The GOVERNANCE blog

Governance: An international journal of policy, administration and institutions

How the GFC changed ideas about ministerial control

Before Brexit there was the global financial crisis.  In the current issue of Governance, Katherine Dommett, Muiris MacCarthaigh, and Niamh Hardiman examine how the GFC changed ideas about the organization of bureaucracy in the United Kingdom and Ireland.  The conventional Westminster model stressed centralization and ministerial control.  The conventional model was weakened because of NPM-style reforms.  But the authors find that the GFC caused another swing of the pendulum.  Austerity drives resulted in “efforts to reassert central government oversight.”  But the authors find that the end result was not simply a restoration of pre-NPM practices.  Rather, it was a more nuanced process of “negotiated governance.”  Read the article. The article is part of a special issue on the future of the Westminster model.

Written by Governance

November 17, 2016 at 7:50 pm

Posted in Current issue

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