-
ually from the ‘first wave’ bodies in the 1970s, to the ‘second wave’ of
delegation in the early 1990s, through to the most significant ‘third wave’
of predominantly regulatory bodies since 1999 onwards.48 There is no
common rationale behind their creation or shared internal or external
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governance frameworks: in several instances the exact legal position of the

agency is unclear; ‘The agencies range from almost complete dependency
to far-reaching autonomy from the supranational institutions, and at the
same time exhibit differing degrees of independence from the member
states and differing degrees of autonomy in terms of task execution.’49
However, as Table 9.7 shows, there are six distinct forms of delegated gov-
ernance at the European level that fulfil a range of executive, technical,
and regulatory tasks (but there are also glaring differences between the
roles, size, and powers of the agencies).50 This reflects the fact that these
bodies have been created at different points in the EU’s development, to
address a range of issues and without any formal or coherent governance
regime for their operation and oversight.
European governance revolves around the principles and tools for
decision-making within the context of multiple layers of players and
decision-makers. The coexistence and intertwining of several governance
levels clearly constitute unprecedented challenges and the logic of del-
egation has proved particularly attractive within this dense and com-
plex political and institutional terrain. From 1999 (i.e. the ‘third wave’)
onwards, delegation to powerful ERAs was perceived as a method through
which the European Commission’s governing capacity could be increased.
Proponents of delegation adopted economic institutionalist theory in
order to suggest that a ‘credibility crisis’ existed in relation to EU regu-
lation as a result of ‘parliamentarization’ (i.e. the creeping competence
or capacity of the European Parliament vis-à-vis the European Commis-
sion). Delegation to ERAs, or ‘deparliamentarization’ as this process was
frequently termed, was therefore viewed as a way of insulating certain
responsibilities from the irrational short-termism of the ‘political’ sphere,
thereby enhancing and protecting policy credibility:51
. . . the need to preserve the credibility of the integration process, notwithstanding

the growing politicisation of the Commission, provides the strongest argument
in favour of an increased recourse to non-majoritarian institutions of regula-
tory policy-making at the European level. The question is no longer whether
European agencies are needed but rather how they should be designed so that
their accountability may be secured and so that their sectoral responsibilities can
be co-ordinated with broader horizontal concerns.52
And yet institutional depoliticization through delegation was antagonis-

tic to long-standing concerns regarding a perceived ‘democratic deficit’
among European institutions. Incremental extensions to the role and
capacity of the European Parliament had been introduced in order to
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Table 9.7. Delegated governance within the European Union, 2008
Foundation Delegated bodies
Community Community Fisheries Control Agency

agencies (first Community Plant Variety Office
pillar) European Agency for Reconstruction
European Agency for Health and Safety at Work
European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the
External Borders
European Aviation Safety Agency
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training
European Chemicals Agency
European Environment Agency
European Food Safety Agency
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
European Fundamental Rights Agency
European GNSS Supervisory Authority (under preparation)
European Institute for Gender Equality (under preparation)
European Maritime Safety Agency
European Medicines Agency
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction
European Network and Information Security Agency
European Railway Agency
European Training Foundation
Office of the Harmonization of the Internal Market
Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU
Common foreign European Defence Agency
and security EU Institute for Security Studies
policy agencies EU Satellite Centre
(second pillar)
Police and European Judicial Cooperation Unit
judicial European Police College
agencies (third European Police Office
pillar)
Executive Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency
agencies Competitiveness and Innovation Agency
Public Health Programme Agency
Autonomous European Central Bank
financial European Investment Bank
institutions
Note: This table excludes European institutions, such as the European University Institute and the European Space
Agency, which have been created on an intergovernmental basis but externally to the EU legal framework.
Source: http://www.europa.eu/agencies/.
enhance the democratic legitimacy of the EU’s institutional framework.

To then delegate responsibilities beyond the direct control of these insti-
tutions in order to frustrate and reduce the democratic reach of the
European Parliament was therefore a highly contested process. Neverthe-
less, the 2001 white paper on European Governance signalled the creation
of a further wave of ERAs and recommended the creation of a formal
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framework covering the creation and use of regulatory agencies.53 This

framework was duly published in December 2002 (complementing the
one introduced for executive European agencies in 2000) and aimed to
prevent the extemporized development of a ‘fourth arm’ of European
governance by explicitly establishing the conditions for the creation,
operation, and supervision of ERAs.54 It also attempted to clarify appoint-
ment procedures and clarify the relationships between the agency and
key European institutions, particularly the European Commission and
Parliament. The framework is, however, very unspecific. In relation to
political oversight, for example, it simply states:
The European Parliament and the Council should have certain powers of political
supervision over regulatory agencies. There could, for example, be a requirement
for hearings of the agency directors by these institutions and the agencies to draw
up regular reports on their own operation.55
The operating framework therefore provides an explicit acknowledgement

of the ‘walking without order’ thesis at the European level and the need
to locate the sphere of delegated governance within robust and explicit
governance frameworks. And yet its lack of specificity, even in relation
to baseline requirements, has rendered it little more than a statement
of good intentions and since 2002 a large number of ERAs have been
established but (as mentioned above) without any clear underpinning
principles or common governance frameworks. It is therefore unsurpris-
ing that many of the key issues discussed in previous chapters are proving
increasingly problematic at the European level. In terms of coordination,
for example, the creation of ERAs represents a direct attempt to impose
greater integration and policy compliance in certain sectors. The agencies
are not designed to operate in isolation, nor to replace national regulators,
but enjoy supreme nodality at the centre of trans-national regulatory
networks.56 In essence, they seek to facilitate vertical (supranational, EC,
state, regional) and horizontal (relations between European institutions)
coordination.
Several agencies have created integrated computer networks in order
to facilitate the flow of information; others have gone further and estab-
lished formal mechanisms to ensure the consistency and coordination
of information across member and applicant states. The European Envi-
ronmental Agency has, for example, set up the European Information
and Observation Network for just such a purpose. Moreover, the ERAs
fulfil an increasingly important role in relation to global governance by
providing a clear institutional locus through which to establish links with
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non-European regulatory bodies, for example, the relationship between

the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products and the
Food and Drug Administration in the USA. ERAs cannot make formal
agreements with external actors but do adopt co-operation strategies. The
ECB and the EIB fulfil a similar role in relation to global financial actors
such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD.
ERAs therefore fulfil a specific function within the emerging and largely
policy-specific models of multilevel governance. As Majone notes, ‘In a
globalising world, managing international regulatory interdependence is
almost as important as filling the institutional vacuum separating the
European and national levels of regulation.’57 However, although ERAs
may play a key strategic role in coordinating webs of semi-autonomous
actors, the simple act of creating functionally specific bodies at the Euro-
pean level risks creating further potential veto-points and attendant costs.
It has also led to a highly contested debate about the balance between
autonomy and control within the context of supranational governance.
As Shapiro argues,
To the extent that the independent agency movement is a device for countering
public disaffection with the Commission, the move is paradoxical on the legit-
imacy dimension. . . . The point is that curing weak democratic legitimacy by a
move to technocratic (and thus obviously élite) legitimacy has a certain ‘out of the
frying pan and into the fire’ aspect.58
However, compared with the Council-Commission-Comitology policy-

making process it is possible to argue that the agency approach deliv-
ers significantly higher levels of transparency. Agencies are likely to be
exposed to certain procedural requirements of openness in their activities
and consultation with key stakeholders in the formulation of initiatives
and programmes of work, which in turn can result in agencies being held
accountable for their actions.59 And yet delegation above the nation state
clearly attenuates the chain of delegation between the governors and
the governed while also increasing the potential for blame-shifting and
blame-games (see Chapter 6):
Who will be responsible if a new medical product with European-wide approval

causes problems? Blaming the new European Agency for the Evaluation of Medici-
nal Products (EMEA) in London would be far too easy! It is, in fact, the Commission
which takes the decision to approve a medicinal product, based on the expertise
provided by the EMEA, the exact legal status of which is a complex legal matter.60
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Since the mid-1990s the European Parliament has emphasized its dissatis-
faction with the current accountability frameworks for delegated agencies
and in relation to some organizations it has been able to institute greater
oversight powers. The regulation of January 2002, for example, creating
the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), empowered the Parliament with
a role in the appointment of the board and included a number of trans-
parency procedures, stipulating that the Director must attend an appoint-
ment hearing before the Parliament, in addition to setting out a range of
requirements in relation to public meetings and publication procedures.
But there are no common or baseline accountability requirements to be
found across the sphere of delegated governance, not even in relation to
distinct organizational forms. Requirements have been instituted on an ad
hoc arbitrary basis that mirrors the evolutionary pattern that has occurred
at the national level. The question then arises of the degree to which
the national and supranational governmental layers are comparable. Put
slightly differently, is the model of democracy that has been designed and
implemented at the European level more amenable to delegation because
it is more technocratic and ‘shallower’ in terms of public participation? It
is exactly this debate about different models of democracy and the role of
delegation that has arisen in the European context and provides a useful
counterpoint for debates at the national level.
Giandomenico Majone and Andrew Moravcsik have challenged the
mainstream version of the ‘democratic deficit’ thesis by highlighting the
existence of different forms or models of democracy and seeking to show
how these contain certain implicit normative assumptions and expec-
tations regarding the balance between democratic principles and what
might be termed governing capacity. Viewed through this conceptual
lens there is no democratic deficit because the EU was never intended
or designed to replicate the ‘deeper’ model of democracy that is common
at the national level. For Majone, the EU is a ‘regulatory state’ concerned
with delivering Pareto-efficient outcomes rather than delivering redistrib-
utive or value-allocative public policies.61 National governments have
delegated regulatory policy competences upwards to deliberately isolate
these policies from domestic majoritarian government. Consequently,
Majone argues that EU policymaking should not be ‘democratic’ in the
usual sense of the term because politicization would reduce rather than
increase the legitimacy of the EU (legitimacy here pertaining to ‘policy
credibility’ rather than democratic anchorage).
Although Moravcsik also challenges the standard ‘democratic deficit’
thesis he does so from a rather different perspective, which tackles the
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issue of democratic anchorage more directly. A distillation of his work sug-

gests the gist of his position is that (1) the democratic accountability of the
EU is secured because the European Council and Council of Ministers are
accountable to and elected by national citizens; (2) the powers of the Euro-
pean Parliament have been increased in those areas where co-decision-
making and qualified-majority voting on the Council may reduce the
strength of indirect accountability via national executives; (3) EU poli-
cymaking is now more open and transparent than most national systems
of government and governance; and (4) an elaborate system of checks
and balances exists which requires a high level of consensus if policies are
to be agreed.62 Moravcsik’s liberal-intergovernmental theory overlaps and
complements Majone’s regulatory-politics theory in two ways: first, both
approaches hold a normative preference for the insulation of regulatory
competencies from majoritarian democratic contests and (second) each
highlights the existence of various forms or models of democracy and
questions the degree to which scholars have been comparing like-with-
like when assessing European governance, in general, and the role of
delegated agencies, in particular. As Moravcsik notes,
Comparisons are drawn between the EU and an ancient, Westminster-style, or

frankly utopian form of deliberative democracy. . . . This leads many analysts to
overlook the extent to which delegation and insulation are widespread trends in
modern democracies, which must be acknowledged on their own terms.63
Although the work of Majone and Moravcsik has stimulated a number

of responses and counter-claims it is sufficient for the purposes of this
chapter to simply acknowledge that a rapidly expanding sphere of dele-
gated governance exists at the European level and that this has opened
up a debate regarding different forms or models of democracy and the
potential pathologies of majoritarian democracy.64 This is an issue we will
return to in the final chapter but we now turn to assessing the politics of
delegation above and below the nation state through the three theoretical
pillars of this book.
9.5. Theory
At the beginning of the twenty-first century Britain is a quasi-federal

state with an asymmetrical pattern of government and governance. Asym-
metrical patterns of this kind are by no means new. As Keating has
emphasized, pre-modern European states were a patchwork of governing
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authorities that drew their authority from a number of sources, while

most twentieth-century states were forced to recognize and accommo-
date certain territorial peculiarities.65 Asymmetrical structures are not
therefore inherently problematic in either administrative or democratic
terms but certain patterns may be problematic (even unsustainable)
because they create anomalies or tensions within the broader mega-
constitutional framework. Indeed, the introduction of certain models of
democracy at the sub-national level or different governing philosophies
may well expose and widen fault-lines in the constitutional configu-
ration that have always existed but which had until that point been
concealed by the dominant political tradition. In a sense, the trans-
fer of decision-making competencies to arenas above or beyond the
nation state facilitates the introduction of difference. Different struc-
tures, different processes, different attitudes suddenly provide reference
points or markers against which contrastive judgements concerning idio-
syncratic qualities can be made. As a result new questions are asked
about the availability of choice (in relation to structures, process, and
policies) in other polities (localities, regions, nations, etc.) as support
for specific reforms or measures spill over and, as a result, political
elites are forced to either concede reform or explain why certain gov-
erning characteristics are deemed appropriate in some areas but not
others.
Devolution and Europeanization have led to the dispersion of author-
itative decision-making capacity (both vertically and horizontally) in a
way that can be clearly located within Hooghe and Marks’s work on
types of MLG which we discussed in Chapter 2. In this context, the
great benefit of the empirical research into how devolution has affected
delegated governance in each region is that it provides greater preci-
sion and therefore greater analytical leverage in terms of understand-
ing the interrelationships between different forms or tools of gover-
nance and how this relates to different models of democracy. Territorial
devolution (to Scotland, Wales, and N.I.) is clearly synonymous with
Type I MLG in Hooghe and Marks’s typology, while the existence of
functional decentralization at the regional level (modified and adjusted
post-devolution) in the form of quasi-autonomous organizations chimes
with Type II MLG. The British state is therefore increasingly decentred,
depoliticized, fragmented, and driven by a largely uncontested centrifu-
gal dynamic. But as we illustrated in Chapter 3, the British state has
always been delegated and fragmented to a great extent. Governing in
Wales, N.I., and Scotland has always involved—admittedly to differing
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degrees—that the national government acknowledge and accept certain

regional variances.
Devolution has, however, delivered a profound and far-reaching change
in relation to the asymmetry of governance in Britain: a change that has
made the structure of the state more complex and confused, and one
that has made the absence of a clear set of governing principles at the
national level even more apparent. In essence, the raison d’être of devolu-
tion is difference or change. It is an explicit recognition by a political
elite, commonly driven by popular opinion, that specific geographical
areas may require different modes of governing. This was true in Britain
where devolution was intended (and institutionally designed) to deliver
a key element of the ‘third way’ narrative’s ‘new politics’. As Giddens
stated, ‘reform of the state and government should be a basic orientating
principle of third-way politics—a process of the deepening and widening
of democracy’ or what he would later refer to as ‘a second wave of
democratization . . . the democratization of democracy’.66 The core tenets
of this approach were participation, openness, transparency, devolution,
explicit constitutional rules, diluted executive power, a more balanced
relationship between the executive and the legislature, and forms of
democracy ‘other than the orthodox voting process’.67 What is interest-
ing about these tenets is that they are distinct from those commonly
associated with the Westminster Model (Table 2.3). This has led some
observers to refer to the ‘slender applicability of the Westminster Model
post-devolution’. And yet what this chapter has revealed is the evolution
of a multilevel polity within an increasingly eviscerated but still highly
influential WM. A modified majoritarianism operates at the national level
and new regional democratic arenas operate through systems of execu-
tive government that involve delegated organizational forms operating
under the auspices of an executive-member (i.e. minister) who is, in
turn, directly accountable to the respective assembly or parliament. In
terms of refining our understanding of the relationship between Types
I and II MLG, the key insights to be drawn from this chapter focus
on how governing relationships have been recalibrated in the regions
post-devolution.
In one sense devolution has achieved its objectives by creating a sub-
national tier of directly elected governance with the capacity to more
tightly control and oversee the sphere of delegated governance in each
respective region. As developments in Scotland, Wales, and N.I. have each
in its own way shown, this has to differing degrees been achieved—‘there
is now greater transparency and accountability.’68 Devolution injected a
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closer political relationship between the responsible politicians and the

delegated public body. As the Chair of the Sports Council for Wales noted,
We are an arm’s-length body, although those arms [sic] are getting shorter and
we are aware of that as well and it’s a challenge for us to manage . . . the number
of people we were in contact with [in the Welsh Office] were very few and far
between.69
What is more significant, however, for the central argument of this book
is the differing reform trajectories that have been adopted in each region.
In this regard, each approach to reform exposed a certain set of assump-
tions about the standards and requirements of a modern democracy and
how these might be achieved in practice, and these assumptions can be
located within the broader ‘walking without order’ thesis which this book
expounds. In Scotland, the ‘walking without order’ thesis may well be
interpreted as having been addressed to some extent as devolution has
led not only to the introduction of a much clearer governance framework
for public bodies and a formalized role for the legislature but also an
explicit set of principles which seek to set out the rationale for and
limits of delegation. In N.I., a troubled history of sectarian violence led
constitutional engineers to embrace non-majoritarian institutions as a
tool of governance through which rivalries and tensions could be reduced
or at least circumnavigated. The peace process and devolution allowed
certain assumptions about the limits of democratic governance to be
reconsidered and ultimately for the structure of the state to be redesigned.
However, what is critical about both cases is that in neither region was the
logic of delegation rejected. As the sections above illustrate, delegation
has been maintained albeit within a different governance framework.
Even in Wales there was no immediate ‘bonfire of quangos’. When an
abolition programme was eventually announced its origins did not lie
in any explicit governing philosophy forged through a detailed public
consultation exercise (as in Scotland and N.I.) but in the instrumental
needs of a weakened First Minister and, as a result, the actual impact
of these measures may prove far less significant than had originally
been announced. Nevertheless, devolution has in many ways delivered
a greater degree of clarity and consistency in relation to delegated gov-
ernance in each region. It is exactly this clarity and consistency which is
missing at the national level. Moreover, the existence of different regional
processes and institutions vis-à-vis delegation has also been noticed in
relation to national politics which has resulted in spillover consequences,
notably in relation to the greater powers of the SCPA when compared to
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the national commissioner. The notion of spillover and the idea of incre-
mental change, combined with an awareness of the territorial heritage in
each region, lead us to consider how our second theoretical pillar, histori-
cal institutionalism (HI), might interpret the findings of this chapter and
how this may deepen our awareness of the relationships between MLG
Types I and II.
As Chapter 2 stressed, the central theme of HI is that history matters.
Decisions taken at T1 will affect and shape those taken at T2, which,
in turn, helps explain enduring structural constraints on human behav-
iour. Through this lens, the long-standing deployment of delegated pub-
lic bodies as central forms of governance in Scotland, Wales, and N.I.
throughout the twentieth century may have established a certain form of
path dependency or ‘logic of appropriateness’. Although this theoretical
framework could play a role in explaining the apparent longevity and
durability of delegated organizational forms post-devolution, it is difficult
to sustain this argument in light of the fact that the pro-devolution
campaign in Wales and Scotland was explicitly based on an ‘anti-quango’
platform. Widespread delegation was not viewed as appropriate in the
regions. However, the concept of path dependency deployed in a slightly
different manner may help us understand the preservation of delegated
governance in all three regions. Path dependency alerts us to the existence
of ‘sunk costs’ as decisions and frameworks become locked-in, and the
costs (political, administrative, financial, etc.) associated with reform and
alternative policy options increase. It is through assessing the various
costs of significant reform and weighing them in relation to the political
incentives for initiating reform that we are able to start teasing apart the
respective reform trajectories in each of the regions.
Decades of gradual bureaucratic accretion and sedimentation in the
regions had led to dense and labyrinthine structures of delegated gov-
ernance and although devolution provided an opportunity to review and
reflect on these structures, the costs of initiating fundamental centripetal
reform strategies would have been extremely high in administrative and
financial terms. As the First Minister for Wales told the Richard Commis-
sion when accounting for the lack of structural reform during 1998 and
2004, there are limits to the amount of ‘institutional churn’ that a polity
can cope with.70 In this context, an administrative spring-clean leading
to the abolition of outdated or peripheral bodies and the amalgamation
of other organizations was a rational and less traumatic approach to
governing. Modification of the hub-model rather than eradicating public
bodies was also rational in terms of political costs because politicians were
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able to make grand claims about the extent of their reforms while also
maintaining a political buffer-zone between themselves and the opera-
tional delivery of core public services. This is a critical point. Rejecting the
logic of delegation would have removed a critical contemporary resource
or defence mechanism for politicians in terms of the capacity to deflect
blame onto semi-independent managers. In these terms, the sudden and
unilateral decision in July 2004 by the First Minister in Wales to launch
a major programme of abolitions can be viewed through cost–benefit
analysis. In the context of the criticism he was facing over his perceived
failure to assert Welsh interests in the wake of the Richard Commission
the short-term benefits of being able to announce a populist measure were
seen by Rhodri Morgan as outweighing the medium- and long-term political
costs of moving to a more direct form of governing.
Suggesting that Scotland and N.I. remain delegated regions where the
hub-model of governing has been retained in a modified form and that
developments in Wales were driven by the actions of an instrumental
actor rather than a coherent governing philosophy might lead to the
conclusion that devolution in 1998 and the preceding decade should not
be interpreted as a critical juncture in terms of its impact on delegated
governance. More specifically, devolution to the constituent regions of
the UK beyond England can arguably be defined as a critical juncture
in terms of Type I MLG—or what we might prefer to label multilevel
government—but it is difficult to make a similar argument in relation to
Type II MLG. And yet the danger of focusing on examples of dramatic
episodic shifts in governance is that it risks overlooking the existence of
more subtle but no less significant incremental reforms that may in turn
produce transformative results. This point leads us to re-emphasize the
significance of changes that have been implemented post-1998 and the
potential for constitutional spillover across and between jurisdictions.
However, in terms of explaining continuity as well as change HI’s
emphasis on ideas, cultures, and traditions—and particularly the obser-
vation that ideational change invariably preceded institutional change—
helps us understand the use of delegation post-devolution: the logic
of delegation is a powerful and largely uncontested metaphor for good
governance in the twenty-first century. This is an issue we will return
to in the next chapter and it is sufficient here to note that delegation,
centrifugal state trajectories, and an increasingly blurred public–private
boundary are hallmarks of New Public Management-inspired notions
of ‘good governance’. This is a powerful ideational framework, as seen
above in relation to the European governance, which shields, maintains,
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and legitimizes certain institutional models and processes. In national

