Cutback Management in Public Bureaucracies
Popular Theories and Observed Outcomes in Whitehall

Professors Dunsire and Hood provide a full-length historical study of bureaucratic cutbacks between 1976 and 1985.

Andrew Dunsire (Author), Christopher Hood (Author), Meg Huby (With)

9780521130752, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 February 2010

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.4 kg

Bureaucratic cutbacks are in the air all over the world. Many people appear sure that taxes are too high and that there are too many bureaucrats. The British government under Margaret Thatcher is generally seen as having been most successful in this regard, particularly on staff reduction. Between 1976 and 1985 there was a drop of nearly 20 per cent, from three-quarters of a million to fewer than 600,000 civil servants in the United Kingdom central government. How were these cutbacks implemented? Did certain civil servants and policy programmes take the brunt, or was the misery shared equally? Or is the entire thing a cosmetic exercise in numbers manipulation? In addressing these issues, Professor Dunsire and Professor Hood set out existing theories on management cutbacks and then test them against what happened in Britain, thus providing a full-length historical study of what actually happened in a decade of cutbacks in one country.

List of figures
List of tables
Preface
1. The cutback management problem
2. Who is vulnerable? the 64-hypothesis question
3. Winners and losers I: party and trend explanations
4. Winners and losers II: the bureaucrat factor
5. Winners and losers III: programmes and departments
6. The tactics of shedding staff
7. The dynamics of cutback management
8. The consequences of cutbacks
Appendices
List of references
Index.

Subject Areas: Civil service & public sector [KNV], Central government [JPQ]