Not terribly long ago, I partnered with AEI Press to revive a lost classic book, Government Project by the great social scientist Edward C. Banfield (1916-1999). The book was published in 1951, and had been out of print for decades. My passion for the book started around 20 years earlier. I had read the book and been stunned by […]
Some Advice on Nonprofit Management
I have had the good fortune to work at three 501(c)(3) organizations in my career. Two of them were think-tanks, and the other was a charitable, direct-service provider. I also spent a decade working in the government with managers of varying levels and as a manager myself. Presently, I am blessed to be at an […]
Data Powered Leadership Reform: A Busine...
I partnered with David Paschane, Christian Hoehner, and Eric Hannel to write this white paper. Its crux is that for government agencies to be more accountable and more self-correcting they need to have better data on their operations and outputs. You can read the paper at http://www.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DataPoweredLeadershipReform.2017.pdf
Bureaucracy’s Latest Challenge: Listenin
The American public often rails about bureaucracy. It is not difficult to fathom why. Who amongst us has not fumed while standing in a long line at an understaffed post office? And how many of us have thrown up our hands in frustration at the complexity of income tax instructions and outsourced the work to […]
Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureacracy
My retro-review of Michael Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, 30th Anniversary Edition (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010), appears in the March/April issue of Public Administration Review. Lipsky’s book remains a terrific study of government, particularly how agencies and their employees work with the public. As I note in my review, “Street-Level Bureaucracy […]
Edward C. Banfield, Government Project: ...
A Retro-Review of Edward C. Banfield’s Government Project: An Account of Big Government in Action, September 2009, by Kevin R. Kosar, August 28,2009 Public Administration Review has just published my retro-review of this terrific book: A Nearly Forgotten Classic in Public Administration: Edward C. Banfield’s Government Project, Public Administration Review, September/October, 2009. As the neo-progressive […]