- Date
- 01 Oct 2025
Christopher Hood was one of the leading scholars worldwide in public policy and administration. His analysis of what he named ‘New Public Management’ helped stimulate public management as an area of study after the late 1980s. The term quickly became the standard label for a set of administrative trends that spread well beyond academia into government, think tanks, international organisations and general public debate. His pioneering work embraced both broad theoretical insights, as with his development of a classificatory scheme embracing all the policy instruments any government can employ, and examination in fine empirical detail of the types of targets that governments set for health services. Some of it was developed in a UK context but much of it had an explicit cross-national comparative approach. His influence and importance were recognised through, among other things, a range of international and domestic awards and honours.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 22