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CHAPTER FIVE: Strategies and Tactics for Administrative Reform

Review

1. Why do you think that "in the administrative world, nothing has become more constant than change"? Why do you think the United States in particular has been devoted to altering its administrative apparatus to make the system work ever better? What implications does it have that one of the oldest constitutional democracies is constantly changing the way it functions?


2. Which of the three major administrative reform strategies—downsizing, reengineering, or continuous improvement—do you find to be the most compelling and why? What are the weaknesses inherent in the other two?


3. Why do you think the private sector has so much influence on government, especially when it comes to reform? How does the public perceive the private sector? How has this changed over time? What could account for these changing perceptions?


4. One of the functions of the subfield, Comparative Public Administration, is to examine different reforms going on around the world and compare the strategies of different nations against each other. What are the inherent difficulties of the subfield? What are the strengths of this type of analysis?


5. The text concludes with thoughts on public management in theory and in practice, citing the difficulties inherent in both. The text states about administrative reform:

     "The job in the twenty-first century has become harder because expectations have grown even as resources have
     shrunk. That means that the challenges for public managers have never been higher, nor has the need for good
     public managers ever been greater".

What do you think about that statement? Why do you think this is the case? What do you think twenty-first-century reformers have to contend with things that their predecessors did not?