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"Kettl, Donald F"
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From Policy to Practice: From Ideas to Results, From Results to Trust
Few areas of public administration have been more discouraging, over a longer period of time, than the struggle to build public trust in government's work. However, new research suggests that public administrators can build trust by improving the results they produce for citizens. Practical, practicable steps can produce big improvements: improving government's focus on citizens' needs; engaging employees; focusing on fairness; and, especially, concentrating on the delivery of public services at the \"retail\" level. Citizens, research shows, can discriminate among levels of government, the administration of different programs in different functional areas, and the work of individual administrators. That provides strong hope for improving trust, in an era when too often government appears too untrustworthy.
Journal Article
The Transformation of Governance: Globalization, Devolution, and the Role of Government
Government has quietly been transformed, following two courses: globalization and devolution. These two trends define the agenda for governance in the early twenty-first century. American government's traditional processes and institutions have become more marginal to the fundamental debates. Meanwhile, new processes and institutions - often nongovernmental ones - have become more central to public policy. This transformation has had two effects: 1. straining the traditional roles of all the players, and 2. straining the capacity of governments to deliver high-quality public services. Government had quietly been transformed, following two courses: globalization and devolution. These two trends define the agenda for governance in the early twenty-first century.
Journal Article
The Job of Government: Interweaving Public Functions and Private Hands
Lively and sometimes raucous debate about the job of government has increasingly engulfed American politics. Much of that debate has swirled around government's size, with conservatives arguing the case for shrinking government and liberals fighting to grow it. In reality, however, neither of these debates engages the critical underlying trend: the increasing interweaving of governmental functions deeply into every fiber of the nongovernmental sectors. Many reforms have sought to rein in government's power, but none has engaged the fundamental interweaving of policy implementation, and, not surprisingly, most have failed. Indeed, many have eroded the public's trust in the governmental institutions on which they depend. This process raises fundamental challenges for defining government's core role, for building the capacity to govern effectively, and for enhancing the accountability of governmental programs. Many of government's administrative tools are a poor match for the governance problems they seek to solve.
Journal Article
Managing Boundaries in American Administration: The Collaboration Imperative
Boundaries have long played a central role in American public administration. In party this is because boundaries are central to the administrative process, as they define what organizations are responsible for doing and what powers and functions lie elsewhere. It is also because of the nations political culture and unusual system of federalism, in which boundaries have always been the focus of conflict. Five boundaries have historically been important in the American administrative system: mission, resources, capacity, responsibility, and accountability. New forces make managing these boundaries increasingly difficult: political processes that complicate administrative responses, indirect administrative tactics, and wicked problems that levy enormous costs when solutions fail. Working effectively at these boundaries requires new strategies of collaboration and new skills for public managers. Failure to develop these strategies-or an instinct to approach boundaries primarily as political symbolism-worsens the performance of the administrative system.
Journal Article
The Clumsy War against the “Administrative State”
Presidential strategist Steve Bannon shook official Washington with his pledge in February 2017 to work for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” It was going to be a battle, he told his audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “Every day,” he said, “it is going to be a fight.” But it was a battle he pledged to win. In response, I have only two words: “too late.” The administrative state, as the Progressives knew it, evaporated years ago.
Journal Article
Weberian Bureaucracy and Contemporary Governance
Abstract
Max Weber’s role as a founder of the study of administration is often in much dispute, but he is important for two things: he captured the essence of bureaucracy and he connected it to the role of business in the economy. Weber points us toward the argument that businesses seek profits, that the key to maximizing their profits is certainty in their environment, and that the “iron cage” of bureaucracy plays an important role in reducing uncertainty. Since his contribution to bureaucratic theory in 1922, however, the ground has shifted underneath his argument, especially in its deep connections to public administration. Although policymakers, the media, and the public still tend to view government organizations in Weberian terms, the actual operation of government, in the United States and around the world, has become distinctly less Weberian. The increasing gap between theory and practice raises profound problems for government’s expertise and accountability, and that poses one of the biggest challenges facing public administration in the twenty-first thinking. A fresh model incorporating the complexity of social problems, the complexity of governmental strategies, and the structures of public law provide a way forward in the second century of the grand Weberian tradition
Journal Article
Water Flowing Uphill: National Implications of State Civil Service Movements
In his fascinating analysis, Paul R. Verkuil points out that 28 states have now embraced at least some form of at-will employment, which gives government supervisors far greater power to terminate public employees without having to go through the extensive employee-protection process that makes it difficult to fire public employees. This movement poses fundamental but unexamined puzzles about how best to align government's human capital for the challenges it must tackle.
Journal Article
Earning trust in government
No issue is more important-or more discouraging-than the steady decline of trust in America's governing institutions. There are two different streams of trust, however. At the wholesale level, distrust grows from income inequality. The roots of this wholesale distrust are deep; in the short- and medium-term, there is little that government officials can do about it. At the retail level, however, the evidence is that improving the citizen experience can help to earn trust, at least in the particular interactions at hand. This is something that teachers can teach and students can learn: that retail trust can be built; that improvements in the administrator-citizen interaction can earn trust; and that emerging strategies to strengthen citizen satisfaction, especially through information technology, can make a big difference. Government managers can improve their interactions with citizens-and citizens will notice.
Journal Article
A Tribute to H. George Fredrickson
Abstract
During his 50-year career, H. George Frederickson contributed on multiple fronts: to better government, to a more thoughtful and rigorous public administration field, to better scholarship, to a network of scholars, and to collaborative interaction among practitioners and scholars. He was the founding Editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory as well as the Journal of Public Administration Education. He was one of the founders of the Public Management Research Association (PMRA) and was instrumental in establishing the world headquarters of PMRA at the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs, where he was the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor. He was President of Eastern Washington University. A gifted writer and thinker who excelled in both breadth and depth, George published important articles and books, and won many awards for his scholarship. Most importantly, he was a catalyst for establishing social equity as the “third pillar” of public administration. In this article, five public administration scholars pay tribute to H. George Frederickson’s most influential scholarly works, with an emphasis on social equity and accountability. George’s impact outside of the United States, especially in South Korea, also is highlighted.
Journal Article