ABSTRACT
In the previous two chapters we discussed the ways in which the NPM template was first employed to reform the British civil service and then applied, in a revised form, to a different policy area: British higher education. In both cases, we presented the various features making up such a template, the dynamic elements that made it possible to customize that template to suit the specific needs of distinct policy areas, and the common political rationale driving the reform process. These two case studies were selected for their institutional peculiarities: the constitutional roles these institutions were attributed (even if informally) within the Westminster system of government and the challenges they posed to a political elite determined to tackle the governability crisis experienced in the 1970s from the top down. While defending the political reading of change proposed against alternative forms of explanation, we also suggested the need to view the process of diffusion of the NPM template at the national level as a ripple effect generated by the strategy of political centralization-cum-managerial decongestion pursued by central government. The public bodies upon whom the NPM template was offloaded acquired growing managerial responsibilities and responded to that challenge by adopting the same strategic logic, passing those responsibilities down along hierarchical chains. Hence, we stressed the existence of a double process of diffusion: a horizontal process that has led the NPM template to spread across interconnected policy areas and a vertical process responsible for the deepening of that same template across institutional levels.
