Inside the Reinvention Machine : Appraising Governmental Reform

This book provides the first independent assessment of the Clinton administrations "reinventing government" plan after a year of effort. What has the reinvention machine produced? Where does it most need to be oiled and adjusted? And has it truly changed the way the federal government conducts its business? The authors of Improving Government Performance: An Owners Manual (Brookings, 1993) join with other public management experts for a look at both the practice and theory of reinventing government. In examining the movements driving ideas, relationships with the governments workforce, and connections with the broader political community, they take stock of the boldest governmental reform movement in a generation.The authors assert that Vice President Gores National Performance Review has sparked remarkable innovations by operating managers in federal agencies. The NPR, however, has unleashed broad changes throughout the federal government without building the new capacity in the Executive Office of the

President required to manage the changing burdens of federal programs. The book appraises the many positive management reforms that federal managers have created, assesses the central political and administrative support that the White House must provide if the NPR is to be successful in the long run, and examines the lessons about the presidents role in governmental management that the NPRs experiment in decentralized administration teaches.The contributors are Carolyn Ban, State University of New York (SUNY), Albany; Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Brookings; Gerald Garvey, Princeton; Constance Horner, Brookings; and Beryl Radin, SUNY, Albany.Donald F. Kettl, professor and associate director at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of Sharing Power: Public Governance and Private Markets (Brookings, 1993) and coauthor of Civil Service Reform: Building a Government That Works (Brookings, 1996). John J. DiIulio, Jr., professor of politics and public affairs at

Princeton University and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, is the editor of Deregulating the Public Service: Can Government Be Improved? (Brookings, 1994) and coauthor of Body Count: Moral Povery... and How to Win Americas War Against Crime and Drugs (Simon Schuster, 1996). [Publisher's text]

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