Moreover, an “English awfulness” explanation might fit with a view of New Public Management as representing international convergence on a common public management style. On castles’ analysis, the English-speaking countries lost their formerly distinctive “high-direct employment” feature of public management between the 1960s and the 1980s, and New Public Management could be interpreted as part of that process of coming in line with non-English-speaking countries. Particularly with respect to the practice of accounting techniques and management consultancy, diffusion of the new New Public Management ideas might have been expected to spread more readily across countries with the same language and similar legal traditions.