Bureaucratic expansionism model . Civil servants get what they want by creating bureaucratic empires that are not well funded and financially inefficient they obstruct government by getting in the way of clear and efficient government.
Ministers and civil servants have different resources to support them.
Ministers have political support, which will allow them some lenience. Authority, they have the overall say. Knowledge, in some cases they know how to tackle a situation without civil service. Policy networks, they have links on how to make a clear and efficient government.
Civil servants have permanence, they’re generally there for life. Knowledge, they have more experience than ministers on certain topics by just living in through related topics. Time, they have more time than ministers to decide how to create an efficient government. Whitehall, they have access over some very confidential files. That ministers can’t. This allows them some sovereignty around ministers.
It is said that civil servants are not servants at all but masters, Tony Benn said that the civil service has it’s own agenda and can a lot of influence over new ministers. There are some objectives that obstruct ministers.
Civil servant control information that goes to the ministers and therefore can manipulate what to tell the ministers. Giving ministers a lack of information or an overwhelming amount of paperwork.
Ministers have other commitments, such as Parliament might delay their work. Ministers may be outnumbered by their civil servants with as high as 10 to 1. Civil servants, in or out of their department, can have informal gatherings and decide what to say to their minister, and watch ministers fail. Overwhelming work load can make a minister feel that they have been cut off from reality outside their departments. Ministers can decide to go ‘native’ and nothing will be done.
Top civil servants outlive ministers. Well as an average ministerial term of two years, they are there for a lot longer.
Individual Ministerial Responsibility, this means that Ministers take ultimate responsibility for what has gone wrong in their department. There have been two major cases of IMR. One being Thomas Dugdale. Which was responsible for the Crichel Down Affair, over land from the RAF and the 3rd Baron Alington. He resigned. He says that all mistakes within his department was without his knowledge but because of Individual Ministerial Responsibility he had to resign.
Another case for IMR is Lord Carrington, over the Falkland Islands. There was no responsibility to government so Lord Carrington was forced to stand down and resign.
Michael Howard, did not resign over prison escapers but got a prison governor sacked through misconduct. When asked ’did you threaten to overrule him’ on Newsnight. He did purposely tried to avoid the ’threaten’ part.
Special Advisers or ’SPADS’ are mostly civil servants, They don’t have to obey the traditional civil service principles. They can be not neutral, not anonymous and not permanent.
They have two major roles. They help to make government less reliant and more independent on the work of the civil service. They also help the Prime Minister keep up to date on what is happening in departments. They play a key role in government. Labour used a lot of special advisers from 1997 by 2003 hundred and eight, twenty-seven prime ministerial and eighty-one government advisers, with only five in 1990.
They face a lot of criticism in the way they serve political-party. As they are funded by the taxpayer. They got known as Spin Doctors. They had conflicting objectives, there was a lot of scandals involving special advisers in the 1990s and party’s promise to stick to policies they have already made. It said that the party was spinning out of control. A famous example of problems with a special adviser would be Jo Moore. She is Stephen Byers’ media advisor. She said ‘good day to bury bad news’. On the day of the 9/11. She had to later on apologise for sending such an email and eventually in time, resigned.
