Quango reform: The next steps?

The coalition government elected in 2010 in the UK pursued a programme of quango reform focused on reducing the number and expenditure of arm’s-length bodies, increasing transparency, improving accountability and maximizing efficiency and effectiveness. This paper revisits Flinders and Skelcher’s 2012 PMM paper ‘Shrinking the quango state: five challenges in reforming quangos’ to assess progress to date and consider future challenges. Drawing insights from the UK programme of quango reform, as well as similar developments in Ireland, the authors identify five new challenges for governments: regulating, managing, reconciling, co-ordinating and reflecting.