ABSTRACT
The Scott inquiry on the sale of arms to Iraq, the revelations of the subsidies offered to the Malaysian government, the report on Westminster City Council, the criticisms of the Public Accounts Committee on the new public sector financial mismanagement and the expansion of quangos which spend about one-third of the nation's income without any form of public accountability: all these factors seem to point to a malaise in the governance of the United Kingdom. Where previously corruption was used to describe the politics of ‘Europe’or ‘the Third World’, it is now being frequently asked whether it is justified for UK citizens to continue to put so much trust in their public institutions. Where UK institutions were once assumed to be somehow superior, the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s indicate that the behaviour of these institutions is no different to the practice experienced in other countries. There are in the 1990s problems of accountability, problems of too many decisions being made by too few and behind closed doors, and problems of too many political appointments and of increased disillusionment with the political process.
