For the last 30 years, politicians throughout the Anglo-American world have inveighed against big government in the name of greater efficiency, while governments have simultaneously become bloated and less efficient. In an attempt to shed light on a subject often kept deliberately obscure, Donald J. Savoie, Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance at the Université de Moncton, gives us a timely and informative primer on how our political bureaucracy works, and offers explanations for how government makes decisions and allocates funds.

There is a lot to digest. Canada’s federal government has become increasingly centred on a small coterie of advisers surrounding the prime minister, leaving the rest of the civil service to simply keep things going without too much fuss. The introduction of private sector management techniques into the public sector, meanwhile, hasn’t worked, Savoie argues, because the two sectors are “fundamentally different in all important and unimportant ways.” And the civil service itself has grown into an outsized and demoralized (though relatively well-remunerated) class increasingly resented by the public it serves.

Savoie takes care to temper his criticism, but it’s clear he is describing a broken system. One comes away with an impression of a public sector consisting of some people toiling very hard at work that isn’t particularly important – “turning a crank that’s not attached to anything” – and others doing very little at all. Why do we need expert policy advisers anyway, the thinking in some circles goes, when we have Google?

While clearly written, Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher does get technical at times; there’s no doubt this work will appeal mainly to readers with a wonkish interest in how government operates. Given Savoie’s analysis of how things got to this point, it’s hard to imagine a road map for change. The book’s brief conclusion, with suggestions for reform, doesn’t seem very convincing after all that has gone before.

These days, questions about the role and accountability of the public sector are being raised more and more in both the media and Parliament itself. Savoie provides an excellent introduction to the terms of the debate, and a useful intellectual framework for understanding many of the complex issues involved.