Study title

Monitoring is central to the policy process: policy makers need to gather information in order to chart the nature and scale of policy problems, and to assess the impact of their policies. Since the 1980s, the UK has seen a huge expansion of quantitative, performance-based measures across policy areas – a trend which has more recently been criticized by the 2010 government. So what explains the appeal of targets and indicators since the 1980s, and how have they been implemented across sectors? How has the emphasis on delivery and the ‘target culture’ affected policy outcomes and political debate? And how feasible is it to roll back performance-based monitoring practices once in place? The Politics of Monitoring addresses these questions through analysing monitoring in three policy areas - climate change, immigration control, and defence procurement – over a 20 year period (1994-2014). The research will be based on interviews with around 90 officials and professionals engaged in monitoring in the three sectors; and analysis of key policy documents, press releases, media coverage and parliamentary debate on monitoring practices and their effects.