Joined-Up Government in the West beyond Britain: A Provisional Assessment
In many western countries, politicians and senior civil servants are working on the improvement of the coordination and integration of the activities of many government departments and agencies. This chapter offers some hypotheses that determine the differences in the style of governments in some countries in terms of their coordination and integration or ‘joining-up’ styles. In this chapter, particular attention is directed on the difficult relationship relating to cross-national trends in horizontal coordination and integration within the client level and privacy concerns. The chapter also offers a short discussion on the ways in which horizontal relationships might be arranged between regulators with different responsibilities within the same jurisdiction for different aspects of work in the same organizations. Before offering a better explanation of the differences in the styles of coordination and integration between countries, the chapter considers some explanations derived from literatures on the subject of ‘joined-up’ government that accept or reject rationales that support or fail to explain the geographical variance of joining-up. After taking a look at some prevailing explanations on the varying styles of coordination and integration, the chapter presents the neo-Durkheimian institutionalist explanation which is non-circular and which provides a more detailed account of the geographical and historical differences of ‘joined-up’ government. The chapter concludes with some provisional conclusions on the politics of administrative coordination and the politics of ‘joined-up’ government.