Peter H. Schuck · June 2009
77 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 973 (2009)
Thoughtful books on governmental effectiveness are always in short supply, and never more so than today.
The Bush Administration was a sink of incompetence (or worse). Examples abound, but I shall identify only five. Even many of the most ardent supporters of the Iraq War, such as Senator John McCain, regard the Administration’s prosecution of it, at least up until the 2007 surge, as disastrous. Its performance during and after Hurricane Katrina is almost universally condemned. The administration of the Department of Justice by Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General, was notoriously inept and perhaps illegal. A leading writer concludes (a bit hyperbolically) that “[f]ive years on, the Department of Homeland Security is still a catastrophe.” And although many factors and institutional actors (including Congress) surely contributed to the current economic meltdown, no one can doubt that the crisis is to a significant extent due to the maladministration of agencies such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Second, the Obama Administration must deal with an exceedingly daunting agenda of programmatic and administrative decisions in policy areas as diverse as energy, taxation, the environment, housing, financial reform, education, trade, national security, foreign policy, intelligence gathering, and a host of others. Its successes and failures will depend, at a minimum, on how effectively it deploys the resources at its disposal and gathers additional resources. With the administration in effect managing the nation’s banking system and credit markets, there are many reasons to doubt that civil servants and their political superiors are equal to this extraordinary task.
Third, public confidence in the federal government today is very low by historic standards. Given the unusually difficult political and policy challenges that governments at all levels face today and for the foreseeable future, such confidence will be difficult, though not impossible, to regain. A relatively recent development strongly supports this prediction. As one of the books under review here clearly demonstrates, the President and other elected officials on both sides of the aisle no longer content themselves with merely disparaging this or that public policy; they now lead the chorus of systemic criticism of government competence and capacity. Ronald Reagan was not alone in insisting that government is not the solution but the problem. Moreover, increasingly well-educated, well-traveled, and technologically sophisticated citizens may be more receptive to such systemic criticisms of government as they hold it to ever higher standards of professional ethics, wise policymaking, and efficient administration.
The two books under review, then, are particularly welcome. To begin with, they nicely complement each other. Promoting the General Welfare: New Perspectives on Government Performance (hereinafter General Welfare), co-edited by political scientists Alan S. Gerber and Eric M. Patashnik, is concerned with the substance of public policy. A Government Ill Executed: The Decline of the Federal Service and How to Reverse It (hereinafter Government Ill Executed), by public administration scholar Paul C. Light, focuses on how public policy is administered. Both of these different emphases, of course, are important. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to decide which is worse: a well-implemented but unwise policy, or a wise policy that is poorly implemented.
But although both books address profoundly important subjects, the bureaucratic crisis documented by Government Ill Executed is the more urgent in terms both of its ultimate social consequences and the relative dearth of political, academic, journalistic, and public attention that it receives. It is the substantive merits and politics of policy proposals that almost always dominates public debates, not the often invisible, mundane processes of public administration. Even political scientists, who should know better, tend to relegate public administration to a relatively obscure corner of their profession. Whereas the substance of policy design is considered sexy, the process of policy administration is usually seen as, well, boring. Alas, these two valuable books will reinforce this unfortunate and often misleading stereotype.
