CHAPTER FIVE

THE IMPACT OF POLITICAL POWER AND PUBLIC POLICY

For a research project on public organizations, a college professor interviewed the secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA). The DCA manages programs for management of emergencies (such as hurricanes), housing and community development, planning for growth, and ecological protection that often include grants for which localities can apply. It thus has a great influence on the constituencies of many political officials and, as one might expect, gets a lot of attention from those officials. During the interview, the DCA secretary’s administrative assistant came in and handed her a note. The secretary told the interviewer that even though she had agreed to take no phone calls during the interview, she would have to interrupt the interview to return a phone call. She showed the interviewer the note. It was a message from one of the most powerful state senators. It said, “This is my SECOND phone call to you and you have not returned my call.” The administrative assistant explained that the senator had told her to write the note that way, to put “second” in all capitals and underline it. The director felt that she had better return the call right away. Government executives often have to be very responsive to elected officials.

Chapter Two defined public organizations as those the government owns and funds and therefore has authority to direct and control. Chapter Four reviewed organization theorists’ ideas about the crucial relationship between organizations, including public organizations, and their environments. It also argued that public organizations’ environments impose a relatively distinctive set of values and criteria on them, through direction and influence by government institutions and entities (see the bottom half of Exhibit 4.3). This chapter provides a brief summary description of the sources of authority and influence—the power—of these entities over public organizations.

The complex literature that analyzes these topics is impossible to cover fully in a brief chapter. Nevertheless, for the analysis of public organizations we need to cover insights gained from studies of public bureaucracy in order to integrate them with the topics in general management and organization theory covered in later chapters. In addition, public managers need to understand and deal with the political entities discussed here. So it is important to highlight some of the key points and issues.

Power and influence relationships are seldom simple, unidirectional, or entirely clear. Analyses of public organizations certainly illustrate these complexities. Wood and Waterman (1994, pp. 18–22) pointed out that for years, scholars analyzing public bureaucracies often characterized them as being out of the control of their political masters. Some scholars have depicted regulatory agencies as “captured” by the interests they were supposed to regulate. Others have concluded that “iron triangles”—tight alliances of agencies, interest groups, and congressional committees—dominate agency policies and activities and close out other authorities and actors. These accounts describe bureaucracies as operating relatively independently of presidents, courts, and legislative bodies (except for special committees with which they might be allied).

A peculiar popular myth about public bureaucracies sees them as existing either for no reason and against everyone’s better judgment or for only the selfish interests of the bureaucrats. In fact, a public agency that no one wants or that only the bureaucrats want is the easiest target for elimination. Still, such popular views persist, and they correspond to very important political developments. Recent U.S. presidents, governors, and mayors have launched efforts to control bureaucracies, seeking to wrest from them their allegedly excessive power or to streamline and reduce them (Arnold, 1995; Durant, 1992; Pfiffner and Brook, 2000; U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2002; Walters, 2002; West, 2002).

Writers on public management often emphasize an opposing view, however. As mentioned in Chapter One, some experts on public management worry that elaborate constraints on public managers (1) deprive them of authority to carry out their jobs and (2) frustrate them professionally (National Academy of Public Administration, 1986). Thus the discussion on bureaucratic power has fallen into two conflicting camps, one in which bureaus and bureaucrats are seen as independent and influential and one in which they are regarded as impotent (Kingdon, 1995; Wood and Waterman, 1994).

More recently, evidence has mounted that both of these views have some merit; that bureaucratic power can more accurately be described as a dynamic mixture of both of these conditions. Researchers and government executives report numerous cases in which federal agencies have shown marked responsiveness to the authority of the president, the Congress, and the courts (Golden, 2000; IBM Endowment for the Business of Government, 2002; Rubin, 1985; Wood and Waterman, 1994); conversely, Wood and Waterman (1994) also show evidence of bottom-up processes in which federal agencies initiate policy relatively independently. Similarly, there are studies of public management and leadership that provide accounts of proactive behaviors by leaders of public agencies (Behn, 1994; Doig and Hargrove, 1987; Hargrove and Glidewell, 1990; Riccucci, 1995). Dunn (1997) described respectful relations between government executives and their political superiors, and Dunn and Legge (2002) find that many local government managers espouse a partnership model for their relations with elected officials. The relative power of public organizations, their leaders, and the governmental institutions to which they are formally accountable is dynamic and depends on various conditions, such as the salience of a particular issue, agency structure, agency expertise, and public attitudes and support. This chapter reviews many of the formal powers of the external actors that influence public organizations, and as many of these dynamic factors as possible, because of their essential role in the fundamental organizational process of gaining financial resources, grants of authority, and other resources from the environment. (Exhibit 5.1 summarizes many of these formal powers and other bases of influence.) As Norton Long (1949, p. 257) declared in a classic essay, “the lifeblood of administration is power.”

