Politicization of bureaucracy and changing public service bargains? Politics in the merit based system for the appointment of UK permanent secretaries

The overall relationship between senior public officials and politicians has been characterised as a Public Service Bargain (PSB) by Hood and Lodge (2006) in an influential recent book of that name, situating both the... [ view full abstract ]

The overall relationship between senior public officials and politicians has been characterised as a Public Service Bargain (PSB) by Hood and Lodge (2006) in an influential recent book of that name, situating both the conventional agency and trustee models within this broader framework. This paper builds on the PSB perspective by developing the different PSB models for the subject of the selection and replacement of senior administrative officials. The paper then applies the extended PSB models to an analysis of trends in selection and replacement of the administrative heads of central government organisations in the UK since the 1970s. The officials heading central government organisations are particularly important in Parliamentary systems, working closely with elected ministers and are influential on policy and outcomes in their own right. Although the UK is conventionally presented as being a merit based system, the practice has always been more complicated than this simple characterisation suggests, as the application of the PSB models reveals. Applying the extended PSB models provides new insights to the better understanding of the complex mechanism of appointing and replacing senior government officials, taking account the changing policy and managerial role of these officials, alternations in parties’ control of government and other important organisational changes including the agencification and contracting out of the provision of many central government services.