ABSTRACT

This chapter is concerned with the first model of the state mentioned in Chapter 1: the constitutional-representative government model. There it was described as a ‘fiction’, because it was not developed in order to explain the reality of the British system of government or its civil service but rather as a guide to such explanations and as a normative model of how well-functioning bureaucracies should behave. The Weberian model, with which this chapter begins, underlies the standard defence of the hierarchical and politically neutral form of the civil service as it has typically operated. This chapter describes the traditional organization of the civil service before the reforms of the 1980s and demonstrate how that fits in with conventional thinking on the operation of key issues in constitutional theory. This chapter provides a benchmark for later discussions of these issues, particularly in the light of academic concern that the recent radical reformations of the civil service create substantial problems for British constitutional practice. The chapter concludes with a critique of hierarchy which underpins the recent reforms.