Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory articles from January 2005

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory archives from January 2005

Goal ambiguity in U.S. federal agencies.
January 1, 2005... In the literature on the distinctive characteristics of public organizations and their management, the most frequently repeated observation concerns the greater vagueness of their goals, as compared to the goals of private business firms, and...

Translating national policy objectives into local achievements across planes of governance and among multiple actors: second-order devolution and welfare reform implementation.
January 1, 2005... INTRODUCTION The implementation of public policy remains, despite claims to the contrary, a prominent, lively, and significant facet of the theory and practice of public administration (Cline 2000; deLeon and deLeon 2002; Kettl 2000;...

Managing uncertainty: the bias and efficiency of federal macroeconomic forecasts.
January 1, 2005... Analysts at a number of federal agencies are required to generate published but highly uncertain forecasts of economic and demographic conditions well into the future. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reports underlying economic...

How competitive is competitive bidding? The case of the single regeneration budget program.
January 1, 2005... Public choice theorists and conservative philosophers like Hayek have greatly influenced the tone of debate about the appropriate role of the state from the late 1970s onward. One of their central arguments is that lack of competition in the...

Street-level bureaucrats and intrastate variation in the implementation of temporary assistance for needy families policies.
January 1, 2005... Street-level bureaucrats are key players in any policy-implementation process (Keiser 1999; Kelly 1994; Lipsky 1980, 1984; Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2000, 2003; Meyers, Glaser, and MacDonald 1998; Schneider and Jacoby 1996; Schneider, Jacoby,...

Management tenure and network time: how experience affects bureaucratic dynamics.
January 1, 2005... The public management field is in the midst of a theoretical and empirical upheaval concerning the role played by networks in the delivery of public services. The rise of public/private cooperation in the public sphere has cast doubt on the...

Red tape and public employees: does perceived rule dysfunction alienate managers?
January 1, 2005... Recent studies have associated red tape with a variety of organizational attributes, including a reduction in benefits provided to clients (Scott and Pandey 2000), a more risk-averse decision culture (Bozeman and Kingsley 1998), and higher...

The evolution of dyadic interorganizational relationships in a network of publicly funded nonprofit agencies.
January 1, 2005... Policy makers have increasingly selected network forms of governance as a mechanism to provide health and human services to their constituents (Agranoff 1991; Bardach 1998; O'Toole 1997). Networks are thought to assist service providers in...

Governance and the Nixon administrative legacy.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Karen M. Hult and Charles E. Walcott. 2004. Empowering the White House: Governance under Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 264 pp. For Karen M. Hult and Charles E. Walcott, Nixon's the one. The structure of the...

Our "can-do" government.(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Paul C. Light. 2002. Government's Greatest Achievements: From Civil Rights to Homeland Security. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 241 pp. Few, if any, scholars have contributed more empirical insight to the study of public...