In this new work, two leading political scientists reassess the shifting fortunes of the Whitehall model of governance - and find it wanting. As we prepare to enter the twenty-first century, it has become clear that the model now has much less currency abroad as well as in the UK. The neo-liberal assaults of Thatcherism and the political drift of the Major years has meant that whereas, previously, 'Whitehall' symbolized a synergy between the political leadership and the permanent bureaucracy, it now evokes images of executive disarray and the subservience of career civil servants to the (often faddish) will of their political masters.