IN PURSUIT OF GOOD ADMINISTRATION: MINISTERS, CIVIL SERVANTS AND JUDGES by Diana Woodhouse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 247 pp. Cloth $78.00. ISBN 0-19-826036-9.

Reviewed by Donald W. Jackson, Department of Political Science, Texas Christian University. E-mail: D.W.Jackson@tcu.edu.
 

The "pursuit of good administration" that contributes the title of this book is focused by the author’s contrast between the "public service" and "new public management" models of good administration. Woodhouse describes the "public service" model as being based on "adherence to the law and to constitutional conventions of accountability," and on "the values embodied in the public service ethos which inform the conduct and attitudes of officials" (p. 36). Among the key ideas of the public service model is that of collective agency responsibility for administration, ultimately through ministerial responsibility to Parliament.

In contrast the "new public management" model is based on "cost efficiency." It involves measuring outputs, being flexible and responsive to change, and encouraging both personal responsibility of officials and competition. The model entails both the possible recruitment of top agency executives from outside the Civil Service and the privatization of certain traditional governmental functions. It is not "rule governed" as is the public service model. Instead institutional rules are designed "to improve efficiency not because they have any intrinsic value." The model also encourages controls, which measure actual performance relative to quantifiable objectives and accountability to consumers. Finally, Woodhouse suggests that this model of administration is "largely uncluttered by notions of public service or concepts such as fairness, equity and reasonableness" (p. 51). Given these descriptions, it should not be difficult to hypothesize which model Woodhouse might favor, although her analysis of both models in Part I of the book is notably even-handed.

At the end of Part I Woodhouse answers the question, Where are we now? She concludes that the public service model is giving way to the new public management model, though elements remain of each. Common to both models is accountability through the offices of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (Chapter 4). One of the most interesting recent contribution to "where we are now" is the "Citizen’s Charter," which was launched by then Prime Minister John Major in 1991. The Charter is founded on six principles: "standards, information and openness, choice and consultation, courtesy and helpfulness, putting things right and value for money" (p. 49). The emphasis is on performance measurement and all public services are required to publish and monitor the standards that their "consumers" have a right to expect. Woodhouse finds John Major’s support of the Charter somewhat surprising given his government’s "apparent carelessness with regard to good administration" (p. 70). Even so, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration is not limited to Citizen’s Charter criteria in assessing agency performance. Woodhouse’s conclusion is that "individual and customer relations have not quite replaced the community and public interest and that value for money and efficiency are still compromised by other considerations such as fairness, equity and reasonableness" (p. 58).

Part II, Judicial Perspectives on Good Administration, will be of greatest interest to public law scholars. Woodhouse begins with the irrefutable assertion that political accountability traditionally has been much more important than legal accountability in the British system of government. The "marginalized constitutional position" of British courts and an "underdeveloped system of administrative law" are consequences of the emphasis on political accountability. Moreover, the absence of a Bill of Rights has placed judges on the sidelines. This is so despite the development of "judicial review" (in the British sense of the term) over the past two decades. Woodhouse concludes that British judicial review still does not hold a "centre-stage position in public administration" (p. 99). However, she describes the current relationship between the Civil Service and the courts as one that seems to be changing.

One hint of change is that in 1987 the Treasury Solicitor published a booklet for civil servants with the title, JUDGE OVER YOUR SHOULDER. An updated version was published in 1995. Another factor was the liberalization of judicial review procedures in 1981. The third factor was the emergence of "liberal" judges in the 1990s who were more "interventionist" than their predecessors (p. 101). Of course what Woodhouse is describing is what others have called the "judicialization of politics" (Tate and Vallinder, 1995), so Britain is by no means alone in this tendency. Also contributing to the expansion of judicial power has been the recognition of the reality that only rarely is Parliament actually able to hold the government of the day accountable, given the usual control of Parliament by a tightly-disciplined party majority. External relationships have also played a role. The legal obligations created by membership in the European Union have required British judges to enforce EU law and to recognize the authority of the European Court of Justice. Likewise, the European Convention on Human Rights--and the Commission and Court in Strasbourg that enforce it--have made British judges more sensitive to rights claims.

According to Woodhouse these developments have not been welcomed by the proponents of the new public management model of administration, who, broadly speaking, prefer internal administrative review procedures to external judicial review. Indeed, sometimes judicial decisions have produced outrage, especially when "interventionist" judges are European rather than British. Probably the most notable example was the split decision (10-9) of the European Court of Human Rights holding that the killing of three suspected terrorists in Gibraltar by British special forces in March 1988 was a violation of the right to life guaranteed by the European Convention. This provoked Michael Haseltine, then the Deputy Prime Minister, to call the decision "ludicrous" and the Government of the day to leak the hint that the U.K might refuse to renew to right of individual petition to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Equally irritating to British officialdom was the 1995 report of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which concluded that the U.K.’s legal systems "does not ensure fully that an effective remedy is provided for all the victims of violations of rights" contained in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In Chapter 6 Woodhouse reviews and details several conflicts between executive/administrative authorities and judges, both within the British system and with European institutions. The inherent conflict she finds is that judges are ultimately concerned with whether certain fundamental values or ideals are observed by government, rather than with issues of economy and efficiency, as is the executive side. Once again we see the pertinency of the two models of administration, and the "new public management" model of administration is the culprit that raises economy and efficiency above fundamental values.

Part III of the book contains a diversion that is not very well-integrated into the balance of the book. Woodhouse devotes one chapter to the development of administrative law reforms and case law in Australia on principles of good administration. Her eventual goal is the specification of appropriate principles of administrative practice and procedure, a subject that may be of less interest to public law scholars. However, Woodhouse is troubled by the absence of a comprehensive code that would detail the principles of good administration. Such principles could be enforced either internally by administrative boards or externally through judicial review. She briefly reviews several draft statements of principles and comes down strongly for a code that would "make the principles of good administration explicit and provide a baseline for administrators and judges" (p. 232).

The principal limitation of the book is its failure to review in detail and to take into account the considerable administrative discretion that still is largely not reviewable by U.K. courts. One example, broadly known as the "Wednesbury principle:" a decision of a minister of state who exercises discretionary power can be overturned by a U.K. judge only if the judge reaches the conclusion that no reasonable minister could have made such a decision. By carefully prefacing a decision with (usually unreviewable) pertinent findings, a clever and careful minister of state often thus can avoid accountability through judicial review. Excessive deference of judges to administrators is one of the reasons why the UN Human Rights Committee has concluded that victims of rights violations often have no effective remedy under UK law.

Overall, this book offers good value for pubic law scholars for Part II alone, and it is well worth reading in its entirety.
 

ASSOCIATED PROVINCIAL PICTURE HOUSES, LTD. v. WEDNESBURY CORPORATION, [1947] 1 All E.R. 498 (King’s Bench), affirmed, [1947] 2 All E.R. 680 (Court of Appeal).

Tate, C. Neal and Torbjorn Vallinder (eds.). 1995. THE GLOBAL EXPANSION OF JUDICIAL POWER. New York: New York University Press.