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This article examines the classical, or real, ombudsman. Unlike quasi ombudsmen, which are bureaucratic control mechanisms subject to executive leaders or agency administrators, real ombudsmen are operationally independent officials of the legislative branch. In 1969, the state of Hawaii was the first to create a real ombudsman. Although Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska, and Arizona have since followed Hawaii's lead, no intensive, long-term study of American ombudsmen has yet been published. This article examines the ombudsman as a monitor of Hawaii's bureaucracies and considers the extent to which the office has become institutionalized over the past 30 years. Nearly 75,000 citizens have had their complaints investigated by the ombudsman, and more than one-fifth of them were rectified, that is, the agency reversed its original action. This study indicates that the classical ombudsman can become institutionalized in the United States. The findings have policy implications as jurisdictions at the federal, state, and local levels consider the creation of ombudsmen or quasi ombudsmen.
During the 1960s, the attention of many American reformers was drawn to the Scandinavian ombudsman. Herbert Kaufman (1969, 6) summarized the arguments of the ombudsman's proponents: "Today, some observers contend that only a specialized, full-time official, wise in the ways of bureaucracy, having a vested interest in correcting its errors, and supported by adequate staff and authority, can perform this function effectively; apparently, it takes a bureaucrat to control a bureaucrat." But the ombudsman's critics doubted that the office had enough power to accomplish very much or that it was resilient enough to survive transplantation into the allegedly inhospitable American political-administrative climate.
Five states have created "classical" ombudsmen, that is, offices similar to the Scandinavian originals: Hawaii (1969), Nebraska (1971), Iowa (1972), Alaska (1975), and Arizona (1996).1 Such urban areas as Detroit, Michigan, King County, Washington, and Boise, Idaho, also have classical ombudsmen. In addition, many more ombudsmanlike offices (which lack the powers of classical ombudsmen) have been created at all levels of government, in universities, in corporations, in nursing homes, and so forth. A number of these offices aspire to or pretend to be fullfledged ombudsmen. As increasing numbers of jurisdictions consider creating ombudsmen, assessing the longterm performance of the classical ombudsman in the American environment seems appropriate. So, too, does drawing comparisons between...