Public Policy and Administration

Narrative stories offer insight into political agency and constructed reality. They are also part of the armoury for maintaining political ascendancy. The UK Cameron–Clegg Coalition government’s public service reform narrative juxtaposed its open, transparent and decentralized approach with the top-down configuration of institutional power attributed to New Labour. The more complex reality of public service reform is exemplified particularly from the criminal justice arena. From a structuralist perspective, the Coalition’s reform trajectory has been related to emergent realities of networked governance. But here too more ambiguous influences were at work with reform again proving more problematic than anticipated.

Using an analytical framework based on European Commission directives and United Nations resolutions calling for a mainstreamed and intersectional approach to age equality, this paper examines the UK’s devolved administrations’ governance practices and territorially specific public policy on older people. The findings reveal mixed progress. Whilst a number of mainstreaming prerequisites have been secured and divergent, ‘regional’ equality rights and welfare entitlements established, shortcomings are also apparent including reliance on an intercategorical, additive approach to intersectionality, one that falls short of fully addressing the diverse needs and identities of older people.

The term resilience is increasingly being used to capture the challenges involved in managing in ‘hard times’. This article aims to provide one of the first empirical studies of the term’s application to local authority interventions around emergency planning and climate change: two areas in which resilience has been particularly emphasised in local policy making. Drawing upon research undertaken in the north east of England, the article considers how local managers have understood and applied the term, the extent to which it has been developed as a coherent policy agenda, and its strategic significance. In reframing the debate on resilience in terms of discourses of ‘recovery’ and ‘transformation’, the article examines how, in addition to informing policy realities on the ground, resilience is also a normative, politically laden term, within which conservative narratives of uncertainty, vulnerability and anxiety compete with a more radical focus on hope, adaptation and transformation. The study reveals concerns over the term’s longevity, tensions between the different interpretations of resilience, and the lack of a coherent strategic framework within which the different discourses on resilience could be considered and reconciled. However, the article also captures the growing importance of a resilience narrative that is seen to add value in a period of austerity, integrate key features of climate change adaptation and emergency planning, and act as a ‘strategic lynchpin’ in relation to other policy areas, such as economic resilience.

Executive agencies remain key players in UK government. However, reflecting their declining political profile, little research has emerged on the longer term evolution of this key new public management (NPM) infrastructure. Although widely cited, the ‘disaggregation–reaggregation’ thesis – which posits that a significant reversal has taken place, following the extensive agencification of the 1990s – has received little systematic evaluation. As political interest in the agency model reawakens under the Coalition Government, it is necessary to understand how the agency landscape has evolved while outside of the limelight. Accordingly, this article examines developments across 1988–2010 along two dimensions: ‘structural’, relating to organisational boundaries; and ‘functional’, relating to the department–agency task division. Viewed within this structural–functional framework, considerable merit is found in the disaggregation–reaggregation thesis, although not entirely in the terms in which it has come to be accepted. The limited extent of formal ‘de-agencification’, particularly, challenges existing reports of the expansion and decline of agencies, and raises important issues for the future research agenda.

The environment in which public sector organisations operate is becoming ever more volatile, with such organisations increasingly facing the dual pressures of growing customer expectations coupled with significant budget reductions. This study presents an exploratory research model to uncover significant relationships between generic strategies and the business and social performance of public leisure providers, in an attempt to ascertain if generic strategies are fit for purpose in the public leisure sector. The findings suggest that low cost and price-based strategies are inadequate for service delivery. Rather, a hybrid strategy – which seeks to add value while also having a cost base that permits low prices – is deemed fit for purpose in the public leisure sector, satisfying the dual strategic agenda of public leisure providers. This study provides contributions to the strategic management, public management, and leisure services literatures.