Charles Goodsell has long taken the position that U.S. bureaucracy is neither a generalized failure nor sinkhole of waste as mythologized by anti-government ideologues. Rather, it is one of the most effective and innovate sets of administrative institutions of any government in the world today. Indispensable to our democracy, it keeps government reliable and dependable to the citizens it serves. However, The New Case for Bureaucracy goes beyond empirically verifying its quality. Now an extended essay, written in a conversational tone, Goodsell expects readers to form their own judgments. At a time when Congress is locked in partisan and factional deadlock, he argues for the increased importance of bureaucrats and discusses how federal agencies must battle to keep alive in terms of resources and be strong enough to retain the integrity of their missions.
"The Case for Bureaucracy" vigorously makes the argument that the public servants and administrative institutions of government in America are among the best in the world. Contrary to popular myth, they are not sources of great waste or threat to liberty, but social assets of critical value to a functioning democracy. In presenting his case, Goodsell covers many aspects of public administration and draws on current events to bring the material alive and up-to-date. This new edition incorporates September 11th and its consequences for public administration. Also a complete assessment is made of the Reinventing Government movement and related reforms.
Goodsell persuasively argues that public servants and administrative institutions are among the best in the world. Contrary to popular stereotypes, they are neither sources of great waste nor a threat to liberty, but social assets of critical value to a functioning democracy. In presenting his case, Goodsell touches on core aspects of public administration while drawing on important events, case material, and empirical evidence. Charles Goodsell is a beloved and highly-respected scholar in public administration and his impassioned case for bureaucrats is a favorite among public administration students and instructors alike.
Why a book defending government? Because for decades, right-wing forces in this country have engaged in a relentless and irresponsible campaign of vicious government bashing. Conservatives and libertarians have demonized government, attacked basic safety net programs like Medicare, and undermined vital regulations that protect consumers, investors, workers, and the environment. This book takes on this anti-government movement and shows that most of its criticisms of this institution are highly exaggerated, misleading, or just plain wrong. In reality, American government - despite its flaws - plays a valuable and indispensable role in promoting the public good. Most government programs are working well and are actually improving the lives of Americans in innumerable ways. Democratic government is a vital tool for making our world a better place; and if we want an America that is prosperous, healthy, secure, well-educated, just, compassionate, and unpolluted, we need a strong, active, and well-funded public sector. Part I: Why Government is Good. The section of the book describes how government acts as a force for good in society. One chapter chronicles a day in the life of an average middle-class American and identifies the myriad ways that government programs improve our lives. Other chapters describe the forgotten achievements of government; how government is the only way to effectively promote public values like justice and equality; and how a free market economy would be impossible without the elaborate legal and regulatory infrastructure provided by government. Part II: The War on Government. This section of the book chronicles the unrelenting assault on government being waged by conservative forces in this country. Chapters describe how cuts in social programs and rollbacks of regulations have harmed the health, safety, and welfare of millions of Americans and how these assaults have taken place on many fronts - in Congress, the administrative branch, and the federal courts, as well as on the state and local level. Also addressed: how the right's radical anti-government agenda is out of touch with the views and priorities of most Americans, and what the real truth is about government deficits. Part III: How to Revitalize Democracy and Government. There are, in fact, some problems with American government, and we need to address these if we are to restore Americans' faith in this institution. One of the main problems with our government is that it is not accountable and responsive enough to the public. Moneyed special interests too often win out over the public interest. Chapters in this section describe this problem and how we can fix it. There are several reforms - including public financing of elections - that could help our government live up to its democratic ideals. The final chapter discusses strategies for building a pro-government coalition in this country.
"Like it or not, all of us who live in modern society are organization men and women. We tend to be caught in the traditional patterns of dominance and subordination. This book is both pessimistic and hopeful. With devastating thoroughness, the author shows how pervasive these patterns of relationship are in our work lives and personal lives, and how deep they run -- into the very language of the organization and of ordinary life. This is not a book about how women can succeed in business, but a criticism of books like those success manuals and notions like that idea of success. The author sees bureaucrats and clients as the 'second sex'. To fit in properly, they just learn the skills necessary to cope with subordinate status, skills that women have always learned as part of their 'femininity'. Liberal reforms -- placing more women in management positions, for example -- are not enough. What is required is the emergence of an alternative voice, one grounded in the experience and perceptions of women, that will challenge the patterns of control found in every aspect of modern life. Public discourse today is not the language of women even when women speak it. In this brilliant synthesis of the feminist literature and the literature on organizational theory and practice, the author suggests how a feminist discourse could interject into public debate a reformulation of the basic political questions of power, reason, and organization and thereby legitimate a concern of both autonomy and community. In the face of the massive incursions of bureaucracy into daily life, this is an important contribution to the project of human liberation."--Publisher description.
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: CONCEPTS AND CASES offers a unique and highly regarded framework in which conceptual readings are paired with contemporary case studies that reflect real-world examples of administrative work, as well as new thinking and developments in the field. Case studies and examples cover topics such as the Columbia space shuttle disaster, the shootings at Columbine High School, and the war in Iraq making it easy to engage students in the readings. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Street-Level Bureaucracy is an insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs.
Given the influence of public bureaucracies in policymaking and implementation, Steven J. Balla and William T. Gormley assess their performance using four key perspectives—bounded rationality, principal-agent theory, interest group mobilization, and network theory—to help students develop an analytic framework for evaluating bureaucratic accountability. The new Fourth Edition of Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance provides a thorough review of bureaucracy during the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as new attention to state and local level examples and the role of bureaucratic values. ? New to this Edition: Interviews with two new cabinet secretaries—Christine Todd Whitman and Tom Ridge—with insightful quotes from them throughout the book. Added material on the battle over regulations, a battle that will loom large during the Trump administration, including midnight regulations and the Congressional Review Act. New examples demonstrate the activity and influence of constituencies of different kinds including the placing of women and minorities on US currency, a vignette that features the musical Hamilton, and the political protests surrounding the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. A new discussion of the privatization of roads, the pros and cons.
Bureaucracy despised, disparaged, and defended -- What citizens experience from bureaucracy -- More bureaucracy myths to delete -- Ask the impossible of bureaucracy? Easy! -- Looking closer at those bureaucrats -- Bureaucratic bigness and badness reconsidered -- Fads and fundamentals of bureaucracy.
In Bureaucracy’s Masters and Minions: The Politics of Controlling the U.S. Bureaucracy, the author argues that political control of the bureaucracy from the president and the Congress is largely contingent on an agency’s internal characteristics of workforce composition, workforce responsibilities, and workforce organization. Through a revised principal-agent framework, the author explores an agent-principal model to use the agent as the starting-point of analysis. The author tests the agent-principal model across 14 years and 132 bureaus and finds that both the president and the House of Representatives exert influence over the bureaucracy, but agency characteristics such as the degree of politization among the workforce, the type of work the agency is engaged in, and the hierarchical nature of the agency affects how agencies are controlled by their political masters. In a detailed case study of one agency, the U.S. Department of Education, the author finds that education policy over a 65-year period is elite-led, and that that hierarchical nature of the department conditions political principals’ influence. This book works to overcome three hurdles that have plagued bureaucratic studies: the difficulty of uniform sampling across the bureaucracy, the overuse of case studies, and the overreliance on the principal-agent theoretical approach.
