Papers by Peter Vincent-Jones
The New Public Contracting: Regulation, Responsiveness, Relationality
OUP Catalogue, 2006
ABSTRACT This book charts the significant increase in Britain over the last 25 years in the deplo... more ABSTRACT This book charts the significant increase in Britain over the last 25 years in the deployment of contract as a regulatory mechanism across a broad spectrum of social relationships. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the trend has accelerated, the use of contract spreading beyond the sphere of economics into public administration and social policy. The 'new public contracting' is the term given this distinctive mode of governance, characterized by the delegation of contractual powers and responsibilities to public agencies in regulatory frameworks preserving central government controls and powers of intervention. In many cases the contracts are not legally enforceable, their power as regulatory instruments deriving from the hierarchical authority relations in which they are embedded. Examples of the new public contracting include the regulation of relationships between government departments through Public Service Agreements and Framework Documents; the regulation of relationships between individual citizens and the state through Youth Offender Contracts, Parenting Contracts, and Jobseekers Agreements; the funding of public infrastructure projects through Public Private Partnerships; and the restructuring of key public service sectors such as health, social care and education through contracts in competitive quasi-markets, reflecting the Government's privatization agenda. The book critically analyzes and evaluates such contractual arrangements with reference to theories of relational contract and responsive regulation. It argues that while in business and other private relations contract routinely enables the parties to regulate and adjust their on-going relationships to mutual benefit, this is often not the case in the new public contracting. In many instances crucial elements of trust, voluntariness, and reciprocity are shown to be lacking. This and other weaknesses in regulatory design are likely to impede the attainment of the Government's policy objectives. The book demonstrates the problems of ineffectiveness and lack of legitimacy generally associated with this mode of regulation, and specifies institutional and other conditions that need to be satisfied for the more responsive governance of these public service functions.
Policy Context
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 25, 2006
Economic Contracts
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 25, 2006
The use of standard contracts in the English National Health Service: A case study analysis
Social Science & Medicine, Jul 1, 2011
The use of contracts is vital to market transactions. The introduction of market reforms in healt... more The use of contracts is vital to market transactions. The introduction of market reforms in health care in the U.K. and other developed countries twenty years ago meant greater use of contracts. In the U.K., health care contracting was widely researched in the 1990s. Yet, despite the changing policy context, the subject has attracted less interest in recent years. This paper seeks to fill a gap by reporting findings from a study of contracting in the English National Health Service (NHS) after the introduction of the national standard contract in 2007. By using economic and socio-legal theories and two case studies we examine the way in which the new contract was implemented in practice and the extent to which implementation conformed to policy intentions and to our theoretical predictions. Data were collected using non-participant observation of 36 contracting meetings, 24 semi-structured interviews, and analysis of documents. We found that despite efforts to introduce a more detailed ('complete') contract, in practice, purchasers and providers often reverted to a more relational style of contracting. Frequently reliance on the NHS hierarchy proved to be indispensable; in particular, formal dispute resolution was avoided and financial risk was re-allocated in compromises that sometimes ignored contractual provisions. Serious data deficiencies and shortages of skilled personnel still caused major difficulties. We conclude that contracting for health care continues to raise serious problems, which may be exacerbated by the impending transfer of responsibility to groups of general practitioners (GPs) who generally lack experience and expertise in large-scale, secondary care contracting.
Social Science Research Network, Dec 14, 2002
This paper explores the relationship between theories of regulation and governmentality, showing ... more This paper explores the relationship between theories of regulation and governmentality, showing how a synthesis of the two approaches may be used in the analysis of central-local relations. The basis of the current trend towards greater partnership and cooperation in the regulation of local by central government is argued to lie in the linking of increasingly selective imperium and dominium controls with responsibilization' strategies involving techniques of accounting, audit, and contracting. Following Nonet and Selznick, the substantive and purposive nature of state action is placed at the centre of the analysis. In this perspective, the ideal of responsive regulation implies not just technical effectiveness, but the harnessing of regulatory forces and`governmental' resources in endeavours to achieve legitimate regulatory objectives. While New Labour's regulatory style is more likely to prove effective than that of the Conservatives, it may be criticized for a similar failure to implement fundamental values of openness and participation in the determination of regulatory purposes.
