ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the efficiency scenarios that believe are most likely to be encountered by policy-makers and public managers charged with improving the management of efficiency. The chapter explores case studies of the UK experience of four key efficiency focused policies to illustrate the importance of efficiency evaluation in democratic public administration. Strategies to maximize productive efficiency may have the effect of standardizing services to the point where there is a poor match between the kind of services valued by citizens and those which are provided. The New Deal for Communities (NDC) programme was a large-scale area-based initiative launched by the UK Labour government in 1998 to address urban deprivation in the cities of England. The role of public reason as a regulative ideal to which policies would be held to account is therefore never more important than when proposals for short or long-term savings are being tabled.
