A comprehensive account of the major changes which have occurred in British public sector management over the last decade. - Relates these changes to the international arena particularly in the European community and the United States. Under Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives promised to change everything. Public sector management was transformed in the 1980s by the wholesale importation of private sector management techniques, in response to a new concern with efficiency and the proper allocation of resources. As the economic miracle of the 1980s fades into memory, the resulting economic and social disaster - and the failure of public sector management - is hard to ignore. Where did the Conservatives go wrong, and what can be done? Managing the Welfare State differs from other books on public sector management in its sharply political and intellectual approach. It is a fiercely argued root and branch critique of new public sector techniques, and vigorously opposes the agenda of reform which in their view has even been assimilated by Labour and continues to inform British social policy to the present.