Reinventing Government in the American States: Measuring and Explaining Administrative Reform

TLDR: In the 1990s, the National Performance Review (NPR) represented a turning point in federal administrative reform, as well as the more general reinvention proposals, and tried to place the reforms in a systematic framework as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: Reform waves flowing across the American political landscape are not new. In the states they have paralleled and sometimes preceded national government reforms that began early in this century and extended into recent decades (Garnett, 1980; Conant, 1988, 1992). Shortly after the federal Taft Commission proposed management reforms in 1912, states set a pattern of examining their structures for possible reorganization. Garnett (1980) identified state reorganization waves associated successively with the Taft Commission, the Brownlow Committee of the 1930s, and the first Hoover Commission of 1947-49. Conant suggested a fourth wave of reform in the 1960 to 1980 period that included more than 20 successful comprehensive state reorganizations (1988, 894). We examine the nature of state reforms in the current decade. That state-level comprehensive reforms in the 1990s might center on "reinventing government" should come as no surprise. In their book, Reinventing Government, Osborne and Gaebler (1992) raised issues that confront state administrators and cited state leaders' experiences in developing "entrepreneurial government." From these examples they sought to identify "common threads" to offer as guides (19). After examining one state (Minnesota) in depth, Barzelay (1992) described a "post-bureaucratic paradigm" that he argued marks this next reform. The National Commission on State and Local Public Service, chaired by former Mississippi Governor William Winter, assembled a set of scholarly papers and held regional hearings to explore steps to "revitalize state and local governance" (Thompson, 1993, 1). The commission ultimately issued recommendations overlapping with reinvention. The American states appear to be adopting some changes that are consistent with reinvention recommendations. To explore this development, we surveyed state agency directors in late 1994 and early 1995 and examine here the scope, content, and implementation of reinvention reforms across the 50 states near the midpoint of the present decade. From the National Level to the States: Characteristics of Reinvention Reforms As candidates in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore accepted the reinvention challenge at the national level: We can no longer afford to pay more for--and get less from--our government. The answer for every problem cannot always be another problem or more money. It is time to radically change the way the government operates--to shift from top-down bureaucracy to entrepreneurial government that empowers citizens and communities to change our country from the bottom up (Clinton and Gore, 1992, 23-24). The administration's National Performance Review (NPR) represented a turning point in federal administrative reform. Analysts have carefully reviewed the many specific proposals that emerged from it, as well as the more general reinvention proposals, and tried to place the reforms in a systematic framework. These proposals came from many sources. Osborne and Gaebler described writing their book as a process in which they "journeyed through the landscape of governmental change" and "sought constantly to understand the underlying trends" (1992, 19). Their search produced ten principles that they used to organize the book. These principles have been variously described as a "constellation of ideas" (Frederickson, 1996, 263), a "global movement" present in the private sector and all government levels and drawing on reforms in the U.S. and abroad (Kamensky, 1996, 248-49), a "conflated aggregation" (Fox, 1996, 258), a "grab bag" from which "everyone who is interested gets to pick his or her own particular purpose" (Nathan, 1995, 213); and "a collage of fashionable approaches to reforming organizations" (Arnold, 1995, 414).(1) Critics of reinvention (and of the National Performance Review, specifically) have targeted its deviation from the long-established administrative management tradition. …