Shrinking the state: reforming arm's length bodies in an age of austerity

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Calls for a 'bonfire of the quangos' regularly appear on the political agenda in the UK, but often fail to deliver significant reforms. Now, however, the Coalition Government is making a sustained attempt to reform these 'arm's length bodies' that make decisions and deliver public services independently of ministers, an issue tackled previously by the Scottish Executive and Welsh Assembly Government.Behind the heat of the debate lie important issues for democratic accountability, efficiency and organisation in the British state. These are especially important in the context of current economic, financial and policy challenges, deficit reduction and the ambition to shift greater responsibility for public provision to citizens and voluntary organisations. The current debate about arm's length bodies in the UK raises a number of important questions for policy makers and academic researchers:1. Why have arm's length bodies been so durable in the face of political and public hostility? 2. Why is reform now possible, and is this a distinctly UK phenomenon? 3. How is the durability and reform of arm's length bodies affected by a climate of austerity? 4. What are the consequences of reforming arm's length bodies for ministers, Parliament, civil servants and those organisations and individuals who use their services? 5. Are there other ways in which delegation of executive or advisory authority to independent bodies might be designed, and what can developments internationally and at local level teach us? Our research will track the development and implementation of the Coalition Government's reform of arm's length bodies and compare this with developments within the devolved administration in the UK, at local level, and internationally. It will consider the legal, constitutional and administrative issues involved, but also the broader politics involved in reshaping and shrinking the state.The research has five distinctive features: 1. It will bring together leading scholars who have employed different but complementary approaches in prior ALB research to develop new theory to explain agency design in the Westminster system in comparative perspective.2. It has been developed, and will work closely, with partners in the policy community, especially the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, Public Chairs' Forum, Local Government Information Unit, and Association of Chief Executives.3. It will employ advanced quantitative and qualitative techniques in a unique and powerful mixed methods design, not previously employed in this field. 4. It will overcome the single-nation, national level bias in studies of ALBs through the integration of cross-national and multi-level data. This will promote knowledge exchange with policy communities and add to the impact of the research. 5. It will stimulate an international dialogue among scholars concerned with the democratic challenges of institutional design for policy achievement.