This article analyzes the basis and success of Margaret Thatcher's attempts to shape the senior British civil service into a responsive instrument of policy implementation from the standpoint of her political values. It also considers some key questions affecting the roles of civil servants in the post-Thatcher period. Emphasis is given to efforts to alter roles and attitudes in four central areas: deprivileging, reorganization, managerialism, and politicization. Although granting that Thatcherism has not succeeded in transforming all elements of traditional Whitehall culture, it is argued that for a number of reasons Thatcher's actions have erected formidable barriers to any hoped—for return to the heyday of the British mandarin or to the attitudes associated with it.
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