An introduction to public administration: People, politics and power

190

Book

of more sensitive and constructive support of Rural Financial ;Clarkets. advocating a more bottom-up approach and working with spontaneous organisations rather than against them. and using real financial discipline. But as one of the contributors says. not even that will work if there is general price discrimination against the agricultural sector as a whole. Given these larger caveats. however, it is a worthwhile contribution to a vitally important debate. G.P. CHAPXfAN Depnrtrnent of Geography Cnntbridge, Il. K.

An Introduction to Public Administration: People, Politics and Power, 2nd edn. J.D. Derbyshire. 1984. xiii + 258

pp., McGraw-Hill,

London,

f7.50

The tone of this introduction to public administration is set in the preface. The first edition came out as Mrs Thatcher entered No. 10. The ‘momentous changes’ which have happened since are included in this second edition. with reappraisals of the role of the Cabinet, the power of the Prime Minister. the accountability of government, and the degree of public participation in political activity. Denis Derbyshire is true to his sub-title, weaving ‘people. politics and power’ into a clear description of the framework of institutions in Britain. But. as the above list also suggests. central government and especially ‘the centre’ of government is given coverage in fulier detail than local government. The book is organized in five parts: the political framework, institutional framework, people in public administration, the state and the economy, and public interest and private interest. Plentiful use of sub-headings and a good index make it easy to take alternative routes through the book without the text being cluttered with crossreferences. It is designed for students from A-Level to first-year undergraduate. but is also useful for unions, public sector employees and anyone else wanting an overall picture of the institutions, concepts and processes of government in Britain. The book is strongest where an initial outline of the structure and functions of an institution is developed through resumes of the history of government inquiries and reports, to reveal the concepts underlying government processes. On the central institutions, descriptions of Parliamentary processes, the Cabinet and Cabinet Committees. and ministries and departments develop into discussions of the relatjonship between ministers and their civil servants, ministerial and collective Cabinet responsibility. the history of attempts to plan and coordinate central government policies through organizations reporting to the Cabinet. and the current shift of ‘the centre‘ from the Cabinet to Downing Street, with the concentration of information in the hands of the Prime Minister. The sections on local government reorganization and the current structures of committees and departments start in the same way. But discussions of corporate planning. the political organization of local government, and centrelocal relations are not written with the same pace nor

Reviews spiced with detail in the same way as the equivalent discussions of central government issues. The chapter on party politics is geared to understanding the national organization of political parties. An otherwise useful diagram (p. 34) comparing the structure of the four main parties leaps from ward to constituency and misses out party organization around local government. The spread of party politicization of local government, the detail of party organization of councils, and the history of tensions between local and national perspectives in the same party are not explored. Such issues receive much less space than devolution (a chapter) and proportional representation (a three-page detailed explanation). As a whole, local government receives 17 pages, mainly tucked into the end of chapters on issues which are just as relevant locally as nationally. Most importantly, the major changes in financing local government only receive one paragraph. The legislation from 1980 onwards which has changed fundamentally centre-local financial relations is not summarized. The current rate support grant system is not detailed, and the dreaded GREA (Grant Related Expenditure Assessment) is not even mentioned. My most serious misgivings ‘political’ in the first chapter.

concern the definition First, politics is defined

of as

a method whereby people with differing interests can govern themselves by distributing power roughly in proportion to the importance of those interests to the weltbeing of the whole community (p. 5). These ‘differing interests’ are supposed to have become apparent as men (sic) ‘coming to master their environment’ decided what they ‘really wanted out of life beyond mere survival’ (p. 1). In this fanciful evolutionary scheme, these choices were made by a dominant group or autocratic individual and even today, in undeveloped of governing is still evident

countries (p. 4).

this method

This autocratic decision-making is contrasted to ‘civilized behaviour’, characterized by moderation and tolerance. Fortunately, this inexcusable ethnocentricity does not recur. Ironically, bv the last chapter, this ‘civilized’ process of arriving at priorities through consensus and compromise is being contrasted with the autocratic style of government associated with conviction politics in Britain. Second, policies, promise but

‘politics’ is limited to the process of defining a process of discussion, adjustment and cominvolving political parties and pressure groups;

trying to get results by persuasion, argument, and intrigue has manv of the characteristics of politics but, unless the intention eventually is to invoke the power and authority of government, then we should not describe that activity as political (p. 6). This is a curiously British conceptualization of politics, as what ‘political’ people do, and as processes interior to government institutions. The result of employing this popular usage of ‘political’ as a theoretical definition is to leave the public’ out of the process of creating issues and influencing decisions. Decision-making making (Chapter

is limited to consideration of only policy14) in which earlier reference to the role

Book Reviews of quasi-governmental organizations in ‘advising’ government on policv (p. 102) is not followed up. and connection is not made w’ith an earlier chapter on the role of pressure groups in influencing government and departmental thinkwhich we may take to be ing (p. 21). The ‘public’. everyone except the 6000 people in the central list (p. 49) and the 7% of the electorate who are seriously interested in politics (p. 17). is left out of the description of decisionmaking. The ‘public’ reappears later in a reactive relationship to the State. in excellent discussions of accountability. participation and complaints procedures. Despite these reservations, this is a useful and readable book. pulling together many of the current administrative and political issues of government in Britain.