Public Organizations and the Public

Public organizations need support from what political scientists call mass publics—that is, broad, diffuse populations—and especially from attentive publics—that is, more organized groups that are interested in specific agencies.

Public Opinion and Mass Publics

General public opinion influences the management of public organizations. Two types of mass opinion figure importantly: attitudes toward government in general and attitudes toward particular policies and agencies. Elected officials have often sought to reform government bureaucracies in ways that appealed to public opinion, especially among many citizens who regard the federal government and its employees as inefficient and in need of reform. Public opinion played a significant role when President Jimmy Carter’s administration reformed the U.S. civil service system in 1979, changing pay and disciplinary procedures and provisions for appointing senior executives. The Carter administration promoted the reform as a means of motivating federal workers who needed to work harder and of making it easier to fire lazy ones. The administration took this approach because it drew more media coverage than an approach simply emphasizing improvements to management in government. Media representatives apparently felt that emphasis on firing lazy bureaucrats would appeal to the public (Kettl, 1989). President Reagan more aggressively attacked the federal bureaucracy, cutting agency budgets and staffing, and sought to diminish the authority of career federal administrators (Aberbach and Rockman, 2000; Durant, 1992; Golden, 2000; Rubin, 1985). Evidence indicated that morale in the federal service suffered. Surveys revealed that many career civil servants intended to leave the service and would discourage their children from pursuing a career in federal service (Volcker Commission, 1989). As part of the National Performance Review, the Clinton administration cut over 324,000 federal jobs between 1993 and 2000. The George W. Bush administration issued the President’s Management Agenda, which called for improved management due to severe deficiencies in management in federal agencies. All of these reform initiatives seemed clearly to be designed, in large part, to show the public that the president would reform the inefficient federal bureaucracy. A general climate of unfavorable public opinion about the public bureaucracy thus had significant effects on the morale and work behaviors of government employees, the structure of the federal government, and the functioning of major federal agencies.

In 1989, a public outcry against a proposed pay raise for members of Congress, federal judges, and federal executives provided another good example of the effects of general public opinion on government employees and organizations. In opinion polls, more than 80 percent of the public opposed the increase. Ralph Nader and the National Taxpayers’ Union fought the raise aggressively, exhorting voters to write to and call their representatives to object to it. Congress overwhelmingly voted down the raise. After its defeat, stories in the New York Times and elsewhere reported bitter reactions by federal managers, including many who would not even have been in positions to receive the raise. They expressed sharp disappointment over the symbolic rejection of their value to the society.

In state and local governments across this country and in other nations, unfavorable public attitudes about government have provided some of the support for various reforms (Peters and Savoie, 1994). Some reforms have targeted government pay systems, seeking changes that would tie a government employee’s pay more closely to his or her performance. The reforms have been justified as a way to remedy allegedly weak motivation and performance on the part of public employees (Gabris, 1987; Ingraham, 1993; Kellough and Lu, 1993). In Georgia and Florida, for example, during the 1990s the governors proposed that merit system protections for state employees be abolished, in part so it would be easier to fire them and to tie their pay more closely to their performance (Kellough and Nigro, 2002; West, 2002). Walters (2002) points out that Governor Miller in Georgia promoted the reforms to the public in the same way Jimmy Carter had argued for similar reforms during his presidency—by connecting them to the stereotype of the inefficient bureaucrats who could not be fired. These sorts of reforms have been undertaken in various nations, and have been particularly prevalent in English-speaking countries in recent decades (Kettl, 2002; Peters and Savoie, 1994; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). They reflect the decline in general public support for government spending and programs.

