Book Reviews / 127

actors have had so much at stake for so long in the practices that result in thickening. He convinces us that there is great momentum and a central tendency toward thickening. Thus, we are ultimately disappointed by his failure to convince us that we can take the steps he suggests will lead to real change, and that once we do, government performance will improve.

Light acknowledges that the question is probably not whether thickening can be stopped, (it can), but whether or not Congress and presidents are willing to change their images of what organizations should look like and foreswear the political advantages of thickening. As he argues, the options to reduce thickening are relatively straightforward: Collapse the field structure; eliminate alter-ego deputies; cap title riding; and create a height and width limit. What is perhaps the more interesting question, given the rhetoric of multiple administrations, is from where and under what conditions will the political will for reform come? He proposes an “action forcing device,” like the Glenn-Roth Executive Reorganization Reform Act of 1993, which could provide the needed implementation mechanism. It would establish a national reform commission who’s recommendations would have a short window for presidential approval and would require congressional action ten days thereafter. The commission, he argues, could also do the necessary research to identify where thinning will have the desired impacts and where it should be restrained. Although Light’s convincing analysis provides unassailable evidence of the nature of the problem and some sensible solutions, he leaves for others the political analysis of the conditions under which the strategies could be realistically achieved.

Finally, through out his policy prescriptions one hungers for the lessons from a successful prototype. Where have these goals been achieved and with what payoffs? In the final chapter Light uses a very brief example of how Britain limits political appointments and constrains the growth of career executives through the power and incentives wielded by the British Treasury (equivalent to our OMB). The outcomes on thickening are significant-there are barely five layers between the minister and the British equivalent of the assistant secretary (compared to 16 here). Further, there are fewer than one tenth as many career executives. Can we make any assessments about the relative “costs” of these arrangements? Can government performance be compared under these alternative models? After the exhaustive and meticu- lous documentation of the ills of the U S . federal bureaucracy in this original and compelling account, one is greedy for more.

M . BRYNA SANGER is Professor of Urban Policy Analysis and Management and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Graduate School of Urban Policy and Management, New School for Social Research.

Ellen Schall

Facing the Bureaucracy: Living and Dying in a Public Agency, by Gerald Garvey. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1993, 252 pp., NPA.

Gerald Garvey writes on at least three levels and two of them work very well. At the most basic level Garvey tells a fascinating story and tells i t with style and skill; he provides the reader with a glimpse of life lived in a

128 Book Reviews

bureaucracy, in this case the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. At the next level, he uses FERC as a case study in an effort to sharpen our understanding of bureaucratic practice. To this end he constructs two admittedly simplified models of public manage- ment theory he calls Old Theory and New Theory. Gently, and cleverly, Garvey conveys many of the arguments of organization theory developed over time in this field. Finally, Garvey attempts to use his experience at and with FERC to suggest lessons for practitioners faced with the challenges of organizational renewal.

FERC is an old-line federal bureaucracy. Garvey captures the feel of it and uses the story to illustrate many important aspects of life as a federal bureaucrat, including the workings of the Senior Executive Service and the use of Schedule C appointments. This is a distinct example of a bureaucracy: a rate-making, rule-driven federal agency. Whatever lessons i t reveals may apply less directly to other public organizations, including those with less clear mandates; those with a more diverse work force (the cast of almost 25 characters Garvey lists to introduce his story is all male, with one exception of a female executive assistant and race is never mentioned as an issue); those public agencies at the state or local level.

FERC regulates three aspects of the energy business: interstate natural gas transportation and some gas production, hydroelectric generation and interstate sales of all commercially produced electricity, and interstate oil transmission by pipeline.

The story is the account of one particular project, an effort to automate the regulatory process. But actually the story begins before then. Garvey tells in a straightforward and compelling manner how he came to be hired as a consultant by the executive director of FERC, a career bureaucrat of the entrepreneurial sort. Garvey’s first assignment was advising the chair of FERC whether his speeches in favor of deregulation were beyond the bounds of his authority and his role. Garvey’s analysis proved so helpful that the FERC chair decided to commission another piece of work, a study of whether the mid- and lower-level bureaucrats at FERC were acting within their ac- countability to the agency and to the law or whether they were abusing their discre tion.

