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Jennifer L. HochschildEditorBook Reviews

Note to Book Publishers: Please send all books for review directly to the Book ReviewEditor, Jennifer L. Hochschild, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and InternationalAffairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1013.

Andrew Caplin

Behavioral Dimensions of Retirement Economics, edited by Henry J. Aaron.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999, 289 pp.

A small yet increasingly influential group of economists and psychologists hasrecently been challenging traditional approaches to economic analysis. The term“behavioral” in the title of the book signifies that many of the chapters in this volumecan be viewed as forming part of this challenge. The big idea is that rational economicman so beloved of traditionalists is a fiction, and that replacing him with a counterpartwho behaves more like Homo sapiens would be an altogether good idea.

Much of the methodological debate has been played out in the context of savingsbehavior, so that a book on retirement economics is a natural. The narrowaccomplishment of the articles is to strengthen the case that the standard modeltraditionalists use to capture retirement decisions is inadequate. The broaderaccomplishment is to open debate on whether one can get deeper insights by droppingthe assumption that agents are strictly rational. The answer to this question may welldetermine the shape of economic policy analysis well into the new millennium.

The traditional model of retirement choices and savings decisions is based on thelife cycle model of consumption. This model treats all decisions as being made by afar-sighted rational decisionmaker. At an early point in life, the decisionmaker laysout the entire array of possible savings and retirement policies. The optimal strategyis chosen only after carefully balancing the private costs and benefits of these policies.

While this theory is the natural starting point for those trained in economic theory,for those not so trained it seems far-fetched, even absurd. With respect to the retirementage, do we really have enough information to balance all the important factors thatmight affect the optimal age of retirement? Don’t we rely more on forces of conventionin making our retirement decision? With respect to consumption and savings decisions,do we really plan ahead as the theory predicts? Aren’t we far more reactive, just waitingfor problems to arise before scrambling for the necessary funds?

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 19, No. 4, 647–674 (2000)© 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and ManagementPublished by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The book shows that for both age of retirement and the level of pre-retirementsavings, the common-sense objections to the life cycle model can be backed upwith evidence. Chapters 1, 5, and 6 focus on the age of retirement. In chapter 1,Gary Burtless argues that the standard model underestimates the inertia that makesthe retirement age respond only slowly to policy changes. In chapter 5, RobertAxtell and Joshua Epstein explain this pattern of inertial change by developing aframework in which only a minority of households make optimal decisions, whileothers mechanically imitate their neighbors. The experiments of DavidFetherstonhaugh and Lee Ross, reported in chapter 6, further emphasize theimportance of social attitudes to retirement. They find that preferences overpolicies that change the age for eligibility of social security benefits depend onwhat is treated as the status quo and what is treated as a departure from thestatus quo.

Chapters 3, 4, and 7 focus on savings behavior. In chapter 3, Annamaria Lusardidocuments the fact that many households save practically nothing before theirretirement, and that, of these households, many report never having given muchthought to retirement. In chapter 4, Ted O’Donoghue and Matthew Rabin argue thatthis lack of preparedness reflects a more general tendency to excessive procrastinationwhen costs to be paid in the present yield their return in the future. Finally, in chapter7, George Loewenstein, Drazen Prelec, and Roberto Weber provide survey evidencethat few retired consumers regard themselves as having made a mistake in terms ofunder-saving.

In both the discussion of the retirement age and the discussion of saving forretirement, I find myself in substantial agreement with the book’s criticisms of thelife cycle model. I do not doubt the importance of social convention, social learning,and norms in limiting the rate of change of a variable as important as the retirementage. I also found Lusardi’s case strong. She argues that the low savings rate and lackof attention to retirement are connected, and lie far outside the standard model.Despite William Gale’s spirited defense of the standard theory, it seems flatlyinconsistent with the simple life cycle theory that so many households do not evenknow their projected level of income in retirement.

In chapter 4, Ted O’Donoghue and Matt Rabin raise the broader question of whetherto drop the assumption of rationality. Their work follows up on Lusardi’s findingsthat many households fail to save for their retirement, and that this is connected to abroader lack of forethought. They interpret the inattention and low savings rate asstemming from procrastination. Planning for retirement involves a present cost, andyields a benefit only later. Knowing this, the decisionmaker would prefer to postponeconsideration of a retirement plan until next period. Unfortunately, next period it isequally tempting to delay, and this same pattern is repeated into the indefinite futurewith delay piling upon delay.

This has an immediate ring of truth to it, at least for those who are in the earlierpart of the life cycle. Yet it also provokes questions. In the first place, lack of planningand lack of savings are not the same thing. One can spend less than all of one’s incomewithout needing a clear picture of exactly how much consumption will result in oldage. Also, as one ages and notes repeated failures to save, wouldn’t it gradually becomeunderstood that one more day of delay will beget another, so that the “if not now,when?” clause would be invoked to shake up the inertia? Finally, suppose that I amsomewhat naive in a certain decision, and do make repeated mistakes. Will I makemore or fewer mistakes if policies change (this is Peter Diamond’s question in hiscommentary on the paper)? How does one analyze the impact of policies on mistakes?

An alternative research methodology is to retain the vision that decisionmakers arerational, yet allow that their goals and constraints are far more subtle than is allowed

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by the life cycle framework. My personal viewpoint is that such approaches arecertainly worth trying in parallel with more radical alternatives. Even if it is ultimatelyproved wrong, I do not believe that the assumption of rationality will be given uplightly, nor do I believe it should be. It allows a unity of thought that is as yet notfound in behavioral alternatives.

Consider first the simple life cycle model. The beauty of the model is that it iscomplete in its explanation of private decisions, and rich in its implications forpolicymakers. If it is correct, then private decisionmakers never make mistakes, andthey exploit all opportunities to learn. In addition, one has a complete vision of theeffect of all policy changes. Methodologically, it is a thing of beauty. The problem isthat it appears to be wrong in many of its major predictions!

The agenda for theorists of all stripes is to identify alternative models that matchthe life cycle theory in its completeness and in its readiness for policy analysis, yetcapture actual behaviors more realistically. The question is whether this goal ismore likely to be met if we relax the rationality assumption, or if we retain it. Myinstincts on this issue tend toward the conservative. I would start by trying to retainrationality, while incorporating in decisionmaking a richer set of psychologicalinfluences.

So how might I try to explain the failure of a forward-looking rational consumer tosave adequately for retirement? One possible way forward is to open the question ofhow and why the future matters at all to a current decisionmaker. To internalize thefuture may take a certain amount of effort, and this attentional effort can only beworthwhile if it produces an ultimately worthwhile payoff. For those whose earningsare low, giving attention to the future is unlikely to produce a radical shift in savings,and it may provoke a rather large amount of anxiety about uncontrollable events,such as deteriorating health. If the future is rarely contemplated, what is the currentvalue of saving? Why not just leave well enough alone, and let the future unfold?After all, Social Security and Medicare will at least provide a buffer against the veryworst of outcomes.

Whether this particular vision of rational lack of forethought is valid, it has certainmethodological advantages over mistake-based theories. In the first place, it beginsto suggest who is more likely to save, since this is likely to depend on how anxiety-inducing it is to contemplate the future. Not surprisingly, the rich will tend to have abetter time contemplating their future contentment, which may provide furthermotivation to save. In addition it carries with it the seeds of a richer analysis ofpolicy, and portrays a potentially complex role of Social Security payments. Certainly,such payments will raise consumption in old age. But maybe there is even more to itthan that, since they may make thinking about the future and planning for it morepalatable for some. On the other side, there may be those who use the presence ofSocial Security and Medicare as a complete substitute for any private concerns withthe future. Given behavioral subtleties, these are just the kind of issues a policymakercould be expected to bear in mind.

In conclusion, the authors in this important volume are at the vanguard of apossible revolution in the methods of economic analysis. I believe that they willwin the debate on behavioral grounds, since current theories are far too narrowto explain many data. What comes next is an open question. Behavior is notenough, even for a behavioral economist. Policy analysis requires a broadertheoretical understanding of why the observed behaviors were chosen. The extentto which constraints on rationality must be taken into account remainstantalizingly open.

ANDREW CAPLIN is Professor of Economics at New York University.

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Daniel A. Farber

Greed, Chaos, and Governance: Using Public Choice to Improve Public Law, by Jerry L.Mashaw. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, 231 pp., $35.00 cloth, $16.00 paper.

Public choice theory—also known as positive political theory, or rational choicetheory—has received increasing attention in American law schools. For instance, itwas recently the subject of a thousand-page reader for law students (Stearns, 1997).Traditionally, legal scholarship has been primarily normative, but it is clearlyimpossible to suggest modifications in the legal system without some conception oftheir actual effects. Public choice theory, in its various guises, offers the promise of apowerful analytic framework for making those predictions.

Greed, Chaos, and Governance is a perceptive assessment of public choice theoryby a leading scholar of administrative law. Compared with other introductorytexts (Farber and Frickey, 1991; Mueller, 1989), the treatment of the theory itselfis less detailed but better at connecting public choice with shifting views of theadministrative state. Mashaw is primarily interested, however, in applications tolaw. Mashaw was a participant in some of the earliest discussions of law andpublic choice theory. Much of the book is a response to the first wave of legalscholarship, which proposed radical legal changes on the basis of public choicetheory. Mashaw also attempts to deploy public choice theory in support of moreincremental legal reforms.

The first wave of public choice scholarship in law was dominated by libertarians.As Mashaw observes, these scholars sought to use public choice theory to “reinvigoratepre-New Deal constitutional doctrines to sharply constrain governmental action,interpret statutes like bond indentures, and eliminate most administrative agencies.”According to those scholars, he remarks, law is “indeed the product of either greed orchaos,” leading to their project of “attempting to reduce collective choices to a bareminimum” (p. 207).

