The Effective Public Manager
Achieving Success in a Changing Government
Chapter One
Defining Effective Public Management
To define effective public management, we believe it is important
to understand where the perception of ineffective public management
comes from. In Chapter One, we discussed how the perception
of government incompetence contributed to the crisis in
public management. This chapter will discuss how the image of
incompetence developed and how it can be countered.
In the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, the desirability of a
smaller government was accepted by both major party candidates.
As Paul Light (2000) mentioned in a column published during that
campaign, both George W. Bush and Al Gore claimed to be "the
candidate of smaller government." Light noted Bush's claim that
Gore's promises would add thousands of new bureaucrats to the federal
workforce and Gore's counter-charge that his "reinventing government"
campaign had pared the size of government by 300,000
jobs. "It hardly seems to matter that state government has grown
under Bush in Texas, or that most of Gore's 300,000 jobs came from
massive post-Cold War downsizing at the Defense and Energy
departm ... read full excerpt from The Effective Public Manager: Achieving Success in a Changing Government, 3rd Edition ebook
