It has long been believed that council-manager governments with professionally trained public managers are more efficiency oriented and insulated from political pressure than mayor-council governments. Despite the general acceptance of this conventional wisdom, empirical evidence to support the...

Local governments in the United States have adopted a variety of economic development tools and strategies to revitalize and compete. This research considers two questions. First, what factors influenced early and late adopters of strategic economic development policy tools, and second, how are...

City managers' policy leadership has drawn great attention from scholars of public administration. However, what factors explain variation in managers' policy-making roles has not been systematically explored. This study investigates the mechanisms leading elected officials to defer to the...

This article examines interstate variance in the distribution of costs for hazardous waste regulation in the American states. The analysis identifies the distribution of regulatory costs for technical externalities and answers specific questions about the regulatory strategies of competing...