Doctoral thesis of Philosophy: Privatisation, state restructuring and competition

This thesis is concerned, centrally, with the responses to NPM from two perspectives: local government and organised labour (specifically national and international trade union organisations). Two themes recur in the policy debates around NPM: the effects on the quality of public services and the impacts on employment. Both are examined in this thesis as they had been under-researched and were overshadowed in the research literature by an economistic concern with costs and technical efficiency.