The English Audit Commission and its Comprehensive Performance Assessment Framework for Local Government, 2002-8: Apogee of Positivism?

This Article evaluates the English Audit Commission (AC) in its recent regulatory relations with local government. Its Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) initiative was central in defining this relationship and is taken as the key policy object here. The appraisal explores the AC’s performance in its own positivistic terms. This means focusing on the behavioural and cultural theories, institutional assumptions and rational presumptions underpinning CPA measurement. Using these three yardsticks, the overall consequences of CPA’s eight judgmental years on the local government polity are traced. Noting the tenacity of positivist thinking in English government, the argument examines two counter-factual regulatory possibilities. These are based on the diverging readings provided by interpretivism and relational materiality.