A Cascade of Failures: Why Government Fails, and How to Stop It

Light, Paul C.
Brookings Institute, Center for Effective Public Management, Washington D.C., July 2014.

In this research paper, Paul C. Light writes that the “first step in preventing future failures is to find a reasonable set of past failures that might yield lessons for repair.” To meet this goal, Light asks four key questions about past federal government failures: (1) where did government fail, (2) why did government fail, (3) who caused the failures, and (4) what can be done to fix the underlying problems?

Wagner Faculty