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The Politics of Evaluation in Performance Management Regimes in English Local Government

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Evaluating Reforms of Local Public and Social Services in Europe

Part of the book series: Governance and Public Management ((GPM))

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Abstract

The lessons from English central government’s introduction of a series of performance regimes over the last thirty years are considered. The shifts between regimes having been driven more by wider, political factors than by evolving managerial ideas, such as a transition from NPM to Post-NPM. Four lessons are drawn. (1) The further such regimes are from detailed value-for-money assessments, the less “objective” and the more politicised the process and results. (2) The effectiveness of performance regimes depends on them having teeth and an effective enforcement agency. (3) That agency faces challenging questions of legitimacy which will be more acute the more polarised the party system and/or central–local relationship. (4) Central-driven performance regimes focus local governments on central government policy preferences, thus weakening local accountability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business and Management, University of London, London, UK

    Martin Laffin

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  1. Martin Laffin
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Correspondence to Martin Laffin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Administrative Science and Local Government, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Ivan Koprić

  2. Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Hellmut Wollmann

  3. GRALE (Groupement de Recherche sur l’Administration Locale en Europe), University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Gérard Marcou

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Laffin, M. (2018). The Politics of Evaluation in Performance Management Regimes in English Local Government. In: Koprić, I., Wollmann, H., Marcou, G. (eds) Evaluating Reforms of Local Public and Social Services in Europe. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61091-7_4

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