GOVERNMENT BY INVESTIGATION: CONGRESS, PRESIDENTS, AND THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS, 1945–2012
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12247 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | PAUL 'T HART |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
856 REVIEWS
GOVERNMENT BY INVESTIGATION: CONGRESS, PRESIDENTS, AND THE
SEARCH FOR ANSWERS, 1945–2012
Paul C. Light
Brookings Institution Press, 2014, 250 pp., £28.92 (pb), ISBN: 978-0-8157-2268-7
Paul Light is one of the most astute and hard-working students of American government.
His works on the structure, reform and failures of the US federal government and on
social entrepreneurship are invariably painstakingly researched. They take a longitudinal
and/or comparative perspective and involve creative combinations of large-N datasets
(whether of objects or studies) with case study narratives and insider knowledge.
His latest book, Government by Investigation, cements his reputation. It documents the
100 most signicant investigations into the US federal government, and asks why some
of them have had so much more impact than others. By impact he means the extent to
which these investigations – which he likens to ‘oversight on steroids’: focused, sustained,
systematic inquiries by bodies such as Congressional committees and blue-ribbon com-
missions which are undertaken in response to signicant breakdowns in government per-
formance – discernibly contribute to addressing the questions raised by the issue under
study. Specically, he examines whether and how investigations contribute to what he
calls: (1) reforming broken bureaucracies, (2) repairing failed policies, (3) reversing course
on national strategies, (4) enhancing accountability,(5) setting the agenda for future action,
and (6) resolving doubts about a particular event.
Light’s carefully (though in part subjectively) selected case inventory covers the period
between 1945 and 2012. It contains both high-prole (but as the analysis suggests, not nec-
essarily high-impact) investigations of Pearl Harbor, Communists in government, Water-
gate, Clinton impeachment, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and nearly forgotten (but not
necessarily low-impact) ones on government organization (1947 Hoover Commission),
crime in America (1965), trafc safety (1965), and, comically, quiz-show rigging (1959).
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 3, 2016 (854–861)
© 2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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