The Next Government of the United States. Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them, by Donald F Kettl, WW Norton, £18.99
Kettl, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has left it a bit late if he had hoped to influence the Obama administration, for already the president and the US congress seem locked in the mutual embrace that the author identifies as one reason why American government is failing. He employs two examples. There's Mildred, his mother in law, who developed dementia and died in a private nursing home where her bills were paid by a public health programme. Then there was Hurricane Katrina, when the most powerful government in the world couldn't mobilise to rescue the poor black inhabitants of non-tourist New Orleans.
Kettl scores good points. We're already beyond the threshold where contracting out "works"; accountability gets lost as public bodies contract out commissioning. Enthusiasts for the sale of contracting in the UK (are there any still?) should read this. New Orleans wasn't rescued because federal and local agencies squabbled and no one - George W Bush at the head of the culprits' list - took charge. But having said, "we have created extraordinarily complex networks that are hard to manage, especially because they bring private and nonprofit organisations into the mission of doing public work," Kettl fails to produce a remedy. Indeed, the second half of the book has him pulling his punches. Ideology - the visceral hatred of many Americans and not just Republicans for social policy - is ignored.
Kettl doesn't confront the how much or who pays questions, though surely they have to be answered long before the organisational problems. His good point, that we are moving towards "explicit passivism, a growing expectation that government should solve citizens' problems, without an integrated public role and through complex partnerships with private providers of public services" isn't developed.
Perhaps the American government would work better if distinguished professors of political science were a little more aware of the wider world - they do things differently (or even better) in China, Germany, and possibly the UK. And distinguished professors of political science ought really to be a bit more political. Instead of a hard-headed analysis of the prospects for partisan realignment over the state and its size - can Obama do it? - all Kettl offers is some oddly mystical pages about the enduring spirit of the American constitution.
David Walker is managing director of communications and public reporting at the Audit Commission
