ABSTRACT
Public management has undergone a revolution. Rather than focusing on controlling bureaucracies and delivering services, public administrators are responding to admonishments to “steer rather than row,” and to be the entrepreneurs of a new, leaner, and increasingly privatized government. As a result, a number of highly positive changes have been implemented in the public sector (Osborne and Gaebler 1992; Osborne and Plastrik 1997; Kettl 1993; Kettl and Dilulio 1995; Kettl and Milward 1996; Lynn 1996). But as the field of public administration has increasingly abandoned the idea of rowing and has accepted responsibility for steering, has it simply traded one “adminicentric” view for another? Osborne and Gaebler write, “Those who steer the boat have far more power over its destination than those who row it” (1992, 32). If that is the case, the shift from rowing to steering not only may have left administrators in charge of the boat—choosing its goals and directions and charting a path to achieve them—it may have given them more power to do so.
