ABSTRACT
Reforming and re-inventing government is nothing new. Americans always have tinkered with their governmental institutions and processes. One of the book, Agenda for Excellence, provides a liberal response to the politicalization and erosion of the national public service. The other book, Shadow Government, indirectly addresses another current movement, the re-invention and re-engineering of government. Both these books have important messages for those who wish to summarily make governments into market-like, rent-seeking organizations. The principle of complete neutrality of the federal work force is not compelling under the doctrine of fusion of politics and administration. The polity is not economy. Government is not market. Public agencies are not firms. This chapter concludes with the proposition that under a constitutional (law) model of the public service, policy could decide which groups of federal employees could engage in partisan activity and which could not.
