Inspection is an important and growing element of the regulation of public services. We develop a theoretical framework for the evaluation of inspection and illustrate the practical relevance of this framework with reference to the new Best Value inspectorate for UK local government. The...

We present the first empirical assessment of the U.K. Labour governments program of public management reform. This reform program is based on rational planning, devolution and delegation, flexibility and incentives, and enhanced choice. Measures of these variables are tested against external and...

This paper tests the median voter hypothesis that variations in policies across political systems are caused by variations in median voter preferences. The context of the empirical analysis is the tax policies of three groups of sub-national governments in England in three time periods. The...

<title>Abstract</title> We review ninety-two studies of public service performance, and analyse in detail those that model the impact of management on both administrative and survey measures of performance. Our review indicates that administrative data typically reflect the performance judgements of government...

<title>Abstract</title> In this article we argue that public management scholars share a purpose that goes beyond scientific understanding of managerial and organizational behaviour and outcomes. A widespread, if seldom explicitly articulated, assumption in the field is that public management research can...