THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BRITISH CENTRAL STATE, PART I: FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS

Abstract

In the bureau‐shaping model of bureaucracy rationally self‐interested officials are primarily concerned to maximize their agencies' core budgets, equivalent to their running costs. They are much less interested in those parts of their overall budget which are allocated as transfer payments to the private sector or passed on to other public sector bodies. The varying importance of core budgets and other spending yields a typology of public sector organizations into delivery, transfer, contracts, regulatory and control agencies. In addition, the bureau‐shaping model is developed in this article to provide an exhaustive classification of government agencies, and to refine the analysis of spending over and above core budgets. The methodological issues involved in applying this typology empirically to the central state apparatus in Britain are explored. Previous attempts at ‘bureaumetrics’ have failed to mesh with ‘ordinary knowledge’ views of Whitehall. By contrast, the bureau‐shaping model provides a framework which is theoretically sophisticated, easily operationalizable, and intuitively understandable. The scale of prospective hiving off from the UK civil service organization over the next decade indicates the value of adopting a framework which can respond methodologically to such changes, and offers a powerful theoretical account of their dynamic. Part II of the paper [next issue] presents the empirical data demonstrating that the bureau‐shaping model is highly effective in systematizing and extending our knowledge of how Whitehall and its attached agencies are structured.

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