Thickening Government

Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability

Paul C. Light

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2011
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780815720164
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Government is under enormous pressure to change. Call it reinventing, reengineering, or plain old change, but the mandate remains the same: produce more with less, and satisfy the customer while doing it.
Paul Light argues that a failure to pay attention to the thickening of government over the past half century may doom any reinventing effort. The federal government has never had so many leaders. There are more layers of management between the top and bottom of government, with more administrative units and occupants at each layer.
Bill Clinton is further from the frontlines of government than any president in American history. If the past decades are any indication, he will exit a presidency that is even thicker. Light presents a revealing look at how thick the bureaucracy really is, how and why thickening occurs, what difference it might make, and what can be done to both reverse the process and keep the thickening from growing back. Light shows how the management layers between the top and bottom of government have steadily increased.
Information gets distorted on the way up, and guidance gets lost on the way down. Thickening often creates so many bureaucratic baffles that no one can be held accountable for any decision; mid-level workers may have so many bosses that they effectively have none. Light concludes that practically nothing by way of quality management, service-government, or employee involvement can work with these towering government agencies. But practically nothing will fail if a radical "down- layering" is undertaken now.

Table of contents

• Chapter 1 How Thick Is Government?
• Chapter 2 Why Did Government Thicken?
• Chapter 3 Does Thickening Matter?
• Chapter 4 Where Does Thickening Start?
• Chapter 5 How Does Thickening Endure?
• Chapter 6 Can Thickening Be Stopped?
• Appendix: The Core Tables
• Notes