Western armies have undergone substantial organizational-cultural transformations since the end of the Cold War. Two main themes have been suggested to describe these transformations: postmodernity and post-Fordism. This article analyzes these profound shifts. The author portrays the new Western army as a "market army," distancing itself from the "citizen army," and envisions a continuum betwee…
Immigration is a sensitive topic on the American political, social, and economic agenda. Globalization as well as the end of the Cold War have meant that people are on the move worldwide as never before. Millions of people from poor countries migrate to richer ones to provide better lives for themselves and their families through legal and illegal channels. Heated debates surround this subject.…
Is pork produced by feeble budgetary processes? By fixing weak budgetary procedures, can wasteful spending and opportunities for corruption be reduced? This essay looks at three varieties of pork: earmarked, ad hoc, and presidential. What can be done to curb the excesses of each one? By examining the problem of congressional earmarking, this timely article proposes a new process for controlling…
Some theorists argue that cooperative intergovernmental relations are critical to policy implementation in the United States. This assertion is explored in the context of fair housing enforcement by comparing favorable administrative outcomes in fair housing complaints at the federal, state, and local levels from 1989 to 2004. What conclusions can be drawn from this systematic comparison of int…
Today, more regulatory provisions are in place for protecting low-income minority populations who shoulder a disproportionate amount of environmental risk. Recognized as communities of "environmental justice," industrial facilities located within these areas bear greater legal liabilities for and societal scrutiny of their environmental impacts. The authors offer compelling evidence that, in an…
As director of a regional council for more than 30 years, Bill Gibson is instrumental in facilitating "boundary-crossing" collaborations that increase public value. This Administrative Profile examines three cases of regional, cross-sector collaboration catalyzed by Gibson's leadership. Characteristics of entrepreneurship, attention to "relationship capital," and the humility derived from ego s…
According to recent "black box" models of public management, managerial capacity is a critical component for achieving service delivery improvement. In particular, black box models assume that the impact of management systems is maximized through integration with effective leadership. This assumption is tested by analyzing the effects of managerial capacity and organizational leadership on the …
How do bureaucrats respond to administrative reform in relation to their overall administrative goals? The authors test the bureau-shaping thesis, which holds that bureaucrats' preferences for certain kinds of roles and tasks motivate their support for bureau reform. Drawing on attitudinal and behavioral data from a survey of English local government officials, the findings underscore how burea…
U.S. federal budget dynamics, as a major attribute of the legislative and bureaucratic decision-making processes, increasingly calls into question the scholarly focus on incrementalism. What constitutes a "small" change is largely unspecified in previous research that has also been unable to assess incrementalism across multiple levels of aggregation. Using a unique budgetary database, this art…
Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are growing in popularity as a governing model for delivery of public goods and services. PPPs have existed since the Roman Empire, but their expansion into traditional public projects today raises serious questions about public accountability. This article examines public accountability and its application to government and private firms involved in PPPs. An …
The authors review the U.S. Army's field manual on counterinsurgency, consider the doctrine and tactics that it espouses, and survey its current critics. They present specific examples of its application and conclude that while counterinsurgency does achieve results, the U.S. government lacks a strategic doctrinal framework for implementing counterinsurgency elsewhere. This shortcoming urgently…
Paul Krugman's work is much celebrated in the fields of international trade and economic geography, recognized with the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. Although his work is less prominent in public administration, it has important implications for the study of political fragmentation, collaboration, economic development, and service delivery in metropolitan areas. The authors discuss how Krugman…
We address focal questions about the growth of "third-party" government and new forms or tools of governance and the extent and impact of their increasing use to implement public policy and the "public will." Our goal is to sharpen this discussion by bringing empirical evidence to bear on key arguments and assertions in the debate. In particular, along with the other contributors to this journa…
Our argument connects the management of relational contracts with the management of policy networks. Thinking about bilateral, horizontal extensions of governmental authority in a state of agents can be enhanced, we claim, because of the rich offerings of relational contracting theory. We review key results from economic theories of relational contracting, provide public sector examples, and pr…
A fundamental source of contracting failure is product uncertainty. When the product's cost, quality, and quantity cannot be easily defined, buyers and sellers are unable to clearly and completely define exchange terms. The risk is that the buyer is the only purchaser of this "complex product," and once the contract is let, the vendor is the only supplier. The consequence is a collective action…
This study examines public management challenges faced by educational agencies that are required to set up a market for providing choice in supplemental educational services (SES) for students in underperforming schools and to hold nongovernmental providers accountable for their performance in increasing student achievement. The operations and performance of SES providers in a large urban schoo…
This article analyzes the consequences of our increasing reliance on private agents in the formulation and implementation of affordable housing policy. We describe the policies and processes by which affordable housing decisions are made in the United States—including how many and what kind of these units are built and where. Then, we empirically explore the impacts of different governance arra…
Examining the linkage between service provision and client outcomes is important in performance-based human service environments. Since most performance initiatives reward agencies for improving client outcomes rather than providing specific services, managers may have incentives to streamline workers’ efforts and reduce resources devoted to services considered nonessential. This article uses d…
This article presents a comparative analysis of the evolution of two community mental health networks that both have similar contracts from the State of Arizona. One of the networks is governed by a for-profit firm that buys needed services from a network of largely nonprofit agencies. The other network is governed by a community-based nonprofit that contracts with four separate nonprofit agenc…
Ordinarily research articles on public sector third-party governance, or the state of agents, turn to the subject of accountability in their conclusions. Rather than leaving it to the conclusions, this article takes up the subject of public sector third-party governance as a problem of accountability. To consider accountability, we studied contemporary performance measurement practices in the f…