Here the story gets squirrelly, though very interesting for students of bu- reaucracy. Garvey describes in detail the contracting process as i t is supposed to work, explaining FERC’s requests for proposals, sole source contracts, and what accounts for the six to eight months i t takes to “compete” even a relatively small contract. He also tells the real deal, what actually was done to achieve his hiring. He reflects on the substantial transaction costs involved in contracting, including his view that federal employees must be pretty bad to make it worth any manager’s while to endure the costs necessary to contract

The twist in the plot comes from the decision to sole source a contract to Garvey, although he agrees it is by no means evident that he was uniquely qualified to perform the assignment, and then to add to his contract a “deliver- able”: the automation of the rate-making process. Garvey’s closeness to the process gets in the way here. He says a “hyperscrupulous” critic might have questioned the decision to sole source, particularly given his “innocence” of computers. I’d suggest i t does not take much in the way of scruples to question the call.

out.

Book Reviews / 129

In a perplexing section, Garvey credits the FERC executive director with a “strategy of indirection” for the decision to add on the automation delivera- ble to Garvey’s contract. Garvey credits as strategic a decision that reads as opportunistic, although it may be that the picture is not fully drawn enough to decide conclusively.

In any event, assuming a strategy, Garvey goes on to lay out FERC’s ap- proach to the automation project as “from the flank” and relying on a special project task force. Garvey has more faith in this indirect approach than I believe is warranted and fails to make the case even in this instance that the task force was the right choice. He sees task forces as letting leaders “focus on a critical subunit in the hope that benefits will eventually accrue to the institution as a whole” [p, 1121. He argues that task forces generate a sense of possibility and offer a psychological boost to those involved. A task force is cast, mistakenly in my view, as the obvious choice once you acknowledge it is too tough for federal managers to restructure. There is something missing in this picture: the role of leadership to redefine the mission in such a way that it resonates sufficiently with the career staff that they are reenergized and refocused. Garvey gives this point short shrift. He cites a few proponents of what he calls the organizational culture view, and acknowledges that the “New Theorists” undervalue this set of ideas, but seems to hold out little hope for this approach reinvigorating bureaucracies. He seems actually to have little hope for bureaucracies altogether.

The automation project at FERC was not a win, although peculiarly Garvey and his colleagues at some point declare themselves winners. An employee who had been disciplined and demoted went to the Inspector General with allegations against those involved in the project. Although the only charge upheld was a ridiculous one about the allocation of parking spots, the investi- gation itself effectively stopped the project. Garvey makes some important points here about the costs of control and what he sees as the unintentional consequences of allegations and investigations. Work stops as people hire lawyers, defend themselves against attack and stop talking to each other, never sure who is saying what to whom for what purpose. Garvey cautions that the web of controls developed over time has a demoralizing, depressing effect. He warns that the balance we seek between discretion and responsibil- ity on the one hand and surveillance and control on the other may have tipped too far, creating a bias against action, where doing nothing is seen as the safest path.

Garvey sees limited room for leadership and innovation. To sustain change in “unforgiving circumstances,” (p. 204) Garvey says those in charge need a kit bag of managerial techniques plus staying power. FERC’s goals were limited. To sustain real change, leaders would need a different kit bag. Gar- vey’s kit bag is heavy on ways to circumvent the existing bureaucracy and short on strategies to confront it and turn it around. Despairing of being able to start over with new staff in a new system, Garvey gives up too quickly on what could be accomplished with the people on board. For all that, he has done us a service. He has provided an honest and compelling close-up view of an effort not just to change policy but to change how one important federal agency works.

ELLEN SCHALL is the Martin Cherkasky Professor ofHealth Policy and Manage- ment, New York University.