Teaching Comparative

The British Civil Service

A long time ago, The Economist published an article about the British civil service that I assigned many times over several years. The article was a very welcome addition to what my textbooks had to say about the vaunted British civil service. About all I remember about it now was that it included a chart showing how many of civil servants were Oxbridge graduates.

The Economist may have done it again. The issue of January 13, 2007 includes the article excerpted here.

The article suggests that the problems of dealing with law enforcement and state schools (among other things) are problems with the civil service. The article outlines three causes, one seemingly originating from Whitehall (the headquarters of big ministries) and academics and another coming from politicians. The third cause comes from The Economist itself.

There's enough meat in the article so students could do an initial evaluation of the arguments. You could then assign them the task of finding more information with which to take a position on the validity of the explanations.


The civil service: From Rolls-Royce to old banger

"BRITAIN'S civil service has often been lampooned, but... people are criticising civil servants for their incompetence rather than laughing at their cunning...

"These [laughs]... have caused a fit of introspection among both politicians and senior civil servants. If so many good intentions... have failed so dismally, maybe the cause lies within government itself. But who is to blame?...

"One camp puts the politicians in the dock. The charge: reckless driving of a civil service once renowned as a sleekly purring Rolls-Royce. Under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, ruling parties with big majorities have failed to respect the old convention that allowed civil servants to speak truth to ministers without fear or favour. As Whitehall has become meekly compliant with ministerial whims, 'Yes, minister' has ceased to mean 'No, minister', and poorly designed and executed policies have proliferated...

"In contrast, another camp blames Sir Humphrey [permanent secretary at the top of the Department of Administrative Affairs]. The civil service may once have been the fabled Roller but it has now become an old banger. According to a recent report from... Labour's favourite think-tank, 'Whitehall is poor at reflecting on its purpose, strategic thinking, dealing with inadequate performance, managing change effectively, learning from mistakes or working across departments.'... the authors, argue that these inadequacies are rooted in the hallowed but now moth-eaten doctrine of ministerial responsibility. Under this convention, ministers are accountable to Parliament and civil servants to ministers. This allows each to hide behind the other...

"Neither camp is necessarily right... For example... reform [could] draw a divide between policy, for which ministers would carry the can, and delivery, for which a more managerial cadre of civil servants would be accountable...

"But Christopher Hood, professor of government at Oxford University, says that it would be hard to draw such a line... and that the deal would be likely to break down in mutual recrimination... [I]t would be difficult to separate out strategic objectives and implementation, pointing out that the 'how' can often be quite political...

"Arguably the most important change the civil service needs to make is to curb its itch to centralise. The top-down control of British public services is exceptional... Britain may have lost an empire overseas, but politicians at Westminster and civil servants in Whitehall have rebuilt one at home and they will not let go."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:30 PM