Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions
Beryl A. Radin
Georgetown University Press
<p>THIS IS A BOOK THAT IS LIKELY TO STIR HEATED DEBATE IN SOME PARTS OF</p><p>the public management community in terms of both substance and methodological approach. It emphasizes problems and limitations that have emerged from a path and agenda that represent some core beliefs of the public administration/public management field. The book’s approach emerged because I have attempted to sort out the differences between the reforms that come from those core beliefs and the acknowledgment that there are issues that cannot be resolved in a way that satisfies many scholars and practitioners.</p><p>Thus the six different reform areas discussed in this book are examined using a variety of information sources. The specific works cited do not represent new analyses; this is not a book that attempts to create new sources of information. Rather, it is an attempt to use existing analyses of the specific reform efforts and look at them through a different lens—the contradictions that characterize the US system. The volume focuses on the ways that all six of the reforms appear to shy away from dealing with three critical contradictions that are a part of the American political and social fabric—structural dimensions of the system of shared powers, multiple values and approaches, and political and administrative attributes of the US public sector. Each of the chapters draws on both academic and practice examples to illustrate the general problem with the strategies employed.</p>