Introduction
This book’s purpose is to analyse the most significant changes that have taken place in the Whitehall model since the Conservative-led Government’s formation in 2010.1 The developments of recent years originate in previous initiatives, particularly the novel ideas for reforming the state initiated by the Thatcher and Blair administrations. The core argument is the traditional Whitehall paradigm is being replaced by the ‘New Political Governance’ (NPG), an alternative model centred on political campaigning, ministerial advisers, personalised appointments, and a ‘promiscuously partisan’ governing machinery (Aucoin 2012). The civil service has gone beyond a ‘tipping-point’ or ‘critical juncture’. The nature of the state bureaucracy in Britain is being altered fundamentally.2
New Political Governance and the End of Whitehall?
The concept of NPG is derived from the work of the Canadian public administration scholar, Peter C. Aucoin . He foresaw a paradigmatic shift in governance and public management in the Anglophone states.3 Their bureaucracies are experiencing growing conflict and discord: in this environment, ‘the propensity for perceptions of politicisation to grow becomes almost unavoidable’ (Grube 2015: 318). On the one hand, civil servants feel vulnerable to attack. Their influence and privileges are diminished by politicians unperturbed when officials become the target of vilification. The former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, complained of, ‘an unprecedented spate of recrimination against named civil servants, made worse by the fact that much of it has been through unattributable, backstairs briefings’.4
At the same time, Ministers are increasingly frustrated at the incompetence and ‘accountability deficit’ that allegedly characterises civil service performance. After merely a year as Prime Minister, David Cameron was, ‘fighting something approaching an attritional civil war with what his advisers call ‘the machine’.5 The appetite for reform of the Whitehall machinery on the part of the political class grew stronger.
It was not always this way. In previous generations, British government was perceived to be both democratic and competent, uniquely combining qualities of ‘efficiency’ with ‘effectiveness’, the envy of politicians everywhere (King and Crewe 2013: xi). The first post-war Prime Minister, Clement Attlee (1956: 124), boasted the British civil service was, ‘unequalled in all the world’. Yet over the last thirty years, the reputation of Britain’s public administration has become increasingly tarnished (King and Crewe 2013: xi).
This introductory chapter outlines the book’s conceptual framework, clarifies the intellectual terrain, and then maps the period in which the traditional civil service model has allegedly been eclipsed. The chapter begins by considering the institutional roots of the Whitehall ‘paradigm’. The chapter then turns to the recent history of Whitehall reform through to the Conservative governments of David Cameron and Theresa May. Finally, the chapter considers the remorseless rise of NPG as the autonomy and independence of Whitehall’s bureaucrats has been assailed.
The argument throughout is the Whitehall model is being radically reshaped. The state bureaucracy in Britain is subject to ‘permanent revolution’. Two key claims animate The End of Whitehall. The first is the Whitehall ‘paradigm’ is being eroded to the point where it is scarcely recognisable. Secondly, the destruction of the British tradition of public administration is detrimental. In Weber’s terms, ‘politics’ is being allowed to encroach upon and weaken the values of ‘administration’. Increasingly, partisanship prevails over the pursuit of the public interest. The ‘deliberative space’ for policy-making has been denuded at the expense of good government and the public service ethos.
The heyday of the Whitehall model in the decades after the Second World War is perceived to have been a ‘golden era’ for British government. In many ways, it was far from ‘golden’. Professional bureaucrats saw citizens as passive subjects of the Crown. The gentleman in Whitehall apparently ‘knew best’. Conceiving policy change as pulling the levers of the centralised state stymied the progress of economic and social reform. Yet the challenge to the Whitehall paradigm over the last thirty years scarcely gives grounds for confidence. Fundamental constitutional principles have been breached. The climate of ‘hyper-innovation’ led to waves of confusing managerial reforms. As a consequence, the UK state is more exposed than ever to the danger of egregious ‘policy blunders’ .
The Whitehall Model
The Whitehall ‘paradigm’ is a structure of governance that emphasises the virtues of non-partisanship, neutrality, parliamentary accountability, bureaucratic permanence, and most importantly, mutual trust between politicians and civil servants (Page 2010). The ‘model’ was elaborated by Colin Campbell and Graham Wilson in their seminal book, The End of Whitehall: Death of a Paradigm? (1995). The Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of 1854 and the Haldane report published in the aftermath of the First World War decreed that Ministers and officials were mutually dependent. Politicians relied on civil servants to provide objective advice and uphold constitutional propriety; officials depended on Ministers to safeguard anonymity and protect the privileges of bureaucrats, maintaining the ‘monopoly’ of the civil service over policy advice. According to the Armstrong Memorandum, ‘The Civil Service as such has no constitutional personality or responsibility separate from the duly constituted government of the day’.6
The Whitehall model is a rational ‘Weberian’ bureaucracy. Politicians and administrators rely on one another but are ‘distinctly separated’, performing contrasting roles inside government institutions; officials are, ‘bound by [their] obedience to the power-holder’, while politicians are confident civil servants will protect them in the struggle for power (Weber 2015: 156; Savoie 2008). As Campbell and Wilson (1995: 9) attest, ‘To understand British executive politics, one needs to understand the world of the politician, the world of the bureaucrat , and the interaction between the two’.
In Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy , civil servants carry out the instructions of Ministers but as administrators—a separate breed from politicians: ‘The honour of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of superior authorities, exactly as if the orders agreed with his own conviction’ (Weber 2014: 19). The Whitehall administrative tradition is thus characterised by a ‘loyalty paradox’. Officials loyally serve the government of the day, but not the partisan interests of the governing party (O’Malley 2017: 404). The Whitehall model is part of the European ‘Rechstaat’ tradition of a non-political civil service faithfully serving Ministers (Guy-Peters et al. 2005: 1292). According to Lord Vanisttart, former Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister (cited in Hennessy 1989: 483): ‘The soul of our service is the loyalty with which we execute ordained error’.
The mutually respectful relationship between politicians and civil servants was the ‘governing marria...