Ideological reactions to the national performance review

In 1993 the National Performance Review (NPR) conducted a six-month evaluation of the responsibilities of the federal public service and issued a report favoring a new model of governance. This approach embraced a net devolution in the overall national role through numerous steps involving debureaucratization and extensive deregulation within the national executive branch as well as an increased use of federalism and privatization outside it. This outlook had been popularized by journalist David Osborne and former city manager Ted Gaebler, in their book Reinventing Government, who in turn credited management luminary Peter F. Drucker. This article analyzes public ideological reactions to the NPR report within a six-month period prior to and after its release—responses (from a population of sources found in indexes) that manifested a substantial degree of convergence. Middle-of-the-road, conservative, and liberal observers endorsed the overall direction of this report, reflecting a consensus on its utility and viewing it as a first step. But toward what? Answers to this question revealed considerable divergence. Middle-of-the-road commentators were skeptical that the report of this commission would lead anywhere due to putative congressional opposition to any reduction in its executive oversight role and to widely expected resistance from federal workers apprehensive about layoffs and wary of an implicit Faustian bargain of looser regulation in return for improved performance. Conservative analysts were unconvinced that this report would lead to a reduced federal sector, the contours of which they only implicitly defined. Liberal observers saw the report as a vehicle toward better (more effective and just) government, a restoration of public confidence in it, and a possible opportunity for its expansion. But they, too, were unconvinced that the study would bring much progress toward these goals for a spate of philosophical, historical, fiscal, managerial, constitutional, and attitudinal reasons. This examination concludes that these sets of reactions represent the outer limit of convergence and consensus, an implicit reaffirmation of the welfare state, and a vindication of Drucker's advocacy, although beyond the NPR report lies the question of what government ought to do.