Mashaw argues that the libertarian project was based on drastically oversimplifiedmodels of politics. With regard to the “chaos” branch of public choice—Arrow’sTheorem and its progeny, which raise doubts about the coherence of voting outcomes—Mashaw sees hope in recent scholarship of reestablishing the coherence of democraticinstitutions. Scholars shows that certain outcomes are much more likely than others,so the system is less unpredictable, and Mashaw believes a normative case can bemade for these high-probability outcomes. With regard to the “greed” branch of publicchoice—which portrays legislation as the product of self-seeking special interests—Mashaw argues that the theory suffers from numerous predictive errors, such as itsinability to account for the growth of modern environmental legislation. Moreover,he says, “the more depressing general predictions of interest group theory must beviewed with skepticism because of the implausibility of its account of both the electoraland the legislative process” (p. 35). But Mashaw does not believe that interest grouptheory can be written off completely. He views the current state of empirical knowledgeas quite primitive, but finds it implausible to think that special interests lack majorpolitical influence.

Because Mashaw finds useful insights, but less than complete validity, in publicchoice theory, he is guarded in applying the theory. His goal is to use what he calls an“unconventional discipline” to illuminate enduring problems of public law, while alsoattempting to “maintain a critical distance from disciplinary enthusiasm that caneasily translate into grotesque descriptions of public life and unwise approaches toinstitutional and legal reform” (p. 49).

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Although Mashaw rejects the more radical legal changes inspired by public choice,he proposes some reforms of his own. Contrary to most legal scholars, he thinks thecourts should be more rigorous in determining the constitutionality of regulatorylaws. Where legislation results from a one-sided power play by an organized interestgroups, courts should look closely to ensure that some defensible view of the publicinterest is also being served. Although this proposal seems plausible enough in theabstract, it founders on the difficulties of disentangling these judgments from purelypolitical assessments of the wisdom of legislation. Conservative and liberal judgesmay be unable to agree on what views of the public interest are defensible, or onwhich groups qualify as “special interests.”

Mashaw also addresses the issue of how to interpret ambiguous regulatory statutes.He suggests that an aggressive judicial interpretation of a statute might actually posemore of a barrier to the accomplishment of the legislative will than a ruling holdingthe statute unconstitutional. The idea is that holding the statute unconstitutionalreturns the law to the status quo before the statute was passed, allowing the legislationto start afresh, while the aggressive interpretation creates a new status quo that mayskew further legislative efforts. But this may underestimate the disruptiveness of suchconstitutional holdings. Imagine, for example, that instead of deciding whetheraffirmative action violated the federal employment law, the court had declared thestatute invalid because of its failure to address this point. Requiring Congress to passthe Civil Rights Act anew would have unpredictable social and political ramifications,even if the ultimate result might have been an affirmative action rule closer tolegislators’ actual preferences.

Another of Mashaw’s suggestions, which seems more promising, involves review ofagency regulations. Mashaw argues that under some circumstances, judicial reviewof agency regulations should be deferred until the regulations are actually applied ina concrete case. Today, it is more typical for the legal validity of the regulation to bedetermined immediately after it is issued. Using some simple game theory models,Mashaw attempts to show that pre-enforcement review leads to an excessive amountof litigation and too little compliance with regulations. While, as Mashaw himselfwould admit, his models are mostly suggestive, the proposal does offer some promiseof helping to disencumber the regulatory process, which is often justly accused ofbeing ossified because of judicial review.

Using public choice theory to analyze legal rules seems to entail a real tradeoffbetween validity and utility. Crude simplistic theories are unlikely to do justice to thecomplex empirical realities, but they do tend to have clear-cut implications for howto design the regulatory process. The first wave of public choice scholarship in lawwent down this path, with predictably dubious results. More nuanced, sophisticatedtheories are far more likely to be empirically adequate, but are also much less likelyto have sharply defined, novel implications regarding regulatory law. Such modelsmay confirm that the regulatory world is complex and multidimensional, but this ishardly likely to be news to political scientists or lawyers.

Greed, Chaos and Governance is an attempt to identify a mid-range of theoriesthat are simple enough to be useable but not too simple to be credible. (Einsteinis reported to have said that a theory should be “as simple as possible, but nosimpler.”) Public choice scholars in law have not yet persuaded their legalcolleagues that they have found that middle ground, but Mashaw’s effort is clearlyamong the most promising.

DANIEL A. FARBER is McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law and AssociateDean for Faculty and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School.

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REFERENCES

Farber, D.A., & Frickey, P.P. (1991). Law and public choice: A critical introduction. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Mueller, D.C. (1989). Public choice II. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Stearns, M.L. (1997). Public choice and public law: Readings and commentary. Cincinnati:Anderson Publishing.

Peter Frost

Argument without End, by Robert McNamara, with James Blight, Robert Brigham,Thomas Biersteker, and Col. Herbert Schandler. New York: Public Affairs, 1999, 479pp., $27.50 cloth, $17.00 paper.

Intended as a follow-up to his controversial 1995 publication, In Retrospect, RobertMcNamara’s latest work on the U.S. war in Vietnam reports on what happened whenhe led a team of Vietnam era civilian and military officials and current scholars toHanoi and (in one case) Italy between November 1995 and July 1998 for a series ofseven meetings with Vietnamese counterparts. Six of the eight chapters deal withareas where McNamara argues that both sides missed opportunities for betterdiplomacy; they include such topics as “Enemies: Washington and Hanoi’s Mindsetsin 1961” and “A Neutral Solution: Was It Possible?” In these chapters, introductoryand concluding comments by McNamara wrap selected dialogues between the twosides. The other two chapters consist of an introduction and a set of “lessons for the21st century,” while additional appendices discuss whether a different U.S. militarystrategy could have been successful, and what the authors believe these discussionshave added to the historical record. All this, McNamara freely admits, easily meetsPieter Geyl’s definition of History as “an argument without end.”

The Vietnam war was unnecessarily bloody, McNamara argues, in part becauseof U.S. mistakes. Vietnam was not simply a puppet of the Soviet Union or China,and hence “Hanoi in and of itself was never a strategic threat to Indochina; neitherdid it intend to be a pawn used by China to knock over the dominoes in Indochina”(p. 378). Not realizing that much of Vietnam’s fighting was initiated by ill-informedlocal commanders, he continues, Americans reacted too strongly to incidents suchas the first attack on U.S. shipping in the Tonkin Gulf or the bombings of the U.S.barracks in Pleiku. President Johnson then engaged in a confusing “fandangle” ofmulti-faceted peace efforts rather than establishing a single quiet and more fullyinformed contact with Hanoi. The United States thus went to war for the wrongreasons, failed to see that Hanoi’s essential requirements for peace talks (the so-called Four Points) were more flexible than they appeared, and could not grasp thatthe establishment of a politically neutral coalition government in South Vietnamwas possible. Part of the “tragedy” of Vietnam, in short, was that the United Statesknew so little about its enemy.

Yet it is a central theme of this book that the Vietnamese must also share some ofthe blame. Why could they not realize that President Kennedy’s inaugural promise to“bear any burden” was not a mandate for aggression, but rather a defensive responseto Nikita Khruschev’s speech defending wars of national liberation? If the Vietnameseleaders were prepared to stay out of the global Cold War, why not tell the Americansthat? Isn’t their refusal to negotiate while being bombed for fear of appearing to beweak unfortunate? And if the National Liberation Front’s program for South Vietnamdid not have to be “the”—as opposed to “a”—program for the future, why not make

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this clear? Here too, McNamara argues, we can see how mixed signals and bumblingbureaucrats made it all but impossible to find out just how close Hanoi and Washingtonreally were to avoiding some 3 million casualties.

Surely these claims have some merit. Common sense dictates that when the UnitedStates is concerned about a local conflict, it should remember that the local authoritiesmight easily misunderstand American intention, fail to establish a reliable “backchannel” to clarify signals, and mistake negotiations for a sign of weakness. Ourmilitary should also recognize that force has its limits, and that even the most savagebombing in history helped stiffen the morale of the enemy. And trite though it seemswhen repeated, it is probably a good thing for all of us to be reminded that our basicpremises about other nations must be constantly challenged, and our policy statementstempered by an informed consideration of how they will be viewed by others.

Yet this sort of single-minded focus on bureaucratic mistakes runs the risk ofdownplaying the more fundamental causes of conflict. Note first that McNamara’sdelegation had no other senior U.S. officials, no Johnson era Hawk and no one fromthe Nixon administration. Might not the addition of someone like Henry Kissingerhave offered a good deal more insight into the difficulties of negotiating an end to thewar? Colonel Schandler’s notion that a military solution was not possible fits nicelywith McNamara’s thesis (and that of General Giap who makes a token appearance),but it ought to be challenged by General Westmoreland or a member of his staff.Equally telling is the fact that McNamara’s delegation had no representative from theformer South Vietnamese government. Despite the fact that the failure of the fractiousand constantly changing Saigon regimes to curb corruption and implement badlyneeded social reforms was one of the gravest problems that American policymakersfaced, McNamara’s book barely discusses the issue. The problems surrounding thegovernment we ostensibly went to help are surely worth at least one major “lesson.”

Consider also the fact that it is the Vietnamese side that has to insist on a conferencesession dealing with pre-1961 history. To his credit, McNamara now seems to realizethat the Vietnamese saw themselves as fighting a centuries-old struggle againstimperialism, that they were adamant that Vietnam is one country—we Civil War buffsought to understand those passions—and that, having felt themselves betrayed bythe Russians and the Chinese in the 1954 Geneva settlement, they held out little hopefor a settlement involving either diplomacy or the major powers. Some of the book’smost interesting parts, indeed, come when the leader of the Vietnamese delegation,Nguyen Co Thach, passionately insists that his government was committed to freeingVietnam from the yoke of Western imperialism. If independence came at a high price,he angrily asserts to a stunned crowd, that was the price History required theVietnamese people to pay.

Finally, there is the question of Communism. Throughout this book, there is littleor no discussion of the fact that Communists and Capitalists have markedly differentviews of what constitutes a just society. Vietnam was surely a holy war, in which pasttradition and twentieth century ideology combined to create two competinggovernments, each of which mixed a sort of religious righteousness into their politicalsystem. Neither saw much good in the other. Neither tolerated political dissent. TheVietnamese claim that a neutral coalition government in South Vietnam might havelasted for some 10 to 20 years is thus open to dispute. So too is McNamara’s statement(quoted above) that the Vietnamese posed no threat even to their neighbors.

