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Those who implement policies have the discretion to shape democratic values. Public administration is not policy administered, but democracy administered.
In The Political Economy of Public Sector Governance, Anthony Michael Bertelli introduces core ideas in positive political theory as they apply to public management and policy. Though recent literature that mathematically models relationships between politicians and public managers provides insight into contemporary public administration, the technical way these works present information limits their appeal. This book helps readers understand public-sector governance arrangements and the implications these arrangements have for public management practice and policy outcomes by presenting information in a nontechnical way.
"Democracy means rule by the people. In a democracy, administration must be constructed in such a way that it serves the people through their elected representatives. The connection between the public and any given administrative action may be quite distant, but it must be in place. Accountability of public management to the popular will may be weak or attenuated, but the arrangements might be justified on other grounds. In any event, the problem of connecting the public with administration must be confronted. It is quite possible that some members of the polity, fully believing in the democratic process, disagree with an administered decision that is without democratic defect. In other words, even with democratic accountability, what government produces may not be the policy that you want"--
The public sector continues to play a strategic role across the world and in the last thirty years there have been major shifts in approaches to its management. This text identifies the trends in public management and the effects these have had, as well as providing a broad overview to each topic.
Combining insights from traditional thought and practice and from contemporary political analysis, Madison's Managers presents a constitutional theory of public administration in the United States. Anthony Michael Bertelli and Laurence E. Lynn Jr. contend that managerial responsibility in American government depends on official respect for the separation of powers and a commitment to judgment, balance, rationality, and accountability in managerial practice. The authors argue that public management—administration by unelected officials of public agencies and activities based on authority delegated to them by policymakers—derives from the principles of American constitutionalism, articulat...
We undertake the first quantitative and broadly comparative study of the structure and performance of partnership communities to our knowledge. Our study addresses several important research questions. How connected are the members of partnership communities? How can we understand the quality of the projects a community undertakes? How do political institutions shape their structure and performance? After defining partnership communities as networked communities of private firms which form the consortia that enter into long-term contractual arrangements with governments, we show how they are affected by government demand for partners. We then provide an overview of those factors predicting success in financing projects. Finally, we focus on the political economy of partnership communities. We develop and test theoretical predictions about how national institutions shape partnership communities and the quality of projects. We also investigate voters' preferences over alternative arrangements of infrastructure delivery before drawing out implications for research and practice.
An overview of experimental research and methods in public management, and their impact on theory, research practices and substantive knowledge.
Are public sector institutions being exposed to ever-greater oversight, audit and inspection in the name of efficiency, accountability and risk management? "Controlling Modern Government" explores the long-term development of controls over government across five major state traditions in developed democracies - US, Japan, variants of continental-European models, a Scandinavian case and variants of the Westminster model. A central aspect of the study is an eight country comparison of variety in the use of controls based in oversight, competition, mutuality and contrived randomness in the selected domains of the high bureaucracy at the core of the state, the higher education sector and the prison sector. Countries covered include Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and the USA. Providing a comparison of trends in the last quarter century in control over public sector activities in OECD countries, this book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students focussing on political science and public administration, as well as policymakers in OECD countries.
Meta-Analysis for Public Management and Policy is a groundbreaking book that introduces meta-analysis and includes proven techniques for research in public management and policy. The book provides statistical approaches to meta-analysis most useful for public policy and management and features five examples of original meta-analyses of important questions in public management and policy conducted by the author and his team. These original studies show step-by-step how to conduct a meta-analysis and contribute original research on ...
Bentley wrote this book over the years 18961908 while working as a Chicago newspaper reporter and editor. He was hailed on methodological grounds as an early supporter of the "behavioral revolution," which called for the use of natural scientific methods in the social sciences and for offering a group theory of politics. Bentley's implicit critique of narrow empiricism reflects the diverse influences of Dilthey, Simmel, and Dewey.