The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure, 1976-1993 by Colin Thain

The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure, 1976-1993

byColin Thain, Maurice Wright

Hardcover | November 1, 1995

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The Treasury is at the heart of British Government, responsible for deciding how much to spend and on what. Both the institution and the public expenditure process are the focus of `The Treasury and Whitehall', a tour de force of contemporary policy analysis. Based on research undertaken withthe cooperation of the Treasury and Whitehall departments, it shows how the key decisions of planning, allocating and controlling public expenditure are made. With unique access to treasury Expenditure Controllers and senior financial officials in the main spending departments, the book provides a detailed and authoritative account of the roles, relationships and inter-actions of the key players in Whitehall Expenditure Community as they confront eachother in annual rituals of the Expenditure 'Survey'. Thain and Wright explain how the rules of the expenditure game were re-drawn in the 1980s in the relentless search for cuts, greater economy and efficiency in the design and delivery of public services, and the creation of a more enterprisingadministrative culture. The authors explain how and why the Treasury was rarely able to impose its constitutional authority to stem the tide of rising public expenditure through the turbulent years of the Thatcher and Major Governments. They show that the Treasury is locked into a system of mutually constrainedpower-relationships with the Whitehall departments, and obliged to negotiate discretionary authority to control their spending.

About The Author

Colin Thain is a Professor of Comparative Public Policy and Administration at University of Ulster. Maurice Wright is a Professor of Government at the University of Manchester.

Details & Specs

Title:The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure, 1976-1993Format:HardcoverDimensions:592 pages, 9.21 × 6.14 × 1.46 inPublished:November 1, 1995Publisher:Oxford University Press

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:

ISBN - 10:0198277849

ISBN - 13:9780198277842

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Editorial Reviews

`This book is likely to be of considerable interest to anyone wishing to consider the relevance of developments in the UK as part of the comparative study of public administration ... This book is, in my opinion, the most detailed and authoritative study of the work of a department of centralgovernment ever published ... As far as I know, no other study of a central government department has been so well resourced. Moreover, it was undertaken by senior academics with well established reputations in this field ... The detail contained in the book is impressive ... Some of the generalfindings of the research are ... supportive of what many readers will have already suspected, and it is good to have authoritative confirmation.'Governance