The Third Way and the U.S.
British reforms of public administration system have reflected on the U.S. at large, but hardly any legal changes have been made. Comparing the United Kingdom and the U.S. on the structure of the governmental system, Shafritz, Russell, and Borick (2016) argued that “the United States has not been a leader in changes in this area” (p. 124). They explained this by the peculiarity of the U.S. Constitution as a governmental core, which was designed to protect freedoms rather than provide efficiency (Shafritz et al., 2016). However, one may track changes in the de facto practice of the public government. For instance, the companies which maintained privately-owned for commercial needs but performed the same function the government was supposed to do were considered to be legitimate by courts in California as there was “no sufficient public support to pay … for new public roads” (Shafritz et al., 2016, p. 82). As the government in the U.S. represents the people and their needs (Shafritz et al., 2016), one may expect the continuation of the changes on the legal level.
The “third way,” however, which considers a free-market approach to the issues of public administration, is likely to be oppressed by the majority of people. The commercial and privately-own public agencies, say closed household communities described by Shafritz et al. (2016), reflect the interests of the minority of the population of the U.S. If the changes are intensified, the majority deprived of goods generated by commercial agencies will be likely to object the “third-way” reforms. Therefore, one may conclude that the society is not ready for such changes in public administration, so the reforms are likely to fail at some stage.
References
Shafritz, J., Russell, E., & Borick, C. (2016). Introducing Public Administration (7th ed., pp. 81-125). Boston: …
