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THE WHITEHALL PROGRAMME AND AFTER: RESEARCHING GOVERNMENT IN TIME OF GOVERNANCE
Author(s) -
BELLAMY CHRISTINE
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.313
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-9299
pISSN - 0033-3298
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011.01901.x
Subject(s) - dominance (genetics) , government (linguistics) , qualitative research , corporate governance , interpretation (philosophy) , perspective (graphical) , political science , public administration , field (mathematics) , sociology , social science , management , economics , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science , pure mathematics , gene , programming language
This article revisits the Whitehall Programme and Rod Rhodes' crucial role in setting it up. It examines the research commissioned for the Programme and how research in this field has changed since the mid 1990s. It confirms that research on Whitehall has become more diverse and specialist – reflecting its apparent hollowing‐out – but that research employing a longer historical perspective does not support an interpretation that government in the UK was ever strongly filled‐in. It also suggests that the study of Whitehall now demonstrates more theoretical ambition than hitherto, and, in the light of the dominance of qualitative research in this field, calls for a more sophisticated methodological debate about qualitative approaches to the study of government and especially their potential contribution to theory‐building.