Two dimensiones of administrative change in contemporany democracies are at war with one another. On the one hand, the "new public management" argues that organizations should decentralize and empower lower echelon employees. Further, government is urged to decentralize

structurally and to create autonomous nad semiautonomous organizations to deliver public services. On the other hand, continuing fiscal pressures and the requirements of the global economy point to the need to coordinate better not only policies but also programs which increasingly cut across departmental or agency lines. The united states presents an extreme case of the need coordinate multiple and often incoherent programs. That need has to a great extent been exacerbated by reforms stemming from the national performance review (NPR). The research reported in this article examines the impact of the NPR on the behavior of central agencies in Washington - the office of management and budget, the office of personnel management, and the general services administration. We argue that despite the changes over the past year, the fundamental nature of central agencies has not been transformed, and they are still very in the business of imposing central policy and management controls.

Public administration review PAR

May/June 1996 Volume 56 Number 3