Building with a bad blueprint: Executive branch reorganization's lessons for institutional reform

The history of institutional reform efforts is marked by failure. Public officials' and reformers' attempts to improve city government, change parties' delegate selection and nominating rules, restructure legislative committees and reorganize the executive branch are almost always disappointing. Social scientists generally maintain that reforms fail so often because they meet with violent opposition from legislators, bureaucrats and interest groups convinced that reform threatens their influence over policy and the allocation of benefits.;The 1965 Michigan and 1961 California reorganizations are compared to determine what role ideas play in reform failure. The case studies use speeches, public statements, press releases, hearings, interoffice memoranda, letters, newspaper articles and interviews to document Governor George Romney's and Governor Pat Brown's commitment to their shared blueprint for reorganization, "orthodox administrative theory," and the merits of their different reorganization strategies. The comparison reveals that by relaxing his grip on the orthodoxy and adopting a cautious, conciliatory, incremental approach to reorganization, Brown took better advantage of his opportunities to reorganize than did Romney. The dissertation concludes that public officials' and reformers' commitment to flawed and limited blueprints for reform contributes significantly to reform failure. It suggests that by adopting an incremental approach to reform, public officials and reformers can consider a wider range of approaches, silence their opponents, keep their ultimate goals in sight while they negotiate on means, and improve their chances for engineering comprehensive change.;This dissertation argues that while particularistic opposition undoubtedly contributes to reform failure, it does not explain it completely. By proposing reform, public officials and reformers gain certain symbolic and tactical advantages that allow them to set the terms of the reform debate. Reform's opponents must make legitimate, persuasive arguments to turn the terms of debate in their favor and place reform's supporters in a position where they must compromise on their demands. They can make these arguments by exploiting the flaws in and limitations of public officials' and reformers' "blueprints" for reform.