Bureaucracy in the Blakeney Decision-Making System

摘要

In his years as premier of Saskatchewan, Allan Blakeney sought to develop a rational decision-making system that would guide the actions of his government. The system would see elected and appointed officials form an almost seamless process to facilitate a planned approach to the formulation of policy But a close examination of a major initiative of the Blakeney government—the Saskatchewan Dental Plan—finds that only some steps in the decision system reflected the wishes of the premier Cabinet acted collectively to determine the aims of government and to make a final decision on the children's dental program. The minister responsible for the plan also behaved according to expectations and quickly determined the priority of the dental proposal. Therole of the bureaucracy, however, fit uneasily into the picture of an orderly decision process. The belief that appointed officials would act together to generate options for a dental plan went largely unrealized. The work of the civil service was instead the result of a series of competitions both within and between departments: A review of other programs in the Blakeney government and earlier CCF governments suggests that this characterization of bureaucracy is not unique to the children's dental plan.