ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the extent to which the concept of ‘Best Value’ as it is being developed within the UK public sector can be seen as the NPM ‘in action’. It suggests that in some senses the new regime appears to be the high-water mark of the NPM. However, it is likely to test to destruction a number of the underlying assumptions of the NPM framework and in the process to demonstrate the need for a more sophisticated analysis of the role of local public services and approaches to their regulation. In particular the apparent paradoxes of the Best Value regime need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests and agendas of central and local government, business, organized labour and service users and the internal tensions within the British Labour Party between the ‘modernizers’ and other factions.
