Regulation Inside Government

Book excerpt: Regulation Inside Government analyses the army of inspectors, auditors, grievance-chasers, standard-setters and other bodies overseeing contemporary public organizations. Based on an unprecedented two-year inside study of British government by a team of leading scholars, this book provides an original analytical perspective on regulation within government. The book begins by examining the size of internal government regulation to reveal a structure comparable in size to government regulation of business. The book then goes on to show how internal government regulation grew in size despite the fact that public bureaucracy elsewhere were being sharply cutback. Given the limitations of orthodox constitutional checks on executive government, the courts and elected members of the legislature, regulation inside government deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. As one of the first comprehensive accounts of regulation inside government, this book begins to fill the gap.