Donald F. Kettl

The global revolution in public management: Driving themes, missing links

Since the late 1970s, a truly remarkable revolution has swept public management around the world. Understanding this revolution means sorting through three issues: the basic ideas of reform; the connections between the reforms and governmental processes, like budgeting and personnel; and the links between these processes and governance. These reforms have proven surprisingly productive but, in the process, they have raised a new generation of fundamentally important issues that have been largely unexplored.

Leadership at the Fed

Assesses Eccles, Martin, Burns, and Volcker, four of the Federal Reserves mo influential chairmen, looks at how they have expanded the agencys powers, a discusses conflicts with the Treasury Department.

Modernising Government: The Way Forward—a comment

This terrific book not only frames the state of play in international public management. It also frames the central but subtle paradox of this movement. In the first stage of the public management reform movement, progress was halting but the driving ideas were inescapably clear. In the current, second stage of the movement, action is lively and vibrant — almost everyone is doing something. But as the movement has spread, the driving ideas have become far fuzzier. The paradox is deeply rooted in the tension between theoretical clarity and broad action. And it raises the book’s central puzzle: can we chart what will come next? In the 1970s, the management reform movement underwent a profound transformation. The world’s most developed nations shifted from trying to modernize less-developed countries to trying to transform themselves. This ‘new public management’ (NPM) provided a fundamental diagnosis of the emerging problems of the developed world — citizens’ growing demands for public services and their shrinking appetite to pay for them. The NPM also supplied a clear prescription — a replacement of hierarchical command-and-control governance with market-driven incentives. The NPM drove high-energy, focused reforms in a small handful of Westminster nations. But as their experience deepened, it became harder to follow the NPM prescriptions. In particular, output-based measures failed to satisfy the outcomebased needs of policy-makers. That, in turn, led to the ‘is the NPM dead?’ debate in the academic literature. The reality was not so much that the NPM went on life support because of failure. Rather, it stimulated sweeping action that stretched its neat formulas to breaking point. The NPM did not die; it spurned a vast array of new reforms, which the book details. That led to the second phase of reforms. Its central element is its very universality. The NPM prompted global reform, but the reforms it stimulated increasingly moved away from the NPM’s guiding principles. That is the core paradox. In fact, the book’s central finding is that ‘modernisation is context dependent’, because the ‘strategies need to be tailored to an individual country’s context, needs

The Perils-And Prospects-Of Public Administration

Every discipline periodically goes through a period of sometimes wrenching reassessment. For public administration, this reassessment has been nearly constant. Americans have always been distrustful of governmental power and, especially, administrative power. They have long believed that public administration is more inefficient and corrupt than private administration. Woodrow Wilsons memorable call to study the importance of running a constitution shows how, even in its earliest days, the modem study of American public administration has struggled for acceptance.

Is the Worst Yet to Come

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, public officials pledged that the nation would rise to the challenge and ensure that the country would not suffer such a disaster again. Almost exactly four years later, however, Hurricane Katrina inflicted a devastating blow on the Gulf Coast. Many of the problems that surfaced during 9/11 returned yet again to plague the Katrina recovery efforts. Moreover, as bad as the problems were in the Gulf, they could have been even worse had the storm been stronger or had it scored a direct hit on New Orleans. More disasters—from earthquakes and floods to bird flu and terrorist attacks—are likely and perhaps inevitable. Unless we take to heart the lessons that Katrina teaches, especially improved systems for communication and coordination, we are likely to repeat the Katrina problems. The worst is yet to come, without a substantial investment of political capital.

The Transformation of Governance and Public Affairs Education

Abstract Public affairs education faces a critical challenge in providing managers and analysts with the right knowledge and skills in a time when governance has been transformed. While governments traditional institutions and processes have become less central to the attainment of public purposes, new institutions and processes that rely on private partners and networks have become more important. The challenge facing public managers is to frame new tactics to manage programs effectively while preserving basic processes of democratic accountability. The challenge for public affairs programs is to prepare students to manage in a world in which not all public service will be in government; more program implementation will occur through nonhierarchical relationships; more domestic policy will be shaped by global forces; and government will need to incorporate new forms of public participation.

Making health reform work : the view from the states

Produced in close consultation with state health care officials from all around the country, this important volume addresses the central implementation, management, and federalism dimensions of health reform. Chapters by some of the countrys leading health policy and public management experts explore the administrative challenges of reform as they relate to health alliances, cost containment, quality of care, medical education and training, and other key issues. They discuss various working principles for developing an administratively sound health reform policy. The contributors are Lawrence D. Brown, Columbia University; Gerald J. Garvey, Princeton University; Donald F. Kettl, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Michael Sparer, Columbia University; James R. Tallon, United Hospital Fund; James R. Fossett and Frank J. Thompson, State University of New York, Albany.

Administrative Accountability and the Rule of Law

In June 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rocked the food industry—and food lovers—with its warning about tainted tomatoes. Consumers in New Mexico and Texas were contracting a rare, sometimes fatal strain of salmonella and the FDA feared that salmonella contamination from tomatoes was the cause. In the weeks that followed, a major outbreak spread across the country and worried consumers abandoned tomatoes. Fourth of July cookouts were not the same, and BLT lovers complained that their favorite sandwich was impossibly dry. By the end of July, the outbreak had infected more than 1,200 persons in 42 states.

Accountability issues of the resolution trust corporation

Abstract No other governmental organization ever created can rival the complex patterns of accountability created to manage the bailout of the savings and loan industry. This complexity has, in turn, led to criticism that the bailout structure is too unwieldy to be managerially effective or politically accountable. While the structure does indeed immensely complicate these problems, it is an inevitable product of the political realities that shaped the bailout strategy. The real issues in maintaining accountability to the public for the bailout are: reporting clearly on how the money is being used; improving Congresss ability to track the complex management of the bailout; and using government officials, not contractors, to supervise the governments goals. Indeed, the biggest potential problem of accountability in the savings and loan rescue is not the convoluted political structure at the top but the heavy reliance on private contractors at the bottom.

Managing community development in the New Federalism

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