Reforming state bureaucracies: Accountants and the politics of managerialism in Britain, Canada and France

This study seeks to understand why managerialist ideas influence bureaucratic reform policy in some places and times, but not in others. Managerialism broadly describes the process through which bureaucracies are reformed by incorporating into their management practices ideas and techniques imported from business administration. In transposing these ideas and techniques to the public sector, civil servants in Britain, Canada and France were often encouraged in the late 1980s to get help from management consultants.;The thesis' main finding is that the influence of managerialism depends on: (i) the organizational development of management consultancy and (ii) whether the state's prior experiences with bureaucratic reform left legacies that facilitated or impeded the access of consultants to decision-making centres. Management consulting is more developed in Britain and Canada than in France. In these two countries, consultancy evolved as the extension of the institutional relationship that accountants had established with their audit clients. Because of historical patterns of industrial development, the French accounting profession is much less important than in Britain and Canada, and French law restricts accountants from performing consulting work for their audit clients.;The link between consulting and accountancy emerged as a key factor in explaining variations in the reception given by states to managerialist ideas. In Britain and Canada, this link enhanced the reputation and prestige of management consulting and facilitated the participation of consultants in the process of bureaucratic reform. British and Canadian consultants have provided policy advice on management issues since at least the 1960s and as a result, managerialist ideas made more rapid inroads in Britain and Canada than in France.;The study also shows that the fate of managerialism is not only determined by the strength or weaknesses of the consulting industry. The British and Canadian cases indicate that although they both have a well developed management consulting industry, managerialist ideas have not been equally influential. They have been more influential in Britain than in Canada because of differences in policy legacies and in the access of consultants to decision-making centres. In Britain, private sector consultants were coopted into bodies located in the executive machinery, first in the Civil Service Department and following its abolition, in the Efficiency and Policy Units attached to the Prime Minister's Office. In these units, consultants had direct access to the inner circles of policy-making where their ideas received strong political support from the Thatcher government. In Canada, consultants have had since the 1970s their primary institutional link with the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). Their access to decision-making centres and their influence on policy have been more limited than in Britain because the OAG is a body attached to the legislature and insulated from government control.;As for the French case, the weakness of the management consulting industry and the legacy of etatism left by postwar reforms kept managerialist ideas off the policy agenda until the mid-1980s. In France, managerialist ideas started to enter into the formulation of policy on the "shoulders" of consultants, first in local governments, and then in the central state at the same time that the consulting industry became stronger because of government initiatives designed to stimulate its development. However, managerialist ideas did not take hold in the central administration as much as they did in local governments. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).