Thirty years ago, Anglo-American politicians set out to make the public sector look like the private sector. These reforms continue today, ultimately seeking to empower elected officials to shape policies and pushing public servants to manage operations in the same manner as their private-sector counterparts. In Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher?, Donald Savoie provides a nuanced account of how the Canadian federal government makes decisions. Savoie argues that the traditional role of public servants advising governments on policy has been turned on its head, and that evidence-based policy making is no longer valued as it once was. Policy making has become a matter of opinion, Google searches, focus groups, and public opinion surveys, where a well-connected lobbyist can provide any answers politicians wish to hear. As a result, public servants have lost their way and are uncertain about how they should assess management performance, how they should generate policy advice, how they should work with their political leaders, and how they should speak truth to political power - even within their own departments. Savoie demonstrates how recent management reforms in government have caused a steep rise in the overhead cost of government, as well as how the notion that public administration could be made to operate like the private sector has been misguided and costly to taxpayers. Abandoning "textbook" discussions of government and public service, Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? Is a realistic portrayal of how policy decisions are made and how actors and institutions interact with one another and exposes the complexities, contradictions present in Canadian politics and governance.

Inspired by the realization that, in most countries, the commitment to regional development is determined by national ideological swings rather than the socio-economic conditions in a particular region (here meaning an area smaller than a country). Surveys and evaluates the history of regional polic

Product Description: The only rival to Harrison McCain’s entrepreneurial success was his deep attachment to his Maritime roots. From McCain’s beginnings in Florenceville, New Brunswick, the early mentorship he received from K.C. Irving, to the global success of his corporate empire McCain Foods, Donald Savoie presents a compelling and candid biography of one of the most famous and down-to-earth figures in Canadian business history...read more

Product Description: In the 1950s most of Acadian society was poor, uneducated, isolated, and dominated by the Roman Catholic clergy. In the following decade two individuals, Pierre E. Trudeau and Louis J. Robichaud, pointed the way for Acadians like Savoie to make important contributions to Canada's development...read more

Product Description: There is a consensus throughout much of the western world that the public sector is in urgent need of repair. This study seeks to understand why this is so by comparing developments in Canada and the United Kingdom. It looks to changes in values both in society and inside government, and to the relationships between politicians and civil servants at the top and between civil servants and citizens at the bottom...read more

Product Description: During his successful campaign to become Conservative Party leader in the spring of 2004, Stephen Harper said of the Maritime provinces, "We will see the day when the region is not the place where you visit your grandparents, but instead more often than not the place where you visit your grandchildren...read more

Product Description: 2004 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and the tenth anniversary of NAFTA. While North American trading relationships should have deepened during this time, 9/11 led to the issue of homeland security, which complicated the already full free trade agenda...read more

Product Description: Canada's machinery of government is out of joint. In Breaking the Bargain, Donald J. Savoie reveals how the traditional deal struck between politicians and career officials that underpins the workings of our national political and administrative process is today being challenged...read more

Product Description: The Art of the State includes contributions from Ron Daniels (University of Toronto) on corporate governance, Rick Harris (Simon Fraser University) on the new economic order, Pierre Marc Johnson (Heenan-Blaikie, Montreal law firm) on international governance and Canada, Michael Keating (European University Institute) on sub-national communities, Will Kymlicka (Queen's University) on new forms of citenzenship, B...read more

Product Description: In Pulling Against Gravity Donald Savoie, one of Canada's foremost authorities on regional public policy, offers a sweeping overview of the policy challenges faced by Frank McKenna as New Brunswick premier in the 1980s and 1990s. He documents McKenna's attempts at affecting changes that went to the very core of the province's economic and social life...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In Governance in the Twenty-first Century Canadian and international experts recognize both the difficulty of making predictions and the need to consider the future in order to prepare the public sector for new challenges. The authors' predictions and recommendations are anchored in a thorough understanding of contemporary public administration...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Distinguished scholars from six countries investigate the effects of reforms in a number of areas, including budgeting, personnel management, and accountability. While reforms have been beneficial in some of these areas, success has been far from universal...read more

Product Description: This volume contains a selection of the most important articles spanning over 20 years on budgeting and managing public spending. It is divided into five parts, covering the main areas of the field including the political-economic environment, approaches to expenditure budgeting and implementing the budget...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Fiscal cutbacks, the public's declining confidence in government, and new ideologies are forcing the public sector in industrialized democracies to undertake major reforms. In these essays contributing authors examine changes to the political and economic environment and the ways in which governments have responded...read more

Product Description: This work suggests that the 1980s were an especially tumultuous decade for the bureaucracies of Great Britain, the United States and Canada. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney came to office convinced that the bureaucracies of their countries were massively flawed: in addition to exerting too much influence over policy, they were inefficient, resistant to change and responsible for many economic woes...read more

Product Description: The ideological foundations of the contributors range from personalized neo-Marxism, through "extreme centre" neo-Keynesianism, to hard-line neoclassical mathematical economics. Despite this diversity there is a surprising degree of consensus...read more

Book by Savoie, Donald J.

Book by Savoie, Donald J.