Reinventing Government or Reinventing Ourselves: Two Models for Improving Government Performance

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the Bureau of Municipal Research's concept of efficient citizenship as an alternative paradigm to customer-centered public administration. Reinventing government is powerful buzz phrase these days both in the world of practical politics and academe. (The term emanates from Osborne and Gaebler [1992] and appears in the much discussed National Performance Review report, From Red Tape to Results [Executive Office of the President, 1993], and in Gore [1994]). The aim is political change to make government work better and cost less (Executive Office of the President, 1993). The strategy is a new customer service contract (Executive Office of the President, 1993; i) where administrators give taxpayers the same responsiveness and consideration businesses supposedly give customers. Frederickson (1994) criticizes the customer-centered model of change for using the wrong metaphor. He argues that citizens are not the customers of government; they are its owners who elect leaders to represent their interests. A customer-centered model puts citizens in reactive role limited to liking or disliking services and hoping that the administrators will change delivery if enough customers object. Owners play proactive role; they decide what the government's agenda will be. Before we accept customer-centered model, it would be useful to compare it with one that envisions the citizen as owner. This allows us to see if different way of looking at citizen roles leads to new emphasis on the kind of changes that are necessary to improve government performance. Unfortunately, the major contemporary reform prescriptions tend not to elaborate owner metaphors. Although DiIulio, Garvey, and Kettl called their 1993 book, Improving Government Performance: An Owner's Manual the bulk of their analysis hinges on the customer model. An intriguing variant on the owner model emerged from the New York Bureau of Municipal Research (BMR), progressive organization incorporated in 1907 to help solve urban political problems. (For its history, see Dahlberg, 1966. Its concept of efficient citizenship posited that urban citizens owned their government and as owners had duty to get involved in city affairs and instruct politicians and public administrators in shareholder demands. The implications of this concept emerge from studying the writings of the bureau's founders and from analyzing the organization's miscellaneous publications that appeared under the heading, Efficient Citizenship (1908-1913). The bureau model does not address all of the problems that have been raised in relation to the reinventing government scenario. Another type of analysis would be needed to determine whether the Osborne and Gaebler model undermines bureaucratic accountability to legislatures suggested by Moe (1994) cratic accountability to and Rosenbloom 1993). Exploring the bureau model is useful for critiquing the scenario's proposed relationship between agencies and the public. It helps modern administrators in two ways. First, the bureau's ideal citizen role contrasts with that offered in Osborne and Gaebler (1992), which models bureaucratic reform on paradigm of the citizen as customer of public services. Comparing the currently much-debated customer model with the bureau's idea of the citizens as owners shows that the earlier concept provided more expansive public role and identifies strategies for producing citizens who want to act like owners. Second, this exercise provides good example of how historical ideas can illuminate modern issues by throwing different light on them. While early urban administration and politics textbooks stress the importance of the efficient citizenship concept (e.g., Rowe, 1908; Munro, 1915; and Capes, 1922), the post-World War Il literature almost never mentions this metaphor. Examining the bureau's work shows what can be lost by neglecting old ideas--a loss that exists even though most modern readers are likely to find the older literature somewhat naive in its authors' expectations from the average citizen. …

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