Ambivalence and Paradoxes in Public Opinion

As shown by the surge in patriotic sentiment and praise for the New York City firefighters and police after the September 11, 2001, attacks, public attitudes about government exhibit marked ambivalence, and this ambivalence influences public managers and their agencies (Lipset and Schneider, 1987; Whorton and Worthley, 1981). Surveys have often found that respondents say they would like lower taxes but do not want public spending reduced for most types of services (Beck, Rainey, and Traut, 1990; Ladd, 1983). Surveys have also found that when respondents are asked how they feel about federal agencies in general, they give unfavorable responses. When asked, however, for a specific evaluation of how they were treated by a particular agency in a specific instance, they give much more favorable responses (Katz, Gutek, Kahn, and Barton, 1975).

Ambivalent public attitudes contribute to the challenges of public management. In the absence of economic markets as mechanisms for measuring need and performance, public officials and public organizations often struggle with difficult questions about what the public wants. In recent decades, elected officials have often responded with reforms and decisions that directly influence structures, behavior, and management in public organizations. Nations cycle in and out of periods of antigovernment sentiment (Hirschman, 1982). Therefore it remains to be seen whether the negative orientation of reforms—emphasizing the need to reform poorly performing government agencies and employees—will continue. Nevertheless, these examples illustrate the influence on public management of general public sentiment.

Public Opinion and Agencies, Policies, and Officials

The general level of public support for a particular agency’s programs affects the agency’s ability to maintain a base of political support. Certain agencies hold a more central place than others in the country’s values (Meier and Bothe, 2007; Wamsley and Zald, 1973), and the public regards their work as more crucial. The Department of Defense, police departments, and fire departments typically retain strong general public support because of the importance people attach to national defense and personal security. Some social programs, such as those perceived to involve welfare payments to the poor, receive weaker support in public opinion polls.

Hargrove and Glidewell (1990) have proposed a classification of public agencies and managerial jobs that places a heavy emphasis on public opinion. They classify public management jobs on the basis of how the public perceives the agency’s clientele (for example, public sentiment toward prisoners and welfare dependents is usually negative), the level of respect the public has for the professional authority of the agency and its head (for example, a scientific or medical professional basis usually gets more respect), and its general level of support for the mission and purpose of the agency. This chapter returns to such factors later when discussing the sources of authority for public agencies and managers.

Media Power: Obvious and Mysterious

The importance of public opinion bolsters the power of the news media. Congressional committees or state legislative committees summon agency executives before them to explain the events surrounding an embarrassing news story about an agency. Whistle-blowers who go public with news about agency misconduct or incompetence have often received such harsh treatment that the federal government has made special provisions to protect them (Rosen, 1998). Bad press can sledgehammer an agency or an official, damaging budgets, programs, and careers. A survey of persons who served as high-level executives in various presidential administrations found that the vast majority of them regarded media coverage as having a significant impact on public policy. Most of them had tried to get media coverage for their agency, and three-quarters of them reported spending at least five hours a week on matters pertaining to the press and media coverage (Graber, 2003, p. 245).

Close media scrutiny of government plays an indispensable role in governance. The news media also report aggressively on scandals in private business, yet they appear to place more emphasis on scrutiny of government. Government is often more accessible, and it is more appropriate to watch it carefully, because government spends the taxpayers’ money. In cities around the country, local news reporters regularly chase down stories about governmental waste or abuse. For example, in some cities they have searched the parking lots of bars and restaurants during normal working hours to take pictures of the license tags of any government vehicles parked there. In one city a television station carried stories about the high costs of the furniture in the office of one of the county commissioners. Major television networks have news segments and special series that regularly broadcast allegations of government waste.

News reporters usually take a strong adversarial stance. They want to avoid seeming naive or co-opted. They need to focus on serious problems and generate an audience by reporting on controversial issues. The Volcker Commission (1989) report described how Carter administration officials had trouble attracting interest in their proposals for civil service reforms until they developed a twenty-six-foot chart illustrating the tortuous steps it took to fire a bad federal employee. The news media immediately focused on this issue and provided more coverage. This attention apparently led the president to emphasize the negative, punitive aspects of the reforms in trying to build support for them. Thus media coverage influenced the tenor of reforms that shaped the personnel practices of the federal government and influenced the morale of employees throughout the public sector.

