ABSTRACT
The program approach turns the incommensurability of government’s resources from a liability into an advantage: the mix of money, public employees, and laws used by one program can be compared with the mix used by another. The program approach readily lends itself to empirical and quantitative analysis, for it defines the activities of government in terms of concrete concerns of operating agencies and the Ministry of Finance rather than abstractions about never-never land. The basic hypothesis of between-nation comparison is simple: Similarities are greater within a given program across national boundaries than among different programs within a country. If national boundaries make less difference to a given program than the boundaries between programs within a nation, then the coefficients of crossnational variation for a specific program should be low. The personal social services provided by relatives and neighbors are often of greater value than those provided by employees of local authorities.
