The United States has had an ambiguous relationship to the New Public Management (NPM) as a global public sector reform movement. Many of the themes, concepts, and tools of governance associated with NPM's managerial ideology-"business-like management," competitive tendering, incentives,...

Belief in the resource-saving and service-enhancing potential of inter-organizational collaboration has become virtually an article of faith among resource providers, client advocates, and service planners. Yet collaboration in practice encounters myriad difficulties, and successful...

The so-called "charitable choice" policy of the Clinton and Bush administrations is another milestone in the transformation of a social services sector that was once decentralized, independent, often informal, and voluntary into a deliberate instrument of public policy. Issues associated with...