This book is thus a wonderful read for historians. It is valuable both because itsheds additional light on key events such as the Tonkin and Pleiku attacks, but farmore crucially because it shows the continuing, passionate differences betweenAmerican policymakers such as Robert McNamara, and various feisty old Vietnamesewarriors. As a comprehensive account, on the other hand, it has problems ranging

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from the fact that it is written topically rather than chronologically on through themethodological and ideological issues raised above to McNamara’s blithe assertionthat President Johnson could have sold a compromise agreement to the Americanpeople. That better trained U.S. and Vietnamese bureaucracies could have dramaticallychanged the course of events, is, I suspect, rather wishful thinking. Yet it is worthpondering, not least so that we can make progress toward meeting McNamara’sadmirable goal of avoiding yet another ghastly slaughter.

PETER FROST is Professor of History at Williams College.

Kim R. Holmes

Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America, by Ashton B. Carter andWilliam J. Perry. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999, 243 pp., $24.75paper.

Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium, by Daniel Goure and JeffreyM. Ranney. Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 1999, 142 pp., $18.95 paper.

Defense planning in the United States has fallen on hard times since the end of theCold War. What was once a fairly a serious exercise has become largely irrelevant tothe development of military strategy and forces. Notwithstanding numerous internalPentagon strategy reviews and countless academic treatises and think tank studies,the evolution of today’s armed forces is driven not by planning, but by fundingconsiderations, service and industrial interests, technology, and politics. Every fewyears or so the Department of Defense releases a strategic review that sidesteps difficultquestions and is ignored the moment it is released. Lacking leadership and supportfrom the top, particularly from the President, military planners do the best they can,but U.S. armed forces continue to be underfunded, overcommitted, and unsure oftheir mission and goals.

There are many reasons for this state of affairs. National defense is a low nationalpriority. Neither Congress nor the Clinton administration is eager to spend more on thearmed forces. But a critical factor is that America’s leaders (and hence the defenseplanners) have not yet come to terms with the end of the Cold War. A decade after thecollapse of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration and Congress have little if anyidea, not to mention agreement, of what the purposes and goals of American powershould be. To be sure, there have been many strategic reviews, national strategy reports,and Clinton doctrines, but none of them have taken hold. We should not be surprisedthat the professional defense planners themselves are divided and unsure of themselves.Cautious and deferential to conventional wisdom, defense planners have tended to fallback on familiar patterns of thinking common during the Cold War.

Some of these familiar patterns can be seen in Preventive Defense: A New SecurityStrategy for America, by Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry. Perry was Secretary ofDefense, succeeding Les Aspin in February 1994 and continuing at his post untilJanuary 1997. Carter was Assistant Secretary of Defense for international securitypolicy from 1993 until 1996; he was responsible for policies regarding weapons ofmass destruction and proliferation, nuclear strategy, and arms control. This book isthe result of collaboration between Carter and Perry on what they call the PreventiveDefense Project, a joint research project at Harvard and Stanford.

The authors argue for a new national security strategy based on what they callpreventive defense. U.S. national security policy should focus more on preventing a

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recurrence of the kind of Cold War circumstance in which the very survival of theUnited States is at stake, or challenged by what they call “A-list” threats. These includea potential “Weimar” Russia, loose “nukes,” an aggressive China, the proliferation ofweapons of mass destruction, and catastrophic terrorism. These do not pose much ofa threat now, Carter and Perry argue, but they could in the future unless the UnitedStates pays more attention to preventing them. The authors contend that the UnitedStates is focused too much on “B-list” threats (such as regional conflicts) and “C-list”threats (such as peacekeeping missions). More effort must be devoted to preventingconflict. We should be less concerned with conventional military preparations forwar that are required by B- and even C-list threats.

The essence of the preventive defense strategy is that arms control and othercooperative efforts are needed to stave off the reemergence of A-list threats. Thus,Carter and Perry propose a laundry list of arms control proposals, military-to-militarycontact programs, and economic enticements to encourage restraint in thedevelopment of weapons by potentially aggressive states. As examples they cite thedestruction of weapons on the territory of the former Soviet Union, military contactswith Russia, and efforts to “freeze” the nuclear weapon program in North Korea. Inthe meantime, since no A-list threats now exist, the United States can afford asignificant reduction in defense spending and in the size of its forces. They cite anumber of efficiency reform measures that supposedly will prevent “hollowing out”the force, but it is clear that they believe a strong deterrent force of the kind GeorgeBush and others envisioned is not only unnecessary, but would interfere with theirplans. In fact, maintaining a robust deterrent force is even viewed as a subversive“threat from within” because it would supposedly create “inefficiencies,” starvepreventive defense programs, and possibly even provoke negative reactions fromwould-be threats.

There is nothing wrong with the Carter’s and Perry’s A-list of priorities. The threatsthey represent are indeed serious and deserve our utmost attention. But a problememerges with their solutions, which are reminiscent of some of the more naïveassumptions about conflict that were prevalent during the Cold War. Many questionsremain unanswered. Why, for example, should we expect potentially hostile states orterrorist groups to befriend us, or at the very least not threaten us, merely because weoffer them cooperation? Might not states like North Korea or Iraq, or terrorist groupslike those led by Osama Bin Laden, have their own reasons to threaten us, reasonsthat are impervious to our friendly gestures? To them the United States stands behindan international political order they abhor and want to change. Do Carter and Perryreally believe that offering cooperation would change the goals of Osama Bin Ladenand his ilk? This line of thinking implies that American power is partly the source ofthe problem of international instability. Carter and Perry seem to imply that the bestway to prevent the emergence of A threats is not to give A countries and groupsanything to feel threatened about.

Another shortcoming in the preventive defense concept is that Carter and Perry donot challenge Les Aspin’s “two major regional contingency” strategy of having sufficientforces to fight and win two major regional wars (2 MRC) “nearly simultaneously.”They also appear to accept the proliferation of peacekeeping missions andcommitments created and imposed by the Clinton administration. But every credibledefense expert in this country knows that there are not enough forces or funding toaccomplish the 2 MRC strategy, much less all of the add-on “peacekeeping” missionsin the Balkans and elsewhere. Rather than admit that their plan of reduced defenseexpenditures will force the abandonment of the 2 MRC strategy and possibly evenrequire cutting back on peacekeeping operations, Carter and Perry pretend thatmilitary reform, the revolution in military affairs, and preventive defense will enable

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the United States to do all of these things without any loss in capability or effectiveness.This will not happen. There are simply too many commitments and too few resourcesto accomplish all of these different goals.

Nothing in preventive defense will solve this mismatch between means and ends inU.S. defense policy. While Carter and Perry think that cooperative efforts with NorthKorea will reduce the threat from that quarter (an assumption that is open to question),they never explain how their focus on arms control and other cooperative effortswith Russia, Ukraine, and China will reduce the threats that drive the 2 MRC strategy—North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Nor do they explain how their big power, arms controlefforts will do anything to reduce the threat from Serbia in Kosovo, which is asignificant drain on U.S. forces. The strategy of preventive defense will not solve thegrowing problem of the mismatch in U.S. strategy and resources because it ignoresthe heart of the problem: too many commitments and too few dollars for the B- andC-list threats.

Although Perry and Carter leave many open questions, their book is informativeabout what the Clinton administration tried to achieve in national security during itsfirst term. The first-hand account of the record makes reading the book a worthwhileinvestment of time. Moreover, Perry and Carter are right that the A-list prioritiesshould drive U.S. national security strategy. For these reasons alone, even the well-informed reader could benefit much from reading this book.

A much more satisfying account of the dilemmas facing defense planning can befound in Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium, by Daniel Goureand Jeffrey M. Ranney. Goure and Ranney are well-know experts in defense planningand budgeting. They tackle the same problem as Carter and Perry, but they do notbelieve that arms control, diplomacy, technology, and reform will prevent the UnitedStates from making hard choices about defense spending and force structure.

Goure and Ranney believe that the Clinton administration is not providing theDepartment of Defense with enough resources to sustain the defense program it saysit wants. They explain how the funding shortfall is weakening the armed forces andwhy the trends demonstrate that the problem is getting worse. This problem isexacerbated by a military infrastructure that is too large and a defense budget thatfaces daunting competitive pressures from social spending programs. The authorsestimate that the Clinton administration’s plans for the next five years will leave uswith a shortfall of $100 billion each year. In short, the authors argue that the nextadministration and Congress will face a “train wreck” in defense that is largelyattributable to inadequate funding levels.

This is a case that Washington and the country need to hear. The administrationand even Congress have found it all too convenient to believe that a magic concoctionof reform, diplomacy, and technology will enable the United States to keep and evenadd new military commitments all the while it cuts defense spending. This charadecannot go on and will be exposed inevitably, most likely when U.S. forces performpoorly in some crisis, or when we cannot deal with an emerging threat. Goure andRanney are right to suggest, “If the current underfunding of national defense is allowedto continue, the United States will face a de facto demobilization and, with it, adiminished capacity to shape and influence world events and to safeguard and protectU.S. national interests in the future” (p. xv).

Goure and Ranney offer a combination of steps to solve the problem: Reducingoperational costs by restricting the pace of operations, skipping the next generationof procurement and jumping to a high technology force, shrinking the size of theforce, as well as increasing funding levels. It is interesting that reducing commitments,particularly peacekeeping operations, is not on this list. It would seem that, in additionto new technologies, some combination of increased spending and reduced “operations

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other than war” would offer the best chance to restore balance to the defense posture.Perhaps the authors believe that this is not a viable option, but with the Kosovooperation going so poorly, and with such resistance to peacekeeping inside theRepublican Party, it should not be dismissed as an option.

Goure and Ranney have made a valuable contribution to the debate on future defensespending and programs. It certainly makes a powerful point about the damage thathas been done to our defense posture during the Clinton era. They have combined in-depth quantitative analysis with sound judgment in assessing the problem and offeringa solution to it.

KIM R. HOLMES is Vice President and Director at the Kathryn and Shelby CullomDavis Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

Laurence E. Lynn Jr.

Public Management Reform and Innovation: Research, Theory, and Application, editedby H. George Frederickson and Jocelyn M. Johnston. Tuscaloosa, AL: University ofAlabama Press, 1999, 378 pp., $59.95 cloth, 29.95 paper.

