Paul Light

Federalist No. 85 offers a synopsis of the overall case for the Constitution. Describing the dangers of a nation without a national government as an "awful spectacle," the paper provides a rebuttal to the active opposition to ratification. Focusing entirely on the operations of government, this essay examines contemporary challenges to faithfully executing the laws and offers an analysis of comprehensive reforms for creating greater accountability, efficiency, and productivity.

Has the role of the social entrepreneur been glorified as the primary driver of social breakthrough? Have we neglected the important role that all change agents play? What must be done to create the networks that create so many breakthroughs? How does the breakthrough cycle actually work? How do we strengthen the infrastructure that supports social change organizations in their quest? Driving Social Change is the ultimate introduction to the many steps needed to challenge and replace the prevailing wisdom.

Based on the latest research from author, professor, and Washington Post online columnist Paul C. Light, Driving Social Change confronts head-on the seemingly eternal questions of solving tough, even intractable, social problems. Starting with the definition of social entrepreneurship as a powerful driver of social change, it goes well beyond the concept to a more detailed assessment of the "breakthrough" cycle with several other drivers. Along the way, the book focuses on the need to protect past social breakthroughs from complacency and counterattack.

If our purpose is to change the world, writes Light, we must concentrate on every driver possible, not just the ones we can see. To that end, the book highlights alternative paths to creating social breakthrough and provides actionable advice, exploring:

-Strategies to broaden the definition of social entrepreneurship

-Tactics to build strong social organizations and networks

-Dynamic methods to respond to constant economic and social change

-The journey from initial commitment to a world of justice and opportunity

As much as social entrepreneurship is a wondrous, inspirational act, even more extraordinary is the creation of durable social impact through whatever means necessary. Driving Social Change tells us that we should be less concerned about the tools of agitation and more concerned about the disruption and replacement of the status quo.

Holding old mindsets up to the light of day, this timely book unflinchingly addresses the change process and challenges us to question our beliefs about how it really works.

In March 2009, the RAND Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition hosted a workshop called “Shaping Tomorrow Today: Near-Term Steps Towards Long-Term Goals.” The workshop gave policymakers and analysts an opportunity to explore new methods and tools that can help improve long-term decisionmaking. The intent was to conduct this exploration collaboratively, drawing from many countries a mixed group of tool builders, analysts, planners, decisionmakers and interested lay observers. Their task was to consider how analysts and policymakers can determine when it is important to make long-term (as opposed to short-term) decisions, how to make better long-term decisions, and how best to support policymakers in thinking long term, using as case studies the areas of education, international policy, and climate change. These conference proceedings summarize the main discussions and presentations that took place during the two days of the workshop and include the papers written for workshop participants. They will be of interest to anyone engaged in the study and practice of thinking and acting meaningfully over the long term, with particular reference to problems faced by planners and policymakers in public institutions of governance.

The federal government's "quiet crisis" of the 1980s has become the "deafening crisis" of the early twenty-first century. Virtually every measure of the state of the public service as envisioned by Alexander Hamilton has worsened over the past two decades. This lecture outlines Hamilton's seven characteristics of an energetic federal service and examines recent trends in its decline. Although the federal service still executes an enormous agenda of important missions, it is increasingly frustrated in its work.

The past two years have been unsettled at best for Congress. Public approval toward Congress remains low, legislative debates have been contentious, polarization remains high, and Congress has a mixed record in dealing with major long-term issues such as Social Security and Medicare. The State Children's Health Insurance program has been delayed awaiting a compromise that might expand coverage, immigration reform has been waylaid by the intensity of opposition across the party lines, energy reform was diluted by ongoing disputes about how to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, and the war in Iraq continues to dictate the pace of major legislative debates.

Nearly two decades after the first Volcker Commission issued its report on the federal public service, the presidential appointment and confirmation process remains long, cumbersome, intensive, and embarrassing. As the evidence presented in this essay suggests, the process may attract people who are motivated more by personal rewards than by the intrinsic value of public service. Although recent administrations have displayed little enthusiasm for reforming the federal appointment process, the best hope for change may reside in future presidents' desire to assert tight political control over executive departments.

As they ponder the final 9/11 commission report detailing the continued lack of preparedness among federal agencies, Congress and President Bush should also consider the parallel lack of preparedness among the citizenry as a whole.