and international terms, the newly established executives of Scotland,
N.I., and Wales were keen to present an image of modern and compe-
tent state management which obviously made certain reform options,
notably those associated with centralization and direct political manage-
ment, less attractive in reputational terms. This emphasis on the role
and influence of ideas would resonate with the approach of construc-
tivist or discursive institutionalists who adopt a more expansive view of
institutions and emphasize considerations of legitimacy and dominant
rationality in explaining how institutions evolve and emerge and are
reformed.71
In ideational terms principal–agent theory (PAT) has provided a pow-
erful framework not only for politicians and officials in designing and
implementing reform but also for scholars in terms of seeking to under-
stand the transfer of different resources between delegator and delegatee.
Interpreted through the lens of PAT, this chapter has revealed a complex
system of multiple principals and multiple agents at the sub-national
and supranational level which feeds back into Chapter 6’s analysis of the
problems of ‘many eyes’ and ‘many hands’. In some ways devolution can
be seen as a response to the dangers of the ‘runaway bureaucracy theory’
in which principals have little control over their agents and are ‘captured’
due to information asymmetries. A new tier of Type I MLG therefore
delivers increased democratic potential to control and scrutinize Type II
organizations. Developments in Scotland could be construed in this way
as the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament now have a far closer
and clearer relationship with the sphere of delegated governance in that
region and a similar argument could be made in relation to Wales and
N.I. The paradox with European governance is that measures to counter a
perceived ‘democratic deficit’ have been countered by further delegation
and the ‘deparliamentarization’ of certain issues.
The notion of retaining the principal as an ‘intelligent customer’ also
chimes with the emphasis placed in governance-theoretic accounts of
the need to ‘fill in’ the ‘hollowing out’ by empowering the core with
greater central strategic capacity and again empirical developments can
be located within this framework. Continuing with the Scottish example,
devolution has led to the creation of a dedicated public bodies team with
twelve staff that is responsible for maintaining a comprehensive register
of Scottish public bodies and supporting ministers through the provision
of advice on best practice and past experience in relation to managing at a
distance and public appointments. However, PAT combined with detailed
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empirical research also reveals the existence of blurred-boundaries,

confused lines of accountability, and the role of informal control mech-
anisms (Table 2.6), which are all factors which feed into our argu-
ment about the emergence of a multilevel polity within the WM (i.e.
our macro-level theoretical frame) and our emphasis on the role of
the British political tradition and historical approaches to governing
(i.e. our meso-level theoretical frame). In a classic example of British
empiricism and ‘muddling through’, the relationship between devo-
lution and delegated governance was never seriously analysed before
devolution was implemented. In this sense, devolution was unidimen-
sional when it came to the extended state. Responsibility for the pub-
lic bodies operating under the auspices of the territorial departments
of state was transferred to the new institutions in Cardiff, Edinburgh,
and Belfast but little thought was given to the much larger body of
delegated public bodies whose jurisdictions included the regions beyond
England but were governed through non-territorial departments. How
would devolution help the regions increase their control and account-
ability over non-devolved policies that were delivered by UK-wide public
bodies?
To this question there is no clear answer, nor evidence of detailed
administrative planning. It is not clear why some UK-wide public bod-
ies were disaggregated into regional organizations on devolution, as
occurred, for example, with the Arts Council and the Sports Council,
whereas other public bodies retained their UK-wide remit and single
organizational status. It is also unclear why the various pieces of devo-
lution legislation provided for formal processes of accountability to the
regions in relation to some public bodies but not others. The Govern-
ment of Wales Act 1998, for example, provided for a degree of regional
accountability to the Welsh Assembly by creating formal powers for the
assembly committees (but not the executive) to be able to demand papers,
persons, and records from a small number of public bodies (including
the Environment Agency).72 But the rationale for the selection of just
a handful of bodies is unclear. The main control mechanisms that the
devolved institutions have over public bodies with a UK-wide remit are,
as the Richard Commission discovered, informal. These include concordat
arrangements between the devolved executives and the UK government
over specific appointments and policy matters, memorandums of under-
standing between the devolved executives and specific public bodies, and
the appointment of specific board members on larger public bodies with
responsibility for representing regional interests. The important feature
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of these concordats, memorandums, and agreements in relation to PAT

and our ‘walking without order’ thesis is that they are ad hoc, arbitrary,
non-statutory, and uninhibited by any coherent governing philosophy or
even the capacity to compare and contrast against and across regions and
policy areas.
It is therefore possible to conclude from the findings of this chapter
that (1) decision-making at various territorial levels is characterized by the
increased participation of Type II forms of MLG operating on the ‘edges
of Type I’ formations as the state becomes increasingly unravelled in ter-
ritorial and functional terms; as a result, (2) the identification of discrete
and nested territorial levels of decision-making is becoming more difficult
to identify in the context of complex and overlapping networks; the role
of the state, (3) is therefore being transformed as Type I structures develop
new strategies of coordination, steering, and networking to protect and, in
some cases, enhance their steering capacity; and finally, (4) in this shifting
context the nature of democratic accountability has been challenged and
needs to be rethought or at least reviewed. These conclusions mirror the
four core strands of MLG that were presented in Chapter 2 and taken
together they present a number of challenges to governing in the public
sector while also impelling us to reflect on the need to redesign democ-
racy. These are issues we will examine in Chapter 10.
Notes
1. Skelcher, C., ‘Reforming the Quangos’, The Political Quarterly, 69 (1998), 45.
2. Morgan, K. and Upton, S., Culling the Quangos: The New Governance and Public
Service Reform in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales, 2005).
3. Hirst, P., ‘Quangos and Democratic Government’, Parliamentary Affairs, 48
(1995), 357.
4. Jeffrey, J., ‘The Origin and Growth of the Government Departments
Concerned with Scottish Affairs’, Public Administration, 17 (1939), 20–32;
Willson, F., ‘Ministries and Boards: Some Aspects of Administrative Devel-
opment Since 1832’, Public Administration, 33 (1955), 43–58.
5. Hogwood, B., The Tartan Fringe: Quangos and Other Assorted Animals in
Scotland (Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, 1979).
6. See Hogwood, B. W.,‘Quasi-Government in Scotland: Scottish Forms Within
a British Setting’, in A. Barker (ed.), Quangos in Britain (London: Macmillan,
1982), p. 71.
7. Scottish Constitutional Convention (1995) Scotland’s Parliament, Scotland’s
Right.
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8. Cm. 3658, Scotland’s Parliament (Scotland: Scottish Office, 1997).

9. Parry, R., ‘Quangos and the Structure of the Public Sector in Scotland’,
Scottish Affairs, 29 (1999), 14.
10. Scottish Executive, Review of Public Bodies: Discussion Paper (Edinburgh:
Scottish Executive, 2001a), p. 2.
11. Scottish Executive, Public Bodies: Proposals for Change (Edinburgh: Scottish
Executive, 2001b).
12. Scottish Executive Press Release SE1502/2001.
13. For a detailed account, see Denton, M. and Flinders, M., ‘Democracy, Devo-
lution and Delegated Governance in Scotland’, Regional and Federal Studies,
16 (2006), 70.
14. See Scottish Executive, Appointments to Public Bodies in Scotland: Modernising
the System (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2000).
15. Scottish Executive (2007) Public Sector Employment in Scotland, 2007.
16. Denton, M., ‘The Impact of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on
Delegated Governance’, Parliamentary Affairs, 59/3 (2006), 491–508.
17. Accessible via www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/public-bodies.
18. HC 209 Quangos Sixth Report by the Public Administration Committee,
Session 1998/99, para 20.
19. Ashworth, R., Boyne, G., and Walker, R., ‘Reducing the Democratic Deficit?
Devolution and the Accountability of Public Organisations in Wales’, Public
Policy and Administration, 16 (2001), 1.
20. Morgan, K. and Mungham, K., Redesigning Democracy (Brigend: Siren, 2000).
21. Jones, B. J., ‘Changes to the Government of Wales 1979–1997’, in B. J. Jones
and D. Balsom (eds.), The Road to the National Assembly for Wales (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 2000), p. 20.
22. See Stott, T., ‘Snouts in the Trough’, Parliamentary Affairs, 48/2 (1995), 232–
340; Morgan, K. and Roberts, E., The Democratic Deficit: A Guide to Quan-
goland (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1993); Cole, M., ‘Asymmetrical Public
Accountability: The National Assembly for Wales, Questions and Quangos’,
Political Quarterly, 77/1 (2006), 98–106.
23. Public Accounts Committee, 47th Report—Welsh Development Agency
Accounts 1991–92, Session 1992–1993; Law, J., ‘Accountabilities’, in A. Rose
and A. Lawton (eds.), Public Services Management (London, Prentice-Hall,
1999).
24. Cm. 3718 (1997) A Voice for Wales, 16.
25. Thomas, A., The Reform of Assembly Sponsored Public Bodies (Cardiff: National
Assembly for Wales, 2004), p. 2.
26. HC Debate, 22 July 1997, Col. 1759.
27. Richard Commission, Minutes of Proceedings, Evidence by Llew Smith MP,
Portcullis House, Westminster, London, 12 June 2003.
28. Welsh Assembly Government, Plan for Wales 2001 (Cardiff: Welsh Assembly
Government, 2001).
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29. See Cabinet Paper by the Finance Minister (Sue Essex), Planning and Deliver-
ing Quality Public Services for the People of Wales, March 2004.
30. Welsh Assembly Government, First Minister’s Statement, Public Services in
Wales, 14 July 2004. Available at http://www.elwa.ac.uk/elwaweb/elwa.
aspx?pageid=3549.
31. Osmond, J. (ed.), Cull of the Quangos: Monitoring the National Assem-
bly for Wales, June to September 2004 (Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs,
2004).
32. Ibid.
33. Quoted in Arts Council of Wales, Public Service Reform, 10 September 2004.
34. Report of the Richard Commission on the Powers and Electoral Arrange-
ments of the National Assembly for Wales (2004), Chapter 6 ‘The Scrutiny
of Unelected Bodies’ pp. 141–69.
35. Cole, M., ‘Asymmetric Public Accountability: The National Assembly for
Wales, Questions and Quangos’, The Political Quarterly, 77 (2006), 98.
36. See Assembly Record, 14 July 2004.
37. Mogan, K., Western Mail, 17 July 2004.
38. Arts Council of Wales, Public Service Reform, 10 September 2004.
39. See Morgan, K and Osmond, J. (eds.), Quango Cull Falters But Continues
(Cardiff: Institute for Welsh Affairs, 2004).
40. Carmichael, P. and Knox, C., ‘Towards a New Era? Some Developments in
the Governance of Northern Ireland’, International Review of Administrative
Sciences, 65 (1999), 103. See also, Gray, A. and Heenan, D., ‘The Significance
of Public Bodies in Northern Ireland and their Representation of Women’,
Administration, 25 (1995), 328–37.
41. Morison, J., ‘Waiting for the Big Fix’, Democratic Dialogue, 3 (1996).
42. Carmichael, P., ‘Northern Ireland Public Administration in Transition’,
American Review of Public Administration, 32/2 (2001), 166–87; See also, Knox,
C. and Carmichael, P., ‘Improving Public Services: Public Administration
Reform in Northern Ireland’, Journal of Social Policy, 35/1 (2005), 97–120;
Knox, C., ‘Northern Ireland: At the Crossroads of Political and Administra-
tive Reform’, Governance, 12/3 (1999), 311–28.
43. Details of the review can be accessed via www.rpani.gov.uk.
44. RPA Final Report, March 2006.
45. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Written Ministerial Statement to the
House of Commons, ‘Review of Public Administration’, 21 March 2006.
46. Orr, K., ‘Scotland’s Quangos Since Devolution’, Local Governance, 29/3
(2003), 157–68.
47. Scottish Executive, Public Bodies: Proposals for Change (2001), p. 2.
48. Kelemen, R., ‘The Politics of ‘Eurocratic’ Structure of the New European
Agencies’, West European Politics, 25/4 (2002), 93–118.
49. Kreher, A., ‘Agencies in the European Community’, Journal of European Public
Policy, 4/2 (1997), 238.
303
Above and Below
50. Flinders, M., ‘Distributed Public Governance in the EU’, Journal of European
Public Policy, 11 (2004), 523.
51. Majone, G., ‘The European Commission: The Limits of Centralization and
the Perils of Parliamentarization’, Governance, 15/3 (2002a), 375–92.
52. Everson, M., Majone, G., Metcalfe, L., and Schout, A., The Role of Specialised
Agencies in Decentralising Governance, Report to the Commission (1999),
pp. 9–10.
53. COM (2001) 428 European Governance: A White Paper.
54. COM (2002) 718 The Operating Framework for the European Regulatory Agen-
cies; COM (2000) 788 Externalisation of the Management of Community Gover-
nance.
55. COM (2002) 718 p. 13.
56. Vos, E., ‘Agencies and the European Union’, in L. Verhey and T. Zwart
(eds.), Agencies in European and Comparative Law (Maastricht: Intersentia,
2003).
57. Majone, G., ‘Delegation of Regulatory Powers in a Mixed Polity’, European
Law Journal, 8/3 (2002), 337.
58. Shapiro, M., ‘The Problem of Independent Agencies in the United States and
the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 4 (1997), 283–4.
59. Williams, G., ‘Monomaniacs or Schizophreniacs?: Responsible Governance
and the EU’s Independent Agencies’, Political Studies, 53 (2005), 89.
60. Kreher, A., ‘Agencies in the European Community—A Step Towards Admin-
istrative Integration in Europe’, Journal of European Public Policy, 4/2 (1997),
229.
61. Majone, G., ‘The Regulatory State and its Legitimacy Problems’, West
European Politics, 22/1 (1999), 1–24; Majone, G., ‘The Credibility Crisis of
Community Regulation’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 38/2 (2000),
273–302; Majone, G., ‘Two Logics of Delegation’, European Union Politics, 2/1
(2001a), 103–22; Majone, G., ‘Non-Majoritarian Institutions and the Limits
of Democratic Governance’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics,
157 (2001b), 57–78.
62. Moravcsik, S., ‘The EU Ain’t Broke’, Prospect, March (2003), 38–45.
63. Moravcsik, A., ‘In Defence of the ‘Democratic Deficit’: Reassessing the Legiti-
macy of the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40/4 (2002),
605; See also, Moravcsik, A., ‘Is there a Democratic Deficit in World Politics?
A Framework for Analysis’, Government and Opposition, 39/2 (2004), 336–63.
64. Follesal, A. and Hix, S., ‘Why there is a democratic deficit in the EU: A
response to Majone and Moravcsik’, European Governance Papers, (2005),
C-05-02.
65. Keating, M., ‘What’s wrong with asymmetrical government?’, Regional and
Federal Studies, 8/1 (1998), 195–218.
66. Giddens, A., The Third Way (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), p. 69; Giddens, A.,
The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 61.
304
Above and Below
67. Giddens, (1998) op. cit. 73–4.

68. Richard Commission, (2004) op. cit. 130.
69. Ibid. 134.
70. Ibid. 129.
71. See, for example, Schmidt, V., ‘Institutionalism’, in M. Lister, D. Marsh, and
C. Hay (eds.), The State (London: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 98–118.
72. C.38, §74, and schedule 5.
305
Part III
Dynamics
10
The Politics, Principles, and
Politicization of Delegation
[T]the debate about the delegation of powers is really a debate about

the fundamental political organisation of the polity, rather than
merely an issue of political and administrative efficiency.1
Through its analysis of delegated governance in Britain this book has

presented a specific thesis and a broader critique. Each chapter has in
different ways shown that the British state has evolved in an ad hoc,
arbitrary, and unprincipled manner: ‘Expediency, ad hoccery . . . precedent
not theory is king.’2 This ‘walking without order’ thesis is demonstrated
in the existence of widespread and fundamental confusion about the
administrative structure of the state; in confusion about the form, nature,
and utility of the control and accountability mechanisms; in tensions
concerning the use of delegation ‘above’ and ‘below’ the nation state;
and in the absence of any set of principles, explicit logic, or rationale that
can explain the ambitions, consequences, or trajectory of this process.
This specific thesis has been located within a broader critique of the
way in which delegation has traditionally been studied within the British
political tradition (i.e. T3). This critique has led us to challenge (or at least
disentangle) many of the long-standing popular beliefs about delegated
public bodies, the aim being to cultivate a more balanced and sophis-
ticated account of the utility of both direct and indirect forms of public
governance. There is nothing wrong with delegation as such. The problem
relates to the failure to manage delegation in Britain.
Our starting point has been that scholars need to move away from and
reject implicitly binary classifications which seek to label organizational
forms as either accountable/unaccountable, legitimate/illegitimate, com-
mand/control, public/private, democratic/undemocratic—terms that are
309
Politics, Principles, and Politicization of Delegation
as crude as they are blunt—and instead seek to tease apart the specific
meanings and connotations of these terms. Greater analytical precision
and rigour exposes the existence of gradations or levels, potential patholo-
gies, and the frequent need to engage in sophisticated conceptual trade-
offs. In order to sharpen our tools of political analysis, this book has
sought to borrow theories, methods, and approaches from other dom-
inant traditions in the study of delegation (i.e. T1 and T2). The aim
has not been to suggest that any one particular approach or theory is
superior but instead to demonstrate that a pluralistic and theoretically
informed approach which rejects certain implicit normative assumptions
can yield a more rounded and refined account of the complexities of
modern governance.
In order to demonstrate this assertion this book differs markedly from
those that have been written squarely within the ‘British’ tradition in
the study of delegation in three critical ways. First, it has adopted a
neutral stance in relation to the analysis of delegation. This has involved
a discussion of both the merits and advantages of delegating tasks and
responsibilities away from national politicians alongside the problems and
challenges created by wholesale delegation. Second, the book has been
located within a very clear and explicit theoretical structure. The West-
minster Model, Historical Institutionalism, and Principal–Agent Theory
have provided a set of reference points and a specialized discourse and
vocabulary which has in a number of ways allowed us to examine the
issue of delegation from a wide number of perspectives and across a
number of levels. Finally, the research presented in this book has avoided
a comparative case study methodology in favour of a broad account of
delegated governance. This is a critical point. As Chapter 4 illustrated, the
absence of comprehensive and reliable data on the number, role, or status
of delegated public bodies combined with the innately suspicious mental-
ity of officials makes undertaking research in this field highly frustrating.
As such the path of least resistance (the simplest option in methodological
terms) is to select a handful of specific organizations and study them in
some detail. The problem with this approach is that although it may tell
us something of the existence of different forms of delegation it tells us
little about the overall extent or trajectory of this mode of governance.
To compare this approach with the study of trees, the case study method
may tell us that different trees exist and that they differ in terms of leaves,
height, roots, and fruit but it offers few insights in terms of the size of the
forests, declining stocks, parasitical growths, or the changing strategies
of foresters. To some degree then this book has attempted to provide an
310
insight into the broader administrative ecosystem rather than an account