If anything, news coverage of government appears to be increasingly negative. Patterson (2001) carefully documents that since 1960 news coverage has become much less descriptive (reporters no longer present only the facts) and much more interpretive of developments. During the same period, coverage of candidates during presidential elections has become much more negative.

Instances in which unfavorable press coverage damages a person, program, or agency make concern about media coverage part of the lore of government (Linsky, 1986). Officials and experts from Washington speak of managing in a “goldfish bowl” (Allison, 1983; Cohen and Eimicke, 1995; IBM Endowment for the Business of Government, 2002), with media attention playing a stronger role in government than it does in business management (Blumenthal, 1983). For years observers have worried that some federal executives devote more time to creating a splash in the media than to performing well as managers (Lynn, 1981). Many public employees appear to feel that they will not get into much trouble for poor performance but will get into a lot of trouble for creating bad publicity (Downs, 1967; Lynn, 1981; Warwick, 1975). City and county officials will pack an auditorium to listen to consultants speak on how to handle media relations, and they regularly complain about unfair media coverage.

This apparent power of the media has mysterious qualities. The potential damage from bad coverage is often unclear. Ronald Reagan earned a reputation as the “Teflon president” by maintaining popularity in spite of sharp criticism in the media. As an additional irony, much of the worry over press coverage amounts to worrying over an entity in which the general public expresses little confidence. Public opinion polls find that public confidence in journalists and the news media is lower than public confidence in many other institutions and has been declining in recent decades (Patterson, 2001). For a long time, many experts argued that the media exercise little influence over public voting patterns and attitudes about specific issues. Some experts on the news media now argue that the media exert a powerful influence on public attitudes, but in a diffuse way. Media coverage develops a climate that pervades the informational environment, and this in turn influences public opinion (Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter, 1986; Murray, Schwartz, and Lichter, 2001). In addition, some experts conclude that journalists develop a shared view of what constitutes news, and this leads to a version of the news that is generally shared by the different news organizations (Patterson, 2001).

Media attention also varies. Some agencies regularly get more media attention than others. Hood and Dunsire (1981) found that the foreign affairs office and the treasury get particularly high levels of press coverage in Britain, whereas other central government departments get relatively little attention. The media often seriously neglect administrative issues. Yet public officials also know that media attention can shift unpredictably. In one large state, where the department of administration ordinarily received little public attention, the director decided to change the set of private health insurance plans from which the state’s employees chose their coverage. Many employees disliked the new set of plans. An outburst of complaints from state employees caused a sudden wave of coverage in the newspapers and television news around the state. A legislative committee soon called the director before special hearings about the changes.

Officials at higher levels and in political centers (capitals and large cities) often pay a great deal of attention to media strategies. Many city governments issue newsletters, televise city council meetings, and use other methods of public communication. Some federal and state agencies invest heavily in issuing public information. Even so, many public managers resist suggestions that they should devote time to media relations, regarding themselves as professionals rather than as “politicians.” More active approaches, however, usually prove to be the most effective (Graber, 2003). Various experts have offered advice on how to deal with the media. Exhibit 5.2 summarizes typical recommendations.

Interest Groups, Clients, and Constituencies

The support of organized groups also determines the political well-being of public agencies. The role of organized interests in American politics generates continuing controversy. Special-interest politics poses the danger that the system will become (or has already become) too fragmented into self-interested groups, making it resistant to central coordination and hence unmanageable (Lowi, 1979). Critics say that the system favors richer, more powerful groups over the disadvantaged and allows private interests to control major domains of public policy. Influence peddling abounds in this system and creates ethical dilemmas for many public managers. Some face temptations; for example, to go easy on industries that they regulate in order to enhance their chance of acquiring a lucrative job in one of them.

Yet public managers also recognize that interest-group activities are not all bad. They play an important role in the current system and provide government with important information. Legislation requires that public managers consult with interested groups and their representatives. Often these groups voice reasonable demands—help our industry so we do not have to lay people off, help us with the economic development of your jurisdiction, help defend the country with this new weapons system, support education, aid the disadvantaged. Sometimes demands from different groups are reasonable but sharply conflicting.

