In uneasy partnership at the helm of the modern state stand elected party politicians and professional bureaucrats. This book is the first comprehensive comparison of these two powerful elites.
Why Reforms So Often Disappoint Aberbach, Joel D.; Christensen, Tom
American review of public administration,
01/2014, Letnik:
44, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article examines why major reforms so often disappoint. It starts with an explication and analysis of perspectives for understanding why reforms often do not work out as hoped—rational ...comprehensive decision making and garbage can decision making, the latter in a “pure” version and in a modified version of the garbage can widely identified with the work of John Kingdon. We present these perspectives in a general way and then discuss how we can understand features of two central aspects of reforms based on these perspectives—the processes leading up to decisions on reforms and reform implementation processes. Some brief case studies are presented to illustrate some of the problems laid out in the theoretical part of the article. We conclude that nonincremental reform is vulnerable at every stage from conception to implementation and that although reforms are certainly not always doomed to failure, they are not often great candidates for success either.
Conducting and Coding Elite Interviews Aberbach, Joel D.; Rockman, Bert A.
PS, political science & politics,
12/2002, Letnik:
35, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In real estate the maxim for picking a piece of property is “location, location, location.” In elite interviewing, as in social science generally, the maxim for the best way to design and conduct a ...study is “purpose, purpose, purpose.” It's elementary that the primary question one must ask before designing a study is, “What do I want to learn?” Appropriate methods flow from the answer. Interviewing is often important if one needs to know what a set of people think, or how they interpret an event or series of events, or what they have done or are planning to do. (Interviews are not always necessary. Written records, for example, may be more than adequate.) In a case study, respondents are selected on the basis of what they might know to help the investigator fill in pieces of a puzzle or confirm the proper alignment of pieces already in place. If one aims to make inferences about a larger population, then one must draw a systematic sample. For some kinds of information, highly structured interviews using mainly or exclusively close-ended questions may be an excellent way to proceed. If one needs to probe for information and to give respondents maximum flexibility in structuring their responses, then open-ended questions are the way to go.
Citizens and Consumers Aberbach, Joel D; Christensen, Tom
Public management review,
06/2005, Letnik:
7, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
New Public Management (NPM) puts a major emphasis on consumer sovereignty. Through consumer sovereignty, it is argued, public organizations will produce outputs more in line with what citizens want. ...This article analyses the implications, both theoretical and practical, of conceiving of citizens as customers. We discuss the features of citizenship, the ways in which the emerging customer focus impacts the role of citizen, how consumerism would and, in implementation, does work and the wider implications for democratic governance, particularly the effects on political and administrative leadership roles and leaders' political accountability, of the tendency to define citizens as customers of government agencies when conceptualizing their relationship to the state.
This essay reviews and analyzes the literature on presidential appointments in light of the growing tendency of chief executives to use the methods associated with what is now known as the ...administrative presidency. It closes with a discussion of the normative issues raised by the existing appointment system, one that appears to generate incompetence, distrust, and delays in filling posts.
This article uses three perspectives to explain the radical economic and state sector reforms undertaken in New Zealand starting in 1984. We interpret the reforms using a rational‐comprehensive ...perspective, a garbage can perspective and a modified garbage can perspective identified in the work of John Kingdon. With New Zealand as an illustrative case, we explore the conditions under which radical reform is possible, the factors governing the adoption of reforms, and the impact on the reform process of a country's historical and cultural traditions. Our analysis emphasizes the import of a package of ready‐made solutions, strong advocates (particularly a well‐placed policy entrepreneur) who attach the solutions to a problem, and the existence of a ‘window of opportunity’ for adoption of the reforms. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of adopting reforms that run counter to a nation's long‐established traditions.
This article argues that the George W. Bush administration is an important milestone in evolving notions about governance and policy that are increasingly identified with the Republican Party in the ...United States. Joining ideas about the power of the president that received their major impetus in the Nixon administration (especially the “administrative presidency”) and policy ideas developed by neoconservatives, the Bush administration has implemented an agenda with important consequences for social policy and for the role of government in general. A series of policy examples, including Medicare drug prescription benefits, education, and what is known as the “faith‐based initiative,” demonstrate the active role government has played under Bush and the techniques his administration has used to get what it wants.
Customer friendliness in tax systems typically characterized by control and enforcement appears to be a contradiction in terms. But many tax agencies, like other types of public organizations, have ...become more customer-oriented in the last few decades. This article, comparing the administration of tax systems in Norway and the USA, describes and analyzes the driving forces behind the consumer orientation movement in tax administration in the two nations and the dilemmas and effects of trying to balance control and service. Using a broad transformative perspective, we analyze structural and cultural changes in tax administration that are related to the increase in customer orientation and also consider the symbolic aspects of catering more to taxpayers. Norway and the USA have experienced similar structural reforms, but the two countries deviate rather sharply in other respects, particularly in the much larger impact of consumer-oriented reforms in the USA.
This article examines changes in the background characteristics, attitudes, and behavior patterns of high‐level U.S. federal executives. It also considers the impact of the New Public Management ...(NPM) movement. The data indicate that despite intense struggles about the role of the public sector, top civil servants remain a well‐educated, experienced, and highly motivated group, the members of which compare favorably to top executives in the private sector. The data also suggest that the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978 has been effective in producing a more politically responsive corps of career civil servants, and that administrators (both career and noncareer) are increasingly attuned to the more technical and legal aspects of their roles and less oriented to protecting particular interests or clientele groups. NPM‐style changes are still in progress and remain controversial, but it appears that political leaders continue to have an excellent (and increasingly diverse) group of career people to work with and a system that—at least in part due to the CSRA reforms—is more responsive to them than before. The top part of the U.S. bureaucracy may have been bent and reshaped in many ways over the last thirty years, but, despite widely publicized fears, it has not broken.
This article reports results of a follow-up study to my book Keeping a Watchful Eye (1990), updating it with data from the 1990s. It examines whether congressional oversight has increased or ...decreased relative to earlier periods, how the variables that predicted oversight behavior in the period from 1961 to 1983 worked in later years, why changes have occurred, and what they mean. It also examines whether there was something distinctive about oversight in the 1990s when Republicans dominated both chambers. Results indicate that the amount of primary-purpose oversight continues to be quite high and that the model developed in the book to explain committee oversight behavior remains remarkably effective. What has changed is a large drop in legislative hearings and meetings (where oversight behavior often occurs), something that the data show actually predates the Republican 104th Congress. However, the Republican takeover did lead to a more oppositional oversight context-to more oversight hostile to the basic goals of programs and agencies.
