Reforming the Federal Administration in the United States. On the Volcker Report and its Critics

For several years now, the question of state reform has frequently been under discussion in France, where no government of any political party has been able to make real progress in this regard, as the mounting public deficit shows. Yet the topic is also in the news in countries that some commentators hold up as models, such as the United States. As Thierry Vircoulon argues here, from a reading of two books on ways of reforming the US Federal administration recently published on the other side of the Atlantic (Urgent Business for America: Revitalizing the Federal Government for the 21st Century. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2003, and High-Performance Government. Structure, Leadership, Incentives. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2005), the problem of how to reorganize what the Federal administration does, and how the many public agencies deliver their services, has been under examination for some years now in the US. The debate about methods of public management, finding ways of improving performance using criteria normally applied in the private sector, benchmarking, etc., is sometimes very similar to the discussion of these subjects in France. It has been given a further boost since 9/11 since the concern with security implies certain changes and a renewed reliance on the state.