Rebuilding Strategic Capacity? Multi-Level Governance, Leadership and Public Service Agreements in Britain

摘要: The spread of new-public management inspired initiatives across advanced liberal democracies in the 1980s and 1990s were driven by a desire to increase economic efficiency state systems - get ‘more bang for each buck’ use Osborne Gaebler’s well known phrase (Osborne/ Gaebler 1992). disaggregation or deconstruction large multi-purpose bureaucratic structures into quasi-autonomous single purpose bodies combined with where possible introduction market principles would, so theory suggested, lead greater specialisation, customer focus transparency. As work OECD (OECD 2002) has demonstrated detail, this farreaching wave administrative reform led rapid ‘unbundling’ (PoUitt/ Talbot 2003) ‘unravelling’ (Hooghe/ Marks 2003, p. 233–243) concomitant growth what become as ‘distributed’ ‘delegated’ public governance (Flinders 2004a, 2004b; Flinders/ Thiel/ Greve 1999) location key responsibilities beyond direct control elected politicians their officials. creation dense administratively complex tier delegated within topography most created both political leadership challenges. From perspective challenge lies designing implementing new mechanisms democratic accountability through which ‘fugitive power’ (Morison 1998) can be scrutinised ‘blame games’ between organisational leaders avoided (Hood 2002; see also Flinders 2004c).