ABSTRACT
The demand for governmental reforms Beginning in the 1980s, American public opinion swung away from a halfcentury of experimenting with government as the first solution to all problems. President Reagan achieved a consensus that government was too big and spent too much. The fall of the Soviet empire allowed President Bush to initiate major cuts in defence spending. Social service agencies began to feel the pinch under President Clinton; despite a preference for increased social interventions, he is caught up by voter pressure to reduce federal spending and his own rhetoric urging his party to reject its tax-and-spend tradition. His administration is a vocal advocate for reinvention, possibly because making the agencies more efficient is the only way to increase constituent spending within a fixed budget. Thus, US government agencies have been dealing with the current reform ideology for almost 20 years.
