How Governments Privatize

The conventional wisdom is that government programs often don't work and that government organizations last forever. In a powerful analysis, Cassell shows how two agencies in the U.S. and Germany made programs work-and how they then put themselves out of business. The result is an important contribution to our understanding of political economy, public policy, and public management. - Donald F. Kettl, University of Wisconsin-Madison; A thorough and outstandingly knowledgeable study.... [An account] of impressive depth and accuracy on institutional building and its political embeddedness in the realm of large-scale privatization. - Wolfgang Seibel, University of Konstanz; Cassell provides us with a rigorously detailed organizational study.... In doing this he draws heavily on the public management literature, but Cassell seeks to extend this literature to an analysis of public/private hybrid agencies that, by some accounts, are becoming more common. Cassell's multilayered analysis is sophisticated and carefully thought out. He presents and contextualizes in clear form the myriad forces that undoubtedly shape the behavior of public agencies. - Governance