Is a Competent Civil Service Becoming Oxymoronic?

Abstract

The two books under review, then, are particularly welcome. To begin with, they nicely complement each other. Promoting the General Welfare: New Perspectives on Government Performance (hereinafter General Welfare), co-edited by political scientists Alan S. Gerber and Eric M. Patashnik, is concerned with the substance of public policy. A Government Ill Executed: The Decline of the Federal Service and How to Reverse It (hereinafter Government Ill Executed), by public administration scholar Paul C. Light, focuses on how public policy is administered. Both of these different emphases, of course, are important. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to decide which is worse: a well-implemented but unwise policy, or a wise policy that is poorly implemented.