James D. Carroll

The Rhetoric of Reform and Political Reality in the National Performance Review

The first phase of the National Performance Review (NPR I), announced September 7, 1993, redistributes control over administration between the president and Congress, and among and within agencies. In focusing on how government works rather than on what government does, NPR I establishes a contemporary form of the politics/administration dichotomy. Congressional and other political action affecting administration through rules and reporting requirements is defined as unwarranted involvement in administration. Bureaucracies that administer these rules and requirements are to be reduced or eliminated. Announced after the November 1994 congressional elections (Barr, 1995; Jehl, 1995), the second phase of the National Performance Review (NPR II) addresses what government does. NPR II advocates consolidating, developing, privatizing, and terminating programs. It addresses perceived public concerns not only with how government works but also with the size, scope, and intrusiveness of federal operations. NPR II reallocates control of programmatic activity within the intergovernmental system, between government systems, and between government and other organizations. It characterizes administration as appropriately concerned with the social and economic value of programs as well as with how government works. Neither phase of the NPR directly and systematically addresses trends that probably will shape much of public administration in the early 21st century. The first is the imbalance between consumption and savings and investment in the United States marked by concern with deficits and debt, entitlement spending, demographic change, and declining private and public investment. The second is the challenge of sorting out relationships and responsibilities among levels of governments, and governments and other organizations. The third is reconciling traditions of constitutional governance and legal accountability with the search for flexibility, innovation, and productivity in addressing managerial and programmatic issues. Part I of this commentary analyzes NPR I as political theory, prescription, and action. Part II summarizes the central themes of NPR II. Part III assesses the NPR as an effort to revitalize government. The National Performance Review, Phase One (NPR I)(1) Like many previous efforts to rethink public administration (Waldo, 1990), NPR I is both an administrative and political approach to how and by whom federal agencies should be organized, controlled, and managed. NPR I is administrative theory, prescription, and action. Its stated administrative objectives are deregulating administration by reducing red tape, empowering front-line employees to produce results, satisfying customers of programs, and reducing administrative costs. Several commentators have analyzed the approach to reinventing government underlying NPR I, as well as recommendations and implementing activities (Frederickson, 1992; Goodsell, 1993; Moe, 1994; Kettl, 1994; U.S. General Accounting Office, 1994). NPR I is also political theory, prescription, and action. Its political objective is changing power, authority, and control over administration in the federal government. The central issue is who should control administration and why. The Political Theory of the NPR The NPRs political theory is a paradigm based upon a paradox. The paradigm is administration empowered to satisfy the needs of the American people free of politics, red tape, and hierarchy. The paradox is that this new paradigm for the information age resurrects and reinvents the old paradigm of the Progressive Era and the industrial age, the much-criticized politics/administration dichotomy (Rosenbloom, 1993). On its face, NPR I would shift the balance of decision-making power over interpreting and implementing policy from politics to administration. In theory, it would significantly enlarge the sphere of front-line administrative power and action by cutting red tape, delayering and downsizing bureaucracy, empowering front-line administrators, and establishing customer service as the objective of federal operations. …

A Report of the APSA Confidentiality in Social Science Research Data Project

Does a researcher have a legal right not to reveal the identity of sources or subjects and not to reveal information obtained in confidence in the course of research, when asked to do so by a grand jury or other investigatory body? Should a researcher have such a right? Under what circumstances, if any, does a researcher have an ethical obligation to promise a source of information not to reveal the identity of the source and the content of what is learned? What position should the various social science associations take, if any, on questions of the ethical responsibilities and legal rights of researchers concerning the confidentiality of research sources and information?

The APSA Confidentiality in Social Science Research Project: A Final Report

In 1973 a research project was initiated by the American Political Science Association to investigate problems surrounding the establishment and maintenance of confidential relationships between scholarly researchers and research subjects. The effort was funded by the Russell-Sage Foundation and co-sponsored by all the various national social science associations.

Disinvesting in America? the legacy of consumption policy in the 1980s

This article traces patterns of consumption, low productivity, debt accumulation and slow economic growth. Rather than calling for an increased emphasis on market and corporate incentives, the author calls for increased public investment. He favors particularly increases in scientific research and development and technology, in public works to rebuild the infrastructure, and calls for a public administration associated with increased investment in government. The New Deal and the Great Society established the foundations of the public policy and administration of consumption—income transfer, entitlement, loan, loan guarantee, credit, subsidy, tax expenditure, and related programs designed to maintain or improve the income levels and social and economic well being of many elements of the United States population. Such programs now constitute approximately 50 percent of the federal budget. In the late 1980s, the United States entered into a new international economic, technological, and demographic order in...

Investing in America? The Public Policy and Administration of Consumption, Saving, and Investment

The New Deal and the Great Society established the foundations for the public policy and administration of consumption and services. The United States has entered into a new international economic, technological, and demographic order in which the public policy and administration of investment will be increasingly important. The choices confronting public administration and the nation are moral as well as political and economic: What kind of nation will be bequeathed to the future? The United States needs a new ethic of public investment. The nations future depends upon increased investment now in people, research and technology, the environment and public infrastructure, children in need, and public systems and the public service. Public administration as theory and practice can contribute to investment in the nation.

The Advanced Study Program of the Brookings Institution

Each year, these and similar questions are explored in the approximately 100 seminars, conferences, and other educational programs conducted by the Advanced Study Program. Approximately 700 political scientists, economists and other social scientists, members of the Senate and House, officials of the Executive Branch, journalists, businessmen, interest group representatives, representatives of foreign governments, and others serve in these programs as an extended faculty, providing the expertise needed to examine developments in public policy and the ways in which policy is made.