`REGULATION RUN MAD': THE BOARD OF TRADE AND THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC
Article Abstract:
And so a rule which has become established by the safe practice of some 30 years is to be set aside because one exception has occurred in what are acknowledged to be exceptional circumstances. Surely this is regulation run mad.... The whole blame should have been placed on the bad look-out' (Sir Alfred Chalmers, former Nautical Advisor, Board of Trade, `Memo on the finding of the Court of the loss of the Titanic', c. August 1912, PRO MT9/920/425. Stress in original). `Boats for all' [is] one of the most ridiculous proposals ever put forward. (R. D. Holt, MP, partner in Alfred Holt & Co. shipowners, House of Commons, 7 October 1912). The Board of Trade has got many eyes and many ears, but it does not seem to have any brains (W. D. Harbinson, counsel for the third-class passengers, British inquiry transcript, p.738). Disasters often involve regulatory failure. Somebody was responsible for safety and failed to ensure it, through negligence or lack of imagination, or both. The loss of the Titanic is the UK's best-known and deadliest peacetime disaster. This article revisits the causes of, and inquiry into, the sinking. It illustrates how the disaster was an early example of the kind of injustice and regulatory failure that has often been central in more recent catastrophes. A regulatory body had, in effect, to inquire into its own shortcomings; therefore too little blame was laid in high places, and too much in low places. The Titanic report scapegoated the captain of another vessel, although the question of his blameworthiness was not read into the inquiry's instructions until after it had heard him. The shipping industry blocked any serious discussion of the disaster in Parliament.
Publication Name: Public Administration
Subject: Political science
ISSN: 0033-3298
Year: 2000
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TESTING THE LIMITS OF INCREMENTALISM: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF EXPENDITURE DECISIONS BY ENGLISH LOCAL AUTHORITIES, 1981-1996
Article Abstract:
Studies of budgetary outputs in public organizations are dominated by the theory of incrementalism. This perspective suggests that expenditure decisions are based on simple rules of thumb. We evaluate the validity of incrementalism by examining the annual spending decisions of 403 English local authorities over 15 budgetary cycles. Two budgetary norms are tested empirically: protect the real level of service provision, and follow central expenditure guidelines. Each of these norms is translated into two decision rules: marginality, or the size of deviations from the norm, and regularity, which refers to the consistency of such deviations over time. Few of the statistical results support the hypothesis that local expenditure decisions are dominated by general budgetary norms or specific decision rules. Our evidence therefore casts doubt on the validity of incrementalism as a theory of local budgetary outputs, and as an explanation of spending decisions in the public sector as a whole.
Publication Name: Public Administration
Subject: Political science
ISSN: 0033-3298
Year: 2000
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THE EMERGENCE OF MULTI-INSPECTORATE INSPECTIONS: `GOING IT ALONE IS NOT AN OPTION'
Article Abstract:
Drawing on data from HM Inspectorate of Prisons, HM Inspectorate of Probation, the Office for Standards in Education and the Social Services Inspectorate, this paper develops a typology of inspection, classified according to the focus of inspection. Five basic inspection types emerge, namely single institutional, multi-service, thematic, survey and monitoring review. The typology is further categorized by a range of characteristics, resulting in a series of variants. The paper then focuses on the particular characteristic of the multi-inspectorate approach to inspection, because this is seen to offer a significant development in inspection practice that is set to expand and develop in the future. By examining operational examples of this approach it becomes clear that inspectorates are affecting the working practices of one another as they use the multi-inspectorate approach as an exercise in benchmarking.
Publication Name: Public Administration
Subject: Political science
ISSN: 0033-3298
Year: 2000
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