REINVENTING GOVERNMENT AND RURAL PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION:

Is the public sector really reinventing itself? Public transportation is a good test because it is highly sensitive to the reinventing government movement now so prominent on our policy agendas. This analysis develops prescriptively useful policy insights from five rural Michigan cases of reinventing local public transportation. The analysis finds that taskforce recommendations are modest attempts at reinvention. Significant change involving interorganizational coordination in a complex service such as public transportation is difficult to bring about. This difficulty is attributed to lack of goal consensus and resource instability. Local policy entrepreneurs, however, possess many more opportunities for promoting reinvention. Copyright 1999 by The Policy Studies Organization.