from the existence of real essential relations and reproduce the phenomenal forms of Appearance w... more from the existence of real essential relations and reproduce the phenomenal forms of Appearance which give rise to merely "spontan-10. ibid. p. 105. (emphasis supplied) 11. The methodological trajectory from simple to complex centrally informs the concrete analysis of Trespass; what is rejected, however, (infra Ch. 4. Section IV) is the conflation of the abstract with the simple and the concrete with the complex. 12. infra. Ch. 4. Section IV (2) (a) 10 eous" and "ideolgocial" consciousness.l 3 'Ihese considerations also
Government by Contract and the New Public Contracting
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 25, 2006
Public Management Review, Sep 8, 2014
Contracts in the English NHS: Market levers and social embeddedness
Health Sociology Review, Sep 1, 2011
... 1 Since administrative devolution in the early years of the Blair government NHS policies in ... more ... 1 Since administrative devolution in the early years of the Blair government NHS policies in the four UK countries have diverged significantly (see: Greer 2004; Hughes et al. 2008). The Welsh Assembly Government ended the ...
Modern Law Review, Nov 1, 2005
This article examines from a regulatory perspective the legal position of citizens in respect of ... more This article examines from a regulatory perspective the legal position of citizens in respect of contracted out human services. It argues that the inadequate protection of individual interests and the public interest here is a re£ection of increasingly complex relationships between the state and independent sectors, expressed in the essentially hybrid character of contemporary public service organisation. Accordingly a hybrid reform strategy, rather than one that attempts to extend or develop private or public law in any particular direction, is most likely to be successful in addressing associated legal governance problems. The attainment of improved redress for service recipients, and increased accountability of contractors and other parties engaged in human services networks, requires the careful tailoring of remedies to the conditions prevailing in particular sectors.The goal of responsive law should be to foster qualities of good administration and respect for fundamental public interest values within the whole range of regulated agencies and bodies performing public service functions.
Regulating Government by Contract: Towards a Public Law Framework?
Social Science Research Network, May 6, 2003
Government contracting in the United Kingdom has traditionally been equated with public procureme... more Government contracting in the United Kingdom has traditionally been equated with public procurement, contract being 'the instrument by which the goods and services required by government departments are procured from the private sector' . Despite concerns about the lack of effective accountability,2 the development of a separate body of government contract law has been widely regarded as unnecessary.3 Over the past twenty years 'government by contract' has assumed new forms. Contractual mechanisms were deployed by the Conservatives in the drive for efficiency within government and to reform the public sector and local government. A fresh impetus was thereby given to public law debates. Doubts were raised about the absence of a framework of legal principles governing the growing role of contract in public administration.4 A 'public law contract', with its own principles regarding formation and dispute resolution, was argued to be necessary to enhance government accountability.5 In the mid-1990s, Treasury pressure for the private financing of major public infrastructure projects gave a new twist to traditional procurement, leading to renewed calls for government policy and practice to be placed in a public law frame.6 Far from diminishing following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election,7 government by contract has been vigorously extended across a wide range of economic and social relations in new private-public partnership initiatives and in a variety of legislative schemes.8
The New Public Contracting: Regulation, Responsiveness, Relationality
ABSTRACT This book charts the significant increase in Britain over the last 25 years in the deplo... more ABSTRACT This book charts the significant increase in Britain over the last 25 years in the deployment of contract as a regulatory mechanism across a broad spectrum of social relationships. Since Labour came to power in 1997 the trend has accelerated, the use of contract spreading beyond the sphere of economics into public administration and social policy. The 'new public contracting' is the term given this distinctive mode of governance, characterized by the delegation of contractual powers and responsibilities to public agencies in regulatory frameworks preserving central government controls and powers of intervention. In many cases the contracts are not legally enforceable, their power as regulatory instruments deriving from the hierarchical authority relations in which they are embedded. Examples of the new public contracting include the regulation of relationships between government departments through Public Service Agreements and Framework Documents; the regulation of relationships between individual citizens and the state through Youth Offender Contracts, Parenting Contracts, and Jobseekers Agreements; the funding of public infrastructure projects through Public Private Partnerships; and the restructuring of key public service sectors such as health, social care and education through contracts in competitive quasi-markets, reflecting the Government's privatization agenda. The book critically analyzes and evaluates such contractual arrangements with reference to theories of relational contract and responsive regulation. It argues that while in business and other private relations contract routinely enables the parties to regulate and adjust their on-going relationships to mutual benefit, this is often not the case in the new public contracting. In many instances crucial elements of trust, voluntariness, and reciprocity are shown to be lacking. This and other weaknesses in regulatory design are likely to impede the attainment of the Government's policy objectives. The book demonstrates the problems of ineffectiveness and lack of legitimacy generally associated with this mode of regulation, and specifies institutional and other conditions that need to be satisfied for the more responsive governance of these public service functions.