Four years after September 11th, public confidence in charitable organizations remains stuck at a contemporary low. According to a telephone survey of 1,820 randomly-selected Americans interviewed on behalf of NYU Wagner's Organizational Performance Initiative during the summer of 2005, confidence has held virtually constant since it bottomed out after months of controversy
surrounding disbursement of the September 11th relief funds. As of last summer, 15 percent of Americans said they had a great deal of confidence in charitable organizations, 49 percent said a fair amount, 24 percent said not too much, and 7 percent said none at all. Public views of how charitable organizations operate also remain unchanged. Only 19 percent of Americans said charitable organizations do a very good job running their programs and services, while just 11 percent said the same about spending money wisely. In addition, 66 percent of Americans said that charitable organizations waste a great deal or fair amount of money, while almost half said the leaders of charitable organizations are paid too much. If the past is prologue, these views will continue to drive higher levels of legislative and media scrutiny, which in turn, may further erode public confidence. The survey also suggests that rebuilding confidence must involve sustained investment in strengthening the capacity of charitable organizations to achieve measurable impacts toward their missions.

Senator Bill First, the majority leader, has often invoked the founding fathers to make his case against delaying tactics like the filibuster, especially when such tactics allow a small number of senators to create what he calls "a tyranny of the minority." But he has shown almost no interest in the founders' similar concerns about tactics that accelerate Senate action, even when those tactics enable a handful of senators to effectively deny the chamber the possibility of reading a bill, let alone debate it. There is plenty of minority tyranny, for example, in the conference committees that Congress uses to spur legislative agreement between the two chambers. Such committees clearly bypass the founders' inefficient back-and-forth in which the House and Senate are supposed to trade versions of legislation until they finally reach agreement. These committees have become more powerful over the years, in no small part because Congress stopped instructing them to stay within the four corners of the versions of legislation at issue. In the 2003 conference over President Bush's energy bill, which eventually failed, conferees added $277 million in subsidies for environmentally friendly shopping malls, including one in Shreveport, La., that would have included a Hooters restaurant. As President Ronald Reagan once said, an apple and an orange could go into a conference committee and come out a pear. There is also enormous opportunity for minority tyranny in the writing of omnibus bills, another legislative accelerant the founders might view as a violation of their constitutional design. Employed after the Civil War to handle the onslaught of private pension bills for disabled veterans, omnibus bills were not used for appropriations until 1950. Since then, they have become a commonplace vehicle for packaging everything from spending bills to highway projects. Last year's $388 billion omnibus bill not only ran more than 1,600 double-sided pages and weighed 14 pounds, it arrived on the House and Senate floor only hours ahead of passage. No wonder members missed the provision that allowed Congressional staff members to review the tax returns of individual taxpayers. Although Mr. Frist promised that Congress would work on reforming the use of omnibus bills, filibuster reform has taken precedence.

This report, comparing data collected in two surveys, one prior to Hurricane Katrina and one following, identifies a significant drop in public confidence in government's ability to handle disasters in the wake of the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as highlights the growth of a perceived "preparedness divide" between rich and poor.

Bush continues a trend toward smaller agendas begun in the wake of the 1981 tax cuts, which sharply constrained the amount of federal funding for large scale, new programs. He also continues a trend among Republican presidents toward a �less-is-more� philosophy of domestic policy. His agenda is half as large as Richard Nixon's first-term agenda in 1969-72, a third smaller than Ronald Reagan's first-term agenda in 1981-84, and a quarter smaller than his father's first-term agenda in 1989-92. Although less ambitious than his predecessors, Bush's limited number of large-scale, new proposals have been undeniably bold. His tax cuts, education reform, social security revisions, prescription drug coverage, and homeland security reorganization are easily classified as large-scale, new proposals, and match up with the large-scale, new proposals of the past such as civil rights, voting rights, and Medicare under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, environmental protection, revenue sharing, and national health insurance under Richard M. Nixon, energy and social security reform under Jimmy Carter, tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, budget reform under George H. W. Bush, and national health care, Americorps, and welfare reform under Bill Clinton. However, what sets George W. Bush apart is the relatively shallow depth of his agenda. Whereas Kennedy and Johnson pursued 54 large-scale, new proposals in their two first terms, and Nixon another 18, Bush has pursued just five in his. Simply put, George W. Bush has placed all of his domestic policy proposals in a very small basket. Half of his agenda consists of small-scale, conventional proposals, including expanded drug treatment, pension reform, and an energy package that pales in comparison to the energy bills of previous administrations.

The Commission has provided the essential outlines for strengthening our intelligence community and homeland security institution. It is now up to Congress and the president to exercise its judgment on whether and how to proceed, including areas that the Commission did not address.

The Commission's report has outlined the essential elements of a more effective intelligence community and homeland security effort. It is now up to Congress and the president to exercise their best judgment on whether and how to proceed, whether through reorganization or long-overdue improvements in key human capital systems, or both.

Testimony regarding the Bush Administration's competitive sourcing initiative, which promises to subject at least 50 percent of the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act (FAIR Act) not-inherently governmental jobs up for competition by some as-yet-to-be-determined date.

