The End of Whitehall: Death of a Paradigm?

In this new work, two leading political scientists reassess the shifting fortunes of the Whitehall model of governance - and find it wanting. The United Kingdom's Whitehall model commanded great respect in the postwar years. The United States had regard for the Whitehall model due to its relative efficiency in introducing and implementing modern social and industrial policies. In the cases of advanced Commonwealth countries - Canada, Australia and New Zealand - the high regard for the Whitehall model derived from the view that bureaucratic development depended upon replicating how things were done in Britain.

As we enter the twenty-first century, it has become clear that the model now has much less currency abroad as well as in the UK. The neo-liberal assaults of Thatcherism and the political drift of the Major years has meant that whereas, previously, "Whitehall" symbolized a synergy between the political leadership and the permanent bureaucracy, it now evokes images of executive disarray and the subservience of career civil servants to the (often faddish) will of their political masters.

This work bases its analysis of the decline of the Whitehall model since the mid-1970s on in-depth interviews with senior officials conducted over the past 17 years. This important book is essential reading for all politics students, scholars and observers of Whitehall.