Inside the Reinvention Machine

This book provides the first independent assessment of the Clinton administration’s “reinventing government” plan after a year of effort. What has the reinvention machine produced? Where does it most need to be oiled and adjusted? And has it truly changed the way the federal government conducts its business? The authors of Improving Government Performance: An Owner’s Manual (Brookings, 1993) join with other public management experts for a look at both the practice and theory of reinventing government. In examining the movement’s driving ideas, relationships with the government’s workforce, and connections with the broader political community, they take stock of the boldest governmental reform movement in a generation.

The authors assert that Vice President Gore’s National Performance Review has sparked remarkable innovations by operating managers in federal agencies. The NPR, however, has unleashed broad changes throughout the federal government without building the new capacity in the Executive Office of the President required to manage the changing burdens of federal programs. The book appraises the many positive management reforms that federal managers have created, assesses the central political and administrative support that the White House must provide if the NPR is to be successful in the long run, and examines the lessons about the president’s role in governmental management that the NPR’s experiment in decentralized administration teaches.

The contributors are Carolyn Ban, State University of New York (SUNY), Albany; Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Brookings; Gerald Garvey, Princeton; Constance Horner, Brookings; and Beryl Radin, SUNY, Albany.

Donald F. Kettl, professor and associate director at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of Sharing Power: Public Governance and Private Markets (Brookings, 1993) and coauthor of Civil Service Reform: Building a Government That Works (Brookings, 1996). John J. DiIulio, Jr., professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, is the editor of Deregulating the Public Service: Can Government Be Improved? (Brookings, 1994) and coauthor of Body Count: Moral Povery… and How to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs (Simon Schuster, 1996).

Donald F. Kettl is the Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also director of the Fels Institute of Government and a professor of political science. Kettl is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including System under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics (CQ Press, 2nd ed., in 2007) and The Global Public Management Revolution (Brookings, 2nd ed., in 2005). John J. DiIulio, Jr., Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of politics, religion, and civil society at University of Pennsylvania and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, was a former assistant to the President and has served as a consultant for the National Institute of Justice and the National Institute of Corrections. He has authored and coauthored numerous books, including What's God Got to Do with the American Experiment? (Brookings, 2000), Body Count: Moral Poverty... and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs (Simon & Schuster, 1996), Inside the Reinvention Machine: Appraising Governmental Reform (Brookings, 1995), Making Health Reform Work: The View from the States (Brookings, 1994), and No Escape: The Future of American Corrections (Basic Books, 1991).