Given the importance of these groups, many public managers have to cultivate their support. More generally, many authors have pointed out that because public agencies need political support for their funding and for authorization to act, their leaders have to nurture political constituencies (Chase and Reveal, 1983; Doig and Hargrove, 1987; Graber, 2003; Hargrove and Glidewell, 1990; Meier and Bothe, 2007; Radin, 2002; Rourke, 1984; Wildavsky, 1988). Strong support from constituencies helps an agency defend itself against budget cuts or even secure budget increases from legislative bodies. It can also help agencies defend themselves against unwanted directives from legislators and chief executives. Constituent groups can promote an agency in ways that it cannot properly pursue itself. Interest groups can block an agency’s actions, sometimes popping up unexpectedly as a manager tries to act.

What kind of group support bolsters an agency? Apparently, the most effective support comes from well-organized, cohesive groups that are strongly committed to the agency and its programs. Conversely, capture of an agency by a constituency can damage the agency and bias it toward the self-interested priorities of that group (Rourke, 1984; Wilson, 1989). Critics have accused some regulatory agencies of being captives of the industries or professions they supposedly regulate, and they complain that other agencies are captured by the clientele who receive their services (allegedly, the Forest Service has been captured by timber interests and the Bureau of Mines by mining interests). Agencies appear to have the most flexibility when they have the support of multiple groups; they can then satisfy some groups, if not all, and even have them confront one another about their conflicting demands (Chase and Reveal, 1983; Meier and Bothe, 2007; Rourke, 1984).

Studies over the past two decades have reported that managers in state and local government agencies often see interest-group involvement with their agency as beneficial and appropriate. State and local agency managers regard interest groups as having less influence on the operations of their agency than the chief executive (the governor or mayor) or the legislature. When groups do exert influence, they often provide useful information about policy issues and group positions (Abney and Lauth, 1986; Brudney and Hebert, 1987; Elling, 1983). Abney and Lauth (1986) found additional evidence that agency managers at the urban level see interest-group involvement as appropriate when it focuses directly on the agency and inappropriate when it is channeled through the city council or the mayor. The managers may be too forgiving of interest-group influences, but the findings also suggest a more positive or at least necessary side of interest groups. Experienced public managers see maintaining relations with these groups as a necessary part of their work, often frustrating but also challenging and sometimes helpful. Public managers have to be accessible to such groups, seriously attentive to what they have to say, patient and self-controlled when the groups are harshly critical, and honest (Chase and Reveal, 1983; Cohen and Eimicke, 1995).

Legislative Bodies

Congress, state legislatures, city councils, and county commissions exercise as much formal, legal authority over public organizations as do any other entities. Formal authority always operates in a political context, which may weaken it or bolster it in practical terms.

Formal Authority

Legislative bodies have substantial formal powers, including authority to control agency budgets, to pass legislation that authorizes and directs agency actions, and to oversee agency activities through hearings, investigations, and other means.

Power of the Purse.

Legislative bodies provide the money needed to operate public agencies. They exercise the final power of approval over budget allocations to agencies. They can fund new initiatives or cut and curtail agency activities aggressively.

Legislation.

Government agencies are usually born through legislation, especially at the federal and state levels. (At local levels, the agencies of a city government are often required under state guidelines.) Such legislation states the basic missions and duties of the agencies and authorizes their activities. Additional legislation can give an agency new duties. Its policies and programs can be extended, given to some other agency, reformed, or abolished.

Some scholars observe that legislation often transmits vague, idealized directives to agencies. For example, legislation directs various regulatory agencies to promote “just” and “reasonable” practices in the public interest and for the common welfare (Woll, 1977). According to Lowi’s (1979) prominent argument, these broad grants of authority give the agencies considerable discretion, and hinder central, purposeful control of the agencies and the public policy process. Diffuse directives also add to the influences that impose vague, multiple, often conflicting goals on government agencies.

