The Evolving Narratives of Public Management Reform

This paper compares five key UK public management reform white papers spread over a period of 41 years. It adopts a narrative approach to analyse the scope, dominant themes, proffered solutions, evidence base, key assumptions and style and presentation of these core documents. This longitudinal narrative framework reveals both changes and continuities in UK reform rhetoric. The UK has now experienced four decades of unceasing administrative reform, and has often claimed to be a world leader. This paper offers an original analysis of the official story of this epoch.