xii, [2], 238, [4] pages. Figures. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Index.

xii, [2], 238, [4] pages. Figures. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Index. Compliments of Government Executive 30 Years of Excellence sticker on front of DJ. Signed with sentiment by the author on the fep. Statement reads From a True Fan of GE! Paul Light 6/99. Paul C. Light is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service. Before joining NYU, he was vice president and director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow, and founding director of its Center for Public Service. He has held teaching posts at the University of Virginia, University of Minnesota, and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was also senior adviser to Sen. John Glenn and the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee from 1987-1989, and director of the public policy program at the Pew Charitable Trusts from 1995-1998. Light has written 25 books, and is an expert on government reform, public service, veterans policy, social security, and social innovation. Extracted from a review by Jody W. Lipford, Presbyterian College: Measuring the size of government is inherently problematic. For example, the usual measures-government revenues or expenditures as a share of gross domestic product-offer some clues, but they leave begging many questions about government's less-direct influence on resource allocation through regulations and mandates. Light grapples with one measure of the size of government, the size of the labor force that produces goods and services for the federal government. Still, he does more than simply enumerate the federal workforce; he also deals with important policy issues related to managing that workforce. Light begins by noting that the size of the federal civilian workforce is an inaccurate and deceptive measure of the size of the total federal workforce. The reason is simple: as Americans have demanded that the government provide more services with fewer (labor) resources, the government has turned increasingly to a workforce employed through contracts, grants, and mandates to state and local governments. Light estimates this "shadow workforce" comprises almost 12.7 million employees, a number far greater than the sum of the federal civilian workforce, U.S. postal workers, and uniformed military personnel (4.25 million). Altogether, the true federal workforce approaches 17 million, a figure almost nine times the size of the federal civilian workforce, the latter being the reference group of President Clinton's claims of reduced bureaucracy and the end of the era of "big government." After examining the true size of the federal workforce and the political incentives to use shadow workers in chapters 1-3, Light turns his attention in chapters 4-6 to policy-management issues. He provides a historical overview of efforts to reduce the federal workforce and of the methods for doing so: ceilings, freezes, and downsizings. But whatever the method used, the reduction has been "driven more by political exigency than by wisdom" (p. 130), and the result has been a large shadow workforce that government agencies have used to compensate for cuts in employment. Light moves on to consider the consequences of a shadow workforce. At times, the use of shadow workers can enhance government performance and efficiency, especially when contracting out gives agencies access to skill and flexibility they do not have in house. Cost savings are also an advantage of using the shadow workforce, although those savings are suspect if contracts are awarded for political reasons or to contractors who are near-monopoly suppliers. Yet use of the shadow workforce may at other times inhibit government performance and efficiency, particularly if shadow workers are used merely to evade head counts or to avoid the red tape of internal hiring and work rules or to conceal inadequacy or to provide a scapegoat if mistakes are...