Controlling Modern Government Variety, Commonality and Change

Are public sector institutions being exposed to ever-greater oversight, audit and inspection in the name of efficiency, accountability and risk management? Controlling Modern Government explores the long-term development of controls over government across five major state traditions in developed democracies - US, Japan, variants of continental-European models, a Scandinavian case and variants of the Westminster model.

A central aspect of the study is an eight country comparison of variety in the use of controls based in oversight, competition, mutuality and contrived randomness in the selected domains of the high bureaucracy at the core of the state, the higher education sector and the prison sector. Countries covered include Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and the USA.

Providing a comparison of trends in the last quarter century in control over public sector activities in OECD countries, this book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students focussing on political science and public administration, as well as policymakers in OECD countries.

Edited by the late Christopher Hood, formerly Emeritus Professor of Government, Department of Politics and International Relations and Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oliver James, Department of Politics, University of Exeter, UK, B. Guy Peters, Maurice Falk Professor Emeritus of Government, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, US and Colin Scott, Vice-Principal for Research and Innovation, UCD College of Business and Law and Professor of EU Regulation and Governance, UCD School of Law, University College Dublin, Ireland