Why the gore report will probably fail

Abstract

The Gore Report on Reinventing Government summarizes the findings of the National Performance Review Board. It is a well-intentioned endeavor, containing many perceptive insights and solutions. Unfortunately, the NPR failed to consider a number of fundamental problems, which will probably cause the reform effort to fail. Foremost among the problems are the neglect of “the public interest,” reform by command rather than by persuasion, the trivialization of the “public” service, the devaluation of citizenship and the cynicism of frustrated expectations. This article discusses some of the implications of those problems. Because The Gore Report-- the popular name for the report of the National Performance Review Board (NPR) -- is, at the same time, both a proposal for managerial reform and a political document, and because our prognosis is so pessimistic, it is important for us to state our beliefs at the outset. First, both authors are social liberals, with a bent toward fiscal conservatism. Both support strong civil rights and environmental programs and have, at various times, been active in such causes. After studying The Gore Report,we believe the intentions of the members of the NPR are honorable and prompted by their commitment to the public's best interests. We especially applaud their wisdom in considering the opinions of governmental employees as they formulated their recommendations for reform. Finally, with just a few quibbles, we enthusiastically support those recommendations. Having said this, however, we also believe that the NPR's attempt to “reinvent” the federal bureaucracy will almost certainly fail. There will be some short-range improvements but, and in spite of President Clinton's assurance that “This performance review will not produce another report just to gather dust in some warehouse. We have enough of them already,”(1) it will go the way of its predecessors, from the Hoover Commission Report to the Grace Commission Report. The attempt will not fail for the lack of decent intentions. It will fail for the same reasons that the Secretary of Defense, Robert MacNamara, failed in his attempt, in the early 1960s, to convert the military into a high-tech corporation run by MBAs with starred shoulder-straps. MacNamara's fundamental mistake was his belief that the theories and practices of business administration could --without modification -- be transposed into the armed forces.(2) He failed, egregiously, to understand that the value bases of business, upon which its theories and practices are predicated, are incompatible with the foundation values of the military. If those theories and practices are to be used with any hope of success, they must first be modified to conform with the value bases of the military. The same is true of the NPR's attempt to impose the unalloyed theories and practices of business administration upon public administration, as discussed below. This is not to say that we cannot learn from business; indeed, we can and we should. But administrative ideas from the private sector, based upon its unique values, must be adapted and made subservient to the public values that should instruct public administration. Without going into too much detail, among the values bases of business are profit-maximization and growth -- which are scarcely values needed in public administration. Thus, the values of business administration must be modified by the values of the public interest. It is often overlooked that Woodrow Wilson made precisely this argument in 1887 in his famous charge that public administration should adopt the techniques of the “science of administration.” He wrote: “The object of administrative study is to rescue executive methods from the confusion and costliness of empirical experiment and set them upon foundations laid deep in stable principle.”(3) Wilson did not want the public service to flounder in trial and error when it could borrow proven techniques from other areas. But he demanded an essential precondition for such borrowing: the moral values underlying business administration must be replaced, or modified, by the moral va1ues underlying the public administration. In short, he considered the adjective “public.” in public administration, as crucial, because it refers to the necessary moral foundation that should instruct the public administration of the Republic. at all levels. Thus Wilson emphasized: “Our own politics must be the touchstone for all [administrative] theories. The principles on which to base a science of administration for America must be principles which have democratic policy very much at heart.”(4)