The state of UK governance 2008: Whitehall — structures and functions under Brown

This article has two elements. The first relates a real current experience in civil service life and discusses the `way it was' on a certain date — 11 June 2008 — with reflections on the structure of departmental Whitehall and Cabinet Government under Gordon Brown's premiership; and on the key role of Public Service Agreements in the way the civil service works now. The second considers what this perceived reality tells us about some current theorizing about `networks' and governance while insisting on the centrality of the observable fact and the parliamentary context as one such `fact'.