This text examines two decades of change in the career patterns and motivations of America's top public servants. Drawing upon interviews with 1000 graduates of the nation's top 20 public policy and administration graduate schools, the author documents the end of the "jobs-for-life" era in the public service sector. The book addresses four questions about the public sevice as seen through the careers of five classes of students: where did these students come from and how have their tracks into graduate work changed? Where did they go after graduation and how have their careers evolved? What were they looking for from public service and how have their motivations changed over the quarter century covered by the survey? And how well have their graduate programmes served them in their careers?
Paul C. Light is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University. He is also Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he founded the Center for Public Service. Light is the author of numerous books on public service and management, among them Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence (2002), Government's Greatest Achievements (2002), Making Nonprofits Work (2000), and The New Public Service (1999).
"Paul Light has done it again. He has brought to our attention a fundamentally important issue with respect to our federal government--in this case the health and future of our public service. Hats off to a very thoughtful analysis." --Senator Carl Levin, United States Senate "Light breaks new ground in this important book. It should be required reading for scholars and practitioners alike." --Walter Broadnax, American University "This thoughtful look at the state of public service in this country should be pondered long and hard...With deft strokes, Paul Light paints a face on our faceless and much-bashed bureaucracy." --John L. Palmer, Syracuse University
"Light has shown in this book why he is among the leading scholars in public policy and administration today. This book goes beyond the description of the challenges to offer clear and compelling recommendations to the many sectors involved with the new public service." -Paul L. Posner, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, Political Science Quarterly, 7/1/2001 |"... Canadian readers will easily benefit from [The New Public Service]. It reminds those who are passionate about government and public policy that the challenge is to ensure that the lasting legacy of the new public management is not a wrecked public service. " -Patrice A. Dutil, Toronto, A Canadian Journal (?) |"Paul Light has done it again. He has brought to our attention a fundamentally important issue with respect to our federal government--in this case the health and future of our public service. Hats off to a very thoughtful analysis." -Senator Carl Levin, United States Senate |"Light breaks new ground in this important book. It should be required reading for scholars and practitioners alike." -Walter Broadnax, American University |"This thoughtful look at the state of public service in this country should be pondered long and hard...With deft strokes, Paul Light paints a face on our faceless and much-bashed bureaucracy." -John L. Palmer, Syracuse University
