EDITORIAL The Changing Nature of Central Government in Britain: the ESRC's Whitehall Programme R.A. W. Rhodes University of Newcastle and Director of the ESRC's Whitehall Programme Introduction The 1998 PAC Annual Conference, held at the University of Birmingham, was devoted to the work of the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Whitehall Programme on the Changing Nature of Central Government in Britain.' This special issue of Public Policy and Administration reprints six of the papers presented at that conference with the Frank Stacey Memorial Lecture. All the papers have been refereed and revised. The aim is to report some of the early findings of the Programme which began in April 1994 and will finish in June 1999 and to illustrate the variety of work being done. Thus, the papers cover the Programme's several themes (see below), comparisons with the rest of Europe (including the EU) and the disciplines of history, law, management and politics. This introduction provides a brief history of the Programme, describes the role of the Programme Director, sets out the Programme's objectives and themes and introduces the articles. Finally, I provide a select bibliography of publications covering the first three years. A Brief History The Programme's formal origins lie in a Workshop entitled 'The Changing Nature of the British Executive' funded by the ESRC which I convened at the University of York on 13-14 April 1992. The workshop brought together academics and civil servants and sought to blend theory and practice. In David Marsh's possibly immortal words 'we have here two people who have made substantial contributions to understanding British government, Peter (Hennessy) in spite of his complete lack of theory and Patrick (Dunleavy) despite his excess of it'. The joke captured the good humour and frank exchanges of the workshop. The informal origins of the Programme were conversations in York in November in the snow between Rod Rhodes and Martin Kendor of the ESRC. Having aided and abetted Rod Rhodes in setting up the 'Local Governance' Programme, he was once more finding ways of spending the Society and Politics Development Group's money (Rhodes 1999a). Public Policy and Administration Volume 13 No. 4 Winter 1998 I