Towards Holistic Governance: The New Reform Agenda

by Perri 6, Gerry Stoker, Diana Leat

The search for a more holistic approach to policy and management looks set to be as much a hallmark of public service reform in the early twenty first century as the changes introduced under the rubric of 'new public management' or 'reinventing government' were in the closing decades of the twentieth. Towards Holistic Governance presents an authoritative assessment of successes and failures to date and a new framework for analysis and implementation based on extensive research both in the UK - where the New Labour government has been an early enthusiast and pathfinder for 'joined-up government' just as its predecessors were for privatisation and contracting out - and elsewhere.

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 12, 2002

About the author

Professor Perri 6 is a noted British social scientist. He changed his name from David Ashworth to Perri 6 in 1983. Whilst not an academic at the time, many years later he said he was amused by the notion of "6, P" appearing in academic papers.

6 worked for Demos, a centre-left think tank with close ties to New Labour in the 1990s. Much of 6's recent research is based on the cultural theory of risk, which he refers to as "neo-Durkheimian institutional theory". He has also done government-backed research for the Information Commissioner's Office, and has written on behalf of the think-tank Demos. He has also written for the peer-reviewed Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory: J-PART, Social Policy and Society and Public Administration.

He is currently Chair in Public Management at Queen Mary, University of London.