The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization, byRichard N. Haass. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999, 198 pp., $14.95paper.

The Managerial Presidency, second edition, edited by James P. Pfiffner. College Station,TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1999, 349 pp., $29.95 cloth; $16.95 paper.

Managers, Part of the Problem? Changing How the Public Sector Works, by Camaron J.Thomas. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1999, 192 pp., $59.95 cloth.

Contrary to arguments by the founders of the public policy schools, as well as(curiously) by many in public administration itself, public management was notinvented in the policy schools in the 1970s (Lynn, 1996). It has been a central concernof the profession of public administration virtually from its inception a century ago.In public administration’s first textbook, Introduction to the Study of PublicAdministration, published in 1926, Leonard White rebuked the outmoded notion thatpublic law was the foundation of public administration. “The study of administration,”he argued, “should start from the base of management rather than the foundation oflaw, and is therefore more absorbed in the affairs of the American ManagementAssociation than in the decisions of the courts” (White, 1935, p. vii).1

The emphasis on management in traditional public administration has beensustained. “Perhaps as much as any other one thing,” said Dwight Waldo, “the‘management’ movement has molded the outlook of those to whom publicadministration is an independent inquiry or definable discipline” (Waldo, 1984, p.12). In his Trends in Public Administration, prepared for President Hoover’s ResearchCommittee on Social Trends and published at the dawn of the New Deal, Whitedescribed “The New Management” as codified in a set of principles of administrativeorganization and management to govern the modern state (White, 1933, p. 143).

1 “The study of administration from the point of view of management,” White has said, “began with thebureaus of municipal research and was first systematically formulated in the 1920s” (White, 1955, p. viii).

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Luther Gulick’s famous “POSDCORB,” adapted from the scientific management ideasof Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol, was his answer to the question, “What workdoes the executive do?” (Gulick, 1937, p. 13). Roscoe C. Martin has argued that, by1940, “administration was equated with management,” although, he noted, there wascomparatively little talk about the “nature of the craft” (Martin, 1965, p. 8).

Concern with public management as craft began coming into the foregroundfollowing World War II. Several developments motivated this shift of focus. Theseincluded publication in 1938 of Chester Barnard’s influential Functions of the Executive(Barnard, 1968), Herbert Simon’s devastating, if misguided,2 critique, of Gulick’sversion of the principles of administration enshrined in POSDCORB (Simon, 1946)—and the growing popularity of behavioralism in the social sciences—and a shift ofpublic attitudes toward the bureaucracy. Gerald Garvey has observed that, for reasonsnot clear, the public and its elected representatives no longer viewed the administrativestate and its bureaucracy as the mechanism for reconciling the need for governmentalcapacity with the need to ensure control by the public (Garvey, 1995).

Barnard’s book in particular laid the groundwork for new perspectives on publicmanagement. His goal was “to legitimize the new American managerial class” (Scott,1998, p. 170). According to Frederick Mosher, Barnard, anticipating the standardmultiple principals tenet in current public management doctrine, “definedadministrative responsibility as primarily a moral question or, more specifically, asthe resolution of competing and conflicting codes—legal, technical, personal,professional, and organizational—in the reaching of individual decisions” (Mosher,1968, p. 210). The notion of the manager as a morally responsible decisionmaker wasto influence the thinking of Herbert Simon, whose 1947 book Administrative Behavior(Simon, 1947) and textbook with Victor A. Thompson and Donald W. Smithburg(Simon, Thompson, and Smithburg, 1950), became classics of postwar publicadministration literature and the basis for the work of the Carnegie School. Thisintellectual school was to influence in turn the public policy schools’ first and mostsuccessful intellectual product, arguably a work of public management, GrahamAllison’s The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Allison, 1971).

The notion that administration is a function separate from politics and policymakingand governed by universalistic principles—seemingly the conventional wisdom inpublic administration although not uncritically endorsed by most of its scholars—was replaced by the recognition that administration and policymaking are virtuallyinseparable. “The intermingling of policy and administration in our government isnot new,” said Paul Appleby. “It is more visible because both policy and administrationare more visible; both have to do with many more things” (Appleby, 1949, p. 24). Hedefined public administration as “that intermingling of policy-making andmanagement which occurs below the levels of legislative, judicial, and popular-electoralpolicy determinations” (Appleby, 1949, p. 25). He began to focus on executive work:what to do and how to do it. In an extended discussion of administrative responsibility,Appleby argued that “[r]estraints upon the exercise of authority are in some respectsmanagerial,” by which he meant governed by concerns for effectiveness and pragmaticaccountability to political institutions and processes (Appleby, 1949, p. 239). InRowland Egger’s interpretation, Appleby saw the crux of responsibility as beginningat the point at which statutory authorities, policy directives, and standard operatingprocedures confront the notion of the public interest (Egger, 1965).

An example of the emerging post-war public management literature is John Millett’s1954 book, Management in the Public Service (Millett, 1954). Millett argued:

2 See Hammond’s brilliant defense of Gulick (Hammond, 1990).

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The challenge to any administrator is to overcome obstacles, to understand and master prob-lems, to use imagination and insight in devising new goals of public service. No able adminis-trator can be content to be simply a good caretaker. He seeks rather to review the ends oforganized effort and to advance the goals of administrative endeavor toward better publicservice. . . . But, in a democratic society this questing is not guided solely by the administrator’sown personal sense of desirable social ends. The administrator must convince others as well.He must work with interest groups, with legislators, with chief executives, and with the per-sonnel of his own agency to convince them all that a particular line of policy or program isdesirable (p. 401).

All this is by way of background for evaluating the four contributions to publicmanagement under review here. These four books are rather typical of publicmanagement’s contemporary mainstream literature. Two are single-authored works,and two are edited volumes, one of conference papers and the other of contributionsto the subfield of presidential studies. These books exhibit the kinds of intellectualstyle that have characterized public management literature for some time. These stylesmight be described along two dimensions: from didactic to analytical, and from idealistto realist.3

Both The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur and Managers, Part of the Problem? exemplifythe didactic/homiletic literature, a didacticism to be found in, for example, the earlierwork of Woodrow Wilson, John Gaus, and Millett. Thomas and Haass both beginwith the premise that the public dislikes and distrusts government and that publicmanagers must become part of the solution to this problem. They write in the nowcharacteristic second person, to “you, the reader,” and their books are replete withshort, snappy subheads, pithy anecdotes, metaphors, and lists of key points and thingsto do. They are on opposite ends of the other spectrum. Thomas is a true believer inthe possibility for self-initiated improvement, scarcely referring to politics, courts, orother institutional constraints in favor of “it’s up to you”; Haass is relentlesslypragmatic, a no-nonsense realist about politics and bureaucracy, viewing managementas a complex task of navigation.

Managers, Part of the Problem? is something of an extreme version of a didactic-idealist approach to public management. Camaron Thomas, an experienced publicofficial in state government and now head of her own consulting firm, characterizes“the public sector you work in” as “the insanity” in which “political considerations …comprise yet another aspect of the ‘macroproblem’”(pp. 5, 27). This situation “is notgoing to be resolved by anything short of a wholesale change—one that affects themind, body, and soul of public management” (p. 32). She proposes “a new paradigm”for public management, which she reluctantly (for she resists labels) labels “CoreManagement” (p. 36), and sets out to provide what she calls “a practical, how-toguide for public managers who are ready to create a collaborative environment,predicated on fast-paced and purposeful change, where civility, respect, and initiativeare the norm” (p. 3).

Core Management has three principles: it is collaborative in nature; its focus isfunctional, by which she means “the agency is dead” (p. 37), to be replaced bycollaboration across boundaries; and it begins and ends with the individual manager,by which she means “managing with respect” (p. 37). Core Management has fiveprimary tasks, from “fostering real positive change” to “delivering the product” (pp.41ff). In this and similar works, the right-sounding adjectives and adverbs—real,genuine, authentic, positive, appropriate, deep—substitute for conceptual precision.

Most of the book expatiates on these principles and tasks. It contains aphorismssuch as, “You are no more entitled to get what you want than anyone else . . . and no

3 One might add a third: from essential, or simplified, to complex.

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less entitled either” (p. 89) and “public management all comes down to achievingbalance [of] a special kind . . . deep, and wide, at the same time” (p. 127). It recognizesnine personality types—e.g., troopers, epicures, romantics—and six rules of CivilizedNegotiation. It offers six rules for achieving a change of heart with respect to budgeting,from taking an oath of trust to quantifying performance in a user-friendly way. Whereto begin the task of self-renewal? She concludes her book with two lists: 22 things wewould like to accomplish and 13 practical steps we can take, e.g., “try doing just theopposite of what the organization would actually do” (p. 161). If my experience is anyguide, this kind of material, of which there is an abundance in a relatively short book,succeeds much better in training and executive development sessions, where it booststhe ego, than it does on the printed page.

In the end, I was troubled by a type of inconsistency to which the didactic literatureis prone. Thomas argues that “Core Management is not learned, but lived . . .experienced . . . internalized . . . personalized” (p. 38, italics added). Within a fewlines, however, Thomas provides a didactic list of 10 things to do, the first of manylists that ends with the 22+13 mandates mentioned above. For an approach based onthe idea of experiential learning, this book contains remarkably little on how readersmight learn from their own experience and manage themselves in an “insane”environment and, instead, a conspicuous emphasis on instructing the reader on howto do it in the good old U.S. Army field guide, how-to-build-a-pontoon-bridge manner.

