Despite decades of cost cutting, governments spend more than ever. How can we make sense of this?
Many of the managerial techniques that have arrived in the public sector over the austerity years – such as results-based pay, corporate contracting, performance management or evaluation culture – have their origins in a budgetary revolution that took place in the 1960s at the US Department of Defence.
In the early 1960s, Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was frustrated with being nominally in charge of budgeting but having to mediate between the seemingly arbitrary demands of military leaders for more tanks, submarines or missiles.
In response, he called on the RAND Corporation, a US think tank and consultancy, to remake the Defence Department’s budgetary process to give the secretary greater capacity to plan.
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