Conversely, legislatures sometimes do the opposite, delving into the precise details of agency management and procedures and engaging in micromanagement. They sometimes reform the general structure of the executive branch, combining certain departments and splitting others apart. They sometimes dictate the organizational structure of major agencies, including what subunits they establish. They produce legislation governing the details of personnel procedures for the agencies within their jurisdiction, or they precisely dictate other administrative procedures. For example, state legislatures sometimes include in legislation detailed specifications about the types of computer records a state regulatory agency must maintain. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA98) specified many of the main features of the agency’s structure and procedures, such as its new operating divisions, flexibilities in personnel administration, and sanctions for specific forms of misconduct by IRS employees. This example, however, actually illustrates a complex interplay between the legislative and administrative branches that may create the appearance of legislative direction when in fact the agency is the source of some of the ideas. In actuality, many of the provisions of RRA98, such as the agency’s new structure and its provisions for personnel administration, were proposed by task forces and executives in the agency and then written into the legislation.

Oversight.

Legislative bodies regularly conduct hearings, audits, and investigations into agency activities (Rosen, 1998). Hearings are a normal part of the appropriations process and of the process of developing legislation. Investigatory and oversight agencies are established under the authority of the legislative branch to carry out inquiries into agency activities and performance. The General Accounting Office at the federal level and auditors general or similar offices in the states conduct audits to support legislative oversight.

Congressional oversight at the federal level has intensified in recent decades and has increasingly focused on administrative processes, apparently in response to presidents’ efforts to control the bureaucracy (West, 1995). Wood and Waterman (1994) reported evidence that congressional oversight can significantly influence the outputs and actions of federal agencies. They showed, for example, that it led to a sharp increase in enforcement actions by the Environmental Protection Agency’s hazardous waste compliance division during one period in the 1980s.

Committees.

Particular legislative committees oversee particular agencies, conducting hearings about them, examining their operations, and developing legislation pertaining to them. Names of some committees correspond almost exactly to the names of major federal and state agencies. City councils often have a committee structure as well, with committees corresponding to the major departments and functions of the city government. Harold Seidman, one of the leading experts on federal administrative reforms, argues that if one wants to reform the federal bureaucracy, one must first reform Congress. Congressional committees jealously guard their authority over agencies (Seidman and Gilmour, 1986). An appropriations committee chair once objected to extending the president’s power to veto legislation, saying, “We don’t want the agencies taking orders from the president. We want them to take orders from us” (Miller, 1990).

Informal Influence

Legislative influences can be relatively informal as well, rather than codified into law. For example, legislators call administrators on the phone to press them for information or to ask for certain actions. State and federal administrators trying to relocate their agencies’ offices or facilities to save money or to reorganize their operations frequently hear from outraged legislators whose districts will lose facilities and jobs. During the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Labor sought to better organize diverse work-training programs run by various bureaus by bringing them under the authority of the newly created Manpower Administration. In committee hearings, powerful members of Congress told the head of this new agency that he should leave the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Trades (BAT) alone and not bring it into the new structure (Ruttenberg and Gutchess, 1970). Labor unions wanted to maintain a strong influence on BAT and had lobbied members of Congress to oppose moving BAT into the new structure. Similarly, legislators press for the hiring of political friends and allies in agencies or argue against their firing (Warwick, 1975). None of these actions is necessarily formally authorized, and some are quite improper. They illustrate an additional dimension of legislative influence on the bureaucracy and show why legislators strive to defend their alliances and influences with the bureaucracy.

Limits on Legislative Power

Some experts insist that, even armed with all these powers, legislative bodies exert little real control over administrative agencies (Woll, 1977). The agencies are specialized and staffed with experts who know much more about their functions than do legislators and their staffs. Legislators often have little incentive to be aggressive in supervising agency performance (Meier and Bothe, 2007; Ripley and Franklin, 1984). Such “good government” activities offer little political advantage, because constituents often cannot see the results. In addition, tough oversight of agencies could jeopardize relationships with them, removing them as potential sources of favors for constituents. Agencies also have independent sources of support from interest groups and from parts of the legislative bodies and executive branches that they can play off against other parts. As mentioned previously, however, recent evidence suggests that although legislative influence is a complicated subject, it is clear that legislative bodies significantly influence agencies in many instances (Wood and Waterman, 1994).

Legislative authority also varies across jurisdictions. Certain states, such as Florida, have relatively powerful legislatures that are based on the state’s legal and institutional arrangements. The authority and power of city councils and county commissions vary from place to place, depending, for example, on whether there is a “strong mayor” or “weak mayor” government in a city.