Contractual Governance: Institutional and Organizational Analysis
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Sep 1, 2000
This paper focuses on the role of contract as a governance mechanism in contemporary economic and... more This paper focuses on the role of contract as a governance mechanism in contemporary economic and social relations, exploring this theme in the context of recent writing on contract and contracting within law and other disciplines. The trends towards both outsourcing by private firms and privatization of public services have increased the importance of contract as an instrument of market and quasi-market exchange. Such organizational developments have been accompanied by institutional changes in the way in which business relationships are regulated through legal and extralegal norms and other constraints in the contractual environment. Contract is also being deployed increasingly as an instrument of regulation of social relations between the state and citizens in the fields of welfare, education and criminal justice. Following Macneil, the paper develops a methodology for assessing the quality of different types of relationship - between buyers and sellers, purchasers and providers, providers and consumers, regulators and regulatees, government and governed, and state agencies and citizens - according to the relationality of "contract" norms. Drawing on theories of responsive regulation, the paper explores the institutional and organizational conditions of responsive contractual governance in selected areas of market, quasi-market, and social relations. The underlying argument is that the core values of democracy, participation, and citizenship have a central part to play in the determination of responsive regulatory policy. We should aim to increase the level of public participation in decisions concerning organizational and institutional frameworks, so that citizen and consumer interests may adequately be represented in the determination of optimal forms of governance.
Contract and economic organisation : socio-legal initiatives
Dartmouth Pub. Co. eBooks, 1996
Part 1 Contemporary issues in the socio-legal analysis of contract: franchising - the draftsman&#... more Part 1 Contemporary issues in the socio-legal analysis of contract: franchising - the draftsman's contract, John Adams from co-operative contracting to a contract of co-operation, Roger Brownsword the relational constitution of the discrete contract, David Campbell competing norms of contractual behaviour, Hugh Collins contracts, co-operation and trust - the role of the institutional framework, Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson the parasitic role of hybrids, Michael Hutter and Gunther Teubner relational contracts and repeated games, Morten Hviid. Part 2 Socio-legal analysis of public sector contracting: long-term contracts in the market for health care, Paul Fenn et al contracts in the NHS - searching for a model?, David Hughes et al limits of contract in internal CCT transactions - a comparative study of buildings cleaning and refuse collection in "Northern Metropolitan", Peter Vincent-Jones and Andrew Harries contracts for public services - a comparative perspective, Kieron Walsh et al.
Regulation and Governance
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 25, 2006
Journal of Law and Society, May 3, 2011
The healthcare modernisation agenda pursued by Conservative and New Labour governments in England... more The healthcare modernisation agenda pursued by Conservative and New Labour governments in England since the 1980s has both economic and democratic dimensions. As competition intensifies and the role of private and not-for-profit service providers increases, economic regulation is becoming more important. At the same time, other pressures at national and supra-national levels are reinforcing the trend towards more democratic and participatory forms of governance. This paper analyses the limits of the recently reformed framework of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in embedding economic relationships in social relations in the English healthcare context. It argues that this goal can be achieved only on the basis of a better understanding of the relationship between economic and democratic strategies for NHS modernisation, requiring that policy makers and professionals pay specific attention to the social learning dimension of governance in this and other human service sectors.