The testimony explains why the Committee's proposed legislation to establish a Department of Defense national security personnel system marks an important step forward in crafting long-overdue changes to our outmoded human capital system in government

It was twenty-five years ago that this Committee took up the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. That statute reflected an effort to modernize a personnel system that had not been reformed since 1946, and addressed many of the issues embedded in this bill. Launched in a bipartisan spirit by the Carter-Mondale Administration, the act was designed to create a new era in human resources management. It contained new procedures for pay for performance, accelerated hiring, and waivers for experimentation. It also created the Senior Executive Service, and sought to modernize the outmoded job classification system that governed the hiring and promotion of civil servants.
It is time to pass this bill and begin the next generation of reform. Civil service reform is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; it is a good government issue. It should be designed first and foremost to assure that talented Americans have the chance to serve their country. As President Carter argued in 1977, the public deserves a government as good as its people. There is overwhelming empirical evidence that this proposal would advance that cause.

It is no longer clear that the federal government work force can pass the following five tests of a healthy public service, which are that it should be:
-Motivated by the public good, not security or a stable paycheck.
-Recruited from the top of the labor market, not the bottom.
-Given the tools to do its job well.
-Rewarded for a job well done, not just showing up day after day.
-Trusted by the people and leaders it serves.

Examines the presidential appointment process in the U.S. Background on the confirmation process; Analysis of the confirmed appointees of several presidents; Cause of delays in the confirmation process; Role of the Senate in the confirmation process.

The nonprofit sector will survive the current weak economy because it has the most dedicated workforce in the nation. It is a workforce that comes to work in the morning motivated primarily by the chance to do something worthwhile, savoring the chance to make decisions on its own, take risks, and try new things, and puts mission above all else.

Discusses what prompts and sustains the volunteering decisions of presidents in the U.S. Views of President John F. Kennedy on volunteerism; Volunteer programs that former president Lyndon Johnson helped create; Other presidents of the U.S. that gave contributions to the nation's national service; Effect of service learning on volunteering.

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11 reminded the nation just how important the federal public service is in times of crisis. The night after the attacks, President Bush said, "the functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington . . . will be open for business tomorrow." In the days and weeks following the attacks, it became clear that not only would government be open, it would take on a greatly expanded role.

Thomas Jefferson had a great deal on his mind as he prepared for his first term as president, not the least of which was the brutal contest that led to his election after 34 ballots in the House of Representatives. Beset by civil unrest at home and threatened from abroad, the nation was fighting for its very survival. Yet, as Jefferson mused about the challenges ahead, he worried most about building an administration whose talents, integrity, names and dispositions, should at once inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind and insure a perfect harmony in the conduct of the public business.

Two hundred years later, there is ample evidence that a president's appointments still have the power to inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind. Confidence in presidential appointees surged dramatically in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and now exceeds confidence in elected federal officials such as members of Congress and federal government workers. The evidence comes from comparing the results of a new nationwide, representative telephone survey of 1,033 adults living in the continental United States with the results of a parallel survey conducted during the summer. Both surveys were conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates for The Presidential Appointee Initiative, a nonpartisan project of the Brookings Institution funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The first survey was conducted between June 18 and July 18, 2001 and the second one was conducted between September 27 and October 6, 2001. For results based on the total sample of either survey, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is within approximately plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Reveals the message from two surveys of senior-level appointees from the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Estimated number that said they would strongly recommended presidential service to a good friend; Percentage that said that presidential service would be both an honor and an opportunity to make a difference.

This article asks how changes in the presidential policymaking process have affected domestic policy in general and the agenda-setting process in particular. The past forty years have witnessed two roughly parallel, but possibly unrelated trends. First, the presidential policy making process has become more formalized as presidents have added staff and capacity to the institutional presidency. Second, the number of proposals on the president's domestic policy agenda have declined in both number and newness. Simply stated, the president's agenda has declined in significance even as the policy process has increased in capacity. This article examines the possible explanations for the trends, while suggesting that institutionalization may not have been the wisest organizational response to the political pressures that led to a shrinking of the president's agenda.

In Making Nonprofits Work, Paul C. Light charts the current trends of management reform in the nonprofit sector and assesses the climate for reform at the local and national levels.

Light examines the four popular philosophies, or "tides," being advocated- scientific management, liberation management, war on waste, and watchful eye-offering examples and caveats from a portfolio of recent experience. Drawing on confidential interviews with leaders in nonprofit management reform, a detailed search of Internet sources, and a survey of state associations of nonprofit organizations, Light's findings suggest that the nonprofit sector has a remarkable opportunity to prevent the excesses and fadism that have dominated reform efforts in government and the private sector. He cautions leaders in the nonprofit sector to recognize the limits of various reform models, to set priorities carefully, and to limit investments of reform energy to a handful of priorities. Finally, he urges reformers to boost the sector's ability to implement new systems and reforms by focusing more closely on capacity building.

