This volume identifies the main changes in the British state since 1945 and evaluates their consequences. It provides students and practitioners with an understanding of the changing public sector and the relationship between these changes and the wider conduct of politics.


Recent academic and political responses to the British state have been influenced by an atmosphere which is increasingly suspicious of hierarchies, bureaucracies and, indeed, the state itself. Tom Ling identifies the factors leading to this development and in the final chapter he evaluates the more...

This study identifies the main changes in the British state since 1945, and evaluates their consequences. It provides students and practitioners with an understanding of the changing public sector, the relationship between these changes and the wider conduct of politics.

Knowledge grows as ideas are tested against each other. Agreement is not resolved simply by naming concepts, but in the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. There are many echoes of these debates in The Evidence Book. The contributors make claims for both practitioner wisdom and the voice of experience. Against this is posed the authority of experimental science and the randomized controlled trial. The contributors are concerned, in their own ways, with collecting, ranking, and analyzing evidence and using this to deliver evaluations. As an expert group, they are aware...