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Research On The Reform Of Public Services In Contemporary Britain

Posted on:2008-12-30Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X Q CaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360212494383Subject:International politics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Since the end of 1970s, Britain has been developing a persistent and great public service reform which made an active research on the transformation of government function, relation reconstruction between government and market, between government and society, and how to deal with the relation between social equity and efficiency. Generally speaking, the reform in Britain acquired an obvious effect and produced a good demonstration impact. Its reform idea and correlative means are canonized by many countries and then formed a wave of public service reform to spread to Europe continent, America and even developing countries in Asia and Africa, which also greatly advanced system innovation and ability advance in every country's governance. At present, our country is at a key period to deepen the reform and also faces a series of deep-seated problems of system reform, the transformation of government function and the transition of governance system. How to use the international successful experience for reference, especially to systemically grasp and analyze the practice in Britain in which the public service reform began, to use and accept its experience and lecture with a definite object, to start with the angle of view of public service reform to research and discuss a new governance pattern which adapts to China's situation, developing needs at present and global developing wave has an important effect to transform government function, advance government's management system reform and design a public-service government. And this is the aim of this thesis.The public service reform in Britain is an integration of continuity and transformation, a process of systematic reform, a result of interlaced influence of various of politics, economy, society, culture factors, a result of various of powers to play asymmetric information game. And the process and effect themselves of the reform produces deep influence to various of factors and powers on the other hand. In order to grasp and analyze the process exactly, the thesis first uses Giddens' chance-contrail method of researching society transition to look for the chance of system transition from the analysis of policy criterion and typical events in Britain's public service reform in recent 20 years, explores how a series of "chances" break or rebuild system combination and sketches the historical skeleton of evolvement on this basis, called "contrail". On the basis of describing "contrail", the thesis analyzes the system circumstance, system arrangement contained in "snippet" or "chance" in typical events according to the analysis frame of "system transition", explores many factors in the process of governance, for example, the power dependence among the collectivity actors, the function and effect of the cooperation among many sectors, of the partition of responsibility and power between public sectors and private sectors, of government organization frame and management manner, of social self-governing network and its function, analyzes in the process of public service reform in Britain, what strategy behavior each actor and its group adppt to participate in the creation of every reform "chance" and then cause the occurring of system transition once and again. According to this thought, the thesis extends a research from following four aspects.First, the thesis analyzes the "chance" of public service system transition in Britain, clarifies the forming process and essential characteristics of the traditional pattern of public service in Britain, reveals the dilemma which the traditional pattern of public service is confronted with and researches the realistic causations by reviewing the background of politics, economy and society at 1970s in Britain. These compose chapter one of the thesis.Second, the thesis reveals the "chance" of system transition in Britain's public service reform. Faced with the dilemma of traditional public service pattern, Thatcher government broke the common-cognition politics, carried out a reform to Britain's public service in the essential tropism of privatization guided by neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. The reform had success and as well as failure, but changed the developing direction of public service greatly. The subsequent Major government followed the essential reforming propositions of Thatcher government and made new development on competition system and quality advance of public service. Then, instructed by the third way thought, the Labor government tried to find a new balanceable development way in the aspects of market function and government responsibility, equity and efficiency, and made a great reform to social policy mainly adopting the way to drive the cooperation between public sectors and private sectors, between government ,society and citizens. This reforming contrail composes the content of chapter two and chapter three of the thesis. Third, Britain's public service reform has been following a main thread, that is, the improvement of public service controlling system which has provided a good angle of view to understand and grasp the reform. In the process of reforming, the value tropism, function orientation, means and policy of the government controlling all had a series of transition or innovation. The perpetual improved system and mechanism of public service controlling have become an important ensure of the success of Britain's public service reform. Chapter four will analyze the controlling system and mechanism in Britain's public service.Last, according to the analyzing frame of system transition theory, the thesis analyzes the system arrangement and governance process of Britain's public service, analyzes the influencing factors and actors by anatomizing typical reform. Starting with politics, economical society and culture mainly, the thesis reveals the interacting relations between public service reform and party, and inter-government relation, and labor union, and international organizations, and economy policy, and social structure, and different cultures, further deepens the understanding of the process of Britain's public service reform and corresponding governance innovation. They together compose the content of chapter five, chapter six and chapter seven.On the basis of interrelated study, the thesis makes some following innovation and breakthrough: first, the thesis uses the supply dilemma of Britain's public service as the origin to study, uses the whole process of system transition as the studying object, and teases the impetus, process, influencing factors and practical effect of Britain's public service, so it is a relatively systematic study. Second, there are some differences in the studying angle of view. The author thinks that, any system arrangement and policy transition is implemented by material actors in some social circumstance and has complicated mutual relations with the circumstance in which it functions. So, the thesis employs the system analysis frame, uses interest analysis as stress, analyzes Britain's public service reform from the aspects of politics, social economy, culture and so on, thereby goes deep into the study of problem. Third, in the analyzing process, the thesis especially pays attention to researching into the forming of policy space in the supply system transition from the particularity and property of the public service itself. Forth, the thesis thinks that, Britain's reform approximately goes through a process of changing public to private-breaking monopoly and promoting competition-advocating cooperation, on this basis, the established pattern of advancing efficiency by market mechanism, ensuring equity by government responsibility, mobilizing multiple bodies to participate together and govern cooperatively should become the essential way of public service reform way.
Keywords/Search Tags:Britain, public service, reform
PDF Full Text Request
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