Faith and Public Policy turns the spotlight on the role of faith in the public square and the spiritual consequences of public policymaking. The work brings together fourteen of America's most respected writers on the intersection of faith and public policy to discuss the changing roles of government, church, education, and the family. Chapters investigate such issues as inner city programs, the secularization of faith-based programs, the impact of tax policy on the family, and the status of school vouchers. Contributions by Steve Forbes and William E. Simon illustrate the deep personal faith that informs and fuels the public leadership of America's leading thinkers and political figures. Readers will find Faith and Public Policy a timely and vigorous conversation on the commingling of government and religion in America, a country eager to return to the Founding Generation's idea of a nation in covenant with God.

Faith and Public Policy turns the spotlight on the role of faith in the public square and the spiritual consequences of public policymaking. The work brings together fourteen of America's most respected writers on the intersection of faith and public policy to discuss the changing roles of government, church, education, and the family. Chapters investigate such issues as inner city programs, the secularization of faith-based programs, the impact of tax policy on the family, and the status of school vouchers. Contributions by Steve Forbes and William E. Simon illustrate the deep personal faith that informs and fuels the public leadership of America's leading thinkers and political figures. Readers will find Faith and Public Policy a timely and vigorous conversation on the commingling of government and religion in America, a country eager to return to the Founding Generation's idea of a nation in covenant with God.

How much responsibility for providing health care to the poor should be devolved from the federal government to the states? Any answer to this critical policy question requires a careful assessment of the Medicaid program. Drawing on the insights of leading scholars and top state health care officials, this volume analyzes the policy and management implications of various options for Medicaid devolution. Proponents of devolution typically express confidence that states can meet the challenges it will pose for them. But, as this book shows, the degree to which states have the capacity and commitment to use enhanced discretion to sustain or improve health care for the poor remains an open question. Their failure to attend to issues of politics, implementation, and management could lead to disappointment. Chapters focus on such topics as Medicaid financing, benefits and beneficiaries, long-term care, managed care, safety net providers, and the appropriate division of labor between the federal government and the states. The contributors are Donald Boyd, Center for the Study of the States; Lawrence D. Brown, Columbia University; James R. Fossett, Rockefeller College; Richard P. Nathan, Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, State University of New York, Albany; Michael Sparer, Columbia University; James Tallon, United Hospital Fund; and Joshua M. Weiner, the Urban Institute.

This book provides the first independent assessment of the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" plan after a year of effort. What has the reinvention machine produced? Where does it most need to be oiled and adjusted? And has it truly changed the way the federal government conducts its business? The authors of Improving Government Performance: An Owner's Manual (Brookings, 1993) join with other public management experts for a look at both the practice and theory of reinventing government. In examining the movement's driving ideas, relationships with the government's workforce, and connections with the broader political community, they take stock of the boldest governmental reform movement in a generation.

The authors assert that Vice President Gore's National Performance Review has sparked remarkable innovations by operating managers in federal agencies. The NPR, however, has unleashed broad changes throughout the federal government without building the new capacity in the Executive Office of the President required to manage the changing burdens of federal programs. The book appraises the many positive management reforms that federal managers have created, assesses the central political and administrative support that the White House must provide if the NPR is to be successful in the long run, and examines the lessons about the president's role in governmental management that the NPR's experiment in decentralized administration teaches.

The contributors are Carolyn Ban, State University of New York (SUNY), Albany; Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Brookings; Gerald Garvey, Princeton; Constance Horner, Brookings; and Beryl Radin, SUNY, Albany.

Donald F. Kettl, professor and associate director at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of Sharing Power: Public Governance and Private Markets (Brookings, 1993) and coauthor of Civil Service Reform: Building a Government That Works (Brookings, 1996). John J. DiIulio, Jr., professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, is the editor of Deregulating the Public Service: Can Government Be Improved? (Brookings, 1994) and coauthor of Body Count: Moral Povery... and How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs (Simon Schuster, 1996).

The Clinton administration's National Performance Review of the federal government (also called the Reinventing Government Initiative) is the eleventh effort this century to improve the executive branch and reform the federal service. Most previous efforts have faltered. How can present and future recommendations avoid the same fate?

This book provides practical and timely guidance to those trying to improve government performance. The focus of successful attempts, the authors argue, should be sustained evolution, not bursts of invention aimed at sweeping transformation. Specific proposals address ways to change government over the long term, ways to streamline bureaucracy, attract more resourceful and innovative workers, and make agencies more responsive to their customers, the citizens.