This article analyses three strands of local government modernization. The first takes an overview of the development of 'modernization' and 'improvement' of local government in the UK under the Labour government since 1997 and the overall programme of reform. We discuss both the shifts and the...

<title>Abstract</title> This article explores a special class of innovations - innovations in governance -- and develops an analytical schema for characterizing and evaluating them. To date, the innovation literature has focused primarily on the private rather than the public sector, and on innovations which...

This article examines the English Beacon Council Scheme, established by central government to reward excellence in service delivery and to disseminate good practice across local government. Using data from a national survey (<italic>N</italic> = 314) and seventy-two interviews from twelve case studies, this...

The UK government's agenda for the 'modernization and improvement' of public services is based on legislative change, programmes of experimentation and the sharing of better practice. But how does the sharing of better practice take place? The precise processes for the transfer of knowledge and...