Thomas Elston

Contact

• workRoom Room A113 West Wing, Law and Social Sciences Building
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 951 5227
• lqxtwel@nottingham.ac.uk

Teaching Summary

Thomas contributes to the following undergraduate and postgraduate modules: "Research Design and Practice"; "Analysing Public Policy"; "Public Management and Governance"; "Research Methods and… read more

Research Summary

Thomas's PhD research is exploring the policymaking role of executive agencies in UK central government. As a key expression of the 'high' managerialism of the 1980s and 1990s, agencification - the… read more

Selected Publications

• THOMAS ELSTON, 2013. Not so 'arm's length': reinterpreting agencies in UK central government. In: Paper presented at the 63rd annual conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA), Executive Politics and Governance Specialist Group, Cardiff, UK..
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2013. Frontiers of Governance: The OECD and Global Public Management Reform by Leslie A. Pal. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 312 pp. $95.00 (hardback). Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions. 26(2), 329-332
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2013. Developments in UK executive agencies: re-examining the ‘disaggregation-reaggregation’ thesis Public Policy and Administration. 28(1), 66-89
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2012. Koen Verhoest, Sandra Van Thiel, Geert Bouckaert and Per Lægreid (eds) (2012) Government Agencies: Practices and Lessons from 30 Countries International Review of Administrative Science. 78(2), 369-371

• View all publications

Thomas contributes to the following undergraduate and postgraduate modules: "Research Design and Practice"; "Analysing Public Policy"; "Public Management and Governance"; "Research Methods and Research Management".

Current Research

Thomas's PhD research is exploring the policymaking role of executive agencies in UK central government. As a key expression of the 'high' managerialism of the 1980s and 1990s, agencification - the disaggregation of unitary bureaucracies into core departments and 'arm's-length' agencies - is often cited as a means of achieving an institutional separation of policymaking and implementation in government. This reflects the wider political primacy and public choice agendas of the new public management (NPM), and yet has been challenged in the post-NPM era by proponents of more 'holistic' policymaking and 'joined-up' governance. Accordingly, more than two decades after the first agencies were established in Whitehall, the research adopts a post-positivist epistemology to explore whether the policy-implementation task division remains meaningful to key actors in government today. In addition, at a time when the Coalition Government is seeking further reform of the agency landscape, including a centralisation of policy capacity, the paradigmatic and policy implications of agency developments under New Labour are also explored.

• THOMAS ELSTON, 2013. Developments in UK executive agencies: re-examining the ‘disaggregation-reaggregation’ thesis Public Policy and Administration. 28(1), 66-89
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2013. Frontiers of Governance: The OECD and Global Public Management Reform by Leslie A. Pal. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 312 pp. $95.00 (hardback). Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions. 26(2), 329-332
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2013. Not so 'arm's length': reinterpreting agencies in UK central government. In: Paper presented at the 63rd annual conference of the Political Studies Association (PSA), Executive Politics and Governance Specialist Group, Cardiff, UK..
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2012. Koen Verhoest, Sandra Van Thiel, Geert Bouckaert and Per Lægreid (eds) (2012) Government Agencies: Practices and Lessons from 30 Countries International Review of Administrative Science. 78(2), 369-371
• THOMAS ELSTON, 2011. Developments in UK Executive Agencies: Re-examining the Disaggregation-Reaggregation Thesis In: Paper presented at the Governance of Public Sector Organisations Permanent Study Group of the 33rd Annual Conference of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), Bucharest, Romania.