From “business‐like” to businesses: Agencification, corporatization, and civil service reform under the Thatcher administration

Abstract

This paper sets out an archival account of events leading up to the mass agencification of the British civil service by the Thatcher administration (1979–1990). This account holds lessons for contemporary understandings of the ideological roots and institutional structures of corporatization. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wanted to make government “efficient” through the adoption of “business‐like” practices. We show that this project was grounded in her Methodist upbringing and the emerging neoliberal economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher's efforts to instill a “market mentality” were met with stubborn resistance from a bloc of Ministers and senior civil servants. We find that Thatcher used agencification to break this resistance. Agencification removed Ministerial control over service delivery and saw “business‐like” managers placed in charge of the newly created agencies. This curtailed the workings of democracy. Like Thatcher's agencification, corporatization today imperils democracy in pursuit of “efficiency.”

Impacts of joint municipal agencification on the democratic governance of waste management

“…Our findings align with the conclusion of Cooper et al (2021) as we are able to argue that joint agencification effectively distances ALBs from local day-to-day policymaking through legal and cultural barriers, though keeping ALBs formally under the ownership control of municipalities. The results of our analyses further support this by arguing that there is a financial barrier, as joint ALBs are usually self-financing bodies with mainly symmetrical annual expenditures and revenues.…”

“…Our findings align with the conclusion of Cooper et al. (2021) as we are able to argue that joint agencification effectively distances ALBs from local day-to-day policymaking through legal and cultural barriers, though keeping ALBs formally under the ownership control of municipalities.…”

“…According to some previous empirical studies, the use of ALBs causes democratic deficit by side-lining political representatives. Cooper et al (2021) have argued that agencification profoundly impacts the functions of democracy by distancing the operations of public services from democratically elected politicians. Citroni et al (2015) in turn have pointed out that ALBs may facilitate the development of new local oligarchies, because their boards can be used as a platform to provide opportunities to represent such non-elected people as former councillors and businessmen.…”

“…According to some previous empirical studies, the use of ALBs causes democratic deficit by side-lining political representatives. Cooper et al. (2021) have argued that agencification profoundly impacts the functions of democracy by distancing the operations of public services from democratically elected politicians.…”

The new “corporate state”: The meshing of corporate and political power and the erosion of democratic accountability in the UK

“…Our concern with the destruction of the (imperfect) accountability mechanism embedded in the UK Westminster model of government builds on, and is related to, research examining the religious and economic beliefs of Margaret Thatcher (Cooper et al., 2021). Here, we build upon that work by including the increasing role and influence of management consultants in government.…”