This work provides an analysis of the creation of new state forms in the remaking of social welfare. The authors examine critically the political forces that enabled "more and better management" to be presented as a solution to the problems of the welfare state; analyze the micro-politics of change within public services; present an incisive and dynamic account of the restructuring of the British welfare state by drawing links between politics, policies and organizational power; address the tensions and contradiction in the managerial state; and trace the emergence of new dilemmas in the provision of public services. They show that these dilemmas are connected to the recurring problems of defining "the public" that receives these services. In particular, they question whether the reinvention of the public as either a nation or consumers or a nation of communities can effectively address the impications of social diversity.
Author/Editor Description: Janet Newman is Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham. She is co-author of 'The Managerial State' (with J Clarke, SAGE 97), author of 'Shaping Organisational Cultures in Local Government' (96), and co-editor of 'Gender, Culture and Organisational Change (with C Itzin, eds, 95).
From the Cradle to the Grave The Crises of the post-War Welfare Settlements Towards the Managerial State? A Change for the Better? The Tyranny of Transformation The Making of Management Regimes of Power Incentives, Institutions and Identities Shaping the Managerial State Capturing the Customer The Politics of Representation Reinventing the Public An Unstable State?
`The Managerial State can be situated as part of a critical literature on public sector managerialism to which it makes a valuable contribution...Clarke and Newman have produced a thoughtful and stimulating book. Their focus is on the British experience and this is unfashionable when this is a sine qua non to produce comparative work in social policy. However, they produce the robust justification of this approach; that as different countries have pursued different attempted solutions to economic recession and crisis and these in turn depend upon a specific combinations of national politics and circumstances then a national focus is fully justified. In the view of this reviewer such an emphasis on Britain serves to enhance rather than diminish the value of the book.' Journal of Social Policy `A significant contribution to the growing body of work which charts the impact of management theory on welfare organizations in the United Kingdom' - International Social Work
