Paul Verkuil and Pragmatic Adjustment in Government

Abstract:     
Written for a Festschrift in honor of Paul Verkuil, this essay focuses on three defining aspects of Verkuil’s scholarship and how they relate to the increasing failure of government to fulfill the legislative goals that Congress has established. Verkuil’s scholarship over the years has insisted that efficiency must be balanced with accountability and fairness in the design of administrative institutions. He has emphasized that managerial approaches may better achieve this goal than administrative procedures, and he has insisted reform should be driven by actual experience, rather than theory. The article ends by discussing three reforms that meet these objectives: civil service reform, replacing counterproductive White House efforts to control bureaucracy with internal managerial controls, and the refunding of regulatory agencies hard hit by budget cuts.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 21

Accepted Paper Series