Writing in 1991 Hood and Jackson argued that ‘administrative doctrines usually rest on . . . soft logic’ and that the latter meant ‘arguments with key premises left out’. This suggests that the field of public management (as a form of ‘administrative doctrine’) ought to appropriately evoke analysis which subjects such doctrines to critical scrutiny. Such scrutiny is offered in Ian Greener's book where the critical approach is designed to treat ‘the ideas and topics that much of the writing on public management has tended to take for granted as problematic’ (p. 1).

The book is organised into ten chapters: the first three deal with aspects of the ‘context of public management’; conceptualisations of the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ management; the ‘changing role of the state’; and ‘changing ideas’ on public management, focusing on ‘public administration’ and ‘New Public Management’ (henceforth NPM). The next four chapters ‘explore significant areas of reform in public services’ (p. 2): debates on how public services should be financed and their implications, markets in the public sector, the role of ‘users’ in public services and performance management. This is followed by a discussion of the role of professionals in public services and the complexities involved in their relations with public sector managers; a conclusion draws together the principal themes of the book.

There are two particularly salient aspects of the way in which the argument is presented. Academic references (while by no means sparse) are kept to a ‘minimum’ (p. 3) to reduce cluttering of the argument, while Chapters 2–9 include further reading. At the end of these chapters a two to three page ‘case study’ is included, designed to illustrate some of the principal issues discussed in the chapter.

The latter might give grounds for concern for readers seeking a ‘critical’ approach to public management. A regular feature of academic commentary on NPM has referred to the tendency of prescriptive NPM texts to contain ‘case studies’ in the form of ‘success stories’. The formula (see any number of New Labour examples) is well worn. A brief, usually context free, account is given of the transformative effect on a public service of the management technique being advocated in, for example, an education or healthcare setting; ‘key premises’ are, of course, omitted. Such problems do not, however, arises in the cases presented in the book, which, while naturally constrained by their length, retain a genuinely critical stance. Thus, for example, the case in Chapter 6 on markets in the public sector contains an admirable account of the distinct problems that have arisen in quasi-markets in health and education in the UK in realising the objectives anticipated by their proponents.

The ‘critical’ approach used in the book focuses on a view of public management not as a ‘success story’ where everyone wins but rather as an attempt to grapple with a set of ‘tensions’. These tensions are skilfully discussed to illustrate the potential problems of ‘public management reforms’, for example: the tensions between professional-led services with the ‘efficiency’ advantage of economising on scare professional working time and greater ‘customer’ responsiveness, between the ‘equity’ advantages of ‘bureaucratic’ control and the innovative potential from more ‘entrepreneurial’ approaches, between resource constraints and projects to ‘individualise’ service provision and between differing approaches to improving ‘accountability’ of public service providers.

An area which, arguably, might have received more attention is ‘narrative’. A corollary of ‘soft logic’ in ‘administrative argument’ is that ‘doctrines’ are sold, in part, via the narratives they construct. In this respect, there is one area in the analysis where a more explicit awareness of narrative might have strengthened the argument. As part of setting out the context for contemporary public management, Chapter 2 deals with the ‘changing role of the state’. The analysis in this chapter uses (albeit in a qualified way, see for example, p. 45) Jessop's distinction between the ‘Keynesian Welfare State’ (KWS) and the ‘Schumpeterian Workfare State’ (SWS). It is thus suggested that this distinction is a ‘useful guide’ (p. 45) to the changing role of the state with a broad shift from KWS to SWS. However, this risks taking narrative too much on its own terms. Thus, for example, discussing structural change in the UK economy under New Labour, Coutts et al. (Reference Coutts, Glyn and Rowthorn2007: 857) point to the official government emphasis on ‘supply side’ driven policies. They quote (ibid.) a Treasury statement from 2004, which maintains that ‘changes in the structure of employment are a necessary part of economic development and flow . . . from the openness of trade . . . technological developments and changes in consumer preferences’. Impeccably SWS one might think, and a key part of the Treasury view on an appropriate public policy response is to develop workforce skills to ease ‘transitional’ costs (ibid.). Coutts et al. go on to point out that employment levels improved considerably in the economically disadvantaged North of England under New Labour. This was not, however, they argue principally due to officially endorsed ‘supply side’ policies, but rather to the direct and indirect effect of ‘the government's expansion of public services (ibid.: 859). Thus ‘an old fashioned injection of aggregate demand . . . has probably been a very important influence despite the Treasury's disdain for such an approach’ (ibid.) – perhaps a case of SWS narrative, but KWS practice?

However this is very valuable book. Ian Greener has tackled the difficult task of writing a text on public management which is both accessible and critical and he has succeeded admirably.