From Hierarchy to Contract

This is the seventh in a distinguished Transaction series attempting to locate the social structure of modern England in an ample bureaucratic and administrative context. The reelection of a Conservative government for a fourth term in 1992 served as confirmation that the process of reshaping and downsizing the public sector, begun under Margaret Thatcher, would continue, albeit in different forms, with John Major.Harrison holds that the central idea for the 1990s is that the hierarchical bureaucracies that have typified the public sector until the present should be broken up and replaced by a public sector that employs contracts and competition to stimulate and achieve its decentralization objectives. This involves not simply inviting private firms to bid competitively for government contracts, a process begun in the last decade, but also breaking up existing public sector organizations.The notion behind contracting out basic public tasks entails dividing them into purchasing as well as providing arms, in short, to replace older hierarchical-bureaucratic relations with contractual ones. In some areas, of which the most significant is health, government has introduced competition between public sector providers as well as between public and private.These schemes are having a great impact across the full range of public sector organizations, central government departments, defense, health, training, and public utilities. In short, this volume details the "Thatcherite Revolution" rather than talks around it. The volume is must reading for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in public administration, political economy, and the sociology of advanced nations.