This paper examines the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) in the federal budgeting process. The early evidence on PART prompts the search for a theory of budgeting that accepts that performance information will influence decisions, but will not be used in the same way from decision to...

The growing literature on public service networks has identified a variety of mechanisms to foster coordination, including trust and norms reciprocity. This paper argues that network actors are also driven by a desire to avoid blame. In doing so, the paper develops the concept of blame avoidance...

A perennial task for the state is the creation and policing of categories. State-created categories have real world impacts on the public. The consequences of racial categorizations, for example, are well-documented. We examine a less studied consequence of state categorization, which are the...

Crises are a time when people look to their political leaders for action. For a President who was a master of shaping political narratives, COVID-19 offered an opportunity to use his messaging skills to steer the public response. Instead, COVID-19 revealed Trump’s long-standing inability to...

A revolution in the measurement and reporting of government performance through the use of published metrics, rankings and reports has swept the globe at all levels of government. Performance metrics now inform important decisions by politicians, public managers and citizens. However, this...