Yes, You Can: The “Who,” the “Why,” the “What,” and the “How” of Innovation in American Government

• Author: Ismael Blanco
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12369
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015

500 Public Administration Review • May | June 2015

Ismael Blanco is a Ramon y Cajal

Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of

Government and Public Policy (IGOP) and

the Department of Political Science and

Public Law of the Autonomous University of

Barcelona (UAB).

E-mail : ismael.blanco@uab.cat

Yes, You Can:  e “Who,” the “Why,” the “What,” and the

“How” of Innovation in American Government

Sandford Borins ,  e Persistence of Innovation in

Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution

Press, 2014). 224 pp. $32.00 (paper), ISBN: 978-0-

8157-2560-2.

I nnovation persists as a phenomenon within the

public sector. “There is skepticism about whether

large, hierarchical, monopolistic government

agencies initiate and embrace change” (1), but, says

the author, “there is extensive evidence that they ‘can’,

they ‘do’, and they will” (1). Sandford Borins does not

hesitate to affirm that the perspective of public sector

innovation has come to replace the “old” New Public

Management: “New Public Management controver-

sies are now history,” he announces in the introduc-

tion—a history which is apparently different from one

that explains the emergence and consolidation of the

scholarly and political interest on innovation.

The skeptical reader who is not convinced with such

thesis must be warned that the book will not offer

ways to explore it. Borins starts from this premise; he

does not develop it. He argues that since the publica-

tion of Innovating with Integrity: How Local Heroes Are

Transforming American Government (Borins 1998 ),

the interest in public sector innovation persists.

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Ismael Blanco

Parc de Recerca de la UAB, Spain

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 3, pp. 500–503. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12369.