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Rethinking Democratic Acccountability, by Robert D. Behn. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001, 318 pp., $18.95 paper, $44.95 cloth.
Robert Behn is an astute commentator on the challenges of managing public agencies, with a gift for conveying his ideas in clear and clever prose. In Rethinking Democratic Accountability, Behn inventories the institutional and cultural barriers to reform in American government and proposes a strategy for overcoming those barriers. It is good advice for managers who want to integrate reform into the daily operations of their agency. It is less useful for reformers who must think about institutional change on a broader scale.
The problem that preoccupies Behn has two aspects. The first is the profusion, over the last half-century, of institutional checks on the managers of public agencies. Behn notes the role played by inspectors general and (until recently) independent counsel; the impact of more restrictive ethics rules and administrative law reforms; the profusion of political appointees within the executive branch; and the power of more aggressive media and congressional committees. Behn could have gone further, adding tougher rules on public access to records and meetings, paperwork reduction and regulatory review requirements, personal privacy rules, and fair employment rules. These restrictions, often imposed by legislators, have been accompanied by shifts of power within the executive branch aimed at improving the capacity of chief executives to oversee and coordinate line departments. Behn is undoubtedly right when he says that "our current system of accountability is neither orderly . . . nor coherent" (p. 60).
Behn emphasizes that the problem confronting managers is not simply one of an overgrown institutional apparatus. Equally troublesome is the dysfunctional culture that is said to pervade the "accountability environment"-those groups and individuals with the capacity to place pressure on the agency and its employees (p. 6; the term is borrowed from Kevin Kearns [1996]). Behn is sharp in his criticism of the watchdogs, journalists, legislators, and interest groups who surround public agencies. They are unjustifiably distrustful, says Behn: fixated on mistakes and obsessed with finding and punishing scapegoats within public agencies. They are often hypocritical, seeking to evade the rules they impose on agencies. And they are irresponsible, refusing to concede that their own conduct may contribute to agency failures, or...