of several distinct trees.
In this regard this book has revealed an ecosystem that is incredibly rich
and certainly diverse. And yet Britain is by no means unique in this regard.
The state systems of the majority of advanced liberal democracies and a
large number of developing countries consist of a diverse range of ‘semi-
independent’ delegated public bodies (Table 1.1). Of the thirty or so coun-
tries that are members of the OECD, for example, delegated governance
accounts for at least 50 per cent and frequently nearer 75 per cent of those
countries’ public expenditure and public employment.3 To this we must
add the role of independent European agencies and other supranational
and global bodies, and the existence of sub-national, regional, and local
public spending bodies. Delegation is a global phenomenon and as such
the themes and issues examined in this book possess an international
significance that resonate far beyond the shores of the UK. Control,
accountability, patronage, depoliticization, to mention just a few, are
key issues within comparative and international debates concerning the
nature and capacity of the state, the evolution of democratic models, and
the shifting location of decision-making capacities within contemporary
governance.
There is, however, a distinctly British dimension to these debates. If we
return to the ecological metaphor, an arboretum containing varieties of
every administrative tree to be found in Britain would be a particularly
large, untidy, and cluttered botanical garden. Although other national
arboretums would no doubt contain a wide range of species there would
at least be some clarity in relation to taxonomy and a reasonably firm
grasp on the population of each species. The British arboretum, by con-
trast, would remain somewhat confused and opaque as arguments raged
over the definition and status of various vines, shrubs, and offshoots.
As amateur dendrologists (in this case select committees and academics)
uncovered new forms of tree, of increasingly curious and irregular forms,
the borderlands of the arboretum would grow increasingly disordered and
confused. The origins of this disorder lie in Britain’s socio-administrative
history and its political culture which have acted in a mutually self-
reinforcing way to forge a rather cavalier and nonchalant approach to
state building, an approach we capture in the phrase ‘walking without
order’. The outcome of this process is a sphere of delegated governance
in which the challenges of control, clarity, transparency, and account-
ability are arguably more pronounced than they are in other countries.
Although I want to develop our analysis of some of these issues I do not
311
intend to simply restate the arguments and issues that have been made
in preceding chapters. Instead, I seek in this concluding chapter to build
a much broader and potentially more fertile line of argument in which I
suggest that by focusing on what might be termed the politics of delegation
(defined as the secondary consequences of delegating functions away
from elected politicians) scholars have failed to analyse and challenge
the primary drivers of delegation in ideational terms. In arguing for
the politicization of delegation this chapter seeks to reveal the underlying
assumptions and principles beneath this process and thereby locate the
logic of delegation firmly within the parameters of public contestation. In
order to develop this line of reasoning and locate it squarely within the
research presented in this book I have divided this concluding chapter
into three interrelated sections. The first section examines the politics of
delegation. Its core question is, how has this book delivered theoretically
informed policy relevant research and why does it matter? In essence, I
argue that delegation, or specifically the British approach to delegation,
matters because the administrative and democratic consequences of this
process are worsened and exacerbated by the unprincipled and arbitrary
manner in which delegation is undertaken. I therefore return to the issue
of principles and underlying rationales in the second section. This situates
the ‘walking without order’ thesis back firmly within a wider debate
concerning the evolution of British democracy and particularly the role
of delegation in maintaining ‘club government’ and insulating certain
socio-political spheres from the jurisdiction of democratic reforms. This
sets the scene for a much broader debate concerning the politicization
of delegation in the final section. In this, I argue that there is a need
to expose and tease apart many of the baseline assumptions which are
commonly accepted regarding delegation, while also acknowledging how
measures designed to ‘marketize’ elements of the state pose distinct ques-
tions about society’s capacity for collective action. In short, I attempt
to locate the logic of delegation firmly within the parameters of public
contestation.
10.1. Politics
The politics of delegation refers to the analysis of the secondary conse-

quences of locating responsibilities and powers beyond the direct control
of elected politicians and is in general concerned with many (but not
all) of the issues that we have examined in the second part of this book.
312
Although I seek to promote a shift in analytical focus from the secondary

consequences of delegation to the primary drivers (or logic) of delegation,
in this chapter it is worth reflecting on some of the key findings or
contributions of the research presented in this book. In this respect, one of
its most significant breakthroughs lies in its development and application
of the Russian Doll Model which allowed us to map out the contours
of the British state in a way that was sensitive to gradations of auton-
omy and could also accommodate the existence of different control and
accountability frameworks. Focusing on the six layers of the model from
non-ministerial departments to independent central banks produced an
audit of some 339 public bodies, with a combined expenditure of nearly
£90 billion and which employed nearly a million staff.
A number of points flow out of these baseline figures. First, we actually
know very little about the sphere of delegated governance in Britain.
This book has contributed to our knowledge but it has posed as many
questions as it has answered. Second, although statistics about num-
bers, expenditure, and personnel provide an insight into the scale and
role of delegated governance, it is important not to conflate this data
with assumptions about power. Power takes many forms and is essen-
tially a shorthand descriptor of different forms of resources. As we have
attempted to show throughout this book, delegated public bodies enjoy
a range of resources beyond their audited finances and personnel. These
involve less tangible but no less political resources in the form of esoteric
knowledge or expertise, or even public respect and legitimacy. A public
body with very few staff and little money may, by this account, still be
incredibly powerful vis-à-vis the public and ministers because it either has
decision-making competencies or because politicians have little choice
but to follow its advice. In essence, I am suggesting that a focus on
auditable statistics, while useful in many respects, is likely to understate
the true extent of the role and resources that have been delegated.
This feeds into a second point regarding the utility of the Russian
Doll Model that revolves around the fact that it provides an ‘organizing
perspective’ (i.e. a framework for analysis, a map of how things relate,
or a set of research questions). It follows therefore that an organizing
perspective is always partial, it is not falsifiable, and it never provides
a comprehensive or even definitive account. However, the value of an
organizing perspective is that it provides a framework to explore complex
issues; it identifies areas that are important and worthy of study. It also
provides a basis for future refinement. Paradoxically, one of the most
interesting aspects of the Russian Doll Model relates to the fact that (1)
313
acquiring basic information on the existence and governance of dele-

gated organizational forms becomes more difficult as the focus of analysis
moves towards the outer periphery and is all but impossible in relation
to PPPs and (2) many forms of delegation sit within the administrative
hinterland and cannot be smoothly assimilated within the official range
of categories. In short, the core executive as it is currently constituted
lacks the incentives and sanctions necessary to maintain a clear ‘meta-
governance’ framework in terms of the capacity to identify, monitor, and
regulate the process of delegation across government. It also lacks the
capacity to explain and justify allocational-preferences (between tasks and
organizational forms) and why they differ so markedly across and between
departments.
This failure to design and implement mechanisms to monitor and
control the sphere of delegated governance by both the core execu-
tive and individual sponsor departments reflects a strand of the rather
superior—bordering on smug—attitude to governing which has imbued
the British political elite since the eighteenth century. While other coun-
tries expanded the role and the capacity of the state within an explicit
framework through either public law or a codified constitution (or both),
Britain felt secure in its unwritten constitution’s capacity for flexibility
and pragmatic adaptation. This approach was consolidated by three char-
acteristics that have each in its own way contributed to the ‘walking with-
out order’ thesis set out in this book. First, within this system the ‘rules
of the game’ in terms of conventions, operating procedures, and institu-
tional knowledge were passed down from one generation of officials to
another through a system of socialization and osmosis rather than in a
clear written form. Second, administration and management were (and
to some extent continue to be) interpreted as rather second-rate activities
to be avoided within an environment which sanctifies policy-advice to
ministers. Finally, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, theory
and planning have not played a central role in the governance of Britain
as it relates to the infrastructure of the state. The whole notion of the the-
ory of planning somewhat grates against the British political traditions’
preference for ‘muddling through’.
These three characteristics came to the fore during Chapter 5’s analysis
of internal control relations between ministerial departments and their
sponsor departments. Since the 1990s a series of reports have been critical
of the failure of the civil service to not only institute clearer and more
transparent lines of communication between departments and public
bodies but potentially more importantly also to foster a culture-shift in
314
which management skills and operational experience are valued. The

latest incarnation of this critique came in the form of the 2002 Alexander
Report and the accusation that some public bodies had assumed ‘orphan
status’. Couched in the language and discourse of governance theory, the
Crown is too often hollow. Departments and particularly the Cabinet
Office have little strategic capacity when it comes to monitoring and
evaluating the extent and performance of delegated organizational forms.
This creates a system that we described as the ‘poor parenting model’ in
which public bodies are hardly steered at all by their parent departments
due to a lack of information, capacity and resources, and motivation on
the part of the minister/department. But when problems occur, the arm
in the arm’s-length relationship will suddenly become much shorter as
the minister and the officials seek to strategically control the situation.
The notion of strategic control in relation to politically salient agencies
leads into a discussion of delegation and accountability. In this field we
sought to construct a more balanced and developed analytical ground-
ing by drawing on the work of scholars who have sought to empha-
size the pathological impacts of overly dense accountability frameworks
on organizational performance. This emphasis was then related back
to the original intentions of constitutional theorists and reformers in
the eighteenth century and specifically to the role of the convention
of ministerial responsibility that was intended to limit the amount and
degree of parliamentary scrutiny. The minister was as Bagehot stated
a ‘protecting machine’ that would protect officials and public servants
from the ‘busybodies and crotchet-makers of the House and the country’.
Having emphasized and explained why the House of Commons was never
expected or resourced to undertake a proactive role in relation to the
scrutiny of the wider bureaucracy, we considered how this might manifest
itself in a preference for different models of legislative oversight and
drew upon American political science to differentiate between police-
patrol and fire-alarm models. This distinction provided a powerful tool
through which we could dissect and understand the actual extent and
nature of parliamentary scrutiny of delegated governance. It also pro-
vided a framework that could facilitate a 360◦ view of accountability
and therefore assess the degree to which Parliament sits at the apex of a
range of non-parliamentary accountability mechanisms (i.e. fire alarms).
A detailed audit of select committee scrutiny allowed us to present three
central findings. First, due to resource restrictions the House of Commons
has little choice but to undertake a fire-alarm strategy in relation to
scrutinizing the wider state structure. Recent reforms to deliver ‘systematic
315
scrutiny’ through the introduction of a set of core tasks and other mea-
sures that were intended to bolster the capacity of select committees vis-
à-vis the executive represent an unsuccessful attempt to move towards
a more police-patrol-orientated scrutiny system because they have not
been buttressed by a significant increase in resources (personnel, financial,
political, etc.) However, (and second) a detailed analysis of committee
activity does reveal a far higher level of parliamentary scrutiny of the
extended state than might have been expected from a reading from the
largely critical and ‘decline thesis’ imbued wider literature. This in itself
raises issues about the manner in which parliamentary accountability
has generally been studied. By failing to distinguish between different
forms of legislative oversight and how these relate to secondary forms
of scrutiny, those interested in British parliamentary accountability have
(implicitly) focused on a single form of oversight (police-patrol) and
thereby ignored the fire-alarm alternative—and therewith the major part
of actual oversight activity. At the very least scholars have tended to
measure and assess the House of Commons’ scrutiny activity against a
level and degree of oversight that the institution has simply never been
intended or resourced to achieve—thereby potentially over-inflating the
expectations–performance gap. Finally, having challenged the dominant
normative assumption that accountability is always a ‘good thing’ and
explored the potentially pathological organizational impacts of ‘multiple-
accountabilities disorder’ the audit of select committee scrutiny produced
some critical data in relation to the asymmetrical nature of legislative
oversight in Britain. Around a third of all select committee publications
(reports and minutes of evidence) focus on just eleven public bodies
(3% of 339 organizations identified in Table 4.7). Moreover, these bodies
provide over 20 per cent of all the witnesses called to provide an account
in person before the House of Commons’ scrutiny committees.
Challenging the myth that delegated public bodies are
‘unaccountable’—and instead arguing in favour of an approach that
both acknowledges the existence of (and interrelationship between)
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms of accountability and is sensitive to the need
for proportionality and balance in designing public governance
frameworks—led us to examine a second topic that had for too long
generated a lot of heat but very little light—public appointments. In order
to frame this debate we sought to make a distinction between public
appointment and patronage and also drew upon the notions of ‘reach’
and ‘permeation’ in order to assess how the jurisdiction of ministerial
appointment powers has been reduced or altered in recent years. This
316
research had three central findings. First, contrary to the negative and
largely polemical media coverage, senior public appointments to the
boards of public bodies predominantly involve no remuneration above
basic expenses: less than 1 per cent of ministerial appointees receive a
salary in excess of £50,000. Moreover, where a pro-rata salary is attached
to a position this rarely reflects the actual amount of commitment
(in terms of time and energy) that this individual will be expected to
dedicate to the position. Second, since the mid-1990s it is possible to
trace a gradual fettering and reduction in ministerial appointment powers
as the regulatory framework has augmented and in some fields ministers
have responded to accusations of concerns of patronage by delegating
their appointment powers to independent commissions. This process
feeds into the third and final conclusion of this book’s research on the
public appointments framework—it provides a perfect case study of the
broader ‘walking without order’ thesis that I am seeking to demonstrate.
The process for limiting the powers and reach of ministers has evolved
in an arbitrary, ad hoc, and unprincipled manner, and has not been
accompanied by any strategic thinking about, for example, how the role
and powers of independent appointment commissions can be reconciled
with the convention of ministerial responsibility, or why the logic of
taking appointment powers away from ministers was appropriate in some
policy fields (notably in health) but not others.
The decision to create new independent appointment commissions
in order to counter accusations of sleaze and corruption was frequently
based on ministerial statements about the need to ‘depoliticize’ certain
functions. This led us to explore the concept of depoliticization in some
detail and particularly in relation to the various strategies and tactics
through which this ambition might be realized. This in itself promoted a
discussion of the historical ebb and flow between politicized and depoliti-
cized modes of governance and how these shifts in the boundaries of
the state frequently lead, for different reasons, to an augmentation and
hyper-innovation of and within the sphere of delegated governance. It
was suggested, however, that an issue becomes no less political in terms of
its public impact through subjecting it to a different mode of governance.
Indeed, I sought to emphasize that depoliticization is better understood
not in terms of abandonment to pessimism and fate but as making a
claim that public support for a specific mode of governing is waning and
a new model based around a different notion of legitimacy is emerging:
not the end of politics but politics by other means. And yet this process
closes down public space for deliberation and contestation which may
317
foster public disenchantment and isolation (a point that supports my

argument in favour of the politicization of delegation and to which we
return below).
The need to accommodate difference combined with a desire to create
new political spaces that would be based upon increased public par-
ticipation, diluted executive capacity, greater transparency, and explicit
constitutional rules acted as drivers behind the introduction of devolution
post-1998. Chapter 9 examined the impact of devolution in Scotland,
Wales, and N.I. on the respective structures of delegation in each region
and concluded that although significant reforms had been introduced
that are already developing, a degree of policy-momentum or spillover
devolution could not be interpreted as a critical juncture in terms of Type
II MLG. Indeed, the confusion surrounding the capacity of the regional
democratic arenas vis-à-vis UK-wide public bodies with responsibilities for
non-devolved issues provided a classic example of pragmatic adaptation
and a typically British approach to reform of the state. Interestingly, devel-
opments above the nation state revealed a similar pattern of confusion.
Delegation has in recent years formed a key component of European
governance and as a result a large number of independent agencies and
regulatory bodies have been established. Long-standing debates concern-
ing accountability, control, patronage, and the role of the legislature,
which have existed for decades at the national level, have therefore come
to the fore within EU studies in recent years. However, where the literature
on European integration can be redeployed to take forward debates at
the national level is in relation to specific forms or models of democracy
and how delegation may be less problematic within specific democratic
designs, which may in themselves be based on distinct conceptions of
secondary concepts such as accountability and legitimacy.
In this field the arguments of Majone and Moravcsik are critical due
to the manner in which they seek to reframe debates by arguing that
the EU is a specific form of technocratic or regulatory democracy and,
as such, should not be compared against those thicker models of demo-
cracy that are widespread at the national level. Arguments in favour of
reforms to enhance the democratic credentials of this governmental con-
figuration can therefore be viewed as a form of spillover through which
specific majoritarian characteristics of national systems are uploaded to
the supranational level.4 However, what is significant about the history of
governance in N.I, and the EU, is that majoritarian institutions had during
distinct phases been viewed as inappropriate. Both case studies suggested
that in divided or polarized societies, or where distinct regulatory or
318
technocratic objectives were being pursued, non-majoritarian institutions

may be able to deliver a potentially more democratic form of governing by
pulling in significant sections of society that would have been disempow-
ered or through traditional electoral systems. This point encourages us to
reflect on normative democratic theory and the concept of legitimacy and
accept that ‘electoral’ legitimacy is just one form of a complex concept
and that other forms (expertise, experience, objectivity, professionalism)
should not be derided.
In this regard it is possible to detect a shift in terms of dominant
forms or models of legitimacy since the election of New Labour in 1997.
This shift has involved a focus on delivery which is encapsulated in
the mantra of ‘what matters is what works’ that has become something
of an epithet for ‘third-way’ governance.5 This move towards contesta-
bility and the rejection of ideological dogma in the selection of who
should deliver public services reflects a modification in statecraft from
a process-based model of legitimacy towards a more output-orientated
based model, the former emphasizing participation, transparency, and
public service values in the design and implementation of public policy,
while the latter simply focuses on the delivery of goods and services in
the most effective and efficient manner possible. This distinction links
directly to Hooghe and Marks’s fleeting comment that different types
of MLG ‘embody contrasting conceptions of community’.6 Developing
this line of enquiry it could be suggested that Type I structures of MLG
embrace communal notions of identity, emphasize the potentialities of
collective action, and accentuate the notion of process-based legitimacy
by protecting and nurturing the capacity for citizens to express their views
through voice (i.e. attempt to modify exchange-relationships through
an expression of complaint, grievance, or praise). Type II structures, by
contrast, focus on individuals as consumers rather than citizens and there-
fore seek to satisfy consumer-preferences and create relationships through
which individuals can seek to modify relationships by deploying their exit
capacity. 7
This distinction helps us understand a central tension of modern British
governance. In many ways, the Labour Governments have since May
1997 implemented a system of bi-constitutionalism.8 This has involved
constitutional reforms that have focused on Type I structures of MLG
and emphasized the role and status of an individual as a citizen, while
also implementing public sector reforms based around the deployment of
Type II tools of governance which are orientated towards the individual
as a consumer of public goods. As such the underpinning models of
319
legitimacy have been distinct and arguably incompatible, even antagonis-

