Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and statistical analysis of administrative data, this article explores the operation of performance management in the Florida Welfare Transition program and its effects on decisions to sanction welfare clients. Unlike most econometric research on welfare sanctions, we approach sanctioning as an organized practice that reflects, not just c…
Racially representative bureaucracy theory suggests that black and Latino clients of street-level bureaucracies will uniformly experience the benefits of a racially diverse staff within these institutions and perceive it as working to their advantage. Conversely, street-level bureaucracy theory suggests that racial minorities working within these organizations are under massive constraints that…
Street-level organizations are pivotal players in the making of public policy. The importance of these organizations is reflected in new public management strategies that aim to influence how street-level organizations work, in part, by “steering” discretionary practices through performance-based incentives. The underlying assumptions are that if performance indicators provide the equivalent of…
Policy makers in the US federal government regularly consult advisory committees, but there is little systematic research on how committee advice influences executive branch policy making. We investigate the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) use of advisory committees when deciding whether or not to approve pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices for marketing. Specifically, using 1997–2006…
An influential literature in urban political and public management debates whether political leadership, in particular the form of council government in the United States, can improve policy and other outcomes by providing coordination, control, and facilitation. The article tests whether stronger political leadership affects citizen satisfaction through the direct connection of leaders to citi…
A growing body of research focuses on the relationship between e-government, the relatively new mode of citizen-to-government contact founded in information and communications technologies, and citizen trust in government. For many, including both academics and policy makers, e-government is seen as a potentially transformational medium, a mode of contact that could dramatically improve citizen…
Images of the modern public administrator clash with yesteryear's neutral public servants obediently carrying out the orders of elected politicians. Partly influenced by the literature on New Public Management, people often argue that public administrators today should ensure quality services, give value for public funds, be responsive, operate strategically, uphold organizations’ reputations, …
The nonprofit sector is evolving rapidly as organizations expand their focus on efficiency, sustainability, and accountability. Public agencies are changing as well, embracing collaborative public management and fostering stewardship-based contracting approaches. But how have all these developments influenced government funding for nonprofit organizations? Which types of nonprofits procure publ…
Network management research documents how network members engage in activities to advance their own goals. However, this literature offers little insight into the nature of work that aims to advance the goals of the network as a “whole.” By examining the behavioral dimension of network governance, this article identifies a specific tension that network leaders address to effectively govern netw…
The historical shift from patrimonialism to bureaucracy is the key organizational transformation of the past thousand years. Classically, patrimonialism was organization based on private households, plus alliances among them. But there are two types of patrimonial organization: expanded households and patrimonial alliances or pseudo-tribes. The latter include ad hoc warrior coalitions, frequent…
The Putin-Medvedev transition reveals the continuing inability of post-Soviet Russian leaders to arrive at any consensual notion of Russia’s national identity around which ordinary forms of legitimate domination might be constructed. In searching for an answer to the problem of leadership succession during his second term as president, Vladimir Putin tried out all three of the classical types o…
How useful is the concept of patrimonialism to analyze state formation and political dynamics in postcolonial nation-states? Using Tunisia, Morocco, and Iraq during critical periods of state-building following the end of colonial rule, the author considers this question. The purpose of the article is to build on Max Weber by exploring how patrimonialism operates in kin-based social contexts whe…
In Chile, how citizens and political leaders have understood, incorporated, and contested the relationship between the familial and the political has been central to the development of their society. The author examines the ideological influence that familial beliefs had on the process of delegitimizing the presidency of Salvador Allende and legitimizing the military coup through an analysis of…
Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was more a mélange of patrimonially organized latifundia than a sovereign state. Literature on the organization of work and politics on these magnate estates has identified a layer of voluntaristic clientage ties astride a set of more lopsided, purely patrimonial relations. Boundaries separating the personnel of these various estates were firm;…
This article places feminist state theorists in dialogue with the Weberian “bellicist” tradition, and argues that locating patriarchalism within modern European states remains a worthwhile endeavor. By tracing conscription exemptions for fathers and husbands in France from the French Revolution’s levée en masse through to Napoleonic conscription and into the first half of the twentieth century,…
One of the most important political legacies of colonialism in Africa has been the reliance on the model of centralized bureaucratic administration, which has had disastrous consequences for African state-building. Like the colonial systems before them, these centralized bureaucracies have not functioned effectively. One of the main problems is a loose coupling between the formal bureaucratic s…
Patrimonialism has been used to explain the “backwardness” of Middle Eastern states, their “lacks.” Patrimonialism, however, may undermine its own insights by creating false binaries and false histories. The author suggests family/families as a point of departure and political familism as a conceptual step toward reframing analysis of state/citizen relationships in Lebanon. Political familism r…
Familial power contributed to binding territories together and systematically severing them in both China and early modern European states. In the early Qing (1644–1911) Empire, Manchu conquerors met the challenges of securing and expanding rule by discovering ways to use laterally related brothers and imperial bondservants to hold Chinese bureaucrats in check, while deploying bureaucracy to re…
This article investigates the ways in which the appropriation of offices and positions for personal use (“patrimony”) shapes incentive structures and collective capacity. Within the context of an agency relation, patrimonial power characterizes a mode of political dominance and resource management excluding accountability. This micro-analytical definition identifies three sources of variation: …
Patrimonialism, until fairly recently, seemed an archaic social form, largely replaced by bureaucratic rationalism. That confident view of modernity, in the histories that Max Weber and his followers wrote, deserves to be challenged as patrimonial regimes reappear in states and firms throughout the world. This article is my attempt to mount that challenge. I first revisit Weber’s conception of …