The Great Crash of 2008 has overturned settled assumptions about government's role in the economy. Economists of both the right and the left prescribe massive federal spending to expand aggregate demand. We are all Keynesians now. Ronald Reagan had proclaimed “government is the problem,” but now we look toward it for a solution. However, the government we hope will bail us out of our financial mess may not be capable of fulfilling that challenging mission.

A Government Ill Executed portrays the federal government's administrative capacities as hollow at present. Its capacities for planning, executing, and evaluating policy have been undermined by sins of omission as well as sins of commission. Federal administration has been the victim of ideological attacks, cutbacks of career personnel, frequent ad hoc reform initiatives, inattention to the recruitment of able public servants, and sweeping privatization of its responsibilities. Just when we need energetic, well-executed government, we discover it has come to resemble its critics' caricature of inept government.

The federal government has not always been inept. Light, a noted public administration scholar at New York University, reminds us it has undertaken great missions in the recent past and achieved striking successes. Among the great missions he discusses are the advancement of human rights and humanitarian relief, the containment of Communism, consumer protection, expanded access to health care, expanding the right to vote, increased access to postsecondary education, and improvement of air and water quality. The federal government once worked effectively for Americans and inspired talented young people with a call to public service. What went wrong?

Good administration has always been consistent with American constitutionalism, and Light frames his examination of modern government with Alexander Hamilton's warning that government “ill-executed” is “in practice, bad government” (Federalist, no. 70). Light identifies seven characteristics Hamilton saw as ingredients of good administration:

• missions that matter, clarity of command, public position as posts of honor, vigorous execution of the law, consistency in administration, and safety or accountability in the executive.

Light's subsequent investigation of the federal executive reveals that the federal government is dramatically inadequate in light of these principles Hamilton championed.

By every one of Hamilton's criteria, the federal government fails. The president and Congress propose great missions for government but do not provide resources that match the missions. Elected officials benefit politically by proclaiming great goals and simultaneously promoting “deep tax cuts to ‘starve the beast’ of big government” (22). Clarity of command has been lost as supervisory positions expanded in number, thickening the executive hierarchy. Light writes, “There were seventeen different executive titles … across the departments in 1960, thirty-three in 1992, fifty-one in 1998, and sixty-four in 2004” (61). Who is responsible? For all its titles, the federal government's posts are increasingly not posts of honor. For political appointees, White House vetting and Senate approval are onerous and likely to drive away many who would serve with honor. Furthermore, talented young people see careers within the federal civil service as dull sinecures rather than challenging opportunities for service. Light surveys the career plans of students at the leading graduate schools of public administration and policy, finding the large majority seek positions in the nonprofit sector or in local and state governments. And data he has collected from participants in the Federal Presidential Management Fellows program reveal that even young people entering public service through this prestigious portal see the civil service holding little long-term promise for a fulfilling career.

Federal administrators have inadequate resources. Reduced budgets, fewer personnel, inadequate technology, and poor physical accommodations produce a workforce that cannot vigorously execute the law. Nor can that workforce attain consistency in the administration of government. Each new presidential administration brings another hobbyhorse of managerial reforms to bear on the executive branch. Light writes: “Even the most energetic … service has limits. To the extent it spends time filling out the paperwork for the latest management fad, it loses energy for implementing all the laws” (164). Finally, Light asks, does the contemporary federal government meet Hamilton's requirement for “safety,” that is accountability and transparency? By way of an answer, Light points to the universe of contractors and grantees forming a hidden federal workforce.

Presently, about 1.8 million people constitute the federal civil service, while an additional 10 million contractors work on government assignments and are paid by federal money. There are good reasons for government to use contractors rather than civil servants in some situations. However, Light argues, the “more important explanation for the largely hidden workforce … rests in pure political incentives” (206). Democrats as well as Republican politicians have made common cause in depriving government of a steady workforce and the resources it requires. Republicans were motivated by ideological distaste for the beast. Democrats discovered they could display a new centrist identity by also smothering government; as Bill Clinton said, “The era of big government is over.” Thus, a bipartisan agreement made it appear as if government was shrinking. However, in reality, both Republicans and Democrats had expanded government's tasks, and the politically safest recourse in attempting to implement those tasks was to do so through an invisible workforce of contractors. We cannot assure safety in execution within this hidden workforce because too few public servants oversee it. Ironically, a common solution to this accountability dilemma is for government to engage contractors to oversee and evaluate the contractors.

Light concludes with sensible measures for reversing the decline of government's administration. His solutions give confidence that we can again achieve well-executed government if that becomes our goal. To reclaim effective administration, Americans and the politicians we elect must realize the great price we pay for a government that is ill executed. Unfortunately, the current crisis may make that price painfully evident.