Bureaucrats and Leadership

240 Pages·2000·21.975 MB·English

by  Kevin Theakston (eds.)

Bureaucrats and Leadership
Transforming Government
General Editor: R. A. W. Rhodes, Professor of Politics, University of Newcastle
This important and authoritative new series arises out of the seminal ESRC
Whitehall Programme and seeks to fill the enonnous gaps in our knowledge of
the key actors and institutions of British government. It examines the many large
changes during the postwar period and puts these into comparative context by
analysing the experience of the advanced industrial democracies of Europe and
the nations of the Commonwealth. The series reports the results of the Whitehall
Programme, a four-year project into change in British government in the postwar
period, mounted by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Titles include:
Nicholas Deakin and Richard Parry
THE TREASURY AND SOCIAL POLICY
The Contest for Control of Welfare Strategy
B. Guy Peters, R. A. W. Rhodes and Vincent Wright
ADMINISTERING THE SUMMIT
Administration of the Core Executive in Developed Countries
Martin}. Smith
THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN BRITAIN
Kevin Theakston
LEADERSHIP IN WHITEHALL
Kevin Theakston (editor)
BUREAUCRATS AND LEADERSHIP
Patrick Weller, Hennan Bakvis and R. A. W. Rhodes (editors)
THE HOLLOW CROWN
Countervailing Trends in Core Executives
Transfonning Government
Series Standing Order ISBN 0-333-71580-2
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order.
Please contact your bookseller or, In case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with
your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmlllan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Bureaucrats and
Leadership
Edited by
Kevin Theakston
Professor of British Government
University of Leeds
First published in Great Britain 2000 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-41192-4 ISBN 978-0-333-98288-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780333982884
First published in the United States of America 2000 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-22658-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bureaucrats and leadership / edited by Kevin Theakston.
p. cm. - (Transforming government)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-22658-9 (cloth)
1. Bureaucracy. 2. Civil service. 3. Political leadership.
4. Government executives Biography. I. Theakston, Kevin, 1958-
II. Series.
JF1501.B793 1999
351-dc21 99-33858
CIP
Selection, editorial matter and Chapter 1 © Kevin Theakston 2000
Chapters 2-9 © Macmillan Press Ltd 2000
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-74968-5
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written
permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright
Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP OLP.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this pUblication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained
forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
Contents
List of Tables vii
Contributors viii
Series Editor's Foreword x
Acknowledgements xiv
1 The Biographical Approach to Public Administration:
Potential, Purpose and Problems 1
Kevin Theakston
2 Excellence in Administrative Leadership: an
Examination of Six US Federal Execucrats 17
Norma M. Riccucci
3 Three Giants of the Inter-war British Higher
Civil Service: Sir Maurice Hankey, Sir Warren Fisher
and Sir Horace Wilson 39
Geoffrey K. Fry
4 Innovators at 10 Downing Street 68
June Burnham and G. W. Jones
5 The Conservatives, New Labour and Whitehall:
a Biographical Examination of the Political Flexibility
of the Mandarin Cadre 91
David Richards
6 Chief Executives and Leadership in a Local Authority:
a Fundamental Antithesis 118
Kester Isaac-Henry
7 Lord Cockfield: a European Commissioner as
a Political Entrepreneur 151
Christopher Lord
8 Policy Entrepreneurship in Action: the Contribution
to Health and Social Care Policy-making of
Sir Roy Griffiths, 1982-92 171
Stephen Harrison and Gerald Wistow
vi Contents
9 Executive Agency Chief Executives:
Their Leadership Values 200
Elizabeth Mellon
Index 222
List of Tables
2.1 Denhardt's attributes of effective administrative
leadership as they apply to six federal execucrats 34
4.1 Innovators at 10 Downing Street 1868-1997 87
6.1 Background of Birmingham chief executives 126
9.1 Values of civil servants, private sector managers
and agency chief executives 205
vii
Contributors
June Burnham is Senior Lecturer in European Government at Middle
sex University and a research assistant at the London School of Eco
nomics. Recent publications include The Politics of the Civil Service (for
the Politics Association), and (with J. M. Lee and G. W. Jones) At the
Centre of Whitehall.
Geoffrey K. Fry is Professor of British Government and Administration
at the University of Leeds. His recent books include Reforming the Civil
Service: the Fulton Committee and the British Home Civil Service 1966-68
and Policy and Management in the British Civil Service. He is currently
writing a book on twentieth-century British political history.
Stephen Harrison is Professor of Health Policy and Politics at the Uni
versity of Leeds Nuffield Institute for Health. His publications include
Managing the NHS in the 1980s, Controlling Health Professionals (with
Christopher Pollitt), Just Managing: Power and Culture in the NHS and The
Dynamics ofB ritish Health Policy (both co-authored with DavidJ. Hunter
and Christopher Pollitt).
Kester Isaac-Henry is a Principal Lecturer in the Department of Public
Policy at the University of Central England, Birmingham. Recent pub
lications include Appointed Agendes and Public Accountability and Chan
ging Local Governance: Local Authorities and Non-elected Agendes (both
co-authored), and Management in the Public Sector (co-edited).
G. W. Jones is Professor of Government at the London School of Eco
nomics and Political Science. The biographer of Herbert Morrison, and a
leading writer on the Prime Minister and the Cabinet system, as well as
on local government, he is the co-author of At the Centre of Whitehall:
Advising the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.
Christopher Lord is Jean Monnet Senior Lecturer in Politics at the
University of Leeds. He is the author of British Entry to the European Com
munity under the Heath Government of 1970-4 and Absent at the Creation:
Why Britain did not join in the Beginnings of the European Community,
1950-2.
viii
Contributors ix
Elizabeth Mellon is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Organiza
tional Behaviour and Director of the Senior Executive Programme and
the Global Consortium at the London Business School. She is the
author of journal articles and chapters on executive agencies.
Norma M. Riccucci is Professor of Public Administration and Policy at
the Rockefeller College of the University at Albany, State University of
New York. She has published extensively in the areas of public manage
ment and employment discrimination law, and is the author of Unsung
Heroes: Federal Execucrats Making a Difference.
David Richards is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Liverpool. He
is the author of The Civil Service Under the Conservatives 1979-97: White
hall's Political Poodles?, and has been researching central government
departments as part of the ESRC's Whitehall Programme.
Kevin Theakston is Professor of British Government at the University of
Leeds and author of Junior Ministers in British Government, The Labour Party
and Whitehall, The Civil Service Since 1945, and Leadership in Whitehall.
Gerald Wistow is Professor of Health and Social Care and Director of
the Nuffield Institute for Health, University of Leeds. An adviser to the
House of Commons Health Committee, his many publications include
Options for Long Term Care: Economic, Social and Ethical Choices; Sodal
Care Markets: Progress and Prospects; and Developing Quality in Personal
Social Services.