What Government Does : How Political Executives Manage

In this book, Paul Lawrence and Mark Abramson build on their extensive interviews with 42 Obama Administration political executives over the past four years. Political executives from numerous federal agencies were interviewed about the challenge of managing in government and the activities undertaken by their agencies.

To understand the challenges of political leadership and how top executivessucceed in accomplishing an Administration’s objectives, business-in-governmentexperts Paul R. Lawrence and Mark A. Abramson present the findingsof a four-year study of top political appointees in the Obama Administration.The 42 participants—Deputy Secretaries and agency heads—provide casestudies of how each approaches the management challenges and achievesthe mission of their organization.Full of behind-the-scenes insights and practical advice from government politicalexecutives on how they face management challenges in real time, WhatGovernment Does: How Political Executives Manage offers indispensable insightsto current and prospective political appointees and everyone interestedin understanding how leaders make government agencies more effective.The new book, a follow-up to their previous book, Paths to Making aDifference: Leading in Government, presents an insightful framework of whatgovernment does. Instead of thinking about government by policy area, theauthors present an alternative approach in which government executives arecategorized by the type of agency they are managing. The book includeschapters on Deputy Secretaries, producers, regulators, infrastructors, scientists,and collaborators.