The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur was formerly titled The Power to Persuade, andincludes a helpful guide to public management literature. Haass, like Thomas anexperienced public official, albeit at the federal level, who is now Director of ForeignPolicy Studies at the Brookings Institution, has the same motivation as Thomas:government “need not be this way” (p. xiii). Contrary to Thomas’s approach, Haassquotes Peter Drucker to the effect that “effectiveness can be learned” (p. xii). Heorganizes his discussion on the metaphor of the compass, at the center of which is“you,” the public manager. Effective entrepreneurship involves all four points of themanagerial compass, each engaging a different quadrant of the political world: North,i.e., those for whom you work; South, i.e., those who work for you; East, i.e., thosewith whom you work; and West, i.e., those with whom you should work.”4

The discussion throughout is brisk, to the point, often illustrated with anecdotes.“Keep your word and be straight with people,” he urges (p. 44). In this connection,he quotes Shelia Burke, former Senator Robert Dole’s chief of staff: “The first timeyou mislead someone is the last time you’re effective.” It is tempting to blame thosewho work for you, he says, but “Do not do it” (p. 115), recalling how he felt when hewas betrayed by a superior. “Do not cave in to pressure to reach an agreement” (p.139); “never distort information” (p. 140); “disagree without declaring war” (p. 142).Haass differs from Thomas in another respect: he concludes with only five ratherthan 22+13 things you have to remember: develop and focus on a narrow agenda;look for opportunities to act; bring honesty and integrity to all you do; be aware;and pay attention to people. In short, he says, “check your compass from time totime” (p. 180).

These aphorisms are unexceptionable—but Haass might well have included ananecdote to illustrate when each and every one of them was necessarily violated,where, on pragmatic grounds, one principle had to yield to another. You mightcompare, or even sum up, the aphorisms of Thomas the idealist and Haass the realist,but this exercise would hardly clarify how you should behave as a public manager inyour particular situation. Don’t assume the worst, says Thomas. Assume the worst,

4 Still the very best of these multi-directional heuristics is Dan H. Fenn’s Harvard Business Review article,“Finding Where the Power Lies in Government” (Fenn, 1979).

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says Haass. Both are correct in their own context. Sometimes you do, sometimes youdon’t; the question is “when?” Context is everything in public management, whichaccounts for the popularity of the case method of teaching in professional education,where subtleties and nuances can be explored and principles can be subjected to thereality tests of specific contexts. Public management is not law, where rules are appliedto facts, and thinking like a manager is not the same as thinking like a lawyer. It is,instead, a matter of analyzing and deciding under particular circumstances in thelight of things that matter then. Both authors know this, I’m sure, but their didactic,aphoristic, anecdotal approach belies the experiential wisdom that both no doubtpossess.

The two edited volumes are, by their nature, analytical rather than didactic in theirintent, although each contains a variety of contributions along the didactic-analyticspectrum. These books raise the familiar question: of what value are edited volumesof individual contributions to a diverse audience (and how do you review them)?That question is answered in The Managerial Presidency by the fact that the focus ison a particular institution that has its own institutional frame, specialists, andaudience. The question is answered in Public Management Reform and Innovation bythe editors having provided not only an introduction and conclusion but, as well,helpful overviews of the papers in each of the book’s four sections, which help areader decide what is worth perusing.

The Managerial Presidency raises another question. Why should an audience whoseinterest is in public management more broadly construed be concerned with a bookon presidential management? Two reasons come to mind. First, the President is anelected executive, the President’s office is an executive office, and the President’s roleis that of an administrator as well as a political leader. These are all generic institutions,and insights about these institutions might well be useful in other settings, with otherelected executives and executive offices, and administrative contexts. Second, thePresident is a consequential actor in governance. The President’s role and effectivenessaffect the entire constellation of national and global political power. Just as is thecase with the courts or legislatures, analyses of the presidency—seeing governancefrom a “presidentialist” perspective—ought to be helpful to scholars thinking aboutgovernance more generally and public management more specifically, at least at thefederal level.

The 19 contributions in The Managerial Presidency are organized into three sections:organizing the presidency; political control of administration; and presidentialmanagement in a separated system. The premise of the volume is that “managementmatters in the presidency” (p. xi), a premise that was most clearly expressedinstitutionally with the creation of the Executive Office of the President as an aftermathof the 1937 Brownlow Committee report. Some of the papers were in an earlier editionof this book, and several were written for this edition; thus it is a collection of both“classics” and recent contributions. Many of the authors have had experience in oraround the White House.

The papers on organizing the presidency are primarily about arcane matters ofstaffing and of the role of a chief of staff. Two of these papers are of general interest tostudents of public management.

In “The Changing Presidential Office,” Hugh Heclo presents the presidency not asa man (or woman) in an office but as “an office that is the raw, exposed ganglion ofgovernment where immense lines of force come together in ways that no single personcan control. The total effect is to program the modern president” (p. 25). Aninstitutional problem of the U.S. presidency is that the “United States does not havea high-level, government-wide civil service that could (as in European countries) helpa new chief executive and his top team turn their ideas into administrative realities”

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(p. 31). Presidents cope by surrounding themselves with “policy technocrats,” creatingthe familiar axes of tension with the executive branch agencies. But even with thesepeople, a principal–agent problem exists: are these “self-interested people doing whathe would want?” (p. 31).

Thus the President as an individual, and like any other public executive, cannotescape the fact that he must manage the presidential office as well as the peoplewhom he appoints to run the departments and agencies. It is a matter of managing“tensions and counterpressures inherent in the job” (p. 35). Concludes Heclo: “amodern president who cannot govern his own office is unlikely to be able to governanything else” (p. 35). The power and policy influence of presidential subordinatesdepends upon the President as manager.

In “Why Entourage Politics is Volatile,” Matthew Holden develops thecomplementary notion of the presidential entourage. Holden argues that a “theory ofthe presidency” should recognize that “administration is the central, recurring politicalprocess” (p. 106). The basic administrative pattern, he says, is tripartite: “chiefexecutives, their entourages, and the array of operating entities . . .” (p. 106).

Like Heclo, Holden believes that the entourage “serves both the needs of the personwho occupies the executive office at a given moment and provides a set of institutionalarrangements” (p. 107). Providing for personal needs is in important respectsidiosyncratic, but the role of the counsel to the President and the press secretaryillustrate the extent to which personal roles have become institutionalized. Accordingto Holden, power sharing and bargaining are inevitable between and among the chiefexecutive and functionaries in the entourage (even the rather sanitized TV series“West Wing” shows this). Its extent usually has a personal basis, but many functions,such as directing the Office of Management and Budget, are major focuses of action,commanding the chief executive’s attention and requiring negotiation. Holden argues,however, that, in general, “the entourage . . . is the element of the executive systemthat seeks, in principle, to enforce command and to discourage bargaining. . . . Thereare no easily legitimated means by which other participants can exert control overthe entourage. That is both its strength and its weakness” (p. 125).

The implications for public management seem clear: to use Haas’s metaphor, lyingto the North of the public manager, as an “operating entity,” is not an elected executivewho is a unified actor with clear policy preferences but, rather, a centrally positionedparticipant in a complex, rather unknowable force field. A Heisenberg principle seemsto apply: you may know the elected executive’s position or direction of movement butnot both. And then there is the “dark matter,” unmeasurable but everywhere presentthat may either attract or repel attempts at control by the Southerners.

Several contributions to “Political Control of Administration” provide useful insightsfor public management. In “OMB and Neutral Competence,” Hugh Heclo argues that“neutral competence contributes a quality of impartiality [that is] less concernedwith the short-term political ramifications of who believes what how strongly, andmore concerned with the substance of the policy issues themselves” (p. 133). It is avaluable quality. “When both the agency and careerists are unshielded frompoliticization, then communication, impartiality, and continuity all suffer” (p. 139).

In “The Politicized Presidency,” Terry M. Moe argues that “whatever his particularpolicy objectives, whatever his personality and style,” the modern president is drivenby . . . formidable expectations [based in electoral politics] to seek control over thestructures and processes of government” (p. 147). His resources are limited, however,resulting in politicized arrangements that are “halting, highly imperfect, and nowherenear sufficient . . . to alleviate the massive imbalance between expectations andcapacity” (p. 150).

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As an antidote to Moe (and complement to Heclo), Joel D. Aberbach and Bert A.Rockman argue in “Mandates or Mandarins? Control and Discretion in the ModernAdministrative State” that “a professionalized bureaucracy elevates the effectivenessof government” (p. 163). The political impulses of the President and his entourageshould be subjected, therefore, to “tests of sobriety” that will enable him to avoid the“error and illegality that have wracked recent presidencies” (p. 171). Elliot L.Richardson and James P. Pfiffner offer the complementary view that Presidents shouldavoid the temptation to politicize government positions too much and, instead,concentrate on improving the quality of political leadership throughout the executivebranch. So, too, does Patricia W. Ingraham, who, on the basis of detailed case studiesof political control of the bureaucracy concludes that, from offering uniform resistanceto change, the career bureaucracy is a source of the expertise, ideas, and skill inimplementation that are essential to presidential effectiveness.

Papers in the final section on “Presidential Management in a Separated System” byand large continue the theme of the previous section, i.e., that presidents and theirentourages overreach their capacity at their peril, this time in the context of the roleof Congress. George Edwards III argues, based on an analysis of the Carter and Reaganpresidencies, that presidents are facilitators on the margins of policy change bothbecause they are distracted by their multifarious duties and because of the ability ofCongress to set its own agenda. In “Congress as Co-Manager of the Executive Branch,”Louis Fisher argues that “workable government requires that Congress maintain astrong interest and involvement in the executive process” (p. 317). The framers, heargues, “never advocated a strict separation of powers” (p. 317). George O. Jonesoffers a pithy summary of the situation: “The president is not the presidency. Thepresidency is not the government. Ours is not a presidential system” (p. 334). Thehard part, he says, is to convince “others,” i.e., those who create the unrealisticexpectations that put the President and his entourage under such great pressure, thatthis is so. He urges that priority be given to making the separated system work well,not changing that system.

Public Management Reform and Innovation is a product of the Third National PublicManagement Research Conference on Public Management held at the University ofKansas in 1995. Similar volumes resulted from the first two conferences, and twoconferences have been held subsequently: in 1997, for which an edited volume hasrecently been published (Brudney, O’Toole, and Rainey, 2000), and in 1999, papersfrom which appear in the 10th anniversary volume of the Journal of Public ManagementResearch and Theory. Its 14 papers (selected from a much larger number presented atthe conference) are organized into four sections: “Theories and Concepts of Reform,Innovation, and Intervention in Public Management”; “Reengineering, Reform, andInnovation as Design Science: the Roles of Institutions and Political Contexts”; “TheManagement of Innovation and Reform: Organizational and Bureaucratic Factors”;and “Politics, Governance, Reform, and Innovation.” These rather diffuse, apparentlyoverlapping titles reflect both the underlying theme, reform and innovation, and thediversity of the contributions, which defy easy classification or assignment to thissection rather than that. As noted earlier, the volume is given coherence by the editors’overview essays, which go well beyond brief summaries of the papers.

