Imposing Duties: Governments Changing Approach to Compliance.(Book review)

Imposing Duties: Governments Changing Approach to Compliance. By Malcolm M. Sparrow. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994. Softcover, $19.95. Pp. 181.

Malcolm K. Sparrow's Imposing Duties is one of the most stimulating, profound, and original books to be published in public administration in many a year. At the same time, it is seriously flawed in methodology, and its basic assumptions cannot be verified. The book follows the Osborne-Gaebler Reinventing Government format, building upon numerous small examples or vignettes (which Sparrow calls "stories"), but it lacks an overall methodology with which to appraise the conclusions. The implications of Sparrow's work are almost as sweeping as those of Osborne and Gaebler. Although Sparrow's book is aimed at practitioners, professors, and students of public administration, it deserves the close attention of all those concerned with improved business-government relations. In fact, because Imposing Duties suggests many major changes in the way in which government conducts affairs and defines its role, the book deserves a wide general audience.

Sparrow, who teaches at the Kennedy School at …