Administrative Values and Cutback Politics in American Local Government

Abstract

Fiscal constraints facing local governments and citizen resistance to tax increases have given impetus to cutback management. Some analysts have focused attention on the causes or consequences of reduced expenditures for programs and personnel while others have focused on strategies designed to buffer the impact of fiscal stress on public employees and the delivery of governmental services. A recent study by Klingner and Nalbandian indicates that cutback management can be viewed as an institutional response to conflict among the four basic values underlying public sector human resource management—political responsiveness, social equity, individual rights, and administrative efficiency. The authors test this model using data from a national survey of urban personnel managers. They conclude that the administrative values framework has limited applicability to the analysis of local cutback management and suggest that theory testing is inhibited by structural aspects of urban fiscal problems.