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Cutbacks and Public Bureaucracy: Consequences in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Christopher Hood ,
Paul Roberts  and
Marilyn Chilvers
Christopher Hood
Affiliation:
Government, London School of Economics
Paul Roberts
Affiliation:
Government, London School of Economics
Marilyn Chilvers
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
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Abstract

Drawing on data for 60 Australian Commonwealth government bureaucracies 1976–86, this paper explores what measurable consequences for bureaucratic structure can be associated with staffing and spending cutbacks. It looks at cutbacks both at government-wide and at individual-bureaucracylevel, on the basis of a casualty list intended to portray the different dimensions of relative bureaucratic ‘suffering’ more systematically than has hitherto been done in the cutback management literature. It then explores associations between measures of cutbacks and indicators of structural consequences, both at government-wide and departmental level, relating that to the debate as to whether ‘leaner means weaker’ in government cutbacks. The ‘leaner means weaker’ view of bureaucratic cutbacks is hard to sustain from these data.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 133 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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