Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo

Sommario

1. Evoluzione e forme storiche del board system. – 2. Dall’autogoverno amministrativo al dipartimentoministeriale. – 3. Il mondo dei quangos. – 4. Censire, classificare e riformare i fringe bodies: un problemaancora irrisolto.

Abstract

Since the Victorian age a wide range of fringe bodies (boards, corporations, authorities, etc.) works at the centre of a big network of administrative and political connections, and a wide new range of forms (quangos, task forces, etc,) has been added in recent times. They act between central government and local authorities, between the day-to-day work of Her Majesty’s executive and the authority of Parliament, between the constitutional bodies and the civil society, between the public and the private. The so-called fringe bodies’activity actually covers the whole area of public administration, and the support they usually provide to the individual departments of central government is a very striking feature of the British administrative history. Starting from the origins of the old “board system”, the most recent developments of quangos and other as sorted authorities or non-departmental bodies acting in the ‘quasi-government’dimension show that within the British system of government the idea of independence of fringe authorities is a quite relative one. From the old liberal and victorian age to the Thatcherite and “New Labour” style of government, gaining the control of “independent” bodies is a very important goal for all policy-makers, and the struggle for power in British public administration and government is increasingly focused on the issue of their actual accountability: to Parliament, to the Minister’s patronage, to the public, or just to themselves?