The Private Government of Public Money: Community and Policy inside British Politics PDF
Preview The Private Government of Public Money: Community and Policy inside British Politics
The Private Government of Public Money Also by Hugh Hecla l\IoDERN SociAL PoLITICS IN BRITAIN AND SWEDEN CmrPARATIVE PoLITICS (with Karl Deutsch and jorge Dominguez) A GovERNMENT OF STRANGERS : ExECUTIVE PoLITICS IN WASHINGTON CoMPARATIVE PuBLIC PoLICY: THE PoLITICS OF SociAL CHOICE IN EuROPE AND AMERICA (with Arnold Heidenheimer and Carolyn Adams) Also by Aaron Wildavsky IMPLEMENTATION (with jeffrey L. Pressman) PLANNING AND BuDGETING IN PooR CouNTRIES (with Naomi Caiden) THE REVOLT AGAINST THE MAssEs AND OTHER EssAYS oN PoLITICS AND PuBLIC PoLicY THE PoLITICS oF TilE BuDGETARY PRocEss THE ART AND CRAFT oF PoLicY ANALYSIS BUDGETING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS (with Nelson Polsby) How TO LIMIT GovERNMENT SPENDING The Private Government of Public Money Community and Policy inside British Politics Second Edition Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky M MACMILLAN © Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky 1974, 1981 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1974 Reprinted 1975 Second edition 1981 Reprinted 1982, 1984 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-16607-7 (eBook) ISBN 978-0-333-26546-8 DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16607-7 For Beverley and Mary Contents Preface to the Second Edition lX Acknowledgements Iv iii List of Abbreviations Iix Introduction Ix i 2 Kinship and Culture: The Expenditure Community The Government Community 3 Mutual Confidence 14 Common Calculations 21 Climate 29 2 The Nuclear Family: The Treasury 37 An Introduction to Treasury Norms 40 The Good Treasury Man so On Making the Impossible Seem Effortless 61 Forming 'The Treasury View' 68 3 Village Life in Civil Service Society: Department- Treasury Bargaining 76 The Ambience of Collaboration 78 Strategies and Deals 88 Underspending, Transfers and Delegation 103 Role Conflict : The Principal Finance Officer 118 4 The Earthly City: Cabinets, Politicians and Other Worldly Men 129 The Spending Ministers : Fighting your Corner 134 The Minister's Briefing 138 The Minister as Combatant 142 Chief Secretaries : Unsung Makers of Major Choices 151 viii Contents Chancellor of the Exchequer : Victim or Victimizer of the Spending Ministers? 159 The Cabinet Carveup-Getting What There is to Give r6g The Treasury and Chancellor Prepare I7' Cabinet Committees I 8 I The Cabinet Meeting r88 5 PESC and Parliament: New Machines for Old Problems rg8 The Coming of PESC 202 The Politics of Projection, or Rashomon Revisited 216 Trial by Technique 217 Payoffs and Punishments 226 Incrementalism to the nth Power 238 Parliament : Who Cares? 242 6 There Must Be a Better Way: PAR and theNc w Rationalism 264 Government Reform, British Style 266 PAR Meets the Machine: Or, the Fine Art of Obtaining Pearls from Clams 276 PAR in Action : What Good Is It? 288 7 The Politics of Advice: CPRS and the Government Centre 304 The Grit in the Machine 309 Who is Your Client? Who is Your Advocate? 321 Access-The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Thinker 326 The Uneasy Conscience 333 8 Idylls of the Constitution 340 Chestnuts We Have Known 341 So What? Expenditure Decisions and Policy Choices 343 Thought and Action : The Philosopher's Stone 360 Government and Action : The Power Complex 373 A Last Word 381 Bibliography 390 Index 393 Preface to the Second Edition SEVEN YEARS have passed since we left London and sent the original manuscript for this book to the publisher. Food and petrol were selling at one-half their present price, and inflation was only one third as high as it would be two years later. The Heath Gov ernment had yet to face the miners' strike, a winter black-out, and loss of office. Labour politicians had not yet discovered the term 'social contract'. In the corridors of Whitehall, civil servants were quietly preparing for the next round of private bargaining on public spending. The years after 1972 made a mockery of Whitehall's spending plans. Instead of public expenditure being held back to make room for increased private investment and exports, exactly the opposite happened. The public sector borrowing requirement for 1974-5 had been planned to be £2.7 billion. It actually turned out to be £7.6 billion. Soon, decisions about public spending depended less on secret determinations inside Whitehall and more on requirements laid down publicly by the International Monetary Fund. Obviously more than enough has happened to justify taking a second look at the private government of public money. But not everything changes, and this is especially true of British govern ment. One would be hard pressed to find another country which could have endured the situation Britain has faced in the last seven years without generating a major upheaval in government institutions. Yet the British way of governing remains largely unchanged.1 Village life inside Whitehall, the Treasury culture 1. Since our first edition appeared, the publication of lurid accounts of Whitehall life has become a minor industry. In their basics (i.e., beneath the oversensationalised and self-serving stories) these accounts tend to support our discussion of 'village life'. See Richard Crossman, Diaries of a Cabinet Minister (Hamish Hamilton, 1975, 1976, 1977); Joe Haines, The Politics of Power x The Private Government of Public Money and Chancellor's problems, the strategies of spending ministers and intrigues of Cabinet decision-making - these remain part of the essence of British government. This continuity in the basics of budgetary politics was vividly illustrated by the arrival of the Thatcher government. The year I 979 was one of those times when the general climate called for spending restraint. Whitehall responded with another of its familiar 'cutting exercises'. Treasury officials used the usual village networks to massage departmental spending bids and canvass optional cuts. In this climate, Treasury ministers could fight effectively to obtain early Cabinet agreement on a total expenditure ceiling. As usual, prime ministerial backing was crucial to the Chancellor's success (an unwritten rule that caused some eyebrows to be raised when the Prime Minister failed to back the Chancellor on several items). Spending departments responded by deploying familiar strategies and deals. The Foreign Office for example used the classic 'sore thumb' technique (p. 9I) by offering to decimate the BBC's external service in the name of economy. (Trouble set in when an inexperienced Chief Secre tary accepted many of these politically hot items and had to be reversed in Cabinet.) Spending ministers still gained or lost in reputation and strength depending on how well they were seen to fight their comers. The Home Secretary, for example, was said to have done well in resisting cuts; alas, the Secretary of Defence was cut more than expected and his star was viewed as being on the decline. At the end of the day, the quickest and easiest cuts remained those achieved by delaying or reducing capital spending, not cutting 'chaps' in the civil service (p. 358) or touching the largest spending programme, social security. And as usual in such exercises, spending 'cuts' basically amounted to a decelera tion in future spending increases. Thus the £4 billion in total cuts agreed by the Conservative Cabinet during the summer of I 979 really meant that the budget in the next year would cost more pounds but after adjustment for inflation would be about the same size as it was in I 978-9. In terms of cold cash, capital spending by the government was planned to rise in I979-8o (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977); Marcia Williams, Inside No. 10 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972).
The list of books you might like
