Savoie considers the war of reform waged by the leaders of these major industrial countries. Reagan declared that he had come to Washington to "drain the swamp" of bureaucracy, and set up the Grace Commission to investigate the operation of the U.S. government. Thatcher and Mulroney were equally committed to reform and initiated wide-ranging changes. By the end of the 1990s, the changes were dramatic. Many governments operations had been privatized in all three countries, and new management techniques had been introduced. In Great Britain, one observer judged that the changes were historically as important as the collapse of Keynesian economics. Is government now better in these countries, and was political leadership right in focusing on management of the bureaucracy as the villain? Savoie suggests that the reforms overlooked problems now urgently requiring attention and, at the same time, attempted to address non-existent problems. He combines theory and research based on sixty-two interviews, nearly all with members of the executive branch of the governments of Britain, Canada and the United States.

Based on unprecedented access--interviews with key players, diaries, memos, etc.--the first book to document Brian Mulroney's impressive foreign policy record, from NAFTA to the collapse of the Soviet Union, climate change to the release of Nelson Mandela. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney led and lifted Canada's voice and influence in world affairs to unprecedented heights. He understood better than many of his predecessors that Canada's power and influence derived from a solid grasp of our vital national interests, and a purposeful commitment to pursing those interests and values on the world stage. With full access to key players and new documentation, Fen Osler Hampson brilliantly tells how Canada succeeded in advancing its national interests on trade, the environment, national security, and the elevation of democracy and human rights under Mulroney's leadership. Through negotiation and the deliberate cultivation of close personal links with other world leaders and figures, including Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, Nelson Mandela and many others, there were significant achievements that serve Canadian interests to this day. Efforts to combat acid rain, repair the ozone layers, and to champion climate change, long before it became fashionable, surprised and satisfied many ardent advocates on the environment. Perhaps most important of all, Brian Mulroney put to bed the long-standing myth that Canada could not be a respected international player if it was seen as being too close to the United States. In sharp contrast to his predecessor, he argued that the path for global influence for the country began with a principled and trusted dialogue with Washington, one that other world leaders noticed. As Canada's present government navigates its own course in choppy international waters, there is much to be learned from our finest hour on the international stage some three decades ago under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Anchored in the principles of the free-market economics, 'neoliberalism' has been associated with such different political leaders as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Augusto Pinochet, and Junichiro Koizumi. In its heyday during the late 1990s, neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm stretching from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc all the way to the developing regions of the global South. At the dawn of the new century, however, neoliberalism has been discredited as the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by a financial calamity not seen since the dark years of the 1930s. So is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former glory? Will reform-minded G-20 leaders embark on a genuine new course or try to claw their way back to the neoliberal glory days of the Roaring Nineties? Is there a viable alternative to neoliberalism? Exploring the origins, core claims, and considerable variations of neoliberalism, this Very Short Introduction offers a concise and accessible introduction to one of the most debated 'isms' of our time. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This is a unique book about a unique Canadian life - about a boy, born and raised in a working-class family in remote Baie-Comeau, who rose to the highest office in the land. How he got there, an outsider fighting his way to the top, is a compelling story. What he did when he got there is just as enthralling. Year by year in this detailed book, he takes us through his time as prime minister (1984-1993), when he mingled with the world's leaders, tackled tough and controversial problems, and left Canada a changed country. The boy from Baie-Comeau changed your life - now his life, frankly recounted in this extraordinary book, deserves a place in your home.

The Secret Mulroney Tapes is an outrageous and intimate portrait of a Canadian prime minister, as told in his own words. There has never been a political book like this, and there will almost certainly never be another. Peter C. Newman, the author of books about John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as well as 2004’s number-one bestselling memoir, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power, has done it again. He has written twenty-two books that have sold two million copies, and earned him the title of Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” political commentator. Here, his no-holds-barred profile of Canada’s most controversial – and most reviled – prime minister breaks new ground. Compiled from years of candid, taped conversations with Mulroney and the people closest to him while he was in power, the sometimes uproarious and often disturbing interviews – 7,400 pages of transcripts totalling 1.8 million words – have been sealed until now. Stunningly indiscreet and savagely frank, Mulroney is the first prime minister to be so nakedly outspoken. Yet he is also revealed as a witty Irish charmer, ready with a quick line to raise a laugh, no matter how impudent or profane, a man as warm in private as he was defensive in the public eye. Mulroney names the names and spills the beans about what really goes on in Ottawa, which he describes as a “sick” city that runs on “goddamned incest”: “They’re all married to one another. They’re shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. It’s just awful.” Lucien Bouchard, his one-time soulmate, he calls “bitter and profane” and “extraordinarily vain.” He writes off his constitutional foe, former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, as an “unprincipled son of a bitch.” His disgust for the press is as monumental as his sense of being misunderstood, and in his eyes the Ottawa press corps are “a phony bunch of bastards” who don’t give him credit even when the world applauds him for being “one of the three men who played the most important role in the collapse of the Berlin Wall.” Out of The Secret Mulroney Tapes emerges a startling picture of the politician whose reign shocked and appalled and yet also revolutionized this country. No other prime minister in Canadian history aroused a stronger emotional response than Brian Mulroney. This book provides Canadians with a unique insight into the bold politician who changed their country like no other.

