Quangos in Britain: Government and the Networks of Public Policy-Making

258 Pages·1982·23.753 MB·English

by  Anthony Barker (eds.)

QUANGOS IN BRITAIN
Also from Macmillan
Edited by B. L. R. Smith and D. C. Hague
THE DILEMMA OF ACCOUNTABILITY IN MODERN
GOVERNMENT
Edited by B. L. R. Smith
THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY
The Public Use of the Private Sector
Edited by D. C. Hague, W. J. M. Mackenzie and A. Barker
PUBLIC POLICY AND PRIVATE INTERESTS
The Institutions of Compromise
QUANGOS IN BRITAIN
Government and the Networks
of Public Policy-Making
Edited by
Anthony Barker
Department of Government,
University of Essex
© Anthony Barker 1982
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1s t edition 1982
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1982 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Lorulon and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-05615-6 ISBN 978-1-349-05613-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05613-2
Contents
List of Tables and Figures vii
Preface ix
Notes on the Contributors xii
PART ONE: A NETWORK OF ORGANISATIONS
I. Governmental bodies and the networks of mutual
accountability
Anthony Barker, University of Essex 3
2. A triangular affair: quangos, Ministers, and MPs
Richard Wilding, Civil Service Department 34
3. Governmental bodies and government growth
Christopher Hood, University of Glasgow 44
4. Quasi-government in Scotland: Scottish fonns
within a British setting
Brian W. Hogwood, Centre for the Study of Public Policy,
University of Strathclyde 69
PART TWO: CASES AND CONTEXTS
5. The quasi-government of Scottish education
Charles D. Raab, University of Edinburgh 91
6. The DHSS-Rowntree Memorial Trust Family Fund;
an innovation in quasi-government
Jonathan Bradshaw, University of York 108
7. The Housing Corporation and 'voluntary housing'
Norman Lewis and Ian Harden, University of Sheffield 121
v
vi Contents
8. Quasi-government for consumers
Leonard Tivey, University of Birmingham 137
9. Quasi-official bodies in local government
Paul F. Cousins, Kingston Polytechnic 152
PART THREE: THEMES AND ANALYSIS
10. Patronage and quasi-government: some proposals
for reform
Anne Davies, Outer Circle Policy Unit 167
11. Quasi-governmental sector professionalism: some impli
cations for public policy-making in Britain
Patrick Dunleavy,
London School of Economics and Political Science 181
12. Accountability, control, and complexity:
moving beyond ministerial responsibility
Nevil Johnson, NuffieLd CoLLege. Oxford 206
APPENDIX: Quango - a word and a campaign
Anthony Barker 219
References 232
Index of organisations 242
General index 246
List of Tables and Figures
TABLES
3.1 Total civil service staff excluding Post Office 1951-78 45
3.2 Governmental organisations referred to in Estimates
1964-5 and 1977-8 for three policy areas 49
3.3 Governmental bodies disappearing from the
Estimates between 1964-5 and 1977-8 50
4.1 Sponsoring departments and geographical coverage of
central Government-sponsored bodies in Scotland 73
4.2 Number of each type of governmental body in Scotland 75
4.3 Joint local authority bodies in Scotland 76
4.4 Sources of variation among governmental bodies 82
9.1 Examples of fifty-six unofficial and quasi-official
bodies in Bromley London Borough 1974-8 156
9.2 Examples of twenty-seven exactly similar bodies connected
to the GLC and relevant within Bromley LB 1974-8 157
9.3 Classification and examples of the bodies connected
to Bromley LB and the GLC 158
FIGURES
Il.l A typology of government-business relations 190
11.2 The policy system for British civil nuclear power 192
11.3 A typology <i relations between state agencies,
professions, and private corporations 194
II.4a Control, consultation, and interest representation
between Central Authority and decentralised agencies in a
non-professionalised policy system 199
11.4b Ideological influence flows between Central Authority
and decentralised agencies in a professionaiised system 200
vii
Preface
The Public Administration Committee is a national academic association of
nearly all British universities and polytechnics teaching political science and
government studies, which promotes this branch of the discipline and aims
to have close links with practitioners in central and local government - and
in the quasi-governmental organisations or 'quangos' with which this
particular book is concerned. The PAC's annual conference of 1979 was on
the theme 'The World of Quasi-Government' and, as its academic convenor
for that year, I must first thank the Committee for having accepted this