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 2007
This article explores the hybrid character of contemporary public service organization with speci... more This article explores the hybrid character of contemporary public service organization with specific reference to the emergence in Britain over the last twenty-five years of a novel mode ofgovernance, the "New Public Contracting." The New Public Contracting governs an ever-expanding range of aspects of modern life through contracting regimes directed at the attainment of particular policy purposes. In Britain, this mode of governance has been problematic in that many contracting regimes have failed to respond adequately to public needs. While the trend toward privatization may be politically irreversible, the role of the state should be to help establish the conditions that enable all parties with stakes or interests in particular public services to participate in collective learning processes aimed at addressing deficiencies in existing provisions.
Accounting and trust in the enabling of long‐term relations
Accounting, auditing & accountability, Aug 1, 1997
The enabling role of accounting in supporting classical contractual exchange has been extensively... more The enabling role of accounting in supporting classical contractual exchange has been extensively analysed in agency theory. In contrast, analyses the role of accounting in enabling empirically important and welfare‐enhancing long‐term relations which rely on trust and co‐operation rather than legal remedies. Under what circumstances does accounting strengthen, weaken or even destroy the trust which underpins relations both within and between organizations? What are the implications for accountability? Explores these general questions in the contrasting contexts of compulsory contracting policies in UK local government and the transition from socialism in Eastern Europe.
Private Property and Public Order: The Hippy Convoy and Criminal Trespass
Journal of Law and Society, 1986
The so-called 'hippy convoy', finally dispersed on June 9 after three weeks of panic over... more The so-called 'hippy convoy', finally dispersed on June 9 after three weeks of panic over the supposed threat to private property rights, has placed on the agenda once again the question of the need for criminal trespass law. On June 4, after pressure from the National Farmers' Union, the Country Landowners' Association and west-country Tory M.P.s, and in a climate of outrage fostered by generally hostile media coverage of the convoy, the Cabinet decided to set up a Ministerial Committee to investigate the possibility of changes in the law Mrs. Thatcher telling an excited House of Commons at question time that the government would be "only too delighted" to make things as difficult for the convoy as possible, and that "if fresh legislation on criminal trespass is needed to deter hippies it will be introduced".' This will be the third official review of the field since 1945, a Law Commission investigation into squatting on residential property begun in 1974 having led to the partial criminalisation of trespass in Part II of the Criminal Law Act 1977, and a Home Office consultation paper of 1983 following Michael Fagan's trespass in the Queen's bedroom at Buckingham Palace having produced the ultimately abortive Criminal Trespass Bill 1984.2 The present calls for legal reform can be understood only in the broader context of a socio-legal analysis addressing three major questions: why have trespasses in the post-war period assumed the various forms they have; why has social reaction taken the form it has; and what have been the effects of this reaction and of any subsequent legal transformation?3 The social function of trespass law is to guarantee private property both by providing a remedy for interference with possession (through the ordinary tort action) and by enabling those with greater rights of possession to recover land from occupiers with lesser interests (through the action for recovery of land).4 Acts of trespass have assumed a variety of forms and been informed by a number of different objectives in the modern period. Squatting in domestic residential buildings, as occurred immediately after the second world war and on an increasing scale from the late 1960s, was undertaken with the obvious
Regulating Government by Contract: Towards a Public Law Framework?
Modern Law Review, Jul 1, 2002
Government contracting in the United Kingdom has traditionally been equated with public procureme... more Government contracting in the United Kingdom has traditionally been equated with public procurement, contract being 'the instrument by which the goods and services required by government departments are procured from the private sector' . Despite concerns about the lack of effective accountability,2 the development of a separate body of government contract law has been widely regarded as unnecessary.3 Over the past twenty years 'government by contract' has assumed new forms. Contractual mechanisms were deployed by the Conservatives in the drive for efficiency within government and to reform the public sector and local government. A fresh impetus was thereby given to public law debates. Doubts were raised about the absence of a framework of legal principles governing the growing role of contract in public administration.4 A 'public law contract', with its own principles regarding formation and dispute resolution, was argued to be necessary to enhance government accountability.5 In the mid-1990s, Treasury pressure for the private financing of major public infrastructure projects gave a new twist to traditional procurement, leading to renewed calls for government policy and practice to be placed in a public law frame.6 Far from diminishing following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election,7 government by contract has been vigorously extended across a wide range of economic and social relations in new private-public partnership initiatives and in a variety of legislative schemes.8
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Papers by Peter Vincent-Jones