This volume is interesting for what it represents: one result of a decade-long effortby a group of academics from public administration, public policy, and the disciplinesto develop a sustained, interdisciplinary tradition of research on public managementtoward the objectives of raising both the visibility and intellectual quality of the fieldand stimulating an ongoing conversation about the subject. (A related effort in Europeis the lengthening series of International Research Symposia on Public Management.)

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Most of the papers are interpretative, analytic essays rather than research papers,most with a didactic, assertive emphasis and many presenting familiar views. Nonecould be considered formally theoretical. The few empirical research papers are basedon qualitative data; no one reports quantitative findings. H. George Fredericksonnotes in his introduction to the volume that fully half of the book is concerned withapplications of the “reinventing government” movement associated with the NationalPerformance Review, which was still fresh on the issue and attention cycle when thepapers were being prepared.

Frederickson sums up what he regards as the primary themes of the book: contextmatters; the combination of downsizing and reinventing tends to elicit bureaucraticresistance; reforms were limited in their extent by the Clinton administration’s decisionto emphasize those that could be implemented unilaterally by the Executive Branch;and fundamental problems with government can be traced to flawed policies, whichimproved management cannot fix.

The book includes a number of useful contributions. Among the most valuable isLawrence B. Mohr’s discussion of “One Hundred Theories of Organizational Change:The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Based on his recent book, Mohr argues that it isgenerally impossible to make “stable generalizations” based on the results of empiricalsocial science research; the validity of study results is strictly limited to the domainfor which the data were collected and, thus, is “historical.” In recognition of this,each empirical study should seek to establish “consummate causal understanding”such that—and this phrase I find of enduring value—it will be “instructive in thinkingabout the same or a similar situation in new contexts” (p. 22). He goes on: “Hownearly this is accomplished will . . . be affected primarily by the set of events orvariables we choose to investigate and the creativity and quality of the way in whichwe conceptualize them, as well as the quality of measurements, analyses, andpresentation” (p. 21). In doing this kind of work, Janet Weiss suggests in her essay,“Theoretical Foundations of Intervention,” policy researchers should “participatealongside the policy-making communities in the ongoing conversations about policyproblems, outcomes and, especially, interventions,” each of which—problems,outcomes, and interventions—should be grounded in its own theory.

Three of the empirical papers present interesting findings, albeit subject to varyinginterpretations. Lois R. Wise and Per Stengård compare the extent to which the internallabor market systems of the U.S. and Swedish governments, and, in particular, systemsand rules affecting compensation, job security, and deployment and staffing patterns,have responded to “activities and legislation with potential for affectingdebureaucratization.” They conclude that in the United States, organizational talk seemslargely detached from action, whereas in Sweden, talk and promises for reform areconverted into action. Unfortunately, they do not attempt to account for this difference.

Marissa Martino Golden is concerned with who participates and whose voices areheard in the rule-making process. She analyzed the public record concerningparticipation in the making of 11 rules by the Environmental Protection Agency, theNational Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, and the Department of Housingand Urban Development. Eight of 10 final rules apparently reflected the influence ofparticipation, but only one incorporated a major change. When participants disagree,which was typical, the agency tends to “hear” the voices of supporters rather thancritics. Actual citizen participation was virtually absent.

Based on their analysis of welfare reform efforts in California, Marcia K. Meyersand Nara Dillon conclude that “policy makers failed to align the actions of street-level bureaucrats with their policy goals. Workers persisted in their instrumentaltransactions not because they disagreed with the policy intent but because the structure

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of their jobs and their understanding of program mission created significantdisincentives for cooperating with policy reforms” (p. 249).

The impression created by the books under review, which, as I indicated, are typicalof the contemporary public management genre, is that of a definite continuity in purposeand substance with the management literatures of traditional public administration.Earlier generations of scholars were much more concerned with formal democraticaccountability than most are today; none would have countenanced the NationalPerformance Review’s advocacy of replacing the concept of citizen with that of customer.Today’s scholarship is much more concerned with outcomes and performance andwith methodological issues than was formerly the case. And, of course, the state of theart and of fashion in social science theory and methods continues to undergo change.

But today’s public management continues to be concerned with good government,with the institutional and structural context of policymaking and administration,with managerial roles and behavior, with the influence of multiple stakeholders, andwith the ethics of accountability and of reconciling expertise with citizen sovereignty.As far as public administration is concerned, our exceptional democracy continuesto do a decent job of generating the intellectual resources it needs to sustain itself.

LAURENCE E. LYNN JR. is the Sydney Stein Jr. Professor of Public Management at theHarris School of Public Policy Studies and the School of Social Service Administrationat the University of Chicago.

REFERENCES

Allison, G.T., Jr. (1971). Essence of decision: Explaining the Cuban missile crisis. Boston, MA:Little, Brown.

Appleby, P. (1949). Policy and administration. University, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Barnard, C.I. (1968). The functions of the executive, 30th anniversary edition. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Brudney, J.L., O’Toole, L.J., & Rainey, H.G. (Eds.) (2000). Advancing public management: Newdevelopments in theory, methods, and practice. Washington, DC: Georgetown UniversityPress.

Egger, R. (1965). Responsibility in administration: An exploratory essay. In Roscoe C. Martin(Ed.), Public administration and democracy: Essays in honor of Paul H. Appleby. Syracuse,NY: Syracuse University Press.

Fenn, D.H., Jr. (1979). Finding where the power lies in government. Harvard Business Re-view, 57(5),144–153.

Garvey, G. (1995) False promises: The NPR in historical perspective. In Donald F. Kettl &John J. DiIulio, Jr. (Eds.), Inside the reinvention machine: Appraising governmental reform.Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Gulick, L. (1937). Notes on the theory of organization. In Luther Gulick & L. Urwick (Eds.),Papers on the science of administration. New York: Institute of Public Administration.

Hammond, T.J. (1990). In defense of Luther Gulick’s ‘Notes on the theory of organization.’Public Administration, 68,143–173.

Lynn, L.E., Jr. (1996). Public management as art, science, and profession. Chatham, NJ:Chatham House.

Martin, R.C. (1965). Paul H. Appleby and his administrative world. In Roscoe C. Martin (Ed.),Public administration and democracy: Essays in honor of Paul H. Appleby. Syracuse, NY:Syracuse University Press.

Millett, J.D. (1954). Management in the public service: The quest for effective performance.

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New York: McGraw-Hill.

Mohr, L.B. (1996). The causes of human behavior: Implications for theory and method in thesocial sciences. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Mosher, F.C. (1968). Democracy and the public service. New York: Oxford University Press.

Scott, W.G. (1998). Barnard, Chester I. In Jay M. Shafritz (Ed.), International encyclopedia ofpublic policy and administration (Vol. 1). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Simon, H.A. (1946). The proverbs of administration. Public Administration Review, 6(1), 53–67.

Simon, H.A. (1947). Administrative behavior. New York: Macmillan.

Simon, H.A., Thompson, Victor A., & Smithburg, Donald W. (1950). Public administration.New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Waldo, D. (1984). The administrative state, 2nd ed. New York: Holmes and Meier.

White, L.D. (1933). Trends in public administration. New York: McGraw Hill.

White, L.D. (1935). Introduction to the study of public administration. New York: Macmillan.

White, L.D. Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 4th ed. New York: Macmillan.

Andrew Mason

The Generational Equity Debate edited by John B. Williamson, Diane M. Watts-Roy,and Eric R. Kingson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 363 pp., $49.50cloth, $21.50 paper.

Generational Accounting around the World edited by Willi Leibfritz, Laurence J.Kotlikoff, and Alan J. Auerbach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, 534 pp.,$72.00 cloth.

To judge from coverage by the popular media and the calls for far-reaching reform,population aging is the new “population bomb.” Barring some cataclysmic event,rapid population aging appears to be inevitable. The growth of the older populationreflects enormous increases in life expectancy and the low levels to which fertilityrates have dropped in recent years. In Europe and Japan, women are currentlyaveraging only 1.4 births each. In fact, the United States is something of an oddityamong industrialized countries because women are currently averaging two birthsover the reproductive span. Just how old populations become will depend a greatdeal on whether fertility rates recover or decline further. If fertility remains at lowlevels the United Nations projects that 25 percent of the U.S. population, 31 percentof Europe’s population, and 36 percent of Japan’s population will be 65 or older by2050 (UN, 1998).

A variety of problems are anticipated as a result of population aging and the publicprograms that currently provide for the elderly. As the number of elderly rise relativeto the tax base, maintaining benefit levels would require substantially higher tax rates.If health care costs continue to rise rapidly, the fiscal problems would be that muchmore severe. Maintaining current programs and raising taxes is viewed by many asobjectionable on two grounds: on equity grounds because future generations will besubject to higher taxes than current generations; and on efficiency grounds becausehigher tax rates will undermine work incentives. On the other hand, opponents ofproposals to overhaul these programs worry that the costs of reform will be unfairlyborne by current generations of taxpayers and that reform will leave the elderlypermanently disadvantaged. Two additional complexities add fuel to the debate. Thefirst is that population aging and pay-as-you-go social security systems may undermine

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saving rates, thereby slowing economic growth. The second is that needed reformcould prove impossible if generational conflict comes to dominate the political process.

The Generational Equity Debate is a collection of articles, most of which have beenpreviously published, selected to contrast opposing views about public policy andgenerational equity in the United States. The emphasis is less on generational equityand more on the debate itself. The introductory chapter emphasizes the way in whichpolicy analysts have framed the debate and employed rhetoric to advance theirparticular point of view. The selections, particularly those by proponents of majorreform, lean toward some of the more outspoken critics of current policy.