tic. This has had far-reaching consequences for public sector organizations
as they have been expected to be Janus-faced in terms of both looking
upwards to ministers and increasingly responsive to the public (process-
based legitimacy) while also looking downwards to their core tasks and
the demands of an increasingly educated and less-deferential public with
increasing public expectations. Indeed, a common thread linking each of
the chapters in this book has been the failure of the successive British
political elites to develop a coherent approach to statecraft that is based
on an explicit set of principles (a point reinforcing our core thesis regard-
ing the evolution of a multilevel polity within the Westminster Model).
All this feeds back into a dominant political tradition that remains bereft
of guiding principles or strategic capacity.
10.2. Principles
The ‘walking without order’ thesis that this book seeks to draw atten-
tion to reflects a failure of intellectual adjustment. Assumptions based
upon evolutionary adaptation in the past restrict the state’s capacity to
respond to more urgent contemporary demands. Without an institutional
framework that delivers the capacity to monitor and assess the structure
of the state, Downs’s laws of bureaucracy (imperfect control, lessening
control, diminishing control, and counter-control) are prone to augment.
The British state’s approach to delegation has never reflected a coherent
view of the system as a whole. Problems and issues have been considered
in isolation from each other. The failure of intellectual adjustment is
therefore a failure to develop a governing philosophy which rejects a
dependence on tacit understandings and ‘mad empiricism’ in favour of
one which accepts the degree to which the size and structure of the state
has evolved since its eighteenth-century origins and therefore seeks to
set down some explicit markers in terms of the principles or rationale on
which the state and particularly the sphere of delegated governance exists.
Although a statement of this kind would mark a major departure from
the British political tradition and would be unlikely to garner cross-party
support it would at least provide a set of reference points through which
an open debate on the role and future of the state could be orchestrated.
Indeed, as future governments experiment with increasingly innovative
and complex forms of PPP in an attempt to satisfy rising public expecta-
tions within a wider context that is resistant to paying increased taxes, a
320
debate of this nature is likely to become inevitable. This was recognized

by Gordon Brown in 2003 when he told the Social Market Foundation,
. . . we must have the strength to face up to fundamental questions that cannot

be side-stepped about the role and limits of government and markets—questions
in fact about the respective responsibilities of individuals, for markets and com-
munities including the role of the state. . . . As long as it can be alleged that there
is no clarity as to where the market requires an enhanced role, where we should
enable markets to work better by tackling market failure, and where markets have
no role at all, an uncertain trumpet sounds and we risk giving the impression that
the only kind of reform that is valuable is a form of privatisation and we fail to
advance—as we should—the case for renewal and a reformed public realm for the
coming decades.9
And yet it is exactly this notion of the public realm that brings us back to
absence of a coherent or explicit governing philosophy in relation to the
British state. The administrative and democratic challenges of governing
Britain in the twenty-first century emanate to a great extent from the
fact that there is no coherent set of principles to justify the system as it
currently exists. In fact what exists is a confused network of competing
and in many cases mutually incompatible principles—a ‘fog of ambigu-
ities’ or ‘club government in disarray’—phrases that are taken from one
of the most erudite expositions of British politics in the twentieth cen-
tury, David Marquand’s The Unprincipled Society. The great contribution of
Marquand’s analysis is that it allows us to view the challenges associated
with delegated governance and particularly the ‘walking without order’
thesis as a symptom of a much deeper malady. At the heart of this malady
lies an ethos or a set of underlying assumptions and beliefs (forged in
the nineteenth century in the context of a minimal state and market
liberalism) that have become historically and structurally outmoded but
that are preserved through patterns of behaviour. In this regard the West-
minster Model concealed profound changes in the form and substance of
the state. It also sought to veil the existence of clear anomalies through
the language and notions of constitutional propriety. It is exactly this
notion of a veil or a cloak which provides the link between the history of
‘club government’, the unprincipled society, delegation, and disaffected
democracies. ‘Walking without order’ is not a problem as long as customs
are accepted, conventions are respected, and ambiguities remain uncon-
tested. Once, however, the populace starts to look beneath the veil or
refuses to accept that the existing constitutional configuration delivers an
321
acceptable degree of, for example, responsiveness or accountability then

arrangements based on hazy foundations are liable to collapse.
The ambiguities inherent in them will be exposed, without being cleared up,
the discrepancies will come out into the open and it will become more and
more apparent that the question of principle they pose cannot be answered with
precision or authority.10
This book is therefore a challenge to the presupposition of club govern-

ment itself—that the assumptions of a political order are best founded
on unspoken understandings rather than a clearly promulgated set of
principles that attempt to justify or at the very least explicate a coher-
ent governing philosophy. In this context, two official documents—the
Cabinet Office’s strategic review Building on Progress: The Role of the State
and the Ministry of Justice’s green paper The Governance of Britain (pub-
lished in May and July 2007, respectively)—can be interpreted as attempts
by the government to underpin structural reforms that have already been
implemented with a principled underpinning.11 And yet even in this
regard both documents reflect more continuity than change in relation
to the British political tradition while also failing to address issues that lie
at the heart of debates regarding delegation.
Although the Labour Government has implemented a significant num-
ber of constitutional reforms since May 1997, a consistent theme of critics
has been the failure to set out the rationale or principles underlying
these reforms as a whole.12 In this context The Governance of Britain
provided an opportunity for the government to set out its governing
philosophy. And yet although the document states that ‘[S]ometimes,
the evolution of the constitution has failed to keep pace with the evo-
lution of society, or government has been unwilling to recognise that
need for reform, or an institution has been stretched so far that further
evolutionary reform is impossible’, it makes no attempt to set out the
government’s mega-constitutional orientation, analyse the situation we
have at present, or explain what the government is trying to achieve.
Contrary to the document’s executive summary, there is no vision of
the government’s view of constitutional renewal, but simply a disparate
collection of specific suggestions that are designed to address a range of
issues that have arisen during the last decade. In this regard the document
exhibits a curious paradox. Although it is designed to initiate a national
debate on the future of the citizen and the state in order to develop
a British ‘statement of values’ the document itself contains almost no
information on the scale or extent of the state, nor any acknowledgment
322
that ministers and officials—let alone the public—have very little infor-
mation on the structure of the state and how it operates, which is in
itself a key driver behind public disillusionment with politics and political
institutions.
One of the key reasons Why We Hate Politics (to borrow the title and to
some degree the thesis of Hay’s book) is because we no longer understand
who is responsible for key public services or decisions, and are constantly
faced by politicians who seek to deny the capacity of elected actors.
Both combine to create a profound and far-reaching crisis of political
legitimacy and public confidence. In this regard The Governance of Britain
is important because it reflects certain implicit assumptions about the
framework of British democracy that appear non-negotiable despite the
fact that they are increasingly difficult to sustain in practice. Democratic
renewal in this document is interpreted as involving the reform and
renewal of the Westminster Model when in reality many of the govern-
ment’s own reforms have eviscerated key tenets of that model. And yet, as
we have argued throughout this book, the Multilevel Polity has emerged—
unannounced but not unnoticed—within the shell of its parliamentary
predecessor and it is the tensions and friction created by an attempt to
sustain a complex form of bi-constitutionality that may in time provoke
a more expansive review of Britain’s constitutional structure.13 In this
regard the implicit assumptions of the Cabinet Office’s strategic review
of the role and future of the state are even more significant because they
reflect the acceptance of a number of normative beliefs or conjectures and
by doing so seek to remove a number of primary debates from the sphere
of public contestation. It is these implicit or uncontested assumptions
that we seek to challenge in Section 10.3.
10.3. Politicization
The modern state could not function without delegation. The delegation
of functions and responsibilities to sponsored bodies operating with a sig-
nificant degree of autonomy arguably empowers governments to address a
wide range of social issues simultaneously without having to be involved
with the minutiae of day-to-day socio-political interactions. Delegation
therefore provides a structural and esoteric capacity beyond the cognitive
and physical limits of politicians. However, in this final section I argue
in favour of the politicization of delegation, and in so doing seek to
reveal the underlying assumptions and principles beneath this process
323
and thereby locate the logic of delegation firmly within the parameters
of public debate. This flows from a concern that scholars have generally
focused their attention on the secondary consequences of delegation (the
politics of delegation) instead of examining the roots or origins of the
logic of delegation, or its permeation across governing regimes. Indeed,
the dominant rationality in favour of widespread delegation portrays
this process as a neutral element of ‘good governance’ when in fact it
clearly masks the redistribution of political power within and beyond
visible democratic frameworks. The logic of delegation itself, rather than
its consequences, needs to be the focus of critical political analysis in
order to push the process back within the sphere of public contestation.
What is missing from the study of delegation is therefore an attempt to
illuminate and then challenge the very essence of delegation as it relates
to state projects because a subtle process of non–decision-making can be
identified in which important choices are denied in favour of arguably
uncontested assumptions about how a modern state should be structured
and managed.
In this regard the British government’s 2007 policy review on the future
of the state is highly pertinent because it quite simply accepts the need
for widespread delegation and the hub-model of government as necessary,
appropriate, and given. The theme that runs throughout the review is
that of a ‘strategic and enabling state’ which is characterized by a focus
on outcomes rather than administration, and views the state primarily
as a commissioner or regulator rather than a direct service provider. It
envisages a small strategic centre (i.e. hub) consisting of a set of policy-
focused departmental centres and the centre of government itself—the
Cabinet Office (including the Prime Minister’s Office and HM Treasury)—
who would simply commission and manage the delivery of objectives
through a range of first-, second-, or third-sector delivery bodies. The
logic of delegation appears almost beyond dispute: it has become an
‘essentially uncontested’ concept within contemporary conceptions of
good governance to the point that anyone challenging the notion risks
being immediately labelled irrational.
And yet the benefits of delegation remain far from uncontested. Van
Thiel’s work on ‘quangocratization’, James’ research on the performance
of executive agencies, and McNamara’s analysis of central bank inde-
pendence, to provide just a few examples, question the link between
delegation and superior economic outcomes.14 Not only does empirical
analysis cast doubt on the conventional wisdom behind delegation but
it also reveals the existence of a series of contestable arguments about
324
the relationship between policymaking, democracy, and social outcomes.

In this regard the intervention of Peters and Pierre into the multilevel
governance debate is apt in relation to delegation.15 They suggest that
delegation can be viewed like a ‘Faustian bargain’ in which a decline
in democratic clarity regarding where power and responsibility exists for
certain services is exchanged for an increase in economic efficiency and
performance levels. If this is indeed the implicit bargain on which new
public management-inspired initiatives are based then there is evidence
to suggest that it is delivering very little.
Consequently, the politicization of delegation emphasizes the existence
of contingency. National politicians do enjoy choices in relation to
whether to delegate specific services, in which form delegation should take
place, how a proportionate balance should be achieved between indepen-
dence and control, when to intervene and at what point to reinstitute direct
ministerial control, and how to retain a clear and comprehensive view of
the topography of delegated governance in toto. These choices take on
added emphasis when it is appreciated that delegation creates its own
epistemic momentum through a process of deskilling. As the number of
functions and responsibilities delegated to public bodies and PPPs oper-
ating at the periphery of the state increase, so the latter undermines its
own intellectual capacity, thereby creating information asymmetries that
weaken its bargaining position and reduce its holistic knowledge base and
institutional memory, which, taken together, further decreases confidence
in the direct delivery capacity of the state. As more functions ‘drift’ across
the spectrum of autonomy and PPPs become a mainstream governance
tool rather than an instrument of last resort for failing services, the intel-
lectual evisceration of the state may become acute. And yet there has been
very little reasoned debate on this process or whether a residual number
of core functions and responsibilities should be maintained beyond the
grasp of delegatory forces.
Delegation is therefore linked to a loss of confidence in politics, the
state, and the potential for collective action. As such it forms a central
element of debates concerning the decline of the public sphere and the
rise of ‘post-democratic’ systems.16 Depoliticization, in particular, repre-
sents an acutely pessimistic response to the challenges of modern British
governance. To call for the politicization of delegation is therefore to work
within the contours of Habermas’ work on the depoliticization and the
public sphere, ‘the depoliticisation of the mass of the population, and the
decline of the public realm as a political institution are components of
a system of domination that tends to exclude practical questions from
325
public discussion’.17 It is in repositioning the existence of choice regarding

delegation, and thereby a more optimistic view on the potentialities of
collective action, within the sphere of public contestation with which
this chapter and this book have been principally concerned.
Notes
1. Majone, G., ‘Delegation of Regulatory Powers in a Mixed Polity’, European

Law Journal, 8/3 (2002b), 322.
2. Hennessy, P., ‘Harvesting the Cupboards’, Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 4 (1994), 203–19, p. 212.
3. OECD 2002.
4. See Keohane, R. and Nye, J., Between Centralization and Fragmentation. John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Research Paper (2001),
01-004.
5. See Flinders, M., ‘The Politics of Public-Private Partnerships’, British Journal
of Politics and International Relations, 7/2 (2005), 543–67; Shaw, E., ‘What
Matters Is What Works: The Third Way and the Private Finance Initiative’,
in S. Hale, W. Leggett, and L. Martell, (eds.), The Third Way and Beyond
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
6. Scharpf, F., Governing in Europe (1999); Hooge and Marks (2003) op. cit.
p. 240.
7. See Hirschman, A., Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1970).
8. See Flinders, M. and Curry, D., ‘Bi-Constitutionalism: Unravelling New
Labour’s Constitutional Orientations’, Parliamentary Affairs, 61/1 (2008), 1–
23.
9. Brown, G., ‘A Modern Agenda for Prosperity and Social Reform’, Speech
to the Social Market Foundation at the Cass Business School, London, 3
February 2003.
10. Marquand (1998) op. cit. p. 198.
11. Cabinet Office, (2007) Building on Progress: The Role of the State; Cm. 7170.
(2007) The Governance of Britain.
12. For a review, see Flinders, M., ‘Majoritarian Democracy in Britain’, West
European Politics, 28/1 (2005), 62–94.
13. Flinders, M. and Curry, D., ‘Bi-Constitutionalism’, Parliamentary Affairs, 61/1
(2008).
14. McNamara, K., ‘Rational Fictions’, in M. Thatcher and A. Stone Sweet (eds.),
‘The Politics of Delegation’, West European Politics, 25 (2002), 47–77; James,
O., The Executive Agency Revolution in Whitehall (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003);
Van Thiel, S., Quangos: Trends, Causes, Consequences (London: Ashgate,
2001).
326
15. Peters, G. and Pierre, J., ‘Multi-Level Governance and Democracy: A Faustian
Bargain’, in I. Bache and M. Flinders (eds.), Multi-Level Governance (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 75–90.
16. Marquand, D., Decline of the Public (Cambridge: Polity, 2004); Crouch, C.,
Post-Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).
17. Habermas, J., ‘The Scientization of Politics and Public Opinion’, in W. Outh-
waite (ed.), The Habermas Reader (London: Polity Press, 1996), p. 62.
327
APPENDIX 1
Twentieth Century Delegated Institutions
Port of London Authority 1908

Road Board 1909
Rural Development Commission 1909
Insurance Commission for England 1911
Agricultural Council for Wales 1912
Central Control Board 1915
Railway and Canal Commission 1916
Commonwealth War Graves Commission 1917
University Grants Committee 1919
Forestry Commission 1919
Electricity Commission 1919
Medical Research Council 1920
Voluntary Hospitals Commission 1921
Food Council 1925
Colonial Empire Marketing Board 1926
British Broadcasting Corporation 1926
Central Electricity Board 1926
British Broadcasting Corporation 1927
Agricultural Mortgage Corporation 1928
Industrial Transference Board 1928
Racecourse Betting Control Board 1928
Coal Mines Reorganisation Commission 1930
Agricultural Research Council 1931
Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries 1931
Milk Marketing Board 1932
Wheat Commission 1932
London Passenger Transport Board 1933
British Film Institute 1933
Unemployment Assistance Board 1934
British Council 1934
Special Areas Commission 1934
Bacon Development Board 1935
328
Appendix 1: Twentieth Century Delegated Institutions
Herring Board 1935

Tithe Redemption Commission 1936
Cotton Spindles Board 1936
British Sugar Corporation 1936
Livestock Commission 1937
Land Fertility Committee 1937
Physical Training and Recreation Council 1937
Air Registration Board 1937
Coal Commission 1938
Whitefish Commission 1938
British Overseas Airways Corporation 1939
Cotton Industry Board 1939
Council for the Encouragement of Music and Arts 1940
War Damage Commission 1941
North of Scotland Hydro-Electricity Board 1943
Council of Industrial Design 1944
Remploy 1945
Arts Council 1945
Forestry Commission 1945
Finance Corporation for Industry 1945†
Industrial and Finance Corporation 1945†
National Dock Labour Board 1946
Bank of England 1946
Apple and Pear Development Council 1947
Central Land Board 1947
Raw Cotton Commission 1947
London Transport Executive 1947
National Parks Commission 1947
Agricultural Land Commission 1947
National Dock Labour Board 1947
British Transport Commission 1947
National Coal Board 1947
National Insurance Board 1948
Agricultural Wages Board 1948
Commonwealth Development Corporation 1948
National Research Development Corporation 1948
Overseas Food Corporation 1948
Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission 1948
Iron and Steel Board 1949
National Film Finance Corporation 1949
National Parks Commission 1949
329
National Research Development Corporation 1949

British Wool Marketing Board 1950
White Fish Authority 1951
Iron and Steel Board 1953
Road Transport Disposal Board 1953
Independent Television Authority 1954
UK Atomic Energy Authority 1954
South of Scotland Electricity Board 1954
Crofters Commission 1955
Crown Estates Commissioners 1956
Sugar Board 1956
Central Generating Board 1957
Commission for New Towns 1959
Red Deer Commission 1959
English Industrial Estates Corporation 1960
Covent Garden Market Authority 1961
National Incomes Commission 1962
National Economic Development Council 1962
British Railways Board 1962
British Transport Docks Board 1962
London Transport Board 1962
British Waterways Board 1962
Horserace Betting Levy Board 1963
Water Resources Board 1963
National Ports Council 1963
Housing Corporation 1964
Charity Commission 1964
National Building Agency 1964
Local Government Commission for England 1964
Commissions of the Peace in (Scotland) 1964
Council for National Academic Awards 1964
The Schools Council 1964
Commonwealth War Graves Commission 1964
Development Commission 1964
Foreign Compensation Commission 1964
Monopolies Commission 1964
Church Commissioners 1964
Home Grown Cereals Authority 1965
Schools Council 1965
Highland and Islands Development Board 1965
Natural Environment Research Council 1965
Science Research Council 1965
Social Science Research Council 1965
330
British Airports Authority 1965

Law Commission 1965
Board of Agrement 1966
Industrial Reorganisation Corporation 1966
Supplementary Benefits Commission 1966
Shipbuilding Industry Board 1967
Council for Agricultural and Horticultural Co-operation 1967
British Steel Corporation 1967
National Seed Development Organisation 1967
Decimal Currency Board 1967
Land Commission 1967
Boundary Commission for E, W and NI 1967
Countryside Commission 1968
Hearing Aid Council 1968
Gaming Board 1968
National Bus Company 1968
Race Relations Board 1968
Land Commission 1968
National Freight Corporation 1968
Scottish Transport Group 1968
Commission on Industrial Relations 1969
British Tourist Authority 1969
Post Office 1969
Eggs Authority 1970
Northern Ireland Police Authority 1970
British Airways Board 1971
Civil Aviation Authority 1971
British Pharmacopoeia Commission 1972
British Overseas Trade Board 1972
Sports Council 1972
Medicines Commission 1972
British Gas Corporation 1972
Monopolies and Mergers Commission 1973
Water Space Amenity Commission 1973
British Hallmarking Council 1973
Crofters Commission 1973
Nature Conservancy Council 1973
National Youth Bureau 1973
Community Relations Council 1973
Family Fund 1973
Price Commission 1973
Office of Fair Trading 1973
Wine Standards Board 1973
331
British Hallmark Council 1973

Great Britain-China Centre 1974
Employment Service Agency 1974
Training Services Agency 1974
Co-operative Development Agency 1974
Manpower Services Commission 1974
Health and Safety Commission 1974
National Consumer Council 1975
Scottish Development Agency 1975
Land Authority for Wales 1975
Fair Employment Agency 1975
Central Computer Agency 1975
National Enterprise Board 1975
Welsh Development Agency 1975
British National Oil Corporation 1976
Welsh Development Agency 1976
Equal Opportunities Commission 1976
Development Board for Rural Wales 1976
British Shipbuilders 1977
British Aerospace 1977
Commission for Racial Equality 1977
Labour Relations Agency 1977
Registrar of Public Lending Right 1979
Sea Fish Industry Authority 1981
Museums and Galleries Commission 1981
† These were privately owned limited companies brought into being to serve the national
interest. Street (1950: 172) describes them as ‘quasi non-governmental bodies . . . they main-
tain close relations with the Government and are virtually instruments of Government
economic policy’. The Bank of England played a major role in the formation of both organi-
zations.
332
APPENDIX 2
Delegated Public Bodies Established