For the first time in more than four decades, the federal budget has registered two consecutive surpluses, and the need to reduce the deficit is not casting a pall over the policy debate. This new, highly accessible book examines the policy options that are available in this new environment to address the new and recurring challenges that face the nation.

The book, which continues the Brookings Institution's highly acclaimed and influential Setting National Priorities series, will serve as a guide for understanding many of the complex issues that will be discussed during the presidential and congressional campaigns of 2000. The book centers around three themes: providing opportunity in the domestic arena, restoring confidence in government, and adapting to the post-Cold War international environment. It tackles such critical issues as Medicare and social security, tax reform, and foreign policy spending, as well as many area not included in previous editions; namely, education, urban problems, the environment, trade, government renewal and reform, crime and drugs, and families.

In this paper, we review methods for assessing and managing the risk of extreme events, where 'extreme events' are defined to be rare, severe, and outside the normal range of experience of the system in question. First, we discuss several systematic approaches for identifying possible extreme events. We then discuss some issues related to risk assessment of extreme events, including what type of output is needed (e.g., a single probability vs. a probability distribution), and alternatives to the probabilistic approach. Next, we present a number of probabilistic methods. These include: guidelines for eliciting informative probability distributions from experts; maximum entropy distributions; extreme value theory; other approaches for constructing prior distributions (such as reference or noninformative priors); the use of modeling and decomposition to estimate the probability (or distribution) of interest; and bounding methods. Finally, we briefly discuss several approaches for managing the risk of extreme events, and conclude with recommendations and directions for future research.

This book addresses a seemingly simple question: Just how many people really work for the federal government? Official counts show a relatively small total of 1.9 million full-time civil servants, as of 1996. But, according to Paul Light, the true head count is nearly nine times higher than the official numbers, with about 17 million people actually providing the government with goods and services. Most are part of what Light calls the "shadow of government"-nonfederal employees working under federal contracts, grants, and mandates to state and local governments. In this book--the first that attempts to establish firm estimates of the shadow work force-- he explores the reasons why the official size of the federal government has remained so small while the shadow of government has grown so large.

Light examines the political incentives that make the illusion of a small government so attractive, analyzes the tools used by officials to keep the official headcount small, and reveals how the appearance of smallness affects the management of government and the future of the public service. Finally, he points out ways the federal government can better manage the shadow work force it has built over the past half-century.

Any organization can innovate once. The challenge is to innovate twice, thrice, and more?to make innovation a part of daily good practice. This book shows how nonprofit and government organizations can transform the single, occasional act of innovating into an everyday occurrence by forging a culture of natural innovation.

Filled with real success stories and practical lessons learned, Sustaining Innovation offers examples of how organizations can take the first step toward innovativeness, advice on how to survive the inevitable mistakes along the way, and tools for keeping the edge once the journey is complete.

Light also provides a set of simple suggestions for fitting the lessons to the different management pressures facing the government and nonprofit sector. Unlike the private sector, where innovation needs only to be profitable to be worth doing, government and nonprofit innovation must be about doing something worthwhile. It must challenge the prevailing wisdom and advance the public good. Sustaining Innovation gives nonprofit and government managers a coherent, easily understood model for making this kind of innovation a natural reality.

The past six decades have witnessed acceleration in both the number and variety of major administrative reform statutes enacted by Congress. This increase can be explained partly by the increased involvement of Congress, a parallel decrease in activity and resistance by the presidency, and heightened public distrust toward government. At least part of the variation in the tides or philosophies of reform involves a "field of dreams" effect in which the creation of new governmental structure during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s generated increased interest in process reforms. However, part of the acceleration and variety of reform appears to be related to the lack of hard evidence of what actually works in improving government performance. Measured by federal employees' perceptions of organizational performance, what matters most is not whether organizations were reformed in the past, but whether organizations need reform in the future and can provide essential resources for achieving their mission.

Offers suggestions on how to remove the barriers to recruiting minority faculty. Obstacles to recruitment; Position description; Search for the position; Making a short list; Evaluation of criteria to be used in reviewing specific files; Interviews; Extra time for reflection and debate.

Explores the effects of the activation of pragmatic schemas on children's reasoning performance. Definition of pragmatic schemas; Developmental and general aspects of research findings; Theoretical significance to child psychology.

This article addresses the importance of economic and demographic assumptions in framing the public policy process. It examines functions of such assumptions as an important aspect of government and as a new challenge for public managers. Using Social Security as a case study, the article suggests that recent fore- casts have been inaccurate for four basic reasons: (I) the social and economic environment, (2) technique, (3) assumption drag, and (4) politics. Nevertheless, the assumptions have been crucial at several key legislative turning points in recent Social Security reforms. The article reviews the impact of political pressure in three specific instances and suggests an emerging pattern in the use and misuse of assumptions. The article concludes with suggestions on how to address the importance of assumptions in the public policy process.