From “business‐like” to businesses: Agencification, corporatization, and civil service reform under the Thatcher administration
基于档案资料，梳理撒切尔政府（1979-1990）推动英国公务员大规模机构化的过程，揭示其意识形态根源（卫理公会教养、哈耶克与弗里德曼的新自由主义理论）及对民主的损害，为理解当代公司化提供历史教训。
Abstract This paper sets out an archival account of events leading up to the mass agencification of the British civil service by the Thatcher administration (1979–1990). This account holds lessons for contemporary understandings of the ideological roots and institutional structures of corporatization. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wanted to make government “efficient” through the adoption of “business‐like” practices. We show that this project was grounded in her Methodist upbringing and the emerging neoliberal economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher's efforts to instill a “market mentality” were met with stubborn resistance from a bloc of Ministers and senior civil servants. We find that Thatcher used agencification to break this resistance. Agencification removed Ministerial control over service delivery and saw “business‐like” managers placed in charge of the newly created agencies. This curtailed the workings of democracy. Like Thatcher's agencification, corporatization today imperils democracy in pursuit of “efficiency.”