In defence of Mandarins: Recovering the ‘core business’ of public management

Abstract

The article explores the office of counsel, indicating, in particular the historical centrality of such an office to the conduct of governing, as well as highlighting the relational uncertainties of that office, forever disputed in its workings. It then proceeds to describe the persona of the British career senior civil servant or ‘Mandarin’, as a particular elaboration of this office of governmental counsel. In so doing, it notes that the Mandarinate’s proclaimed right and duty to counsel carries with it certain dangers that have historically beset this potent but inherently interstitial office; that fearless counsel can easily appear to slide into attempted control (or be so made to appear). This point is highlighted through an exploration of recent and ongoing reforms of the British civil service, which both governments of left and right have introduced, under the rubric of ‘performance’, ‘mandates’ and ‘responsiveness’. Here the senior civil service’s proclaimed role and duty as counsel of government is precisely compromised through its re-description as illegitimate political interloper. The solution to this illegitimate usurpation involves the re-assertion of political authority by the government of the day through a re-definition of the Mandarin role. Thus, Senior civil servants are re-described as managers whose role is exclusively focused upon delivering the governing party’s programme with maximum enthusiasm and conviction. In the process, counselling becomes increasingly the preserve of partisan personae in government — most particularly special advisers, whose allegiance is exclusively to the governing party, rather than to the state.The article concludes with a brief examination of some of the political and administrative consequences of the decline of the ‘mandarinate’ and the related shift towards the institutionalization of partisan counsel within the machinery of government of the British state.