Book Reviews : The Budgeting and Evaluation of Federal Recreation Programs. By JEANNE NIEN- ABER AND AARON WILDAVSKY. (New York: Basic Books, 1973. Pp. 172. $8.95.)

• Author: James P. Pfiffner
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297502800122
• Published date: 01 March 1975
• Date: 01 March 1975
• Subject Matter: Articles

213
Life) was used in an earlier volume in this series ( Urban Affairs Annual Reviews,
Volume 3, 1969 ) .
DAVID MARS
University of Southern California
The Budgeting and Evaluation of Federal Recreation Programs. By JEANNE NIEN-
ABER AND AARON WILDAVSKY. (New York: Basic Books, 1973. Pp. 172. $8.95.)
Much has been written about planning-programming-budgeting-systems. From
its early promise and oflicial establishment in all federal agencies by President
Johnson in August of 1965 to its unheralded demise in June 1971, it has been
the center of controversy for those interested in budgeting. The main focus of Nien-
aber and Wildavsky’s book is the failure of PPBS in the National Park Service
and the Forest Service, but their concern is broader than these case studies. They
are also concerned with the theoretical nature of organizational evaluation and
with recommendations for a better way of performing the task that PPBS failed to
perform. Their goal is to integrate their theoretical perspective with the practical
experience in the several agencies and to make a proposal in order to illustrate
what creative policy analysis might be. The strength of the book is that it deals
well with each of its three main concerns. Its weakness is that it fails to integrate
them fully.
The authors begin with a theoretical chapter dealing with the nature of
evaluation and its function in an organizational context. There seems to be an
inherent tension between the changes suggested by evaluation and the innate con-
servatism and turf protection in any bureaucracy. Evaluation is impossible without
choosing objectives, but the very act of defining objectives is threatening because
some parts of the organization will lose. Some vested interests will be hurt and
some will be helped. The dilemma must be faced, however, if an organization
is not to stagnate. Theirs is the same problem that was confronted on a grand
scale by Mao’s Cultural Revolution: the acceptable mix between stability and...