Fenno, Richard F., Jr. The President’s Cabinet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. The best study of how cabinet secretaries “go native.”
Golden, Marissa Martino. What Motivates Bureaucrats? New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. An illuminating study of four agencies amid Reagan’s administrative presidency.
Goodsell, Charles T. The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, 4th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2004. A corrective to misconceptions about government bureaucracies.
Heclo, Hugh. A Government of Strangers. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1977. The classic guide to the relationship between political appointees and civil servants.
Hess, Stephen. The Government/Press Connection. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984. A penetrating, readable account of press operations in the bureaucracy, comparing four disparate agencies.
Light, Paul C. The True Size of Government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999. An innovative look at how bureaucratic tasks grow even as the civil service stays small.
Wilson, James Q. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. New York: Basic Books, 2000. An examination of the bureaucracy from “the bottom up” that synthesizes experiences from examples.
