The Transformation of Governance: Globalization, Devolution, and the Role of Government

Over the last generation, American government has undergone a steady, but often unnoticed, transformation. Its traditional processes and institutions have become more marginal to the fundamental debates. Meanwhile, new processes and institutions--often nongovernmental ones--have become more central to public policy. In doing the peoples' work to a large and growing degree, American governments share responsibility with other levels of government, with private companies, and with nonprofit organizations. This transformation has had two effects. First, it has strained the traditional roles of all the players. For decades, we have debated privatizing and shrinking government. While the debate raged, however, we incrementally made important policy decisions. Those decisions have rendered much of the debate moot. Government has come to rely heavily on for-profit and nonprofit organizations for delivering goods and services ranging from anti-missile systems to welfare reform. It is not that these changes have obliterated the roles of Congress, the president, and the courts. State and local governments have become even livelier. Rather, these changes have layered new challenges on top of the traditional institutions and their processes. Second, the new challenges have strained the capacity of governments--and their nongovernmental partners--to deliver high-quality public services. The basic structure of American government comes from New Deal days. It is a government driven by functional specialization and process control. However, new place-based problems have emerged: How can government's functions be coordinated in a single place? Can environmental regulations flowing down separate channels (air, water, and soil) merge to form a coherent environmental policy? New process-based problems have emerged as well: How can hierarchical bureaucracies, created with the presumption that they directly deliver services, cope with services increasingly delivered through multiple (often nongovernmental) partners? Budgetary control processes that work well for traditional bureaucracies often prove less effective in gathering information from nongovernmental partners or in shaping their incentives. Personnel systems designed to insulate government from political interference have proven less adaptive to these new challenges, especially in creating a cohort of executives skilled in managing indirect government. Consequently, government at all levels has found itself with new responsibilities but without the capacity to manage them effectively. The same is true of its nongovernmental partners. Moreover, despite these transformations, the expectations on government--by citizens and often by government officials--remain rooted in a past that no longer exists. Citizens expect their problems will be solved and tend not to care who solves them. Elected officials take a similar view: They create programs and appropriate money. They expect government agencies to deliver the goods and services. When problems emerge, their first instinct is to reorganize agencies or impose new procedures--when the problem often has to do with organizational structures and processes that no longer fit reality. The performance of American government--its effectiveness, efficiency, responsiveness, and accountability--depends on cracking these problems. Consider the case of Wen Ho Lee, arrested in December 1999 for mishandling classified nuclear secrets on his computer. Intelligence analysts concluded the Chinese government had captured the secrets of the W-88 warhead, America's most advanced nuclear device. Either intentionally or by sloppy handling of secret data on his computer, the experts believe the Chinese had obtained the secrets from Lee. For two decades, Lee was an essential researcher at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. As an analyst in the secret "X Division," he had access to the top secrets and moved massive amounts of data--806 megabytes--to unsecured computers. …