Bureaucratic Failure and Public Expenditure was written to address the question: Once a law is passed, under what conditions will the bureaucracy fail to give the political leaders exactly what they ordered? The book deals explicitly with the federal government of the United States. Certain aspects of the theory could be applied to other large organizations or to other governments and times, but these are separate task. The book is organized into three parts. Part I is based on a literature survey that roams widely through economics, political science, sociology, public administration, and various related bodies of knowledge. Although much of this was unfamiliar terrain for an economist, the route was defined by the objective of identifying the conditions predisposing to failure. Part II contains 11 brief case studies that are based on reports by the United States General Accounting Office. Relying on this source permitted coverage of a broad selection of the nonmilitary activities of the government. Part III reexamines the hypotheses developed from the literature in the light of the cases and other studies of implementation. The final chapter consists of the author's reflections on the implications of bureaucratic failure.

When should government intervene in market activity? When is it best to let market forces simply take their natural course? How does existing empirical evidence about government performance inform those decisions? Brookings economist Clifford Winston uses these questions to frame a frank empirical assessment of government economic intervention in Government Failure vs.

Refer review of this policy book in 'Journal of International Development, vol. 10, 7, 1998. pp.841-855.

This book, by A. Premchand, a former Assistant Director of IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department, provides a comprehensive discussion of the expenditure process in public authorities from a management perspective. It covers the various aspects, ranging from budget formulation to the courteous delivery of services to the public. In each, it considers the critical issues faced in industrial and developing countries and formerly centrally planned economies and discusses the efforts necessary to assure the public about the adequacy of public expenditure management machinery.

"From healthcare to workplace conduct, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. The most alarming consequence of ineffective policies, in addition to unrealized social goals, is the growing threat to the government's democratic legitimacy. Understanding why government fails so often--and how it might become more effective--is an urgent responsibility of citizenship. In this book, lawyer and political scientist Peter Schuck provides a wide range of examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry--and how to right the foundering ship of state.Schuck argues that Washington's failures are due not to episodic problems or partisan bickering, but rather to deep structural flaws that undermine every administration, Democratic and Republican. These recurrent weaknesses include unrealistic goals, perverse incentives, poor and distorted information, systemic irrationality, rigidity and lack of credibility, a mediocre bureaucracy, powerful and inescapable markets, and the inherent limits of law. To counteract each of these problems, Schuck proposes numerous achievable reforms, from avoiding moral hazard in student loan, mortgage, and other subsidy programs, to empowering consumers of public services, simplifying programs and testing them for cost-effectiveness, and increasing the use of "big data." The book also examines successful policies--including the G.I. Bill, the Voting Rights Act, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and airline deregulation--to highlight the factors that made them work.An urgent call for reform, Why Government Fails So Often is essential reading for anyone curious about why government is in such disrepute and how it can do better"--

Comparing Public Bureaucracies: Problems of Theory and Method is based on the Coleman B. Ransone, Jr. Lectures delivered by the author in 1986 at The University of Alabama.

A global wave of reform is fundamentally reshaping the role of the state in national economies. This book provides a fresh and accessible perspective on the political economy of this megatrend. It traces the theoretical roots of the reforms to developments in public economics which emphasize problems of government rather than market failure. It then breaks new ground in developing an economic theory of leadership to explain how policy leadership networks can strive to influence the direction of reform processes.