The Chief Executive

Presidents, governors, and mayors rival the legislative branch for the status of strongest political influence on agencies. Presumably, chief executives have the greatest formal power over the public bureaucracies in their jurisdictions. Yet, as with legislative bodies, the influence patterns are complex and dynamic, and chief executives face similar challenges in taming the unwieldy bureaucracy.

Appointments

Chief executives appoint heads of executive agencies and usually an additional array of patronage positions within those agencies. Wood and Waterman (1994) found that the appointment of a new agency head was often strongly related to a change in agency actions and outputs in the direction of the president’s preferences. The chief executive’s ability to influence agencies through these appointments varies by agency, jurisdiction, and political climate, however. President Reagan mounted an aggressive effort to influence federal agencies through appointments. He filled the top positions of some major agencies with executives committed to reducing the regulatory role, size, and influence of the federal bureaucracy. As a result, certain agencies sharply curtailed their staff and activities (Golden, 2000; Rubin, 1985). Administration officials also added new levels of political appointees at the top of agencies. This added layers between the top executives and the highest-level career civil servants, effectively demoting career service managers. These steps had so much impact that the Volcker Commission (1989) called for reductions in the number of appointments the president can make. This example illustrates the potential power given to a chief executive by the authority to make appointments. In certain states and localities, many major or cabinet-level agency executives are independently elected and thus not beholden to the chief executive. Jurisdictions also vary in the degree to which they have patronage appointments within agencies.

Executive Staff Offices

The executive offices of the U.S. president and of governors and mayors around the country give chief executives various resources that can bolster their influence. Units within an executive office can represent special constituencies and functions. A governor might have an office of minority affairs or veterans’ affairs as a way of demonstrating concern for that constituency. Other subunits might concentrate on press relations or relations with the legislature. Some governors and local executives have inspectors general in their executive offices to conduct investigations into allegations of improprieties in agencies.

Budgeting Authority

The most significant of the staff offices are those that wrestle with budgets—the Office of Management and Budget in the executive office of the president and similar offices on the staffs of mayors and governors. The legislative branch ultimately approves the budget, but the chief executive assembles agency budget requests and submits them to the legislature for approval. The chief executive tries to hammer his or her priorities into the budget by proposing extensions or cuts in funding for programs. The executive’s influence over the budget depends on many factors—anticipated tax revenues, programs needing attention, developments in the political climate (such as strong midterm election results for the chief executive’s party or strong popularity ratings). The legislative body may fight back, of course, putting money back into programs that the chief executive tries to cut, and vice versa. Agency officials engage in various ploys to maintain their funding and avoid cuts (Wildavsky, 1988). Their ability to do so depends on factors already described, such as group support. Yet through this process the chief executives have significant potential influence on public policy and public agencies.

Policy Initiatives and Executive Orders

Chief executives have certain formal powers to tell agencies what to do through directives and executive orders (Cooper, 1996). For example, some of the original equal employment opportunity (EEO) initiatives were implemented through executive orders from President Eisenhower and later presidents. They directed federal agencies and private companies holding federal contracts to establish EEO programs. Chief executives can also prompt agencies to develop programs and policies that the executive will support through the budgeting process.

Many of the proposals developed by the Clinton administration’s National Performance Review were implemented through presidential executive orders. The president ordered agencies to reduce rules and red tape, to develop customer service standards, and to establish “reinvention laboratories” to develop innovative new processes, among other actions. Cooper (1996) argued that executive orders can be very useful to presidents, and some of these actions illustrate their effects. Agencies responded rapidly in carrying out some of the actions the president directed as part of the National Performance Review. Cooper also noted, however, that executive orders can complicate the roles of agency executives, because they sometimes conflict with other legal mandates for the agency. They become part of the complex, often conflicting influences on agencies and their leaders. In one virtually comical instance, President Clinton issued an executive order directing all federal agencies to reduce their rules by 50 percent.

The Courts

As with the other institutions surrounding public organizations, some experts say that the courts exert powerful controls over the public bureaucracy, while others see them as ineffectual. Various experts point to the courts as the strongest ultimate check on the power of the public bureaucracy; others see bureaucratic power overwhelming the courts.

