BOOKS RECEIVED
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1994.tb00813.x |
| Date | 01 December 1994 |
| Published date | 01 December 1994 |
BOOKS
RECEIVED
619
intellectual toolkit for tackling the subject. For
a
textbook, that Seems something of a cop-
out.
Indeed, the reader
is
left puzzling about what ‘public sector management’ means, and
how,
if
at all, it differs from traditional public administration in subject matter
or
disciplinary
techniques. The development
of
NPM
is implicitly treated as a wholly political movement.
Yet there were some intellectual reasons for the development of
a
’management’ terminol-
ogy,
as a reaction against the traditional public law/political science view
of
public admin-
istration, with its overwhelming emphasis on public accountability issues. The claim was
that operational problems of service delivery and organizational design tended to get
’crowded out’ and needed more analytic
focus.
However, the authors do not discuss such
questions, and
in
fact ‘public sector management’
is
never defined. The book implies (but
does not say explicitly) that ‘public sector managers‘ are to be equated with public servants
(rather than politicians or those who organize public service provision in privatized
or
independent bodies), and the multiple meanings of the term ’public sector’ are not dis-
cussed. The book would seem to be best viewed as an intelligent application of traditional
public administration concerns to the
NPM
movement,
in
the
sense
that its main message for
readers is the ambiguities and dilemmas
of
public accountability bound up with the
rise
of
NPM.
Christopher Hood
London School
of
Economics
BOOKS
RECEIVED---
Pete Alcock,
Understanding Poverty.
Macmillan Press, 1993, 286pp, €10.99
(pb), f35.00 (hb).
ISBN:
0-333-56759-5
(pb), 0-333-5678-7 (hb).
Meryl Aldridge and Nicholas Hewitt
(eds.),
Controlling Broadcasting-Access
policy and practice in North America and
Europe.
Manchester University Press,
1994, 264pp f45.00.
ISBN:
0-7190-
4277-
1.
Douglas
E.
Ashford (ed.),
History and Con-
text
in Comparative Public Policy.
Uni-
versity
of
Pittsburgh Press,
1992,
365pp, $44.95 (pb).
ISBN:
0-8229-3694-
1.
Alan
R.
Ball,
Modern Politics and
Government
-
5th edn.: Revised and
Updated. Macmillan Press, 1993,
276pp,
€10.99
(pb), f35.00
(hb).
ISBN:
(hb).
0-333-59327-8 (pb), 0-333-59326-X
Michael Banton,
Discrimination.
Open
University Press, 1994, l03pp, €8.99
(pb), f30.00 (hb).
ISBN:
0-335-19191-6
(Pb).
Rodney Barker,
Politics, Peoples and
Gov-
ernment.
Macmillan Press, 1994,
Robert
J.
Bennett, Peter Wicks and
Andrew McCoshan,
Local
Empower-
ment and Business Senices.
UCL
Press
Limited, l994,349pp, €45.00.
ISBN:
1-
David Billis,
Organising Public and Volun-
tary Agencies.
Routledge, 1993,254~~.
(price unknown).
ISBN:
0-415-07439-8.
Richard
D.
Bingham and Rober Mier
(eds.),
Theories ofbcal Economic Devel-
opment.
Sage
Publications, 1993,
Anthony
H.
Birch,
The British System
of
Government
-
Ninth edition.
157pp, f8.99.
ISBN:
0-333-56345-X.
85728-144-6.
319pp,
€20.50.
ISBN:
0-8039-4868-9.
Public Administration
Vol.
72
Winter 1994 (619-623)
0
Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994,108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4
~JF,
UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge,
MA
02142. USA.
0
Basil
Blackwell
Ltd.
1994
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