University

Environmental Taussig. f32.05

1985,

SUE WRIGHT of Sussex. U. K.

191

It would be wrong to suggest that this book is not an effective text on environmental economics per se. Indeed, the authors‘ own experience of the popularity of the subject, the publisher’s acknowledgement of this book’s success (in issuing a third edition). and the pleasing absence of the indigestable differential calculus that some environmental economists seem to find so much favour with, all stand to its advantage. So, for someone really committed to teaching environmental economics the book can be recommended. But the grip of economics in the teaching of environmental analysts and management is not one that I am prepared to condone. I simply cannot accept the authors’ conviction of the single disciplinary approach as the primary point of entry into environmental analysis. What seems more important is to advance the craft of eclecticism from the heritages of many disciplines, together with a broadening awareness of the world through sensitively-portrayed studies. This needs rather different kinds of teaching and reference material than are given in this book.

Economics,

3rd edn, J.J. Seneca and M.K Prentice-Hall. Englewood Cliffs, NJ,

In the early pages of this book, now in its third edition, the authors make quite plain their own conviction in the primary importance of proficiency in a single discipline in this case economics - in making effective headway in environmental analysis. The firmness of this conviction, along with the authors’ undoubted disciplinary knowledge and teaching experience, makes them eminently well placed to deliver an advanced undergraduate or postgraduate textbook on environmental economics. For a book of this kind, it is written well enough and reasonably structured, and it covers with some proficiency the standard principles of cost-benefit analysis, and the basic economic theory of market economics and externalities, of public goods, and of distributional aspects. It also draws on aspects of water pollution, air quality and hazardous wastes. by way of contextual material. If one is to quibble about the range of its technical content, then the absence of material on multi-attribute utility analysis, fast growing in popularity as an alternative or complement to costbenefit analysis, might be considered an undesirable omission. But the reasons why I will not be recommending this book as a core text for my own students of environmental analysis go much further than technical omissions, or, for that matter, the book’s price (f32.05), though this cannot be a point in its favour. They have to do with my concern that the book is about economics more than it is about the world. There is a continual preference for hypothetical, not actual, case studies in the text’s narrative (is it really impossible to find farmers who determine their waste disposal options in the given way?); there is a similar preference for hypotheticality in the very familiar-looking graphs of supply, demand, price and cost (is there no real data which approximates the required shape of the graphs?); there are relatively superficial discussions of valuing life, health and aesthetic quality, before the monetary calculus takes over once more; there is the all too noticeable separation of the bulk of the discussion of economic decision aids (in the early part of the book) from social realities and the institutional and political contexts (later in the book) in which they would have to operate, and the way these contexts are described seems rather tame.

SALLY MACGILL Scllool of Geography, University of Lee&, U.K.

Agrarian Change in Egypt: an Anatomy of Rural Poverty, S. Radwan and E. Lee, 1985, ILO-WEP Croom Helm, London,

f15.95

Egypt has long had one of the most intensive forms of agriculture supporting a very high level of population per unit of land. Nasser introduced a radical institutional change aimed at achieving a more equitable distribution of land, while under Sadat technocratic reforms affecting marketing, prices and agricultural investment were implemented. Yet this book reveals that despite these reforms the Egyptian farmer today has become highly proletarianised and rural inequalities have increased. The core of the book is a survey of 1000 households in 18 villages carried out in February 1977. The selection of villages was based on stratification by major agroecological zones and by settlement size. The questionnaire was unusual in that it was designed specifically to generate data on the major correlates of rural poverty. Unfortunately the authors were able to complete village profiles for only one village and were unable to make return visits to their sample households to identify seasonal fluctuations in rural poverty. The survey methodology is described in detail and the results presented clearly in a series of tables, but the delay of almost a decade in publication, despite a final chapter which attempts to relate the results to the 1980s reduces the usefulness of the survey. The results of the survey focus on economic data such as employment, and sources of income, and also on consumption patterns. There is no attempt to look at inter-household variation in income distribution and consumption and discussion and aggregation of data to the community level is minimal. The purpose of the survey, according to the authors, was threefold: to provide up-to-date information on rural development; to evaluate the impact of various State policies on the rural poor and to suggest policy implications. In terms of these aims the authors are not very successful. The situation in the villages has changed considerably since the 1977 survey and their analysis of