May 1997 to May 2007
Policy sector New delegated public bodies
Northern Parades Commission, Sentence Review Commissioners,

Ireland Equality Commission, Human Rights Commission,
Strategic Investment Board, Independent Monitoring
Commission, Youth Justice Agency, Policing Board, Office
of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Invest
Northern Ireland, Office of the Oversight Commissioner.
Regulation Postal Services Commission, Office of Communications, Gas
and Electricity Markets Authority, Consumer Council for
Postal Services, Gas and Electricity Consumer Council,
Statistics Commission, Energywatch, Gangmasters
Licensing Authority, Food Standards Agency, Adventure
Activities Licensing Authority, HM Crown Prosecution
Service Inspectorate, Community Interest Company
Regulator.
Education Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, General Teaching
Council for England, Learning and Skills Council, Medical
Education Standards Board, Schools Funding Agency,
University for Industry, Office of Fair Access, National
College for School Leadership, Adult Learning Inspectorate,
Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher
Education, Sector Skills Development Agency, Independent
Complaints Adjudicator for OSTED and the Adult Learning
Inspectorate, School Food Trust, Office of the Schools
Adjudicator, Partnerships for Schools, British Educational
Communications and Technology Agency, Arts and
Humanities Research Council.
(cont.)
333
Appendix 2: Delegated Public Bodies Established May 1997 to May 2007
Health National Clinical Assessment Authority, Commission for

Patient and Public Involvement in Health, NHS Business
Services Authority, Council for the Regulation of Health
Professions, Council for the Quality of Health Care, NHS
Information Authority, Commission for Healthcare Audit
and Inspection, NHS Information Standards Board,
Postgraduate Medical Education Standards Board, Nursing
and Midwifery Council, Health Professions Council,
Health and Social Care Information Centre, General Social
Care Council, National Institute of Clinical Excellence,
Commission for Health Improvement, Genetics and
Insurance Committee, Social Care Institute for Excellence,
Health Development Agency, National Care Standards
Commission, NHS University, NHS Bank, Commission for
Social Care Inspection, Independent Reconfiguration
Panel, National Patient Safety Agency, Health Protection
Agency, NHS Independent Appointments Commission,
National Treatment Agency, Retained Organs
Commission, Family Health Services Appeal Authority,
Human Genetics Commission, Office of the Independent
Regulator for NHS Foundation Trusts, Human Tissue
Authority.
Constitutional House of Lords Appointments Commission, Electoral
Policy Commission, Commission for Judicial Appointments,
Office of the Information Commissioner, Standards Board
for England.
Criminal/Legal Civil Justice Council, Sentencing Advisory Panel, Sentencing
Policy Guidelines Council, Legal Services Complaints
Commissioner, Legal Services Commission, Youth Justice
Board, Criminal Records Bureau, Independent Police
Complaints Commission, National Police Training and
Development Authority, Assets Recovery Agency, Security
Industry Authority, Serious Organised Crime Agency,
National Crime Squad, National Criminal Intelligence
Service, National Offender Management Service, Civil
Nuclear Police Authority, Life Sentence Review
Commissioners, HM Inspectorate of Court
Administration, HM Courts Service Agency.
Industrial/Business Low Pay Commission, National Employment Panel, Better
Policy Regulation Commission, Small Business Service, Ethnic
Minority Business Forum, Nuclear Decommissioning
334
Authority, Fuel Poverty Group, British Trade International;

Insolvency Practices Council, Partnerships UK, Financial
Reporting Council, Valuation Tribunal Service, VisitBritain,
Regulator for Community Interest Companies.
Lottery National Lotteries Fund, National Lottery Commission, Big
Lottery Fund.
Transport Strategic Railway Authority, Commission for Integrated
Transport, Independent Railway Industry Safety Body,
Office of Rail Regulation.
Rural/Agriculture British Potato Council, Countryside Agency, Commission for
Rural Communities, Integrated Administration and Control
Systems Appeal Panel, Marine Fisheries Agency, Rural
Payments Agency, State Veterinary Service, Government
Decontamination Service.
Economic Competition Commission, Financial Services Authority,
Policy Monetary Policy Committee, Statistics Commission,
Independent Complaints Commissioner for the FSA,
Competition Service, Competition Commission Appeal
Tribunal.
Social Policy New Opportunities Fund, Race Relations Forum, JobCentre
Plus, Disability Rights Commission, Youth Justice Board,
Pensions Compensation Board, Community Forum,
Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service,
Pensions Regulator, Appeals Service, Family Justice Council,
Public Guardianship Office, Office of the Children’s
Commissioner for England, Pension Service, Regional
Cultural Consortiums, The Rent Service, Pension Protection
Fund, Social Care Institute for Excellence, Independent
Review Service for the Social Fund.
Security Office of Surveillance Commissioners, Security Vetting
Appeals Panel, Interception of Communications
Commissioner, Intelligence Services Commissioner,
Investigatory Powers Tribunal, Special Immigration Appeals
Commission, Office of the Immigration Services
Commissioner.
Genetics Human Genetics Commission, Agriculture and Environment
Biotechnology Commission, Genetics and Insurance
Committee, Committee on Novel Foods and Processes,
Sustainable Development Commission, Distributed
Generation Co-ordination Group.
(cont.)
335
Misc. Statistics Commission, National Archives, Independent

Football Commission, Millennium Commission, Spoilation
Advisory Panel, Committee for Monitoring Agreements on
Tobacco Advertising and Sponsorship, Consumer Council
for Postal Services, Brownfield Land Assembly Trust Co.,
Office of the Chief Inspector of the Criminal Justice System
in N.I., Commission for Architecture and the Built
Environment, National Endowment for Science,
Technology and the Arts, Land Registration Rule
Committee, Office of the PPP Arbiter, English Tourism
Council, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Authority, UK Film Council, New Forest National Park,
Zoos Forum, Historical Royal Palaces, Local Improvement
Finance Trusts, Arm’s Length Management Organisations,
Community Interest Companies (CICs), Public Interest
Companies.
336
Index
A-Level examination papers 183 narrowing of 280

AAOs (additional accounting officers) 113, need to limit 75
115, 116, 197 new forms of 79, 104
abandonment 241, 259, 317 non-parliamentary mechanisms 315
‘abdication’ thesis 51, 185 overly dense frameworks 315
abolition 11, 65, 67, 70, 86, 87, 116, 199, proportionality in relation to 133
274, 277 reforms aimed to increase levels of 87
Agencies and Public Bodies Team 83, 162 regional 300
antiquated Commons procedures 190 resource-dependencies that dictate 11
ASPBs 278, 279, 281, 282 Sharman report into 116
executive NDPBs 286 soft 88, 93, 173–4, 178, 179, 180, 183, 201
major programme of 298 tensions surrounding 12
outdated or peripheral bodies 297 see also democratic accountability;
patronage and sinecures 212 external accountability; multiple
professional self-regulation 130 accountabilities; parliamentary
QCA 263–4 accountability; public accountability
quangos 12, 74, 76, 77, 271–2, 276, 280, Accountancy Foundation 247
285, 289, 296 accountants 194
quinquennial reviews 151 Accounting Officers 114, 146, 147, 197
structural 275 see also AAOs
accountability: Accounting Standards Committee 247
and accessibility 270 accretion 219
attention focused on 276 Activity Centres Act (1995) 127
biggest single problem for chief ad hoc adaptation 33, 63, 127
executives 146 administrative burdens 86
clear lines of 41 administrative hinterland 119, 120–8, 129,
complaints regarding 63 227, 232, 243
concerns regarding 141, 269, 287, 318 adult literacy policies 125
confusion about 1, 300 Adventure Activities Licensing
consistency in terms of 83 Authority 85, 127
contract-based 55 adversarial modes 172, 184, 231, 240
direct 92, 295 Advertising Standards Agency 123, 174
economic costs of 25 Africa 209
frameworks and mechanisms for agencies 151
ensuring 88 accountable to NMDs 114
fuzzy 19, 131, 203, 229 activities and agency staff 78
hard 173–4, 178, 179, 183, 201 arm’s-length 3, 81, 147, 191
highly normative observations delegated 50
regarding 14 disconnected from departments 86
indirect, via national executives 293 European 268, 311
lack of 2, 63, 209 exposed to procedural requirements of
layers of state intended to deliver 128 openness 291
337
Index
agencies (cont.) anti-quango platform 76, 81, 297

independent 3, 268, 311 anti-scientific sentiment 18
international trend towards creation of 50 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act
likelihood of losses 55 (2001) 85
over-exaggerated role of 38 apoliticization 255–6
regulatory 290 Apothecaries Act (1815) 246
semi-independent 14 appointed bodies 282, 283
significant tension between departments appointments 2, 24, 88, 105, 113, 116,
and 149 275
see also chief executives; executive high-profile, accusations of patronage
agencies; also under various agencies, e.g. in 271
Advertising Standards; Assets Recovery; lay 124
Basic Skills; Benefits; Central Services; regulation of 130
Child Support; Defence Evaluation and see also public appointments
Research; EFSA; EMEA; Environment; Appointments Commission 236
European Environmental; Food arbitrary powers 209
Standards; Highways; International Architects Act (1997) 124
Atomic Energy; Land and Property Architects Registration Board 117, 124
Services; Medical and Dental Training; arena-shifting 129, 238, 243
Oil and Pipeline; PAT; Quality arm’s-length bodies 115, 134, 148, 157,
Assurance; Research; Rural Payments; 174, 254, 285, 296
Ulster-Scots; Welsh Development accountable management 73
agencification 37, 38, 100 agencies 3, 81, 147, 191
ministerial responsibility affected by 79 appointments to 208, 211, 220
agency behaviour 56 campaign to defend status as 280–1
agency management 150 control and 142–7
agency model 142 DCMS review 110
agency-shadowing 134, 154, 156 delegation of responsibilities to 236,
costs of 157 276
agency status 112 DoH website 126
granting of 110 governance of 268
agricultural subsidies 146 growth of 213
Alder Hey Hospital 85 independent organizations 125
Alexander Report (2002) 145, 150–2, 158, integrated 286
161, 315 ministerial patronage to 213
amalgamation 73, 77, 86–7, 115, 278 non-problematic management 164–5
Americanists 20 oversight of 158, 159
Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland preference for 282
272 public bodies spawn their own 134
Anderson Committee (1943–45) 71, 72, reconfiguration of 124
74–5, 92, 93, 101, 159 relationships 53, 73, 113, 160
Anglo-American Carnegie Project veil for ministerial government 156
(1969) 104 see also BSU
Anglocentric approach 178 Arts Council 300
annual accounts 105, 111, 113, 116, 130, Arts Council (NI) 285
154, 182 Arts Council of Wales 279, 280–1
audit of 194 Ashworth, R. 276
annual business plans 114, 153, 154 Asia 209
annual income 127 ASPBs (Assembly Sponsored Public
annual reports 77, 82, 111, 113, 115, 116, Bodies) 276, 280, 287
117, 130, 154, 182, 192, 199, 225 abolition of 278, 279, 281, 282
anonymity 79, 174, 176 Advisory 277
anti-cancer drugs 254 Executive 277, 278
anti-delegatory stance 21 Assets Recovery Agency 85, 112
338
Index
asymmetric power model 39 Bar Standards Board 247

audit 145, 153, 180, 193, 197, 201, 220, 286 bargaining behaviour 38
tight regimes 55 multi-level 229
see also NAO see also ‘public service bargain’ notion
Australia 235 Barker, A. 101
‘automacity’ 172 Basic Skills Agency 125
autonomy 2, 3, 11, 24, 40, 42, 68, 78, BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 71,
104, 108, 111, 113, 116, 126, 180, 117, 120, 165, 199
187 appointment of Chairman 222
accountability and 130 World Service 120
balance between ministerial control BBFC (British Board of Film
and 161 Classification) 127
control and 141, 143 Behn, R. 172
day-to-day 114 Belfast 283, 300
departmental 162 Benefits Agency 165, 194
different gradations/levels of 100, 143, Bentham, Jeremy 65
163 Bergman, T. 17
differing degrees of 288 best practice 72, 148, 159, 299
disaggregating into constituent parts 160 Better Government Services (report 2002) 86
expected level of 105 Better Regulation Task Force (report 2003) 13,
far-reaching 288 86, 100
financial 143 bias:
form and 110 inherent 162
gradation of levels from the centre institutional 164
outwards 130 public perception of 215
high 6, 49 see also negativity-bias
independent board with a high degree bi-constitutionality 246, 247, 260
of 262 Big Lottery Fund 174, 248
informal or ‘soft’ mechanisms of 17 Birkinshaw, Patrick 3
low 6 Black Wednesday (16 September 1992)
managerial 145, 149 253
operational 110, 112, 117 Blair, Tony 9, 80
policy 145 blame:
principal and agent views over 143 allocating 172
privatization as a way of increasing attributing 54
149 capacity to deflect 298
professional 260 high 145, 164
spectrum represented by layers of Russian blame avoidance 7
Doll Model 143 pressure for 172
sponsor departments 207 blame-boomerangs 176
traditional 248 blame-games 10, 54, 106, 146
‘auxiliary precautions’ 168, 179 potential for 182, 186, 291
blame-reduction 174
Bache, I. 38, 40 blame-shifting 174, 176, 187, 255
Bagehot, Walter 64, 65, 183, 200, 315 potential 50, 107, 291
balance of power 66, 67 ‘blame-shirking’ model (Fiorina) 186
shifting 157, 187–8, 190, 191 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries 69
Bank of England 198, 200, 228, 247 Board of Customs/Board of Excise 63
interest rates set by 236, 263 Board of Office of Communications 211
Monetary Policy Committee 81, 117, 180, Board of Public Appointments
199, 221, 231, 253–4 Commissioners 226
Bank of England Act (1998) 180 boards 63, 64, 67
Bank of England Bill (1997) 200 boards exam 134
Bar Council 247 boards undesirability of 69
339
Index
boards (cont.) budgets 115, 283

see also CAPRI; Fundraising Standards; annual 112, 119, 124, 125–6, 159, 194,
Local Government; Poor Law; Railway 274, 284
Departments; Road Standards; Bulpitt, J. 9
Unemployment Assistance bureaucracy 11, 200
Boggs, Carl 238 growth of 185
Bouckaert, G. 7, 143 scrutinizing 187, 189
boundaries: bureaucratic drift 50
agreed, capacity for political salience to preventing 55
override 156 BW Watergrid 118
blurred 300
definitional 130 cabinet government 36
departmental 110 Cabinet Office 112–13, 115, 128, 129, 150,
feminist attempts to redefine 244 183, 215, 274, 275, 324
formal rules in setting 157 Agencies and Public Bodies Team 83, 108,
greater scrutiny of 158 162
jurisdictional 130, 149, 236 Classification of Public Bodies 107
political 236, 244 constitutional responsibility 162
public-private 298 creation of various lead units 244
structure and 105–8 guidance on openness and
territorial, incongruent and accountability 182
overlapping 42 guidelines on openness 130, 182
boundaries of the state 130 joint review with Treasury (2002) 131,
constitutional no-man’s land on 126 134
focus of analysis shifts towards outer 129 little strategic capacity 315
bounded rationality 39, 45, 90, 203, 209, new categories of delegation 120
230 official guidance on relationship between
constitutional 34 departments and public bodies 153
WM as a form of 178 strategic review (2007) 322, 323
Bourdieu. P. 257 see also Public Bodies Database/Directory
Bovens, M. 169, 172, 173, 178 capacity 41
Bowen Report (1978) 74, 102–3 blame-shifting 174, 255
Braun, D. 17 decision-making 236, 243, 259, 294
Bridgeman Committee (1932–36) 70 departmental, reasserting 157–60
Bristol Hospital 85 directive 248
British Board of Film Censors, see BBFC expertise and 159
British Constitution 10, 36, 99, 184, 201, governance/governing 201, 288
212, 213, 229, 261 governing 292
capacity for flexibility and pragmatic ‘hard’ 162
adaptation 314 human agency 241, 243, 244
‘efficient secret’ of 183 institutional 56
green paper on the nature of 227–8 intellectual 56
muddle-through’ capacity 72 judicial redress 174
tradition of pragmatic, ad hoc lack of 165
adaptation 33 ‘naming and shaming’ 217–18
British Council 116 operational 179
British Medical Association 262 oversight 185, 190
British Medical Journal 263 public expectations regarding
British Nuclear Fuels 117 politicians 255
British Olympic Association 248 regulatory 245
British Swimming Association 248 state 57, 121, 249, 268
Brown, Gordon 227, 254, 263, 321 steering 301
BSU (Arm’s-Length Body Business Support structure and 128
Unit) 158, 159, 160, 162, 163 see also control capacity; strategic capacity
340
Index
capital 112 Child Support Agency 197, 199

CAPRI (Common Agricultural Reform Children’s Commissioners 122
Implementation Board) 147 choices 45, 100
carbon emissions 127 analytical 17
Carbon Trust 127 difficult 11
Cardiff 277, 300 overlooking the availability of 47
Cardiff Bay Development Corporation 278 policy 89, 257
Care and Repair 125 CHRP (Council for the Regulation of Health
Carmichael, P. 282 Professions), see Council for Healthcare
case studies 16, 17, 18 Regulatory Excellence
Catholic population 282 cinemas 127
causal variables 54 Citizens Advice 125
Central Banks 117, 255, 256 Civil List 112
central government 106 Civil Service Department 74
Central Services Agency (NI) 285 annual report on NDPBs 77
central strategic capacity 19, 131 see also CSC
‘hollowing-out’ 161, 299 Civil Service Order in Council 148
Central Welsh Examination Board 276 Civitas 255
centralization 44, 67, 81, 90, 92 clarity 53, 75, 169, 172
uniformity and 89 absence of any sense of 121
centrifugal pressures 3, 8, 11, 52–3, 237 achieving 170
centripetal drift 275, 278, 279 and focus 178
centripetal pressures 237 clarity and consistency 83, 85–6, 87, 99,
Chalmers, D. 262 108, 118, 119, 126, 128, 151, 152, 160,
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 214 203, 204, 223, 232, 287, 296
change 45, 80, 87, 90, 93, 295 classifications 100, 101, 102, 105–6, 107,
continuity and 252 108, 117
episodic 47 implicitly binary 309–10
evolutionary and pragmatic 203 markedly different 129
fundamental 73, 202 seeking to avoid 128
incremental 47, 297 uniform 127
institutional 46, 298 ‘clearance procedure’ 197
labelled as ‘cut’ 262 clientelist practices 214, 218
massive failure an important condition allegations of 219
for 46 ‘club government’ 13, 122, 162, 230, 245–6,
mega-constitutional 202 260, 312, 321, 322
nature and timing of 91 crisis of 247, 248
overestimated agency capacity to CMG (War Cabinet Official Committee on
deliver 146 the Machinery of Government) 70–1
pressures for 47, 48 cockle pickers 85
preventing or mitigating against 160 Code of Conduct for Officials Appearing
resource-dependencies that dictate 11 before Select Committees 113
third-order 257 Code of Practice for Ministerial
charitable status 125, 284 Appointments 274
Chester, D. 101, 103 ‘Code of the Woosters’ 13
chief executives 105, 153, 154, 197, 198 Code on Access to Official Information
accountability 116, 146 174
dismissed 176 co-decision-making 293
managerial flexibility 148 Cole, M. 6
relationship between ministers and 149, Coleraine 283
150 collective responsibility 162
responsibilities 79, 113, 146, 151 collective self-government 42
suspended 146 Collini, Stefan 13
unnecessary restrictions on 148 commercial activities 6, 101, 113
341
Index
commercial confidentiality 118, 182 notion of responsibility 39

