Seasonal Cycles in Public Management: Disaggregation and Re-aggregation

A central feature of New Public Management (NPM) was the disaggregation of organizations into smaller units. This article examines the ebbs and flows of organizational size in the UK public sector—from the rise of the ‘small is beautiful’ idea in the 1980s and 1990s to the current ‘new big government’. This is not a simple cycle as the new big government differs in significant ways from the old—but there is clearly a cyclical element at play. Some proximate causes for the new wave of mergers given by policy-makers are explored.