Homeland Security and the U.S. Public Management Policy Agenda.

Summary
The U.S. has been described as an “uninteresting laggard” in comparative
public management policy. The passage of the Homeland Security Act in
2002 demands a reevaluation of this label. The Act created the Department
of Homeland Security, but also marked a dramatic shift toward greater
public personnel flexibility, both for the new Department and the entire
federal government. It is tempting to suggest that the Act is an effort to
“catch up” with the New Public Management benchmark countries.
However, such an argument is overly simplistic and misleading. This
article argues that the Act represents a triumph of a preexisting
management agenda that was successfully tied to the issue of security
during a political window of opportunity. The management agenda of the
Bush administration pursues many of the concerns of the Clinton era, but
does so with a more top-down and centralized interpretation of flexibility,
reflecting an executive-centered philosophy toward government and a
willingness to tackle the dominant stakeholder in this area, public service
unions.

Note
Opprettelsen av Department of Homeland Security (DHS).