Part II of the volume consists of five previously published works by proponents ofmajor reform. The authors of these pieces have diverse backgrounds ranging frompolicy-oriented academics to former politicians and heads of think tanks. The articlesare thoughtful, they raise important issues, and they challenge conventional thinking.Most readers will find many ideas worthy of careful consideration. Most of thesechapters are noteworthy for their rhetoric and, in part, were selected by the editorsfor this very reason. For example, in chapter 2, Peter G. Peterson expresses concernabout “whether our children [will] participate in the American Dream or whetherour nation’s wealth-producing engines will fail within their lifetime” (p. 42). Lester C.Thurow describes population aging in bleak terms in chapter 3, arguing that populationaging is creating a new class of people who are “bringing down the social welfarestate, destroying government finances, and threatening the investments that allsocieties need to make to have a successful future” (p. 59). Richard D. Lamm asserts,“In all areas of American activity, but especially in the health care field, infinitedemands have run smack into finite resources” (p. 89).

The authors also suggest a variety of reform measures, many of which are beingactively considered in serious policymaking circles, e.g., means-testing andprivatization of Social Security and health care reform. Some proposals are especiallycontroversial, such as Daniel Callahan’s proposal “to use age as a categorical standardto cut off life-extending technologies under the Medicare entitlement program” (butonly after implementation of other reforms that improve health care for the elderly).

The articles in section III of the volume are of a very different quality. They aremore cautious in their approach. They raise questions about the scientific evidencesupporting some of the reformers’ claims. They are more supportive of the status quoand an incremental approach to reform. Alicia Munnell argues that reformers areexaggerating the effects of aging and that modest changes in the Social Securityprogram are sufficient. Jill Quadagno argues that means-testing Social Security wouldstigmatize the elderly and prove divisive. Robert H. Binstock disputes that generationalconflict is an important force in American politics and challenges the view that risinghealth care costs will injure the U.S. economy. Theodore Marmor, Fay Lomax Cook,and Stephen Scher argue that conservatives are using issues of generational equityand conflict as a pretext for reducing public spending on social welfare. In the finalchapter to the volume, Kingson and Williamson argue that privatization of SocialSecurity is unnecessary and violates the moral basis of Social Security. Taken together,these five chapters challenge the moral, economic, and factual basis for major reformsof programs for the elderly. Do they win the day? Readers will surely vary in theanswer to that question.

Generational Accounting around the World provides a rich set of new data andanalysis using tools first introduced in 1991 by Auerbach, Kotlikoff, and Gokhale.Generational accounts are used to evaluate fiscal policy from a long-term perspective,primarily by comparing two economic statistics: the net lifetime tax rate paid bythe newborn generation and the net lifetime tax rate paid by future generations.Fiscal policy is said to be in “generational balance” if the tax rates paid by the

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newborn generation and by future generations are equal; in “generational imbalance”if they are not.

Perhaps the most important result is the finding that many industrialized countriesface serious generational imbalance. If current government programs and policiesare continued, future generations will pay a substantially higher portion of theirlifetime income in taxes than do current generations. In an updated analysis of theUnited States, Gokhale, Page, and Sturrock (chapter 21) find that future generationswill, on average, be required to pay 49 percent of their lifetime income as comparedwith 29 percent for the newborn generation. As serious as the situation appears to befor the United States, several other countries face much greater generationalimbalance. In Japan, according to Takayama, Kitamura, and Yoshida (chapter 19), inthe absence of reform, future generations will face a net tax rate of 386 percent oflifetime income as compared with 143 percent for the newborn generation.

Why do countries face such large imbalances (and, in some countries, such highnet tax rates)? In part, future generations face higher tax burdens because manycountries have accumulated a large national debt. Generational balance requires thecurrent generation to assume responsibility for paying off a portion of that debt. Ifthe debt is merely passed on to future generations or, worse, added to by currentgenerations, a higher tax burden will be imposed on future generations. If this werethe only source of generational imbalance, generational accounts would have little tooffer beyond standard measures of fiscal balance, such as, the deficit. As is clear fromthis book, however, a more important source of generational imbalance is the effectof rapid population aging combined with public programs, primarily pension andhealth care programs. These programs transfer resources from the working-agepopulation to the elderly, and they impose a net lifetime tax on each generation becausethe rate of return available from pay-as-you-go schemes, on which most countriesrely, are substantially less than the rate of return otherwise available. Thus, eachdollar “invested” in these transfer schemes effectively imposes a lifetime tax on allparticipants. The larger the size of the elderly population, the larger the size of suchprograms and their accompanying tax burden.

The volume provides a useful introduction to the methodology for the uninitiatedreader, but it also goes well beyond earlier efforts. Generational accounts for 17countries—Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Thailand, Japan, Portugal, andthe United States—comprise a valuable resource for those interested in public policy inthese countries and for those interested in comparative analyses. In a brief comparativestudy, Kotlikoff and Leibfritz (chapter 4) show that many of the industrialized countriesof the world face “grave,” to use their term, intergenerational imbalance. The mostserious imbalance is found for Japan, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Brazil. Onthe other hand, Canada is “essentially in generational balance” and in New Zealand,Thailand, and Sweden the imbalance is negative, i.e., future generations face lowerlifetime net tax rates than the current newborn generation. The comparative data arealso used to show that population aging, rather than public debt, bears primaryresponsibility for generational imbalances where it exists.

Several chapters provide a stronger theoretical basis for generational accounts. Inchapter 1, Kotlikoff uses a simple theoretical model to compare generational accountsto conventional measures of fiscal policy such as the deficit. In chapter 3, Fehr andKotlikoff use a general equilibrium model to assess whether the generational accountsmethodology provides a reliable indicator of generational equity. They conclude thatfor a large, closed economy the accounts are reliable, but that for small open economiesadjustments to the methodology yield superior results.

The volume provides useful guidance about the effect on generational balance of

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alternative policies. Several chapters assess the results of changes in tax rates andgovernment spending, in general, or on specific programs. The authors also examinethe timing of these changes and conclude that postponing reform substantiallyincreases the ultimate costs. The comparative nature of the volume is also useful inthis regard by identifying countries that do not face serious generational imbalance.More favorable conditions in Thailand can be traced, for example, to a more favorableage structure and the absence of substantial public transfer programs to support theelderly. In Australia, reform of the public pension program has resulted in a substantialreduction in the generational imbalance.

With any new method, especially one as ambitious as generational accounting, manyquestions have to be answered before its value can be fully determined. Some of theissues raised in academic circles have been addressed in this volume, but other issuesremain. My own view is that the merits of generational accounts would be greatlyenhanced by a more rigorous explanation of the need for generational balance and itsrelationship to generational equity. These concepts are frequently equated but withouta clear theoretical foundation. Generational imbalance arises because industrializedcountries rely on programs that transfer resources from those of working age, whohave greater current income and greater lifetime income, to the elderly. As conventionallymeasured such transfers would be judged to reduce, not increase, inequality. At presentit remains unclear why generational balance is an important policy goal.

ANDREW MASON is Professor of Economics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

REFERENCES

Auerbach, A.J., Gokhale, J., & Kotlikoff, L.J. (1991). Generational accounts: A meaningful al-ternative to deficit accounting. In D. Bradford (Ed.), Tax policy and the economy (Vol. 5, pp.55–110). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

UN (United Nations). (1998). World population prospects: The 1998 revision. New York.

Kimberly M. Thompson

Should We Risk It? Exploring Environmental, Health, and Technological Problem Solving,by Daniel M. Kammen and David M. Hazzenzahl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1999, 404 pp., $39.50 cloth.

Should We Risk It? is a unique resource designed for those who teach environmentalrisk analysis and seek a basic introductory problem-oriented text, and for thosemotivated analytical types who want to gain a basic appreciation of environmentalhealth risk analysis. The book is modeled after Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course inEnvironmental Problem Solving (Harte, 1985), a model that firmly grounds the bookin a mode of teaching by example. While this mode is likely to promote the expectationthat “the risk assessor does not have the option to say ‘I don’t know’ in response to alegitimate question” (Wilson and Clark, 1991), it does make the book hard to readcover to cover. For those who read risk analysis literature, however, all of the problemswill be familiar, particularly since many of them are classics or are drawn directlyfrom the published literature.

Should We Risk It? highlights the fact that “science policy” issues—mixtures offacts and values—play a major role in the assessment, management, andcommunication of risks, which may differ from other policy areas. In particular,

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substances in the environment must obey the laws of science (i.e., conservation ofmass must hold, water can’t flow uphill) even if these laws stand in the way of whatwould appear to be an economically, legally, or politically optimal solution. The bookalso grapples with some of the most challenging areas of environmental risk analysis,notably how to deal with some of the key uncertainties. For example, the chapters onepidemiology and toxicology discuss dose–response modeling, with consideration ofthe uncertainties that derive from extrapolating health effects observed in high-doseanimal studies to humans at much lower doses.

Overall, Should We Risk It? offers the reader an opportunity to develop a firmunderstanding of environmental risk analysis concepts and learn about the sciencepolicy issues relevant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from the lastdecade. Some of the newer concepts (e.g., benchmark dose and margin of exposurein toxicology, spatial issues in exposure assessment, the distinction betweenvariability and uncertainty and their different implications for risk management)do not appear in this version, although they will probably be considered in futureeditions. Like all areas of policy analysis, readers should certainly be aware thatenvironmental risk analysis is not static and that any text provides a review of theproblems that have been “solved” in the hope of motivating analysts to tackleproblems yet to be encountered.

The authors clearly recognize the dynamic nature of the field, and they havecreated a Web site related to the book that was under development at the time ofthis review. The authors promise the site will ultimately provide updated versionsof problems and solutions in the book, supplemental problems and solutions(perhaps restricted to faculty members), and opportunities to offer suggestions andadditional problems. This concept appears to mirror the idea of a shared resourcefor teaching cases (like that offered by the Electronic Hallway at http://www.hallway.org, although the authors of Should We Risk It? are relying on altruisticdonations for problems.

Should We Risk It? is a good complement to Uncertainty: A Guide to Dealing withUncertainty in Quantitative Risk and Policy Analysis (Morgan and Henrion, 1990),which reviews much more comprehensively the risk analysis literature and discussionof theory but which lacks the wealth of solved problems and does not focus specificallyon environmental risk. Readers interested in environmental risk analysis beyond thebasic level, will probably want to consider another new book called ProbabilisticTechniques in Exposure Assessment (Cullen and Frey, 1999). Both of these booksprovide much more discussion of probabilistic risk analysis and treatment ofuncertainty than is offered by Should We Risk It?

