Structure, Culture, and Governance: A Comparison of Norway and the United States FROM THE PUBLISHER
Public bureaucracies are the workhorses of contemporary government, responsible for implementing public policies, and in the process making far more laws than do legislatures and adjudicating more cases than do the courts. How do bureaucracies function within a political system? How do they behave in the context of surrounding systems? To what extent do governmental structure and political culture shape the performance of bureaucracies? In this comparison of two countries-Norway and the United States-the authors analyze similarities and differences in political-administrative systems, measuring the capacity to govern and the influence of structure and culture in each case. They provide a framework for a broader understanding of public bureaucracy, its importance in a given political system, and how it interacts with other institutions to govern.
Author Biography: Tom Christensen is professor of public administration at the University of Oslo. B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of American Government at the University of Pittsburgh.
SYNOPSIS
Considering governance a scarce commodity, Christensen (political science and public administration, U. of Oslo) and Peters (government, U. of Pittsburgh) compare how the central political and administrative systems in the two countries supply it. They find that the two have faced very different challenges in performing the regulative and distributive tasks common to all developed democracies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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