Public Services Under New Labour: Back to Bureaucracy?

Abstract

The public service policies of the present Labour Government are assessed against a conceptual model of bureaucracy. In particular, is there evidence of a shift away from the market reforms of the Conservatives, and a move towards bureaucratic methods of resource allocation and service delivery? It is concluded that there is a small, but significant, shift back to bureaucracy: if Conservative policies consisted of ‘marketization at the margins’, then Labour reforms can be described as ‘bureaucratization at the boundaries’. The potential consequences of this change in emphasis are considered.