With the addition of Should We Risk It? we now have several useful teachingresources for environmental risk analysis. Two edited texts, Risk Assessment andManagement Handbook for Environmental, Health, and Safety Professionals (Kolluruet al., 1996) and Fundamentals of Risk Assessment and Risk Management (Molak,1996) provide excellent overviews of risk analysis topics. Nonetheless, opportunitiesstill exist to add to this pool of resources. For example, while the handbook edited byKolluru et al. includes a section on ecological risk assessment, none of the textsmentioned addresses the issues related to considering both ecological and humanoutcomes associated with environmental risks. Furthermore, no texts provide a setof teaching cases relevant to environmental risk analysis, although Kolluru et al. andThe Greening of Industry: A Risk Management Approach (Graham and Hartwell, 1997)offer several cases.

KIMBERLY M. THOMPSON is Assistant Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science

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at the School of Public Health, Harvard University.

REFERENCES

Cullen, A.C., & Frey, H.C. (1999). Probabilistic techniques in exposure assessment. New York:Plenum Press.

Graham, J.D., & Hartwell, J.K. (1997). The greening of industry: A risk management approach.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Harte, J. (1985). Consider a spherical cow: A course in environmental problem solving. MillValley, CA: University Science Books.

Kolluru, R., Bartell, S., Pitblado, R., & Stricoff, S. (1996) Risk assessment and managementhandbook for environmental, health, and safety professionals. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Molak, V. (1996). Fundamentals of risk assessment and risk management. New York: LewisPublishers.

Morgan, M.G., & Henrion, M. (1990). Uncertainty: A guide to dealing with uncertainty in quan-titative risk and policy analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, R., & Clark, W. (1991). Risk assessment and risk management: Their separation shouldnot mean divorce. In C. Zervos (Ed.) Risk analysis (pp. 187–196). New York: Plenum Press.

Monica Duffy Toft

Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 1–3, edited by Lester Kurtz. NewYork: Academic Press, 1999, 2672 pp., $675.

The Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict undertakes the task of bringingtogether scholars from a variety of disciplines to address issues—past and present—related to violence, peace, and conflict. According to the editor, the purpose of theEncyclopedia is “to take stock of our knowledge concerning these crucial phenomena.”Violence, peace, and conflict are investigated from a variety of academic perspectives,from anthropology to warfare and military studies. The Encyclopedia will be mosthelpful to academics who want an overall introduction to debates and developmentsbeyond their specific field of study. Although some authors address the policyimplications of their issue area, these implications tend to be addressed rather brieflyand in an ad hoc fashion.

For the most part, the essays are well written and stand alone. Yet, they also reinforceeach other. Readers interested in international law, for example, have a number ofessays to draw on, including one each on just-war theory, human rights, and legaltheories and remedies. Similarly, students of ethnic conflict and cooperation canturn to articles on ethnicity, linguistic constructions of violence, secession, civil war,and international relations.

The essays were clearly intended to be even-handed presentations of an issue areaand not hooked into any particular school of thought or argument within a givendiscipline. Readers interested in alternate and broad disciplinary approaches willfind the essays helpful and informative; although as noted, leading debates are notpresented as such. For example, the essay that overviews international relations claimsthat the nation-state’s role is diminishing and that this is occurring for two reasons:the spread of international organizations; and increasing economic interdependence.Within the international relations discipline, this claim is widely disputed. The more

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general point is that many readers are not likely to be in a position to weigh therelative merits of what seems to be presented as a consensus within fields of study.Readers thus need to be cautious when exploring outside their discipline. Becausemost of the contributors concentrate on developments and trends within their field,and deal with policy only secondarily, if at all, readers interested in policy and thepolicy implications of violence, peace, and conflict, will find the volumes lessinformative and interesting.

The Encyclopedia is well organized. Its three volumes consist of 196 individualessays. Each volume includes the table of contents of the other two volumes, as wellas the list of contributors, the guide to the Encyclopedia, and the preface. The essaysare arranged alphabetically, with titles and topics that draw on a broad issue, such aschild abuse, civil war, or folklore. Most essays begin with an outline. Most include aglossary, although in a few cases the definition of terms themselves is so contestedthat authors include a fuller discussion within the article. The abstracts are invaluable,but not all of the essays include one. In a compendium this large, not having abstractsfor all of the essays diminishes their accessibility. The articles end with cross-referencesto related articles in the three volumes; and, in some cases, include a bibliography.

In sum, the overall impression is of an excellent compilation of scholarly material,which does a remarkable job of balancing the width of its material with its depth. Ata time when academics seem to be specializing more and more narrowly, thisEncyclopedia is an impressive and welcome addition.

MONICA DUFFY TOFT is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy Schoolof Government and Assistant Director, John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies,Harvard University.

David L. Weimer

The Economic Pivot in a Political Context, by Charles Wolf Jr. New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Publishers, 1997, 222 pp., $34.95 cloth.

Professionals of various sorts generally speak to narrow audiences: practitioners totheir clients, teachers in professional schools to their students, and researchers toother researchers. They speak to the public mainly when issues have relevance to theregulation of their professions or clearly relate to their technical expertise. In general,such relative detachment from the public forum is neither surprising nor necessarilydisturbing, though it leaves the field to “public intellectuals” who often do not offeranalysis. Yet it does seem curious that members of those professions dealingfundamentally with public affairs do not more often make thoughtful, balanced,professionally informed, and accessible contributions to public discourse. A prominentexception is Charles Wolf Jr., whose 39 essays on international relations andcomparative political economy from the first half of 1990s are collected in TheEconomic Pivot in a Political Context.

I approached this volume with conflicting expectations. On the one hand, it seemedunlikely that opinion or editorial pieces, written to be topical, short, and catchy, wouldage well. On the other hand, because Wolf has been an important contributor to thedevelopment of the public policy profession, as an analyst, educator, and theoristover a long and distinguished career at the RAND Corporation, I expected his essaysto be of the highest quality, and therefore possibly to transcend the circumstancesthat prompted their initial publication. After completing the volume, I felt as thoughI had consumed an entire box of chocolates—some were wonderful, some were stale,

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but together they were a bit too rich and I craved something more nourishing.In a prologue, Wolf sets out a framework for thinking about the post–Cold War era.

He sees international relations as now being characterized by complexity (morerelevant players), volatility (more change, uncertainty, and instability), permeability(greater openness to flows of information, trade, capital, technology, and people acrossborders), and domesticity (greater priority within countries to domestic social,political, and economic issues). The essays that follow explore a number of topicsthat have been prominent in the new era: U.S. trade policy, the relationship betweeneconomic power and military power, the implications of trends in the Japanese andChinese economies for the United States, and the economic and politicaltransformations underway in Russia and the Ukraine. As indicated by the title of thevolume, the essays generally take as their starting point some economic fact, theory,or assumption, which Wolf then explains, challenges, or interprets from a publicpolicy perspective.

The strongest pieces deal with trade issues. In several essays, including a longerone reprinted from the Public Interest, Wolf challenges the neo-mercantilism thatwas still enjoying public and intellectual favor when he wrote. Strategic trade theory,the conceptual basis for neo-mercantilism, argues that in some industries economiesof scale and learning can create positive spillovers to national economies. Wolf countersby sketching the dis-economies of scale and learning that eventually disadvantageindividual firms as they grow beyond some size and eliminate positive spillovers fromthe favored industry. Of course, implementing neo-mercantilism requires an activeindustrial policy with the government having the burden of picking the sectors andfirms that will create the positive spillovers. Advocates of neo-mercantilism point toJapan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) as a demonstration thatan effective industrial policy is possible. Wolf reviews MITI’s mixed record and notesthat more fundamental economic factors, especially aggregate savings and investmentrates, provide a simpler explanation of Japan’s export success.

In several essays, Wolf reminds readers of the connection between the currentaccounts balance and the difference between domestic savings and investment. Whendomestic investment exceeds domestic savings, the difference must be financed byforeign dollar holdings that accrue when the dollar value of goods sold to the UnitedStates exceeds the dollar value of goods bought from the United States. The deficit inthe current accounts balance can only be eliminated if the difference between domesticinvestment and savings is eliminated. Viewed from this perspective, the trade deficitresults from the low U.S. savings rate. Although Wolf makes this point effectivelywithin the terse op/ed format, the volume would have benefited from the addition ofan appendix that developed this accounting relationship more fully, including whatmacroeconomics tells us about the dangers of persistent current accounts deficitsand, if they are dangerous, what policies might be used to close the gap betweendomestic savings and investment.

Wolf’s essays on trade largely interpret mainstream economic theory. His essays onmilitary and economic power go against the grain of current academic wisdom. Headmits that the importance of military power has declined somewhat in the post–Cold War era, but he argues that it has not diminished nearly as much as is commonlyassumed. Several of his essays deal with the complicated issue of the internationalarms trade, where he sees greater cooperation among exporters as desirable.

Wolf does not shy away from challenging other social scientists, especially thosewho have made unfounded predictions in popular books. He would like experts to beheld more accountable for their incorrect predictions. In this spirit, his prologuebriefly assesses the accuracy of his own predictions in the essays contained in thevolume.

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The essays themselves are models of clear and effective writing. They contain morenuance than the typical op/ed page contribution, but still maintain focus. The collectionas a whole, however, suffers from the inclusion of several essays that repeat verbatimwhole paragraphs from previous essays—several times familiar text sent me back tothe beginning of an essay to make sure I hadn’t lost my place. It also contains a fewessays, such as one identifying the fiscal activists and fiscal conservatives in the “new”Clinton administration, that are just too dated to be of much interest. Thus, the volumespeaks more highly of Wolf as an author than as an editor.

As students of public policy, we should celebrate Wolf’s success in contributing somany intelligent essays to public discourse. Yet, while some of these essays certainlydeserve to be revisited, I suspect that few readers will be completely satisfied with thevolume as a whole.

DAVID L. WEIMER is Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science, University ofWisconsin.