1. 40 YEARS OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
REFORM IN UK CENTRAL
GOVERNMENT – PROMISES,
PROMISES
Christopher Pollitt
Emeritus Professor, Public Management Institute,
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
christopher.pollitt@soc.kuleuven.be

2. 1. UK A WORLD LEADER IN PMR
• Almost unceasing, large scale reforms, 1970-2012
• UK examples frequent in the international literature
• Cabinet Office and DfID active internationally promoting
UK ideas and practices
• UK influential and active in OECD, World Bank

3. 2. STATE OF KNOWLEDGE AND
ENQUIRY
• Remarkably little reliable and warranted knowledge of
outcomes of reform (no shortage of anecdotes and
impressions)
• Not much sign that governments have been interested
in finding out
• But plenty of practitioner ’how to’/craft knowledge has
been accumulated

4. 3. TAKE A SAMPLE OF FLAGSHIP
PROGRAMMES
• 1970 Reorganization of central government
• 1981 Efficiency in government
• 1991 Citizen’s charter
• 1999 Modernising government
• 2011 Open public services

5. 4. CHANGES AND CONTINUITIES
• Change - white papers have become longer, glossier,
more populist
• Change - their scope has increased ot the whole of the
public sector, and beyond
• Change - the citizen has moved from the fringes to
centre stage, and is now a ’citizen-consumer’ (Clarke)
• Continuity – none of these white papers has any
systematic information about a) the need for reform, b)
the targets of the reform or c) the costs of the reform.
And only one of them (Citizen’s charter, 1991) puts in
place a specific programme for evaluating the reform.

6. 5. PROMISES, PROMISES
Lets look at some of the promises:
• 1970: more co-ordinated and strategic approach to
policymaking, and a better evidence base
• 1981: Modern business techniques will eliminate waste
and lower public spending
• 1991: explicit standards will be set for public services
and better information will be provided to citizens
• 1999: joined-up government; eveidence-based
policymaking; partnerships; e-government; enhanced
responsiveness to citizens and businesses
• 2011: decentralization; transparency; pluarlity of
providers; equal opportunities

7. 6. WHY SO LITTLE HARD
EVIDENCE?
• Difficulties in designing and implementing monitoring
and evaluation (reforms don’t stand still, and neither
does the context, plus there are often big attribution
problems)
• Lack of sustained interest. [Quote from official.]
Political interest seldom sustained over the years it
takes to implement a major reform. In some cases
evaluations are resisted.

8. 7. WHY SO MUCH REFORM?
• Many reforms in many countries – an international wave
• Anglo-Saxon club of managerial enthusiasts
• Special features of UK: law-lite, highly centralized,
majoritarian, toothless legislature.
• ’It’s so easy!’

9. 8. REFLECTIONS
• Motives for reform may have shifted somewhat. PMR is now
a policy sector in its own right
• PMR has become both an ideology and a business that
benefits from that ideology. Unlike 1970 there is now an
international community of PMR ’experts’
• Can/will this situation change? Perhaps. Regular coalitions
might blunt it. Growing public cyncism might reduce the
symbolic, short term political gains from reform
announcements. Or governments could pass some kind of
self-denying ordnance, attaching statutory requirements to
new reforms.
• But on the whole, the probability of major change seems low.
• So, promises continue to be plentiful, even if they are not
cheap.