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One increasingly popular device for achieving a balance between authority and accountability in government is the institution of the ombudsman. The first non-Scandinavian ombudsman appeared in New Zealand in 1962, and since then the office has spread to many countries and been adopted at different levels of government. This book-the first intensive study of New Zealand's "model" ombudsman- seeks to understand the process by which the institution was successfully adapted and made a part of New Zealand's political system. The author's inquiry is based on eighteen months of field experience in New Zealand. His book examines the complaints, the clients, their interaction with the ombudsman, his relations with the bureaucracy, and his effectiveness. His relations with various publics-bureaucrats, Honorable Members, and Queen's Ministers receive special attention.Originally published in 1977.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

George A. Krause has undertaken a statistical analysis of the relationship between the president and the Congress and the enforcement activities of two regulatory agencies: the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice for the years 1949–92. He finds that the president and the Congress often influenced each other, but neither of the political branches succeeded in dominating the bureaucracies. These findings are consistent with the interpretations of presidential-congressional-bureaucratic power of most journalists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, and public administration scholars.

This article examines the classical, or real, ombudsman. Unlike quasi ombudsmen, which are bureaucratic control mechanisms subject to executive leaders or agency administrators, real ombudsmen are operationally independent officials of the legislative branch. In 1969, the state of Hawaii was the first to create a real ombudsman. Although Iowa, Nebraska, Alaska, and Arizona have since followed Hawaii's lead, no intensive, long‐term study of American ombudsmen has yet been published. This article examines the ombudsman as a monitor of Hawaii's bureaucracies and considers the extent to which the office has become institutionalized over the past 30 years. Nearly 75,000 citizens have had their complaints investigated by the ombudsman, and more than one‐fifth of them were rectified, that is, the agency reversed its original action. This study indicates that the classical ombudsman can become institutionalized in the United States. The findings have policy implications as jurisdictions at the federal, state, and local levels consider the creation of ombudsmen or quasi ombudsmen.

Over the past quarter century, federal bureaucracies have been affected by numerous changes-many of which were designed to restrictbureaucratic autonomy. Several scholars have concluded that bureaucracy's role in the process of governance has been substantially diminished. When the changes are closely inspected, however, most-including the proliferation of political appointees-prove not to be as effective at restraining bureaucracy as often supposed Also, because many restrictions interact with others, they are not really summative; sometimes they cancel each other out.