‘Towards a new civic bureaucracy’ is now formally published in the UK and Europe. It is available as a hardback, e-publication or for kindle. There is a launch offer of 20% off the hardback and e-publication via the Policy Press website. The book is formally available in North America, Canada and South America in March. […]
Two of my blog posts exploring themes from the book have been published on external sites whose theme, appropriately enough, is transformation. The first is on the Transforming Places website, run by colleagues at Groningen University. The post considers why public bureaucracy struggles to accommodate place-based working and how it needs to embrace it as […]
The idea of New Public Management which was adopted almost worldwide from the 1990s – and which still casts its shadow today – saw the problem of public administration as one of efficiency and long-term affordability. If only services could be provided more cheaply and quicker, then all would be well. For the right, the […]
‘Towards a new civic bureaucracy: lessons from sustainable development for the crisis of governance’ will be published by Policy Press on 22 February 2022. There is a 20% discount on pre-orders through the Bristol University Press website. If you would like to host a webinar or similar on the publication, please contact me through the […]
Our current structuring of public bureaucracy (and arguably private sector bureaucracy too) is based in a 19th and early 20th century industrial model of how the world works. It divides the responsibilities and functions of governance into separate tasks, with their own goals and hierarchies. It seeks a managed, rational approach to delivery which is […]
In the late 2000s, I attended a public policy seminar in Edinburgh exploring issues of public sector delivery. I had come to present the Welsh experience of forging collective common purpose between the Welsh Government Housing Department, the social housing sector, tenant interests and local government. It became clear early on in the event that […]
Is knowledge-power dead in our new populist world? Are we perhaps moving to a world of ‘Ignorance-Power’? Or is there a scope for constructive dialogue? Knowledge-power is a term coined by Michel Foucault for the way in which public bureaucracy or professions can exercise power through the choice and exercise of disciplinary or technical knowledge. […]