With a likely cost of £4 billion, the Health and Social Care Bill has all the hallmarks of an avoidable policy fiasco

This week sees the release of a highly critical report from the cross-party Health Select Committee on the Health Minister, Andrew Lansley’s proposals to reorganise the NHS. The Committee’s Chairman, the former Health Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, said that the NHS should focus on achieving efficiencies rather than on management upheaval. Patrick Dunleavy argues that the proposed NHS reorganization will be a policy disaster for the government, which may end up costing up to £4billion – 1/5th of the amount needed to be saved by the NHS through efficiency gains

Reflections from the Other Side of the World

Pilot study abroad program at Kochi University lands junior Jack Dunleavy on a life-changing trip to Japan

The Parliamentary arithmetic shows that the Cameron-Clegg coalition is almost immune to rebellions – it will last five years

Most commentators in the press and from the Labour party have assumed that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will be plagued by internal dissensions in the House of Commons. In fact, Patrick Dunleavy argues that the government can survive untouched until 84 right-wing Conservative MPs abstain, or 41 Liberal Democrats vote with the opposition – which should never happen. If the leaders and ministers can hold it together between themselves, this looks like a full-term government

David Cameron is running a ‘ring-donut’ government with a weak centre. His feeble grip on policy coordination suggests a failure of statecraft

Being the UK Prime Minister is about far more than looking good on TV and being unflustered in the Commons at question time. There is an essential policy co-ordination and policy motivation role to the office, which must be taken seriously if what government does is to cohere to an integrated whole. Yet after 16 months in power, Patrick Dunleavy has serious doubts about David Cameron’s ability to make public policies that work. He seems to be running an eclectic, ‘ring donut’ government of barons and caretakers, where Tory ministers are left free to create incoherent policies – while Cameron’s attention is focused only on keeping the Coalition afloat

Book review: numbers rule: the vexing mathematics of democracy, from Plato to the present

Patrick Dunleavy reviews a fascinating, but flawed, history of democratic thinking from an American perspective. It throws often unexpected light on democratic innovations through the ages; and if the government’s project to slice the UK electorate up into equal constituencies is your bag, you can get stuck in here

Book review: managing modernity: beyond bureaucracy? edited by Stewart Clegg et al

In this collection of essays Steward Clegg and co-authors envisage the end of bureaucracy, where big corporations and public sector organizations are open and free of constraints. Patrick Dunleavy is intrigued but not convinced, arguing that all forms of ‘beyondism’ and ‘post-x’ social theory are inherently dissatisfying. If the authors really knew what was happening now or next, they’d tell us – instead of assuring us only that it is ‘not x’

Extended Cut: Bringing Math to the People with Professor Robert Jacobson

Math buff creates Google+’s first mathematics community

Electoral reform in local government: alternative systems and key issues

The Government plans a full modernisation of local government, including annual elections and a stronger scrutiny role for elected representatives. Such a programme must also consider reform options which improve the match between votes and seats, revitalise local electoral dynamics and strengthen links between councillors and constituents. This research, by Patrick Dunleavy and Helen Margetts, investigates a key possibility for such an agenda: changing the local electoral system. The researchers simulated local elections under five alternative electoral systems to first-past-the-post

Parliament bounces back – how Select Committees have become a power in the land

Much reformist discussion of the House of Commons views it as an institution in permanent decline, operating in a museum-building with stuffy and out-of-date processes that MPs stubbornly refuse to change. But Patrick Dunleavy and Dominic Muir show that the reforms pushed through in 2009-10 by Tony Wright have already made a dramatic difference. The media visibility of the Commons’ Select Committees has grown substantially, giving them unprecedented national (even global) attention

Five minutes with Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson: “Blogging is quite simply, one of the most important things that an academic should be doing right now”

Following this week’s the launch of EUROPP – an academic blog investigating matters of European Politics and Policy –Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson (also the creators of this blog!) discuss social scientists’ obligation to spread their research to the wider world and how blogging can help academics break out of restrictive publishing loops