The Quest for a Leaner, not a Meaner Government

Gerard Maas has examined the Clinton administration's efforts to create a government 'works better and costs less'. The movement to reinvent the U.S. federal government is best viewed within the context of a larger international trend to roll back government and improve efficiency in the public sector. The National Performance Review (NPR) laid blame for a 'performance deficit' with the systems rather than the people of the federal government. Nonetheless, personnel reductions constituted a major part of the operation.

Something similar happened in The Netherlands with the Dutch government's effort to improve administrative performance. The scale and approach of the 'Grote Efficiency Operatie' (GEO - Large Efficiency Operation) were different. Still, the operation is comparable with the NPR. Together with Frans van Nispen of the Department of Public Administration at Erasmus University, Maas has compared the American and Dutch cases. This broad side-by-side review of the Dutch and American operations yields valuable insights.

Both operations began as an effort to improve efficiency in the public sector. Both subsequently took to downsizing as the way to quickly address issues of public sector legitimacy and performance. Both aimed to cut costs through personnel reduction. Both appear to have been successful in that respect. Striking differences between the American and Dutch operations are the personnel reduction strategy and the personnel separation instruments used. Characteristic of the reinvention effort in the United States is the heavy reliance on employee 'buy-outs' to facilitate targeted personnel reductions. That instrument was not available in the Dutch case. There, attrition and hiring freezes facilitated a 'cheese-slicer' strategy of relatively small but across-the-board cuts in personnel. A third difference is that the defense sector bore the brunt of reductions in civilian personnel in the United States while that sector was excluded from the personnel reduction effort in the Netherlands. Hence, while the overall reduction percentage is far higher in the US, that percentage for the domestic sector alone is about the same in both countries.

The targets of the GEO have been met, on paper at least. The NPR seems to have met its downsizing targets well ahead of schedule. Even so, the effectiveness of both operations may be questioned. It is not at all clear whether the attainment of quantitative goals was primarily due to the measures implemented in the context of these operations. Besides, the fact that cost savings and personnel reduction targets were met guarantees neither increased efficiency or greater effectiveness. It is indicative that while the NPR met its downsizing target, the extent to which personnel reductions were targeted toward the 'management control' positions that the NPR sought to eliminate remains unclear; downsizing efforts may have overshadowed management reforms that are key to a fundamental long term improvement of administrative performance.

The comparison suggests that institutions do matter. The American case features the (office of) the vice-president promoting and coordinating reform efforts and the Dutch case highlights the importance of the committee of senior executives, albeit in a somewhat different role. The success of the Dutch effort to reduce the number of employees is at least partly attributable to so-called 'visitatiecommissies' (visitation committees), established to provide counter-expertise. In the end, in both cases, quantitative aspects were nonetheless emphasized to the neglect of qualitative aspects.

These efforts to improve efficiency in the public sector suffered from the same weakness, namely a shifting of the operations' focus from performance improvement to personnel reduction. Political dynamics seem the prime culprit. The qualitative bleeding that results from an almost exclusive focus on the reduction of personnel may be counter-productive in the longer term, i.e. may lead to a government that may 'cost less' but does not exactly 'work better'. Fortunately, signs of a shift back to a greater emphasis on quality have more recently appeared, e.g. the creation of performance-based organizations in the US, ‘agentschappen’ (UK-type agencies) in the Netherlands, and a renewed attention for the development and use of performance indicators in general.

Background Materials

Maas, Gerard C., Amerika ontslaat zijn ambtenaren in de hoop op beter (America fires its civil servants in the hope of better), in: Managementblad Rijksdienst (Management Magazine National Service), March/April, 1996, pp. 3-6. (Samsom H.D./Tjeenk Willink bv, Alphen aan den Rijn)

The Quest for a Leaner, Not a Meaner Government. Paper by Maas, Gerard C., and Frans K.M. van Nispen, presented at the Conference on Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective, April 5-8, 1997, Bloomington, Indiana.(Read Only).

Maas, Gerard C. and Frans K.M. Van Nispen, The Quest for a Leaner, Not a Meaner Government, in: Perry, James L. (Ed.), Research in Public Administration, Volume 5, 1999, pp. 63-86. (JAI Press, Stamford)

Additional information and materials on this and related topics is available from the University of North Texas Libraries’ Government Documents Depository NPR-archive, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development (GOV), the World Bank’s Public Sector Governanceand Administrative & Civil Service Reform sites, and the United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance .

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