Book Review: U.S. Inspectors General: Truth Tellers in Turbulent Times

• DOI: 10.1177/0275074020973001
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Nadia E. Hilliard
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

American Review of Public Administration

2021, Vol. 51(1) 72 –75

© The Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

journals.sagepub.com/home/arp

Book Reviews

Behind much recent scrutiny of presidential administrations

have been Inspectors General (IGs), overseers positioned

throughout the federal bureaucracy, and tasked with rooting

out fraud, waste, and abuse as well as providing constructive

suggestions for bureaucratic reform. Yet few citizens and

even public officials are aware of the extent of their author-

ity—what is their function? What effects do their reports

have? Are their reports politicized? Their relative obscurity

results not only from scholarly inattention: low profile is

written into the IGs’ job description as a way of preserving

their impartiality and non-political role. However, given

the acute need for reliable processes of accountability in an

era of partisan polarization, IGs have found themselves

increasingly in the limelight. In this context, Johnson and

Newcomer’s comprehensive overview of the IGs—their

function, their environment, their organizational effective-

ness—is tremendously welcome.

Since Paul Light’s (1993) classic work introducing the

IGs to the academic community, few scholars have attempted

to provide systematic analyses of this role. Johnson and

Newcomer build on and respond to Light’s work, and pro-

vide a much needed, updated statement of who the IGs are

and what they do. Unlike Light, however, they leave aside

the question of overall policy effectiveness. Rather than ask

whether the IG model is, on balance, a boon for American

democracy, their analysis instead focuses squarely on organi-

zational effectiveness: which elements of the strategic envi-

ronment need to be in place for IGs to help their host agencies

enhance the operations of their agencies? Their overall argu-

ment that IG effectiveness depends heavily on institutionally

mediated personal relationships is well substantiated and

important; beyond needing basic resources, IGs require a

supportive strategic environment to effect accountability.

The book begins with a clear, detailed explication of the

IG category (Chapter 1) and a brief historical overview

(Chapter 2). Although Johnson and Newcomer do not pro-

vide much original data here, they provide the necessary

institutional context and outline the theoretical approach—a

focus on the strategic environment—for their subsequent

analysis; they then proceed to the meat of their argument.

There is much to admire here. In addition to shaping their

discussion with the strategic environment framework, they

structure their analysis by looking at each stage of the “life

cycle” of the IGs. They begin with the politics of IG appoint-

ments and career paths (Chapter 3), and find that the IG com-

munity plays a key role in IG vetting and training, providing

an opportunity for bureaucratic norms to be refined and

transmitted through professionalization.

In Chapter 4, the authors move to the details of IG work.

Here, they track the process of IG work, from starting capac-

ity (staff and other resources), to the process of crafting rec-

ommendations, and finally, to the challenge of having the

recommendations implemented. Notably, they pay detailed

attention to the interpersonal and institutional considerations

that influence the framing and scope of IG recommenda-

tions, as well as to the real material constraints faced by

agencies in implementing recommendations. Both of these

are crucial factors in conditioning IGs’ overall impact on the

federal bureaucracy. Even their choice of target investiga-

tions is conditioned by the expectations of Congress and the

requests of program managers. Finally, the authors argue that

IGs perform important agenda-setting work for bureaucratic

reform; more work needs to be done to develop this impor-

tant point.

Chapter 5 expands the focus from the concrete work done

within Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) to the dynamics

of the IGs’ interaction with key stakeholders in their strategic

environment. It is organized around the familiar but funda-

mental concepts of independence and accountability. The

stakeholders in this strategic environment include members

of Congress, agency leaders, program managers within the

agency, and industry representatives, and this emphasis

permits the authors to expand on the crucial role of relational

expectations in shaping IG outputs. Johnson and Newcomer

illustrate the dynamics of these relationships through an

analysis of scores of interviews and surveys from six OIGs.

Because of the need to maintain the anonymity of their inter-

view subjects, the six case studies necessarily remain uniden-

tified. Given the sheer diversity of OIGs and the importance

of specific bureaucratic culture in conditioning IG work, the

reader is left with some frustration that the authors might

have mixed apples and oranges in drawing conclusions about

973001ARPXXX10.1177/0275074020973001The American Review of Public AdministrationBook Reviews

book-review2020

Book Reviews

Johnson, C. A., & Newcomer, K. E. (2020). U.S. Inspectors General: Truth Tellers in Turbulent Times. Washington, DC: The Brookings

Institution. 270 pp. $34.99, ISBN 978-0-8157-3777-3.

Reviewed by: Nadia E. Hilliard , University College London, UK.

DOI: 10.1177/0275074020973001