Canada's machinery of government is out of joint. In Breaking the Bargain, Donald J. Savoie reveals how the traditional deal struck between politicians and career officials that underpins the workings of our national political and administrative process is today being challenged. He argues that the role of bureaucracy within the Canadian political machine has never been properly defined, that the relationship between elected and permanent government officials is increasingly problematic, and that the public service cannot function if it is expected to be both independent of, and subordinate to, elected officials. While the public service attempts to define its own political sphere, the House of Commons is also in flux: the prime minister and his close advisors wield ever more power, and cabinet no longer occupies the policy ground to which it is entitled. Ministers, who have traditionally been able to develop their own roles, have increasingly lost their autonomy. Federal departmental structures are crumbling, giving way to a new model that eschews boundaries in favour of sharing policy and program space with outsiders. The implications of this functional shift are profound, having a deep impact on how public policies are struck, how government operates, and, ultimately, the capacity for accountability.

Agencies and policies instituted to streamline Ottawa's planning process instead concentrate power in the hands of the Prime Minister, more powerful in Canadian politics than the U.S. President in America. Riveting, startling, and indispensable reading.

Thirty years ago, Anglo-American politicians set out to make the public sector look like the private sector. These reforms continue today, ultimately seeking to empower elected officials to shape policies and pushing public servants to manage operations in the same manner as their private-sector counterparts. In Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher?, Donald Savoie provides a nuanced account of how the Canadian federal government makes decisions. Savoie argues that the traditional role of public servants advising governments on policy has been turned on its head, and that evidence-based policy making is no longer valued as it once was. Policy making has become a matter of opinion, Google searches, focus groups, and public opinion surveys, where a well-connected lobbyist can provide any answers politicians wish to hear. As a result, public servants have lost their way and are uncertain about how they should assess management performance, how they should generate policy advice, how they should work with their political leaders, and how they should speak truth to political power - even within their own departments. Savoie demonstrates how recent management reforms in government have caused a steep rise in the overhead cost of government, as well as how the notion that public administration could be made to operate like the private sector has been misguided and costly to taxpayers. Abandoning "textbook" discussions of government and public service, Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? Is a realistic portrayal of how policy decisions are made and how actors and institutions interact with one another and exposes the complexities, contradictions present in Canadian politics and governance.

Citizens have lost trust in their institutions of public governance. In trying to fix the problem, presidents and prime ministers have misdiagnosed the patient, failing to recognize that government bureaucracies are inseparable from political institutions. As a result, career officials have become adroit at managing the blame game but much less so at embracing change. Donald Savoie looks to the United States, Great Britain, France, and Canada to assess two of the most important challenges confronting governments throughout the Western world: the concentration of political power and the changing role of government bureaucracy. The four countries have distinct institutions shaped by distinct histories, but what they have in common is a professional non-partisan civil service. When presidents and prime ministers decide to expand their personal authority, national institutions must adjust while bureaucracies grow to fill the gap, paradoxically further constricting government efficacy. The side effects are universal – political power is increasingly centralized; Parliament, Congress, and the National Assembly have been weakened; Cabinet has lost standing; political parties have been debased; and civil services have been knocked off their moorings. Reduced responsibility and increased transparency make civil servants slow to take risks and politicians quick to point fingers. Government astutely diagnoses the problem of declining trust in government: presidents and prime ministers have failed to see that efficacy in government is tied to well-performing institutions.

There is a consensus throughout much of the western world that the public sector is in urgent need of repair. This study seeks to understand why this is so by comparing developments in Canada and the United Kingdom. It looks to changes in values both in society and inside government, and to the relationships between politicians and civil servants at the top and between civil servants and citizens at the bottom. Donald J. Savoie argues that both Canada and the UK now operate under court government rather than cabinet government. By court government, he means that effective power now rests with their respective prime ministers and a small group of carefully selected courtiers. For things that matter to prime ministers and their courts, the decision-making process shifts from formal to informal, involving only a handful of actors. For things that matter less to them, the decision-making process is horizontal, cumbersome, and consultative, and involves a multitude of actors from different government departments and agencies as well as a variety of individuals operating outside government. Court governments undermine both the traditionally bureaucratic model and basic principles that have guided the development of our Westminster-Whitehall parliamentary system. Nonetheless, Canada and the United Kingdom still cling to accountability requirements better suited to the past and the traditional bureaucratic model. Savoie concludes with a call for new accountability requirements that correspond with court government as well as the new relationships between politicians and civil servants, and civil servants and citizens.