List of Table and Figures
Glossary
Preface and Acknowledgements
1: Observing Government Elites
Part I: The Setting
2: The Governmental Setting
3: The Departmental Setting
Part II: The Actors
4: The Minister
5: The Permanent Secretary
Part III: Scenes
6: The Departmental Court
7: Protocols, Rituals and Languages
8: Networks and Governance
9: The Resignation
10: Willed Ordinariness, Being There, and Myths
Bibliography
Index
Rod Rhodes is treasurer of the Australasian Political Studies
Association, life Vice-President of the Political Studies
Association of the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Academy of
Social Sciences in both Australia and Britain, and editor of Public
Administration, 1986-2011. He was the Director of the UK Economic
and Social Research Council's 'Whitehall Programme' (1994-1999);
and of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian
National University
(2007-8). He is the author or editor of some 30 books including:
The State as Cultural Practice (joint author, OUP 2010); Comparing
Westminster (joint author, OUP 2009); Observing Government Elites
(joint
editor, 2007); The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (joint
editor, OUP 2006), and Governance Stories (joint author, 2006). He
is Professor of Government in the School of Government at the
University of Tasmania (Australia) and Professor Emeritus of
Politics at the University of Newcastle (UK).
`Rather than offering an institutional or public choice analysis of
the inner workings of government, therefore, Rhodes offers instead
a thick description of everyday life in a Whitehall department.
Having secured an extraordinary degree of access, Rhodes followed
around his subjects for a year during the second term of the Blair
government, paying close attention not just to the things they did,
but also why they did them and their feelings and beliefs
about their actions. The result is a fascinating and surprisingly
readable and entertaining book. Politicians and bureaucrats,
believe it or not, are just like us well maybe not quite. They
swear, make
mistakes, and bitch and gossip about each other and their enemies
(usually the Treasury).'
Dr Steve Coulter British Politics and Policy LSE blog
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