proposed theme and the many colleagues who made a large and successful
gathering out of its discussion.
The majority of this book's chapters were delivered as conference papers
on that occasion in September 1979 and I am grateful to those authors for
having been willing to reduce and adapt their texts. I am also most grateful to
the other authors who agreed, one or two at short notice, to contribute
additional chapters to give the book a wider range.
Apart from a valuable document from the independent Outer Circle Policy
Unit (What's Wrong With Quangos?) of 1979, whose author, Anne Davies,
contributes one of the chapters below, this book is the first serious study of
the 'quasi-government' theme in Britain of more than article-length since the
three volumes of research and analysis arising from the Carnegie Corpora
tion's Anglo-American Project on Accountability, the most recent of which
appeared in 1975 (all three were also from Macmillan). Propagandist
pamphlets have not been lacking, however, and they helped to launch a
culling expedition against 'quangos' during 1979-80. Like the well-known
'Small Earthquake in Peru' (conceived in a contest to devise the most boring
possible headline for The Times), it left 'not many dead'. The Public
Administration Committee's conference on quasi-government was intended
to increase both academic and political awareness of the nature and problems
of the modern tendency to spread governmental authority and activity across
society in ways other than simple additions to either the Statute Book, or the
formal responsibilities of Ministers, or the rise of the civil service. Of
course, the number of pages of legislation and the formal responsibilities of
Ministers have indeed increased greatly since the War (although the civil
ix
x Preface
service is smaller). But a great deal of public policy is now handled by, or
through, or in some relationship to, organisations which are not formally
part of either central or local government and which may not even take their
existence or practical remit from an Act.
These bodies - hundreds of them - have come to be known to the press
and broadcasters as 'quangos', a near-acronym which I derived from the
rather roundabout (and originally American) technical term 'quasi-non
governmental organisation'. In the dangerously catchy form of 'quango',
this general idea of often new bodies which stand somewhere between
government and private society has become much more widely known in the
last few years. It is a messy as well as a complicated subject, but the political
principles involved are of great importance. Are these many bodies - some
next door to government itself and others almost entirely private or
independent - a necessary or even laudable part of the more elaborate links
between government and society which a modern, highly developed nation
requires? Or are right-wing fears of creeping socialistic state control (or
left-wing fears of the coming invincible marriage of monopoly corporations
to the so-called liberal state) justified, so that 'quasi-government' ought to be
abolished or much reduced and our political system sharply restored to the
narrow but traditional basis of ministerial responsibility to Parliament, with
nearly all government work done by those Ministers' own civil servants?
Could Ministers and Parliament accept such an additional burden, and is
their record of democratic accountability worthy of such implied admira
tion? And if we keep 'quasi-government', how should it be run and
controlled?
Some discussion of these profound issues will be found in this book,
associated with a wide range of analysis and research reporting. The
Government's review of some classes of 'quangos' (Report on Non
Departmental Public Bodies (Cmnd. 7797) prepared by Sir Leo Pliatzky)
was published during the final editing of this book, thus allowing its text to
be amended where bodies mentioned by authors were confirmed or
announced in this White Paper as being due for execution or alteration.
Amendment to certain numbers in some of the tables following Pliatzky
was not possible, but no offence to true knowledge is committed: every list
of 'quangos' is as long as a piece of string because of the difficulties of
definition and classification. It is styles, methods, relationships, and
accountability which matter - not allegedly precise or complete numbers of
specimens.
Charles Raab wishes to acknowledge the help of his colleague, Andrew
McPherson, on an earlier draft of his chapter about Scottish education and
the support of the Moray Fund of the University of Edinburgh while