Commissioner for Public proposals for depoliticization of NHS 262
Appointments 273, 275 Considine, M. 178
see also CPAS consolidation phase 86
commissions 63, 67 consolidationalists 41
creation of large numbers of 246 ‘constitutional watchdogs’ 121
undesirability of 69 constrained selectivity 210, 215, 218, 219
see also under various headings, e.g. CSC; consultation requirements 55
Development; Electoral; Electricity; continuity 45, 46, 80, 91, 322, 298
Equality and Human Rights; and change 252
Independent; Insurance; Judicial contracts 49
Appointments; Museums and Galleries control 2, 10, 24, 78, 105, 115, 276
Trust; Northern Ireland Parades; Poor acceptable balance between independence
Law; Public Appointments; Retained and 141
Organs; Rural Development; Sentence attention focused on 276
Review; Statistics; Traffic central 39
Committee on Standards in Public Life clear lines of 41
(1994) 79 concerns regarding 269, 287, 318
Committee on the Machinery of confusion about existence and utility of 1
Government 69 coordination and 19, 86
Communications Act (2003) 86 counter 38, 320
community commitment 42 diminishing 38, 320
Community Interest Companies 118, 119, direct 247, 252
124 disaggregating into constituent parts 160
Community Relations Council (NI) 284 highly normative observations
Companies Act (1985) 117 regarding 14
‘competence maximizers’ 56 imperfect 38, 320
complex networks 170 indirect, state’s capacity for 123
overlapping 40 informal 210
steering of 19, 131, 134 internal 53, 93, 141–66, 231
complexity 114, 118, 119, 127, 128, 187 legislative 189
attempt to make sense of 102–3 lessening 38, 320
delivery chain 174 loyalty and 208
innate 120, 131 principal-agent 141
modern governance 141 regulatory 247
PAT emphasis on 134 resource-dependencies that dictate 11
compromise 93 sponsor departments 207
negotiated 54 tensions surrounding 12
Comptroller and Auditor General 121, transparent modes of 13
197 control capacity 252
confusion 120, 151, 152, 231 direct 145, 246
administrative 74, 100 informal 210
bordering on chaos 128 control mechanisms 55, 56, 73
definitional 101 departmental, tighter 110
opacity and 112 electoral 130
congressional politics 49 formal 16, 53, 154, 156
Conservative Party/Government 11, 12, 63, informal 17, 142, 154, 300
75–81, 82, 190, 222, 252, 276 interventional 145
accusations of sleaze and corruption legislative 189
214 primary 107
clientelist practices 214 secondary 107
Conference (1978) 74 sophisticated account of range
creation of specialist bodies to regulate available 143
professions 123 ‘co-ordination dilemma’ 42
342
Index
core governance characteristics 116 Crown bodies 112, 117, 162, 315
Core Tasks 198, 199 multi-member independent boards or
corruption 13, 169, 186, 212–15, 222 commissions 63
accusations of 79, 99, 214 Crown Estate 112
guarding against 227 Crown Prosecution Service 112
pejoratively associating politics with CSC (Civil Service Commission) 113
256 appointments 129
widespread 209 Commissioner’s Recruitment Code 210
cosmetic pruning 75, 272, 285 creation of (1855) 212, 213, 215, 246
cost-benefit analysis 298 CSPL (Committee on Standards in Public
cost savings 11 Life) 211, 214–15, 218, 226, 232, 275
costs 45–6, 117, 187 cultural prejudices 90
agency 55 cultural theory 255
agency-shadowing 157 Culture, Media and Sport Committee 190,
cultural 90 197
delegation may well entail 50 Customs and Excise 199
democratic 73 Customs and Revenue 112
economic 90
legal 90 Daalder, Hans 208, 210, 211–12, 213, 218,
political 90 221, 228
see also opportunity costs; sunk costs; Davey, Ed 12
transaction costs DCMS (Department for Culture, Media, and
Council for Healthcare Regulatory Sport) 52, 86, 154
Excellence 123 Gambling Commission and 110–11
Council of Ministers (EU) 261, 290, 293 review of arm’s-length bodies (1998) 110
councillors 219–20, 270 deadlines 191
Counter Fraud and Management unrealistic 146
Service 115 death of school pupils 85
Countryside Council for Wales 278 decentralization 44, 90
Courts Service 112 functional 283, 294
Covent Garden Market Authority 117 upwards and downwards 37
CPAS (Commissioner for Public vertical 24
Appointments in Scotland) 272, 274, decision-making 243, 259, 313
275, 296–7 authoritative, dispersion of 40
CPS (Centre for Policy Studies) 11–12 discrete and nested territorial levels of 40
‘credibility crisis’ 288 insulating from political influence 251
credit deficits 176 intervening in 254
credit-taking 173, 174 key, depoliticising of 10, 236
opportunities for 187 ‘locked in’ 45
politicians prioritize blame-avoidance numerous but formally independent
over 172 arenas 41
creeping growth 158 political character of 238
Crick, Bernard 188 powers dispersed across jurisdictions 42
criminal involvement 85 processes 182
crises 46, 202, 203 transfer of competencies 294
intermittent 47 deductive approach 16, 17
interpretation and existence of 48, 91 deductive modelling 20
reforms appropriate to resolution of 48 ambivalence towards 18
critical junctures 35, 47, 162, 214, 215, 230, Defence Evaluation and Research
260, 298, 318 Agency 197
long periods of stability interspersed definitional debates 103–5
with 46 DEFRA (Department of Environment, Food
cronyism 215, 222, 225 and Rural Affairs) 146
Crown appointments 274 deliberative democracy 293
343
Index
delivery chains complexity of 174 ‘Directory of Governance’ 83

extended 11 Disability Rights Commission 84
extensive interdependence within disclosure 116
178 discretion 54, 208, 215, 219, 226, 253, 254
democratic accountability: freedom and 222
challenged 40, 301 discrimination 282
demands of 179, 184, 188, 201 dismissal 173
EU 293 possibility of 176
governance capacity and 201 ‘divide and rule’ strategy 38
operational efficiency and 172, 179, division of labour 154
188 DoH (Department of Health) 86, 111, 114,
democratic anchorage 292–3 123, 126, 127, 159, 160, 222
democratic deficit 268 Arm’s-Length Bodies Business Support
mainstream version challenged 292 Unit 162
perceived 276, 288, 299 fundamental review of public bodies 157
‘democratic superiority’ 2 double-delegation 114, 134
democratic theory: Douglas, Mary 238, 255
emphasis on ‘auxiliary precautions’ Dowding, Keith 20
130 Downs, A. 37–8, 320
normative 16, 18, 19, 319 DP (differentiated polity) 37, 38, 39
democratization 122, 245 DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) 52,
popular 260 125
second wave of 295 dual-principal structure 52
Demos 235 Dubnick, M. 169, 172
‘deparliamentarization’ 288, 299 due-process 209
Department for Education and Skills 122, Dunleavy, Patrick 20, 101, 110
125, 127 Dunsire, A. 101, 108
Department of Health (NI) 286 duty 173
departmental model 36
depoliticization 24, 120, 229, 235–67, 268, ECB (European Central Bank) 291
279, 280, 294 economic institutionalist theory 288
attempted, tensions surrounding 12 economies of scale 41
attempts at 191 Edinburgh 300
distinctive framework for examining Education Boards (NI) 285
129 Education Council for Nursing and
embraced 180 Midwifery (NI) 285
perceived benefits of 10 efficiency 42, 93, 145, 325
see also institutional depoliticization; civil service 78
preference-shaping depoliticization; maximizing 54, 131
rule-based systems optimum 50, 186
Design Council 52 prioritizing 25
‘de-skilling’ 56 structural 41
‘destatization’ 9 sub-optimal 38
Development Board for Rural Wales 278 see also operational efficiency
Development Commission 69 efficiency and effectiveness 168, 169, 170
devolution 83–4, 157, 268, 296 efficiency savings 11, 55, 158
delegated governance and 300 ‘efficient delegated management’
profound and far-reaching change 295 model 164
raison d’être of 295 ‘efficient secret’ (Bagehot) 200
suspension of 283 EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) 292
see also Northern Ireland; Scottish EIB (European Investment Bank) 291
devolution; Wales Electoral Commission 9, 85, 121
devolved management model 54 Electricity Commission 69, 70, 71
Direct Rule (NI 1972) 283 Elgie, R. 17
344
Index
elite democracy 268 European Parliament 289, 290, 292

elite interviews 17 growing scrutiny powers 261
semi-structured 18 incremental extensions to role and
ELWa (National Council for Education and capacity of 288
Training for Wales) 277, 278 powers increased 293
EMEA (European Agency for the Evaluation European Policy Forum 235
of Medicinal Products) 291 Europeanists 20
empowerment 38, 39, 80, 127, 182, 292 Europeanization 294
‘end-to-end’ reviews 86, 151 evolution of the state 237
Energy Savings Trust 127 Exchange Rate Mechanism 253
England 118 Exchequer 114
professional self-regulatory bodies Chancellor of 112, 117
122 Exchequer and Audit Departments Act
English Heritage 111, 115, 150 (1866) 197
Enterprise Ulster 285 executive 224
entrepreneurship 170 balance of power in favour of 66, 67,
Environment Agency 300 187–8, 190, 191
Environment Agency (NI) 285 centralized power in the hands of 209
Environment Agency (Wales) 300 concern regarding relationship between
Environment Committee enquiry parliament and 184
(2003) 197 dominant position diluted 37
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs faith in strong centralized power 39
Committee report (2007) 176 laissez-faire approach to internal-control
Epstein, D. 49 164
Epstein, R. 257 non-departmental organizations 76
Equality Act (2006) 86 parliamentary majority owes primary
Equality and Human Rights allegiance to 183
Commission 86, 121–2 parliamentary scrutiny of 189
ERAs (European regulatory agencies) 287, reforms that may negatively affect its
288, 289, 290, 291 governing capacity 200
ERG (Executive Review Group) 147 relationship between legislature
essentialism 256 and 189–90
EU (European Union) 12, 17, 40, 287–93 segmented 37
Britain’s membership 105 veto powers 55
concerns regarding democratic deficit executive agencies 78, 79, 86, 90, 93, 102,
within 268 105, 107, 112–14, 125, 129, 147, 150,
key strand of debates within 235 153, 176, 191, 198, 284
shifts in responsibilities upwards to 268 European 290
transfer of functions and responsibilities performance of 324
to 261–2 executive NDPBs 104, 107, 115–16, 119,
EU Programmes Body (NI) 284 122, 123, 126, 157, 219, 263, 274, 284
Europe 71, 168 abolition of 286
southern 209 Annual Reports 82
European Agency for the Evaluation of appointments to 115, 211, 221
Medicinal Products 291 audit of 191, 286
European Commission 290 autonomy of 110, 114
device for countering public disaffection expenditure of 77, 284
with 291 governance characteristics 117
growing politicization of 288 number reduced through devolution 83–4
European Council 293 plans for the reform of 285
European Environmental Agency 293 SHAs and 111
European Information and Observation expectations-capacity gap 189, 201
Network 290 expectations-performance gap 316
European integration 43, 288, 318 Expenditure Committee 74
345
Index
expert opinion 257 Foras na Gaeile 284

extension 219 Forensic Science Service 129
external accountability 54, 93, 131, Forestry Commission (Forest
167–206, 231 Enterprise) 114
‘external pulls’ 172–3, 182, 201 formal/contractual relationship 142
externalities: Foster, Sir Christopher 133
negative 22, 42 foundation hospitals 84, 85
policy 41 Foundations 125
extra-governmental organizations 3 ‘fourth arm’ of governance 290
research on 104 fragmentation 11, 118, 149
exacerbating concerns regarding 127
failings 186 institutional 37
fate 238, 241, 259 unregulated 86
abandonment to 317 framework documents 148, 149, 150, 153
Federal Reserve 235 France 163, 212
federal systems 42 franchise extension 63, 247
Fell Running Association 248 Fraser Report (1991) 113, 147–8, 149, 151,
feminists 244 154, 158, 161
field trips 85 fraud 163
film industry 127 Freedom of Information Act (1998) 174
financial accountability 194 French civil service 148
financial liabilities 107 Friedman, L. 101
financial penalties 49 fringe bodies 3, 74, 101
Financial Services Authority 180, 198, 199, Fritchie, Dame Rennie 219–20
203, 247 ‘fugitive power’ 10, 129, 236
Finer, H. 18–19, 63, 67, 71, 89 Fulton Report (1968) 73, 75, 78, 79
Fiorina, M. 186 Fundraising Standards Board 123, 124
Fire Authority (NI) 285 Further Education Funding Council for
fire-alarm model 185, 186–90, 191, 194, Wales 278
197, 199, 200, 202, 315, 316
First Commissioner for Public Gambling Commission 110–11
Appointments 226 Gangmasters Licensing Authority 85
‘first wave’ bodies 287 Gay, O. 121
First World War (1914–18) 68, 70 General Dental Council 123
fiscal policy 254 General Medical Council 122
‘fishing expeditions’ 186 General Social Care Council 119, 123
flexibility 19, 41, 42, 49, 55, 73, 90, 113, General Teaching Council for England 119,
145, 170 123, 124
delivered by indifference to theory and ‘generalist’ skills 163
planning 128 Germany 163
higher degree of 112 Gershon Report (2004) 11, 86
managerial 148 Getting to Grips with Depoliticization (Demos
maximized 162 briefing paper 2000) 235
policy 257 Giddens, A. 295
procedures that limit 273 Gilardi, F. 17
reducing 171 Gladstonian arguments 246
Flinders, M. 40 global bodies 311
floating bodies 105, 106, 120, 126–8, 164, globalization 257, 291
232 GOCs (government-owned companies) 117
Food and Drug Administration (US) 291 Gold Standard 253
Food Safety Promotion Board 284 Golden Rule 254
Food Standards Agency 9, 84, 102, 174, 182 Goldston 209
Meat Hygiene Service 114, 134 ‘good chaps’ theory of government 13,
see also EFSA 162–3
346
Index
Good Friday Agreement (1998) 283 hierarchical bureaucratic layers 161

good governance 1 Higher Education Funding Council 115
inspired notions of 298 Highways Agency 112
reform initiatives inspired by 161 Hirst, P. 269
vague images of 169 Historic Scotland 111
Governance of Britain, The (green paper Historical Institutionalism 21, 22, 33, 45–9,
2007) 227–8, 230, 232, 322 56, 63, 89, 161, 230, 297
‘governance of governance’ 39 central claim of 260
governance theory 19, 20 clear complementarities between WM
‘government by luncheon’ 53 and 35
‘government by moonlight’ 3 hiving-off 74, 78, 90
Government Decontamination Service 112 Hix, S. 262
government intervention, see Hogwood, B. 19, 101, 103
state/government intervention ‘hollowing out’ thesis 37, 40, 43
Government of Wales Act (1998) 276, 281, Home Improvement Agencies 125
300 Home Office 110, 129
Government Trading Funds Act (1973) 113 homogeneity 42
‘Governmental Sphere’ (Hay) 243, 244, 249, honours 176
252, 255, 261, 280 Hood, C. 101, 108
grants: Hooghe, L. 41, 42, 43, 44, 264, 294
government 125 horizontal accountability 178
lottery 248 horizontal governance 262
grants-in-aid 116, 127 House of Commons 63, 80, 169, 183, 189,
Greaves, H. R. 101 270, 276
Gregory, R. 176 abolishing antiquated procedures 190
Grey, Henry, 3rd Earl 66 acceptable ministerial representation 65
Griffith, J. A. G. 101 balance of power between executive,
Groundwork UK 125 OCPA and 224
Leader of 191
Habermas, J. 256, 325 Library 154
Hague, D. 101 most prestigious and capable of
Haldane Report (1918) 69, 70, 71, 73, 86, committees 197
87, 89, 90, 93 oversight capacity 190
Hall, P. 257 personal responsibility of ministers 66
Hall, W. 104–5 powers of 188, 200–1
‘hands on’ governance 110 resource restrictions 315
Hansard 79 role of 188, 227
Harden, Ian 2, 3 scrutiny capacity 75, 227, 231, 316
Haskins Review (2003) 86 see also Liaison Committee; PAC; PASC;
Hay, Colin 48, 91, 237, 241–3, 244, 249, Scrutiny Unit
255, 259 House of Lords 86–7
Health and Social Services Authority Appointments Commission 85, 121, 220,
(NI) 285 221, 222
health boards 272 Constitution Committee 170, 182
Health Professions Council 122 membership of 236
Health Professions Wales 279 Public Service Committee 134
Health Promotion Authority for Wales 276 Housing Executive (NI) 285
health sector 85, 124, 126, 158, 220 Huber, J. D. 49, 157
Hennessy, P. 89 Human Fertilisation and Embryology
Herceptin 254 Authority 182
Heseltine, Michael 76 Human Tissue Authority 85
heterogeneity 42, 62, 117 hybrids 3, 14, 106, 125, 184, 284
Hewart, Lord 70 complex 100
hierarchical accountability 178 curious 127
347
Index
hyper-innovation 122, 237, 244, 261, 317 information:

and creativity 81 alternative stream of 156
hyper-politicization 237, 244, 246, 247 complicated 120
comprehensive 131
Ibbs Report (1988) 78, 79 executive’s right to control flow of 133
ideological dogma 87 freedom of 182
image management 171 lack of 165
Immigration and Nationality Directorate negative executive mentality regarding
111 release of 104
implementation challenges 37 outdated and unreliable 129
incentive dilemmas 54 perfect 54
incentives 116, 132, 133, 164, 176, 314 reliable 120, 131
core executive lacks 132 strategic response to demands for 104
perverse 55 information asymmetries 51, 55, 93, 146,
political 106 157, 160, 299
incoherent arbitrariness 67, 71, 74, 80, 87, ‘information impactedness’ 54
88, 115, 119, 121, 124, 128 inherent arbitrariness 77
income self-generation 116 Inland Revenue 199
incomes policy 253 innovation 171
independence 115, 122, 123, 126, 153, 256, Inspectorates 86, 120, 124, 232
263 creation of 247
acceptable balance between control Russian Doll Model-like 227
and 141 institutional depoliticization 251–3, 254,
differing degrees of 288 256, 259, 288
enhanced 113, 197 ‘institutional drift’ 100
high-profile campaigns to retain 280 institutional hybridity 42
monetary 264 ‘institutional memory’ 164
most organizations enjoy very high levels institutionalism, see Historical
of 142 Institutionalism; new institutionalism;
severely compromised 184 sociological institutionalism
undermined confidence in 197 ‘institutionalitis’ 85, 87, 273
Independent Assessors 218, 274 institutions 45, 46, 169, 236
independent bodies 11 ‘hard’ 162
advisory 76 how they emerge and reform 47, 299
governmental 126 international 257
see also IPBs; ISBs key European 290
Independent CIC Regulator 119 multilevel and complex set of 283
Independent Commission on Parliamentary neutral non-majoritarian 249
Scrutiny 190 non-majoritarian 288, 296, 319
Independent House of Lords Appointments supranational 288
Commission 85, 122, 220, 221, 222 Insurance Commission 68, 69
Independent Police Complaints intellectuals 13
Commission 84, 115 Intelligence Services Commissioner 124
independent regulators 13, 77, 86, 252 ‘intelligent customers’ 134, 156, 163, 299
independent review 248 Interception of Communications
indirect control mechanisms 239 Commissioner 124
indirect governing relationship 239 interdependence 37
indirect steering mechanisms 161 contemporary delivery chains 178
inductive approach 18 horizontal 40
industrial revolution 64, 212 international regulatory 291
industrialization 244, 245 vertical 40
inefficiency 73, 213 interest groups 86, 90, 197, 199
pejoratively associating politics with 256 interest rates 236, 253, 263
inflation 254 official 117
348
Index
intermediate bodies 6 Labour movement 247

