Deregulating the Public Service: Can Government Be Improved?

By John J. DiIulio Jr.

Book Overview

The nation's federal, state, and local public service is in deep trouble. Not even the most talented, dedicated, well-compensated, well-trained, and well-led public servants can serve the public well if they must operate under perverse personnel and procurement regulations that punish innovation and promote inefficiency. Many attempts have been made to determine administrative problems in the public service and come up with viable solutions. Two of the most important--the 1990 report of the National Commission on the Public Service, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, and the 1993 report of the National Commission on the State and Local Public Service, led by former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter--recommended ""deregulating the public service.""
Deregulating the public service essentially means altering or abolishing personnel and procurement regulations that deplete government workers' creativity, reduce their productivity, and make a career in public service unattractive to many talented, energetic, and public-spirited citizens. But will it work? With the benefit of a historical perspective on the development of American public service from the days of the progressives to the present, the contributors to this book argue that deregulating the public service is a necessary but insufficient condition for much of the needed improvement in governmental administration. Avoiding simple solutions and quick fixes for long-standing ills, they recommend new and large-scale experiments with deregulating the public service at all levels of government.
In addition to editor John DiIulio, the contributors are Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, now at Princeton University; former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter; Gerald J. Garvey, Princeton; John P. Burke, University of Vermont; Melvin J. Dubnick, Rutgers; Constance Horner, former director of the Federal Office of Personnel Management, now at Brookings; Mark Alan Hughes, Harvard; Steven Kelman, Harvard; Donald F. Kettl, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Mark H. Moore, Harvard; Richard P. Nathan, State University of New York at Albany; Neal R. Peirce, The National Review; and James Q. Wilson, UCLA.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815718535
• ISBN13: 9780815718536
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Governing Prisons

Interesting look into the prison systems within three different states in three different geographic areas. Marked similarities in their approaches as well as where they found their own varisions to approach the over-crowding as well common prison management issues.

The Seminal Book on Correctional Administration

John DiIulio's seminal work on correctional administration is timeless, and it is just as relevant today as it was when it was written in the late 1980s. Governing Prisons continues to be an excellent text for graduate courses in criminal justice and business administration. Too, it should be required reading for prison administrators.

The One Reference for Those Interested in Safe and Humane Pr

If I could reccomend only one book on prison management this is the one. The author critically examines and compares three large state prison systems; California, Michigan, and Texas. He identifies the fundamental philosophies that govern each system and shows the practical results of each. The "Michigan Responsability Model", The "Texas Control Model", and the California Confused Model which is merely a mixture of the Michigan and Texas philosophies. All prison systems in the U.S. are varients of the two models or mixtures of one degree or another as is California. The study speaks for itself as to which is the superior system, if the goal is safe and humane prisons that provide as effective rehabilitation as is possible. Must reading for prison administrators, professors, politicians, and anyone else interested in proper prison management.