Target-driven reform rewards bureaucrats while distrust of frontline workers degrades services

Evidence

Imposing “targets” and assigning funds on the basis of meeting them — what the economist calls “reform”, i.e. ideology dressed up as realism — will only ever lead to a situation in which bureaucrats and the bureaucratically-minded prosper. The way to improve education, and all other public services, is to accept the obvious truth (though such truth is contrary to ideology): most people working in these services are not, in fact, venal, are not motivated solely by what is in the interests of “them and their famileeee”. So it would be better to hand more control back over to them; by all means intervene if it is going wrong, but don’t assume that things work better if they are run by bureaucrats (the whole of reality is a counter-example to this ludicrous thesis). — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1395

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is there real empirical evidence (e.g. from public-sector management scholarship) that target-and-funding regimes measurably reward bureaucratic rather than service competence?
• XREF: connects to: Bureaucratic inertia and lax enforcement can quietly sabotage reform from within — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 359; Bureaucratic interpretations become autonomous and resistant to change in late capitalism — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 101; Professional civil-service experts acted as reform agents — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2646 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Organizationally-aligned incentives make state agents untrustworthy to their clients #corroborates (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 767
• Bureaucratic inertia and lax enforcement can quietly sabotage reform from within #corroborates (0.78) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 359
• Professional civil-service experts acted as reform agents #contradicts (0.75) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2646
• Bureaucratic interpretations become autonomous and resistant to change in late capitalism #corroborates (0.72) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 101