where o where

March 4, 2011 2:50 PM

About 10-12 years ago, an academic type published a book and hit the promotional circuit. No longer remembering the author's name or the book's title, I can't find it again. The book's thesis was that 5 billion (in then dollars) was wasted by municipal governments in the US each year because of mucipal duplication. e.g. Two neighboring suburban towns each have their own PD and FD for example, each having to pay top dollar for a Police and fire chief when one department could easily cover both towns and then some at substantial savings that added up to billions in savings (annually) if implemented nationwide. I'm hoping someone here can point me to this book and author...
posted by Fupped Duck to Law & Government (3 answers total)

Joel Garreau's Edge City?
posted by carmicha at 4:03 PM on March 4, 2011

I can't help you with the actual book, but "New Public Management" might be a useful search term--NPM was a movement in the late 80s and 90s that emphasized efficiency, market-based strategies, and privatization in government. See Reinventing Government by Osborne and Gaebler.
posted by aka burlap at 5:07 PM on March 4, 2011

also this might have some citations you'd be interested in: Miranda, R., & Lerner, A. (1995). Bureaucracy, organizational redundancy, and the privatization of public services. Public Administration Review, 55(2), 193. Even if you don't have access to academic journals, I think you can get to the abstract via google scholar.
posted by aka burlap at 5:17 PM on March 4, 2011