International Atomic Energy Agency 12 Labour Party/Government 121, 182, 183–4,
International Council of Arbitration for 208, 276
Sport 12 approach to governance 10, 11, 63, 99
International Monetary Fund 3, 12, 291 capacity to counter legislative and public
Internet Corporation for the Assignment of concern 74
Names and Numbers 12 clientelist practices 214
inter-organizational relationships 52, 54, 55 Conference (1996) 80
communication 145 constitutional reforms 322
objectives 134 creation of specialist bodies to regulate
interpersonal relationships 142, 145, 146 professions 123
breakdown of 152 democratic institutions in NI 283
‘interpretive frames’ 47 depoliticization 262, 264
interventional control 145 general election manifesto (1997) 218
Invest N.I. 285 nationalization programme 72
IPBs (Independent Parliamentary review and reform document (1998) 271
Bodies) 121–2, 129, 232 use of public bodies 79–80, 99
Irish Lights Commission 284 white paper on Welsh devolution (1997)
irresponsibility 74 276
ISBs (Independent Statutory Bodies) 120, see also New Labour
124–5, 232, 284 labyrinthine structures 74, 120
‘ladder of abstraction’ (Sartori) 36
James, Oliver 20, 324 Land and Property Services Agency 285
James Report (2005) 11 Land Authority for Wales 278
Jeffrey, J. 269 landscape surveys/reviews 86, 87, 151, 158
Jennings, Sir Ivor 70, 188, 213 language and terminology 103
Jessop, Bob 9, 39 large-N surveys 16, 17
job security 176 Laski, Harold 188
Jobcentre Plus 112 late-Victorian period 66
Johnson, N. 6, 100 Law Society 122, 124, 247
joined-up government 84, 87, 105, 164 laws of bureaucracy 38
attempts to nurture 150 layers (organizational forms), see Russian
joined-up objectives 134 Doll Model
joint-ownership ventures 118 Leeuw, F. 145, 161
Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Legal Services Complaints
Rights 121 Commissioner 123, 124
Jones, B. J. 276 legislative accountability 179
Jordan, G. 101 legitimacy 18, 47, 169, 291, 299, 313, 319,
judgements 34, 171, 245 320
normative 255 conceptions of 238
Judicial Appointments Commission 121, electoral 256
129, 220–1 EU institutional framework 289
input-orientated 25
Keating, M. 293–4 public confidence in 172
Kemp, Sir Peter 141 reduced 292
Kettl, D. F. 178 Scharpf’s work on 43, 131
King, Lord 226 legitimation 10
King’s Fund 262, 263 lesson-learning 169, 172
knowledge: Lewis, Norman 3
scientific 256 Liaison Committee (House of
shared 56 Commons) 190, 191, 192
transmission of 245 Liberal Democrats 12, 280
Knox, C. 282 Liberal Government (1906–14) 68
Koppell, J. 171, 172 liberal-intergovernmental theory 293
349
Index
Liberal tradition 188 MCOs (mega-constitutional

Library Authority/Boards (NI) 285 orientations) 34–5, 245, 247, 248, 260,
Life Sentences Reviewer 124 294, 322
limited companies 125 media 104, 172, 186, 197, 199, 222
liquidity 254 negative and largely polemical
local authorities 274, 276, 285 coverage 211
local government 106 response to pressure from 254
Local Government Board 69 Medical and Dental Training Agency 285
‘logic of appropriateness’ (March & Medical and Dental Training Agency
Olsen) 45, 90, 297 (NI) 285
London 12, 43, 277 mental health 248
politicians based in 270 mergers 77, 278, 285
London Organising Committee 148 delaying 281
London School of Economics 20 planned 86
London Underground 85, 194 meso-political level 21, 49, 230, 251, 257,
Londonderry 283 258
loss of confidence 238, 241 issues and questions 10–13
Low, Sidney 89, 184 theories 35, 36
Low Pay Commission 84, 236 meta-governance 39, 132, 314
Lukes, S. 258–9 methodological approach 17
micro-political framework 57, 257, 258
McCubbins, M. 51, 185, 186, 187, 201 issues and questions 13–14
Machinery of Government Division 162 theories 36, 163
Mackenzie, W. J. M. 101 Milburn, Alan 263
McLean, I. 102 Mill, John Stuart 65, 66
McNamara, K. 324 minimum wages 236
Macrory, Sir Patrick 282–3 Minister for Schools 154
macro-political level 49, 57, 251, 257, 258 ministerial departments 6, 77, 78, 89, 101,
issues and questions 8–10, 21 102, 133, 191, 202, 232, 242, 278
theoretical perspective 131, 161, 162, accountability 167, 178, 280
230 attempts to elucidate structure of state
MAD (Multiple Accountabilities beyond 100
Disorder) 25, 171–2, 173, 176, 179 boards abolished and functions taken over
Majone, G. 291, 292, 293, 318 by 65
Major, John 79, 214 centrality of 71, 90
majoritarianism 21, 292, 293 creation of 66
modified 295 deified 178
political structures 282 delegated public bodies and 70, 93
strong, commitment to 39 delegation beyond 99
Manpower Demonstration Research deliberate attempt to bypass 68
Corporation 104 esoteric or salient responsibilities 110
‘many hands’ problem 38, 146, 169–79, 299 ideal re-emphasized 69
Mapping the Quango State (2001) 86 layers beyond 111
March, J. G. 45 logic of 67
Marcussen, M. 255–6 principle of 75, 91
Marinetto, M. 44 scandals or policy disasters concerning
market confidence 235 9
market-testing 149 scrutiny system remains predominantly
Marks, G. 41, 42, 43, 44, 264, 294 focused on 106
Marquand, David 2, 227, 245, 321 sponsor departments and 152, 160,
Marsh, D. 39–40 314
Massey Report (1995) 55, 149–50 viewed as bureaucratic icebergs 188
Mather, G. 54 Welsh 278
Mayhew, D. 186 ministerial intervention 165
350
Index
ministerial responsibility 10, 36, 65, 75, 89, ‘moral pushes’ 172, 173, 182, 201
90, 91, 113, 133, 168, 176, 178, 202, Moran, M. 237, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248,
203, 213, 218, 220, 225, 227, 255 249, 259, 261
accommodating arm’s-length Moravcsik, A. 292–3, 318
‘accountable management’ within 73 Morecambe Bay 85
accountability and 184 Morgan, Kevin 280
affected by agencification 79 Morgan, Rhodri 278, 298
appointments and 216, 222, 317 Morison, J. 10, 282
centralizing logic of 143, 161 Morrison, Herbert 73, 188
centrifugal pressures grate against Motability 125
centripetal logic of 52–3 Mowlam, Mo 283
degree decreases 182 Moynihan, Lord 248
delegation could be reconciled with 79 MPs (Members of Parliament) 64, 121, 277
devolved management and 143 constituency and legislative
direct and universal 66 responsibilities 202
established 67 empowered by extension of franchise 63
great benefit of 133 increasing demands on 66
individualistic and competitive qualities key challenges for 88
of 164 multiple roles of 200
limits of 121 opposition 197
practical utility restricted 67 resentful of independence and insularity
provision ‘obviously unsatisfactory’ 69 of boards 65
role of 183, 315 ‘muddling-through’ capacity 19, 72, 119,
sanctity upheld 79 300, 314
theory and practice of 80, 88 ad hoc unprincipled 119
unchanged by delegation 180 Mulgan, R. 169
WM built upon centralizing logic of 161 Muller, W. 17
ministries 63, 112, 322 multiple accountabilities 174, 178, 179–84
new 68 see also MAD
Minutes of Evidence 194, 198 multi-purpose bureaucracies 55, 78
misrepresentation 103 Museums and Galleries Trust Commission
MLG (multi-level governance) 43, 261, 291, 116
325 mutual understanding 54, 146
emergence of 40, 41
Type I 41–2, 44, 294, 295, 298, 299, 301, Nairn, T. 43
319 ‘naming and shaming’ capacity 217–18
Type II 42, 44, 264, 294, 295, 298, 299, NAO (National Audit Office) 116, 194, 197
301, 318, 319 National Air Traffic Services 118, 199
MLP (multi-level polity) 43–4, 45, 61, 261, National Asylum Support Service 125
323 National Audit Act (1983) 197
evolution of 295 National College for School Leadership 115
Westminster Model and 43, 57, 161, 203, National Homelessness Advice Service 125
320 National Library of Wales 278, 281
‘moderate optimists’ 188, 200 National Lottery Commission 197
modern management styles 55 National Museums and Galleries 71
modernization 190, 193, 197, 200, 202 National Museums and Galleries of
‘window of opportunity’ in relation Wales 278, 281
to 203 National Savings 198
Momenta 174 National School of Government 112, 152
monetarism 253 National Weights and Measures
monetary policy 253, 258 Laboratory 112
political discretion in relation to 254 nationalization 72
Monitor 118–19 nationalized industries 53, 73, 213, 221, 252
monitoring 170, 253 debates surrounding governance of 93
351
Index
Natural and Environmental Research NGOs (non-governmental

Council 116 organizations) 120
Natural England 86, 115 see also quangos
NDOs (non-departmental organisations) 72, NHS (National Health Service) 114, 118,
74, 75, 92, 93, 101 126, 239
creation of large numbers of 246 allegations of clientelistic practices 219
executive 76 decisions regarding availability of
use and role of 71 drugs 254
NDPBs (Non-Departmental Public proposal for depoliticizing 262
Bodies) 81, 86, 90, 103, 105, 106, 122, reconstituted 262–3
129, 192, 224 NHS Act (1977) 114
advisory 82, 215, 221, 274, 283 NHS Appointments Commission 115, 124,
appointments 213, 221 220, 221, 222, 223, 225, 227, 228, 229
Financial Memorandum and Business NHS Bank 126
Plan 116 NHS Business Services Authority 115
legal and structural characteristics 143 NHS Local Improvement Finance Trusts 118
ministerial patronage to 213 NHS Plan 220
register of 103 NHS Trusts and Authorities:
scrutiny sessions with 198, 199 local councillors appointed to
sponsor departments and 153 boards 219–20
Treasury rules on 125 spending restraints 255
tribunal 283 NICE (National Institute for Clinical
see also executive NDPBs Excellence) 182, 254–5, 263
negativity-bias 172, 174, 179, 185, 186, NMDs (non-ministerial departments) 77,
190 110, 111–12, 113, 114, 123, 126, 143,
negotiated compliance 247 221, 313
neoconservatism 256 appointments balance between
neoliberalism 256 ministerial and 218
nepotism 213, 227 ‘no surprises’ rule 54, 145, 146, 152
nested jurisdictions 42, 44 nodality 151, 290
Network Rail 107, 118, 253 Nolan Committee 226
networked accountability 178 non-accountability 7
networks: non-elected agencies 9
for 89 non-intervention 165
patronage 218 non-majoritarian institutions 3
policy 37, 39, 170 norms 171
public-private 43, 262 collectively held 47
self-steering 37 constitutional 222
see also complex networks cultural 247
new institutionalism 162 shared 45
different variants of 47 North America 212
New Labour 11, 24, 81–8, 190, 319 North-South Language Body (NI) 284
central element of statecraft 235 Northcote-Trevelyan Report (1853) 212
public appointments 219–28 Northern Ireland 264, 298
quango explosion under 12 complex socio-political history 287
significant aspects of approach to devolution 12, 24, 43, 269, 283, 284,
governing 261 286–7, 294, 295
New Opportunities Fund 84 Direct Rule (1972) 283
‘new politics’ 295 new democratic frameworks 268
New Public Management 78, 249, 256, 325 Secretary of State for 283, 285
central theme of 176 sectarian conflict/violence 282, 296
hallmarks of 298 tensions 85, 282
Newton Commission (2001) 190–1, 200 Northern Ireland Assembly 112, 283
Next Steps initiative 79, 80, 141 Northern Ireland Certification Office 283
352
Index
Northern Ireland Executive 283, 299 Olympic Games (2012) 248

Northern Ireland Parades Commission 85, ombudsmen 227
283 see also Parliamentary Ombudsman
Northern Rock Bank 254 ONS (Office for National Statistics) 129,
Norton Commission (2001) 43, 190, 191, 198, 199
200 National Accounts Classification
not-for-profit companies 127 Committee 106
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority 85 opacity 112, 182, 222, 242
Nuffield Foundation 190 open recruitment 246
Opening up Quangos (paper 1997) 81–2
‘obedient servant’ theory 56 openness 81, 168, 282
obesity 174, 248 agencies exposed to procedural
‘observational equivalence’ 199 requirements of 291
OCPA (Office of the Commissioner for Cabinet Office guidelines on 130, 182
Public Appointments) 9, 110, 113, 116, reforms aimed to increase levels of 87
130, 212, 214, 219–27, 231, 232, 274, operational efficiency:
275 democratic accountability and 172, 179,
Code of Practice 115, 216, 217, 218, 224, 188
225, 226, 228 need to balance democratic scrutiny
Principles for Public Appointments 216, against 190
218, 229 operational failures 37
OECD (Organization for Economic opportunism 50, 54, 62
Cooperation and Development) 3, 7, 9, opportunity costs 186
291, 311 opposition parties 104, 172, 262
OFCOM (Office of Communications) 52, ‘optimal enforcement strategy’ 185, 200
86, 170, 174 organ retention 85
Board of 211 organizational failure 54
Office of Fair Access in Higher organizational status 111, 112
Education 84, 85 assignment of 106
Office of Public Service and Science 148 benefit of focusing on 108
Office of the Adjudicator for Higher definitions and confusion in relation
Education 124 to 102
Office of the E-Envoy 126 explanations of 13
Office of the Independent Regulator for NHS formal 42, 105, 106, 107, 110, 123, 174
Foundation Hospitals 84, 85, 118–19 single 300
Office of the Information Commissioner 85, unclear 114
121 ‘orphan status’ 86, 134, 142, 151, 315
Office of the Public Private Partnership Orr, K. 286
Arbiter 85, 118 Orwell, George 103
Office of the Social Fund Commissioner Osmotherly Rules 113
(NI) 284 output/outcome-measurements 170
Office of Water Services 112 outsourcing 11
official registers 125 oversight 105, 125, 133, 154, 158, 159, 168,
OFLOT (Office of the National Lottery) 77 179, 185, 189, 190, 202, 290
OFSTED (Office for Standards in audit of 194
Education) 77, 199 deployment of different models of 184,
Office of the Independent Complaints 193, 194
Adjudicator 124–5 neglect of 187
OGC (Office of Government responsive mode of 197
Commerce) 114, 126 time spent on 187
O’Halloran, S. 49 overtime 100
Oil and Pipeline Agency 117
Olsen, J. P. 45 PAC (House of Commons Public Accounts
Olympic Delivery Authority 248 Committee) 194–7, 199
353
Index
parastatal organizations 1, 3, 125 path-dependency 8, 21, 35, 90, 162, 230,

Pareto-efficient outcomes 292 297
‘parliamentarization’ 288 degree intensifies 45
parliamentary accountability 73, 117, 174, focus on 47
189–201, 316 influence of 46, 48
great quality of 178 institutional and contextual framework
Parliamentary Commissioner for of 89
Standards 121 patronage 2, 13, 19, 24, 69, 160, 207–34,
parliamentary decline thesis 188, 189, 200 260, 284
Parliamentary Ombudsman 82, 121 accusations of 7, 79, 99, 271
parliamentary scrutiny 183, 190, 316 complaints/concerns regarding 63, 141,
actual level of 200 269, 287, 318
annual review of 192 removing 246
exhaustive audit of 201 Westminster-based ministers 270
expectations-gap that exists in relation PCs (public corporations) 106, 116–17, 120,
to 200 123, 124, 129, 213, 221, 263, 274
increased 247 legal and structural characteristics 143
ineffective 189 supervisory 101
nature and extent of 184, 193, 194, 199 Peelites 245, 260
viewed as effective 168 pensions 176
parliamentary sovereignty 36 ‘people’s peers’ 222
Parris, H. 66 perfect information 54
Parry, R. 104 performance 184, 325
participation 168, 245, 247, 248 against targets 116
increased 318 balanced review of 172
Partnerships for Health 118, 134 clinical 254, 255
Partnerships for Schools 120 detailed information about 55
Partnerships UK 118, 129, 134 falls below prescribed levels 49
PASC (House of Commons Public key indicators 153
Administration Select Committee) results 114–15
82–3, 85–6, 88, 90–1, 127, 183–4, sub-optimal levels 148
218, 220, 223, 224, 226, 232, performance management documents 153,
275 154
Government by Appointment report performance paradox 145, 161
(2003) 223, 225 performance-related pay 164, 176
PAT (Principal-Agent Theory) 16, 17, Permanent Secretaries 113, 114, 147, 197,
21–2, 33, 35, 49–57, 73, 131, 134, 225, 279
141, 142, 143, 160, 230–1, 299–300 permeation 208–12, 316
common dilemmas 93 pessimism 259
concordats, memorandums, and abandonment to 317
agreements in relation to 301 Peters, G. 7, 44–5, 143, 325
ideal model of devolved management Petit, Philip 238
163 Phillips, G. 100
internal-control relationships 163 Pierre, J. 44–5, 325
involvement in routine operational Pierson, C. 91
decisions 156 Pliatzky Report (1980) 76, 77, 90, 103, 104,
key aspect of the relationship 145 272
more convincing interpretation of pluralistic stagnation 38
relationships at national level 165 Police and Justice Bill (2006) 87
one of the benefits of 93 Police Complaints Authority 84
reforms designed to clarify and facilitate Police Complaints Board 84
relationships 148 police-patrol method 185–6, 187, 188, 189,
resource-dependencies 154 190, 191, 194, 197, 199, 201, 316
roles and responsibilities within 151 policy chains 37, 42
354
Index
policy disasters 9 Post Office 70

‘policy steer’ 53 power 38, 47, 57, 81
policymaking 161, 251, 275, 291 bringing closer to the people 236
effectively abdicated to independent decision-making 259
agencies 51 executive, euphemism for 183
EU 292 legitimate distribution of 230
possible to separate from operational ‘non-decision-making’ 259
concerns 50 prevention of abuse, corruption and
strategic 145 misuse of 169
political conflict 47 retained and controlled through thought
political cultures 100, 163, 311 control 259
adversarial 184–5 sharing 41–2
link between 237 shifting from parliament to executive 184
political interference 225 transfer of 10
political parties 283 won or lost 38
Daalder’s work on 210 power-dependency 38
political pressure 254 power relations 47
politicians: inverted 49
capacity of 237 Power Report (Rowntree Trust 2006) 133
control over strategic policymaking 145 PPPs (public-private partnerships) 107,
electoral legitimacy 256 118–20, 164, 314, 325
increasing the role of 81 appointments to 221
indirect control mechanisms 239 Arbiter for 124
London-based 270 increasingly innovative and complex
non-culpability 176 forms of 320
political behaviour of 56 London Underground investigation 194
power not with 236, 261 opaque accountability mechanisms 182
pressures to demonstrate service ‘Partnerships for Health’ enquiry 197
improvements 145 secondary 134
public disenchantment and distrust in PQs (Parliamentary Questions) 111, 113,
relation to 236 280
services led by 262 answers to 197
taking decisions out of the hands of 229 procedures for answering 79
trust in 87, 169 pragmatism 62
politicization 121, 130, 231, 236–7, 241, precautionary principle 170
244–9, 264, 280, 292, 309–27 preference-shaping depoliticization 255–9
growing, European Commission 288 preferences 50
unwarranted, accusations of 248 allocational 314
politics of delegation 2, 18, 19, 35, 63, conflicting 52
309–27 legislative 189
deeper and more balanced understanding personal 225
of 21 policy 51
important reason for examining 24 Press Complaints Commission 123
Pollack, M. A. 20, 49, 55 Prime Ministers 117, 141, 148, 324
Pollitt, C. 101, 142, 164 Office for Public Sector Reform 86
polycentricity 41, 42, 78 see also Blair; Brown; Major; Thatcher
Poor Law Board 65 ‘principal capture’ 93, 160
Poor Law Commission 64, 65, 67 ‘principal ignorance’ 54
‘poor parenting’ model (Pollitt) 142, 157, Prison Service 111, 112, 165, 199
164, 165, 315 ‘Private Sphere’ (Hay) 242–3
popular democracy 247, 260 private-sector 6, 105
limiting the impact of 246 privatization 11, 37, 77, 100, 149
positivist approach 16 intermediate stage towards 117
positivity offset 172, 174, 179 politics of 251
355
Index
Privy Council 124 public spending 105

