Within schools of public policy, there is general recognition that public management mediates the relationship between policy analysis and policy making, on the one hand, and the concrete, documentable outcomes of public policies, on the other. Understanding this mediating process toward...

Promoting innovative government has attracted a bipartisan constituency. But if the concept of innovation is watered down to encompass any promising idea or any program change that hasn't been tried before, it will lose its power as a device to stimulate non-trivial improvements in governmental...

The theory of policy implementation yields conflicting predictions. Depending on the case and the perspective of the observer, policy control over the bureaucracy ranges from loose or non-existent to oppressive and pernicious right down to the street level. This paper presents a theoretical...

Though Canada, Mexico, and the United States have distinctly different administrative histories, the language of "performance," "customers," "accountability," "privatization," and "decentralization" is heard throughout North America, and all three countries are engaged in public management...

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the policy analysis “movement” irrupted into American political life. Opportunistically assembling rudiments of authority, knowledge, technical skill and application that began to accumulate with the emergence of the modern administrative state, a...

The U.S. Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) was enacted to promote strategic planning and performance management in the U.S. Federal Government. This act and its effects to date are considered in three contexts: (1) of recurring efforts by U.S. political leadership to improve...

During his relatively short tenure in office, Illinois Department on Aging (IDOA) Director Victor Wirth performed an apparent managerial miracle. Inheriting an agency ridden with internal conflicts and in bad repute with its contractors and constituencies, Wirth successfully refocused his...

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...

Scholars within different disciplines employ a wide range of empirical approaches to understanding how, why and with what consequences government is organized. We first review recent statistical modeling efforts in the areas of education, job-training, welfare reform and drug abuse treatment and...

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...