The Changing World of Top Officials - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0335203019 ISBN 13: 9780335203017

Casa editrice: Open University Press, 2001

Riassunto

This book explores the roles and workings of the heads of government departments in six nations: departmental secretaries in Australia, departmentschefs in Denmark, directeurs d'administration in France, secretaris-generaal in the Netherlands, chief executives in New Zealand, and permanent secretaries in the UK. It also seeks to explore their 'infinite variety' by showing how inherited government traditions shape the response to reform.

It examines how such reforms as privatization and contracting out have affected who does these jobs and how they do them. It asks whether the demands of the new public management have made departmental heads more accountable, more public and more vulnerable. For each of the six countries the authors give details of departmental secretaries' backgrounds, their career paths, their conditions of employment, their impacts, and their changing positions. Central to each chapter are short biographies or portraits of top officials with extensive quotations from interviews in which they talk about how they see their worlds and how, for instance, they now focus more on managing their departments and less on policy-making. The experience of senior public servants is brought vividly to life.

This book is the first comprehensive, comparative portrait of top government officials, and is an important resource for students and scholars of politics, public policy and public management, and makes fascinating reading for all senior civil servants themselves.

Su questo libro

L'autore

Rod Rhodes is Professor of Politics (Research) at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK.
Pat Weller is Professor of Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Centre for Australian Public Sector Management at Griffith University.

Contenuti

Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction
'enter centre stage'
France
'dual structure, shared dilemma'
Netherlands
'fragmenting pillars, fading colours'
Denmark
'the Island culture'
United Kingdom
'everybody but us'
Australia
'mandarins or lemons?'
New Zealand
'cautionary tale or shining example?'
Conclusions
'Antipodean exceptionalism, European traditionalism'
References
Index
Index.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Open University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0335203019
• ISBN 13: 9780335203017
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 288
• Redattore: Rhodes R.A.W.
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile