Enhancing Public Innovation by Transforming Public Governance, or vice versa?

Abstract

This book offers a new and important perspective on the relationship between Congress and the bureaucracy. Its most significant contribution is to argue and show how the bureaucracy performs three crucial functions in government: bureaucracies monitor problems, they help to define the problems they monitor for action at higher levels of government, and they generate and transmit information about problems to policy mak-ers in Congress. Few would probably disagree with this characterization of the bureaucracy, but Workman convincingly argues that these functions of the bureau-cracy have been given too little scholarly attention in previous treatments of the role of bureaucracy. According to Workman, much research has placed too much emphasis on how the bureaucracy can be con-trolled and on how the bureaucracy can influence the backend of the policy making process, including the implementation of policies and regulation. Workman's main concern is the role of the bureau-cracy in the front end of the policy making process; how it influences and shapes the Congressional agenda by providing signals and information about problems in need of political action. The bureaucracy, however, also receives cues and signals from Congress, and this tension between democratic authority and bureau-cratic expertise forms what Workman denotes the dual dynamics of agenda setting. In short, the dual dynamics implies that change in the policy agenda is a result of bureaucratic problem solving from below and congres-sional problem prioritization from above. Thus, a cen-tral task for bureaucracies is to monitor problems and aid in defining them for government actions, whereas Congress then synthesizes this vast information, han-dles tradeoffs among which issues to attend to, and coordinates action on the policy problems. In chapter 2, Workman lays out how his perspective on the relations between Congress and the bureaucracy deviates not only from standard views on the bureau-cracy but also from how the policy making process is normally understood. This critical literature review is highly recommendable and deserves to be on the cur-riculum of every graduate course on public administra-tion. Every scholar must carve out a niche for his or her own study, but Workman does not place his study in a remote niche of the field of public administra-tion. Instead, he places himself right in the centerfield where politics and administration intersects. From that vantage point he engages in a critical discussion with, for instance, the delegation literature, agency theory, and research on subsystem politics—literatures that, according to Workman, are at risk of getting lost in the details and of losing sight of the big and impor-tant questions of the discipline. As Workman describes: " It is very much like holding an object in one's line of sight and drawing the object ever closer. In doing so, details of the object come into focus, while the object, its general nature and contours are lost. This has been the course of scholarship on the bureaucracy until very recently " (p. 25). Another critique is directed at the strong scholarly emphasis on accountability and democratic respon-siveness. If this can be achieved along with solving the policy problems at hand, all is well and good. But sometimes, as Workman argues, responsiveness and accountability comes at the expense of address-ing severe policy problems, and this tension between responsive government and problem-solving govern-ment provides another central motivation for the book (p. 46). Furthermore, Workman concludes his com-prehensive literature review with a sharp comment to