proceeds of crime 85 ‘Public Sphere’ (Hay) 242–3
professional associations 122 punctuated equilibrium 46, 47
professions 260 purchaser-provider relationship 141
promotion on merit 246
proportionality 168, 172 QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum
and balance 227 Authority) 154, 163, 183, 198
need for 186, 188 decision to abolish 263–4
‘protecting-machine’ phrase 183 Qualifications, Curriculum and Assessment
PSAs (Public Service Agreements) 150, 165 Authority for Wales 279
PSRBs (professional self-regulatory qualified-majority voting 293
bodies) 122–4, 129, 243, 246, 247 qualitative methodologies 18
public accountability 123, 180, 183, 200, Quality Assurance Agency 134
235, 275 ‘quango count’ 106, 158
Public Accounts Committee 125 ‘quango drift’ 129
public appointments 14, 92, 207, 208, 211, ‘quangocratization’ 2, 8–9, 13, 100, 324
219–28, 284 quangos (quasi non-governmental
Public Appointments and Public Bodies Act organizations) 3, 6, 11, 19, 191, 202,
[Scotland] (2003) 274 248
Public Appointments Commissioners 275 abolition of 12, 74, 76, 77, 271–2, 276,
public appointments: 280, 285, 289, 296
interrelationship between patronage accountability of 199, 269, 280
and 210 bonfire of 81, 274, 277, 286, 287, 296
ministerial bias in 215 creating 62
policies for dealing with 21 distinctly Welsh 276
politics of 212 growth of 74
public and parliamentary disquiet major executive 278
over 214 maximalist definition of 130
see also OCPA merging staff employed by 279
Public Appointments and Public Bodies number reduced 77, 285
(Scotland) Act (2003) 225, 226 official definition of 103, 130
Public Appointments Order in Council perceived inefficient, unaccountable and
(2002) 215, 219, 226, 232 illegitimate 74
Public Bodies Co-ordinator 199 promise to dismantle 80
Public Bodies Database/Directory 77, 83, role of 79, 270
103, 120, 126, 127, 130 term coined and applied to disparate
Public Broadcasting Authorities 120 range 104
public choice theory 16 unwanted and unnecessary 12
public confidence 123, 172 Quangos: Opening the Doors (1998) 182, 271
undermined 247 quantitative analysis 16, 17, 20
Public Diplomacy Board 126 quasi-autonomous organizations/bodies 1,
public engagement 241–3 2, 72, 242, 262, 283, 284, 294
public expenditure 253 creation of 251
public good(s) 211, 229, 319 delegation to 11, 66
commitment to 42 interpreted as a ‘bad’ thing 19
public interest 246 sub-national 264
Public-Interest Companies 107, 118, 119 quasi-governance 274
public policy 131 quasi-privatization 252
private bodies orientated to 120
private companies with charitable Rail Regulator 170
status 125–6 Railtrack Plc 107, 252
public-private divide 9 Railway Departments Board 69
Public Safety Department (NI) 286 railway infrastructure 107, 252
‘public service bargain’ notion 174–6 Railway Rates Tribunal 70
356
Index
Rand Corporation 104 transparent modes of 13

ratchet effect 55 widening and deepening 219–28
rational behaviour 56 see also PSRBs
rational choice theory 14, 16, 17, 20, 47 regulatory agencies 290
rationality 120, 170, 231, 256 regulatory interdependence 291
dominant 238, 255, 299 regulatory mechanisms 247
neutral 255 regulatory-politics theory 293
political and administrative 203 Remploy 117
retrospective 47 renewable energy 127
see also bounded rationality repoliticization 280
rationalization 48, 75, 86, 115 factors likely to generate demands for 240
and reform 81 temporary 253
infrequent and largely unsuccessful reporting regimes 55
attempts 90 representative democracy 253, 260, 282
rationing 255 challenges of rebuilding 236
reabsorption 279, 280, 287 ‘club government’ retained within
reach of ministers 208–12, 215, 218, 219, framework of 246
221, 228, 316 institutions and individuals commonly
complete versus partial 217 associated with 238
reduction in 213, 220, 225, 226, 227 Research Agency 197
reasoning: resource allocation 54
commitment to 16 resources distribution inequalities 194
political, shifts in 238 resource-dependencies 11, 37, 39, 154, 203
reclassification 120, 124 informal 156
redistribution 41 potential to radically alter the nature
Redwood, John 12 of 261
re-election model (Mayhew) 186 responsibilities 81, 121, 126, 148, 150, 207
referenda 270 appointment 124, 231
Reform Act (1832) 63 clarity promised by PAT 53
reforms 47, 148, 190, 192, 203, 207–8, 212, constituency and legislative 202
229, 272 core departmental 118
appropriate to resolution of crises 48 delegated to specific organizational
constitutional 85, 87, 322 forms 99
core options for 285 demarcating 152
executive 285 depoliticization of 254
far-reaching, radical 214 distribution of 124, 149
formal 287 division of 154
incremental 92, 298 esoteric or salient 110
inherent biases against 162 insulating from irrational short-termism
initiatives inspired by good 288
governance 161 operational 79
managerialist 37 overlapping 74
modernization 193, 197, 200, 202 oversight 187
rapid programme of 222 principals and agents seek to deflect 54
rationalization and 81 regulatory 122, 246, 247
‘root and branch’ approach to 75–6 roles and 49, 148, 151
social 68 state absolves itself completely of 251
structural 102, 278, 322 statutory 111, 120
trajectory of 219, 223–8 transfer of 129, 161, 174, 252, 257, 261–2,
WM 323 269, 270, 277, 278
regional governments 269 visibility and 79
regulation 122, 252, 292 see also collective responsibility;
EU 288 ministerial responsibility
independent 230 restructuring 3
357
Index
Retained Organs Commission 85 Schwartz, T. 51, 185, 186, 187, 201

Review of Public Bodies (Scottish Executive ‘scientization’ 255, 256
2001) 271 Scotland 118, 122, 225, 277, 278, 281, 287,
Rhodes, R. 37, 39, 43 298
Richard Commission (2004) 277, 280, 282, assembly able to curtail patronage powers
297, 298, 300 of Westminster-based ministers 270
Richards, D. 39–40 dissatisfaction with use of public
risk-aversion 171 bodies 12
risk-reduction tools 55 new democratic frameworks 268
ritualization 171 pro-devolution campaign 297
Road Board 68, 69 reform process adopted in 279
Robinson, F. 81 role of quangos operating in 270
Robson, W. 70 see also under following headings prefixed
Rowntree Trust 133 ‘Scottish’
Royal Charters 116, 122, 153, 246, 281 Scotland Act (1998) 270
Royal Colleges 122 Scottish Agricultural and Biological Research
Royal Commissions: Institutes 272
Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scottish Commissioner for Scottish
Wales (1908) 281 Constitutional Convention 270
Civil Service (1914) 69 Scottish devolution 12, 24, 43, 83, 122, 264,
Royal Mail 117 269, 286, 294, 295
Royal Mint 198 imposition of new procedures that limit
Royal Pharmaceutical Society 122 flexibility 273
RPA (review of public administration) 283, interplay between delegated governance
284, 285–6 and 274
‘rubber leavers’ 37 national identity and 276
rule-based systems 106, 253–5, 256, 258, referendum (1979) 270
259 significance of 275
‘rules of the game’ 314 Scottish Executive 270, 273, 275, 299
runaway-bureaucracy theory 51, 56, 185 annual budget 274
Rural Development Commission 68 reform programme 271–2
Rural Payments Agency 146, 147, 165, 176, Scottish Homes 272
197 Scottish National Party 270–1, 274
Russell, Peter H. 34 Scottish Office 75–6, 270
Russian Doll Model 100, 105, 108–28, 130, Scottish Parliament 112, 122, 270, 272, 274,
131, 143, 157, 164, 174, 180, 194, 201, 275, 299
227, 231, 232, 242, 243, 262, 313 public appointments 215
Scottish Valuation and Rating Council 272
S4C 120 scrutiny 10, 24, 25, 54, 117, 165, 182, 188,
salary 176 231, 248, 275, 276
pro-rata 228 balance needs to be shifted in favour
sanctions 55, 164, 176, 314 of 178
absence of 56 boundaries between ALBs 158
core executive lacks 132 committees 270
distaste for 247 demands for more formalized
effective deployment problematic 52 measures 88
negative 173 demands for tighter forms of 176
probability of 56 effective, exacerbating concerns
Sartori, G. 36, 258–9 regarding 127
satellite bodies 3 external 211
Saward, M. 39 firm refusal to empower the legislature 93
scandals 9, 85, 186, 248 functions or services not likely to be
scapegoats 176 subject to 113
Scharpf, Fritz 25, 43, 131 ‘hard’ 180
358
Index
increasing the capacity of 75, 81 shared learning 41

more flexible approach to 198 Sharman report (2001) 116
new forms of 133 SHAs (Special Health Authorities) 115
non-legislative forms 185 Annual Business Plan 114
oversight and 105 Corporate Plan 114
primary democratic method of 179 executive NDPBs and 111
rational approach to 186 Shaw, K. 81
reforms intended to strengthen 191 Shelburne, Lord 90
‘soft’ 189 Shipan, C. R. 49, 157
strain on the system 106 shirking 56
systematic 190, 191, 200, 315–16 agency 50, 163
volume and quality of 280 see also ‘blame-shirking’
see also parliamentary scrutiny Shortridge, Sir Jon 279
Scrutiny Unit (House of Commons) 192, ‘silo mentality’ 151
200 sinecures system 212
SDAs (Service Delivery Agreements) 150 singularity issue 134
‘second wave’ bodies 287 skills-deficit 152
secondary delegation 100 sleaze 13, 186
secondments 152 accusations of 79, 99, 214
secrecy 209, 276 Smith, Llew 277
Secretaries of State 113, 225 Smith, M. 39–40
Constitutional Affairs 235–6 smoke-alarms 185, 189, 197, 200, 202
Education 183, 263 Social Care Institute for Excellence 127
Health 220, 254, 263 social exclusion 248
Media and Sport 211 Social Market Foundation 321
Northern Ireland 283, 285 Social Services Department (NI) 286
Trade and Industry 211 sociological institutionalism 47
Transport 252 soft accountability 88, 93, 173–4, 178, 179,
Wales 276 180, 183, 201
sectarian conflict/violence 282, 296 Solicitors Regulatory Authority 247
Security Industry Authority 85 Somers, John 63
sedimentation 85, 90 Specialist Schools and Academies Trust 125
Select Committee on the Nationalised spill-back 12
Industries (1951) 72 spillover 12, 208, 219, 297
select committees 78, 79, 82, 88, 105, 113, spillover constitutional 24, 298
146, 199, 200 momentum, logic and 223–8
annual reports 192 ‘spoils system’ 207, 229
detailed audit of scrutiny 315 sponsor departments 120, 124, 127, 149,
number of witnesses 193–4 153, 154, 158, 207
reforms to the system 191 autonomy and control 207
time and resources 202 ministerial departments and 152, 160,
see also PASC 314
self-governing occupations 246 Sport England 248
see also PSRBs sporting bodies 248
semi-autonomous bodies 291 Sports Council 300
single-focused 78 Sports Council (NI) 285
Senior Departmental Sponsors 113, 154, Sports Council for Wales 279, 281, 296
158 SPS (Single Payment Scheme) 146
Sentence Review Commission 85 stability 65
Sentencing Guidelines Council 85 financial/monetary 117
service corporations 101 long periods interspersed with critical
service delivery 25, 150, 168 junctures 46
Shapiro, M. 291 reducing 171
shared cognitions 47 Standards Board 115
359
Index
Standing Orders 198 terrorist attacks 85

‘starred’ appointments 226 Thatcher, Margaret 74, 75–6, 147
state/government intervention 123, 247 Thatcher, Mark 17
accusations of 248 Thatcherism 81
responding to public demands for 249 theoretical approaches 21
Statistics Commission 9, 198 ‘third-face’ or ‘radical view’ (Lukes) 259
Stewart, John 170 ‘third wave’ bodies 287, 288
Stone Sweet, A. 17 ‘Third Way’ 81, 87, 295
Storey, A. 257 Thompson, S. 101
Stormont 283, 284 ‘Tony’s cronies’ 222
strategic capacity 49, 105, 120, 240, 315, top-down view of democracy 39
320 Tory administrations, see Conservative
Cabinet Office has little 108 Party/Government
lack of 223 Toulmin Smith, J. 65
strong, absence at the centre 128 Trade and Business Development Board
Treasury-controlled attempts to (NI) 284
improve 150 trade-offs 11, 50, 93, 145, 310
see also central strategic capacity trade unions 253
strategic challenges/objectives 37, 54 over-representation of leaders on
Strategic Rail Authority 84, 199 boards 214
strategic reviews 278 political negotiations with 253
Straw, Jack 80 trading funds 112, 113, 114, 129
Street, A. 69–70, 101 traditions (T1/T2/T3) 14–21, 156–7, 168,
Strom, K. 17 178, 184, 201, 260, 297, 309, 310
structural disaggregation 6 Traffic Commission 70
subcommittees 198 training and enterprise councils 278
sub-national jurisdictions 43 transaction costs 16, 42
sunk costs 21, 35, 45, 89, 162, 297 transparency 13, 72, 81, 85, 88, 92, 99, 123,
scale of 48 134, 168, 209, 215, 216, 260, 275, 292,
sunset clauses 12, 186 295
‘super-quangos’ 286 absence of 210
supranational authority 43 agency approach delivers significantly
supranational bodies 287, 288, 311 higher levels of 291
governance 291 coherence and 33
state-building 268 increasing 230
Sustainable Investment Rule 254 layers of the state intended to deliver a
systemic failure 172 degree of 128
reforms aimed to increase levels of 87
‘targeting’ 216 requirements concerning 248
targets 55, 116, 253 Transport for London 85
focused 164 Treasury 72, 75, 106, 126, 129, 150, 162,
inflation 254 324
realistic but stretching 156 control of public monies 212
‘soft’ 156 employment of targets 253
strategy for achieving 153 funding from 248
too many 151 guidance on management of risk 153
‘tartan fringe’ 270 joint review with Cabinet Office
task-specific organizations 55 (2002) 131, 134
Taylor, A. 39, 100 Public Service Agreements 165
Teaching and Higher Education Act responsibility for public service
(1998) 124 expenditure 148
Telegraph, The 12 rules on NDPBs 125
territorial boundaries 42 Treasury Committee 198, 231
territorial peculiarities 294 Treasury Select Committee 117
360
Index
Tribunals 277 Wales 118, 275

Trosa Report (1994) 148–9, 151 Children’s Commissioner 122
trust 54, 87, 146, 169 devolution 12, 24, 43, 83, 122, 264, 269,
high 145, 150, 245, 247 276, 277, 278, 286, 294, 295, 296
low 145, 172 major programme of abolitions 298
trust ports 284 new democratic frameworks 268
tunnel-vision 55–6, 93, 134, 149, 164 newly established executive 299
incentivizing 171 pro-devolution campaign 297
two-party system 36 public sector reform 287
typologies 101 see also under Welsh
tyranny of the majority 282 Wales Centre for Health 281–2
Wales Tourist Board 278
UK Debt Management Office 198 war collectivism 70
UK Sport 248 Ward, I. 184
UK Trade & Investment 112 Warner Review (2004) 86, 115, 157–8, 159
Ulster-Scots Agency 284 Warrenpoint 283
‘unbundled’ powers 3, 226, 249 Waterways Ireland 284
‘unconstitutional’ proposals 133 ‘Way We Work’ programme 159
under-performance 176 Weberian logic 161
understanding: Weir, S. 104–5
mutual 54, 146 Welsh Assembly 112, 122
shared 238 power to amend primary legislation by
unelected bodies 276 Order 276
Unemployment Assistance Board 70, 71 public appointments 215
unintended consequences 55 regional accountability 300
PAT emphasis on 134 transfer of responsibility to 277
unitary state 36 see also ASPBs
United Nations 235 Welsh Assembly Government 279–82, 287
United States 41, 168 Welsh Assembly Government Plan for Wales
Congress 16, 50–1, 185, 187 2001 278
Government Manual 92 Welsh Development Agency 276, 278, 280
universities top 176 Welsh Health Common Services
universities tuition charges 85 Authority 276
unrecognized bodies 105, 106, 120, 126–8, Welsh Health Insurance Commission 276
164, 232 Welsh Language Board 278, 279, 281
Welsh Office 76, 276, 277, 296
value-emphasis 170 Westminster Model 21, 22, 33, 36–45, 48,
values 34, 170, 245 49, 62, 63, 91, 133, 160, 176, 178, 202,
democratic 248, 260 310, 321
diametrically opposed 246 clear complementarities between HI
fundamental 168 and 35
pre-democratic 260 contemporary relevance of 229
public service 169 degree of uniformity and centralization
shared 238 suggested by 89
Van Thiel, Sandra 8–9, 145, 161, 324 emergence of multilevel polity within 300
Verhoest, K. 143 evolution of multi-level polity
vested interests 45 within 161, 320
veto-points 37 formal and rhetorical commitment to 92
VFM (Value for Money) enquiries 194 key tenets of 131
Video Recordings Act (1984) 127 MLP and 43, 57, 161, 203, 320
voluntary organizations 1 precepts and emphases 35
reform of 203, 323
Wade, E. 100, 101 role of 161, 261
Waldegrave, William 170 slender applicability, post-devolution 295
361
Index
Whigs 246, 260 Wilding, R. 101

whistle-blowing powers 225 William III, king of Great Britain and
White Papers: Ireland 63
European Governance (2001) 289–90 Williamson, O. E. 54
Governance of Public Bodies (1997) 79 Willson, F. 101, 269
Modernising Government (1999) 83 ‘windows of opportunity’ 202, 203, 214
Reorganisation of Central Government ‘winner takes all’ mentality 229
(1970) 73 Wodak, R. 257
Voice for Wales, A (1997) 276 Work and Pensions Committee 197
Whitehall 54, 274, 283, 284 World Bank 3, 12, 235, 291
appointments on merit 218
departments publicly criticized 225 Yesilkagit, K. 20
historical analysis of structural Youth Dance England 125
reform 102 Youth Justice Board 84
number and nature of departments
(1970s) 101 zero-sum games 38, 93, 130, 145
362

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Delegated Governance and the British State:

Walking Without Order

Denton for collaborating with me on research into depoliticization and

By Wendy Winter Garcia

(Facit indignatio versum).

Just what do you do all day?

Not a person you’d dismay

Just dulce far niente

List of Figures xii

1. Walking Without Order 1

Part II. Themes

5. Internal Control 141

Part III. Dynamics

10. The Politics, Principles, and Politicization of Delegation 309

Appendix 1. Twentieth Century Delegated Institutions 328

1.1. The spectrum of autonomy 5

1.1. Comparative review of quasi-autonomous bodies 4

7.1. Differences between patronage and public appointments 209

AAO Additional Accounting Ofﬁcer

CSC Civil Service Commission

GCC General Chiropractic Council

MRC Medical Research Council

OFT Ofﬁce of Fair Trading

QNG Quasi Non-Governmental

It is a commonplace that the characteristic virtue of Englishmen is

State structures have been radically reformulated in recent decades. In

Questions of delegation, autonomy, and control have been posed and

1. What does the concept of ‘delegated governance’ encompass?

1.1. Delegated Governance

Delegation is a central concept in the study of modern governance. The

Table 1.1. Comparative review of quasi-autonomous bodies

Country Quasi-autonomous bodies

France Public establishments (Éstablissements publics Nationaux) Independent

Purely Public Executive Non-Departmental Central Bank

Walking Without Order

Purely Private Degree of control by ministers

Figure 1.1. The spectrum of autonomy

to locate a number of different organizational forms. At opposing poles

. . . society cannot be run solely by a combination of elected representatives and

My starting point is that scholars need to move away from and

Delegated governance remains a sphere of politics that frequently gener-

Table 1.2. Signiﬁcant dimensions of the delegated governance debate

Political level Key questions

Clearly, Table 1.2 provides a selection of representative questions from

1.2.1. Macro-Political Issues and Questions

be viewed as one of the most recent stages of state development in the

[which] involves redrawing the public-private divide, reallocating tasks, and

Jessop accepts that governments have always relied on other organiza-

1.2.2. Meso-Political Issues and Questions

‘useless’, suggested severe inefﬁciencies and organizational duplication,

1.2.3. Micro-Political Issues and Questions

public appointments, eiusdem generis, in itself provides a signiﬁcant addi-

In order to demonstrate the distinctiveness of a particular object,

1.3.1. Tradition 1 (T1)

Reluctant epithet ‘Americanist’ ‘Europeanist’ ‘British’

Walking Without Order

1.3.2. Tradition 2 (T2)

to understand the nature and consequences of delegation either within

Moreover, scholars within this tradition have also sought to accommodate

or state-of-the-art studies within this tradition. What these studies pro-

1.3.3. Tradition 3 (T3)

Primer of Public Administration (1950). The British approach was, and to

The impact, however, of these two strands should not be exagger-