Cutback Management in Public Bureaucracies: Popular Theories and Observed Outcomes in Whitehall Book

Although bureaucratic cutbacks are in the air all over the world, it is the British government under Margaret Thatcher that is generally seen as having been particularly successful in cutback management. Between 1976 and 1985 there was a drop of nearly twenty percent in central government civil servants. This book explores how these cuts were carried out. Did civil servants and policy programs take the brunt or was the misery shared equally? Can the staff savings be attributed to increased efficiency or to a deterioration in services? Or is the whole thing an exercise in numbers manipulation? In addressing these issues, the authors test existing theories on management cutbacks against what happened in Britain and conclude that although the "Thatcherite" heat is likely to go out of civil service retrenchment, cutbacks will nonetheless continue.