Not so ‘arm’s length’: reinterpreting agencies in UK central government Thomas Elston, PhD Candidate, International Centre for Public and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, UK Email:
[email protected] Paper presented to the panel, Executive Politics and Institutional Approaches, convened by the Executive Politics & Governance specialist group at the annual conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA) in Cardiff, March 2013 ***Comments welcome; please do not cite without permission*** Abstract As prominent expressions of new public management (NPM) and its recent attenuation, agencification and de-agencification have been subject to sustained empiricist investigation. However, interpretive analysis remains incipient. Accordingly, this paper explores the evolution of agencification within the UK by attending to its changing discursive construction. Drawing on a three-part analytic framework, which interprets meaning through the rhetoric of argumentation, narrative voice and discursive differentiation, the recent Public Bodies Reforms are shown to narrate a significant reinterpretation of the original executive agency idea of the Next Steps programme. In particular, the old emphasis on managerialist empowerment and decentralisation has given way to new themes of corporate integration and ministerial control. Thus, while no formal or legal redefinition has occurred, the UK’s ‘arm’s-length’ agency model has been discursively ‘departmentalised’. This highlights the potential limitations of using empiricist, ‘population