The federal and state courts operate under fairly conservative principles (Cooper, 2000, pp. 63–67; Woll, 1977). Courts overrule the actions of agencies for two main reasons. They can stop an agency from going beyond the intent of the legislation that created it. They can also prevent an agency from violating correct procedures, such as those required under the due process of law provisions of the Constitution and related legal precedents. These standards actually focus the courts on preventing agency actions rather than on proactively directing policies and programs. In addition, a number of relatively conservative legal principles strengthen the position of public agencies in disputes with citizens or groups. Examples of these include provisions that make public officials immune to many types of liability or require citizens with complaints against agencies to exhaust all possible remedies that they can seek through the agency before a court will hear their complaint. Also, for the courts to settle a dispute, someone has to initiate a lawsuit; this is expensive and can take a long time. Agencies win a lot of suits because they have highly specialized personnel and legal expertise at their disposal (Meier and Bothe, 2007).

In a sweeping critique of contemporary governmental processes in the United States, Lowi (1979) cited vague legislation as a major problem in weakening judicial oversight of the bureaucracy. To achieve compromise among diverse interests in the legislative process, Congress and other legislative units give diffuse grants of authority to agencies, passing legislation that communicates only very general objectives and standards. Courts then have difficulty enforcing adherence to congressional intent. The sheer size and complexity of the administrative branch of government, the wide range of specializations it encompasses, and the technical complexity of many of the policy issues that come before the courts make it extremely difficult for the courts to exercise strong control over bureaucratic actions (Stewart, 1975).

Yet under the right circumstances, the courts wield immense authority and can be very aggressive in the oversight of administrative agencies (O’Leary and Straussman, 1993; Rosenbloom and O’Leary, 1997). Through injunctions they can force or block an agency’s actions. They can direct an agency to pay damages, thus making administrators very careful about assessing the legal implications of their rules and procedures. Limitations on judicial interventions concerning, for example, citizens’ ability to sue government officials and exhaustion of administrative remedies have relaxed over time (Meier and Bothe, 2007). A ruling making it easier for citizens to sue social workers when children under their supervision suffer child abuse has changed the procedures and expenses of agencies across the country. In surveys, administrators report that court decisions influence the allocation of funds at state and local levels for education, prisons, hospitals, and other services (Meier and Bothe, 2007).

Congress has moved toward including more specific standards in some legislation (Wilson, 1989), and court rulings sometimes focus powerfully on one particular aspect of an agency’s operations. Courts sometimes intervene in particular agency activities, often due to some constitutional principle such as due process of law or equal protection of the law. On occasion, courts have in effect taken over schools and prisons in certain jurisdictions. Lawsuits to force agencies to comply with legislation requiring environmental impact statements prior to any major building project have delayed many projects in many agencies. The courts wait in the background, in a sense, seldom directly intervening in day-to-day operations of public organizations. Yet they pose an ominous background presence. Administrators frequently take actions and establish procedures expressly because of what a court has done or might do.

Research has strengthened the position that courts have a significant influence on agency operations (O’Leary, 1994; Wood and Waterman, 1994). O’Leary (1994) cited numerous examples of a “new partnership” between judges and public managers that entails significant judicial influence over agencies and their operations as well as extensive interaction with agencies’ managers and staff. She reviewed research on these developments in relation to personnel administration in agencies and found evidence of such interaction. Her research provided evidence that the courts sometimes dictate which issues an agency must attend to. Courts can diminish the authority of administrators, in part by dictating where they must devote agency resources. This can decrease the budgetary discretion of administrators (and can involve a judge’s refusal to defer to an administrator’s expertise). Court orders can also influence staff morale, sometimes demoralizing people in the agency and sometimes boosting their enthusiasm about their work. These examples and findings provide the beginnings of a body of research that needs much more development. The material from organization theory and organizational development reviewed in other parts of this book shows that the legal and judicial environments have not received much attention from organizational researchers (O’Leary and Straussman, 1993). These examples, however, show how the governmental and legal institutions surrounding public organizations can directly influence organizational design and effectiveness and the behavior of the people within organizations. They also reveal that most public managers and employees need a sound knowledge of the judicial environment (Cooper, 1996, 2000; Rosenbloom and O’Leary, 1997), and they raise a number of important research questions for scholars.

Other Government Agencies as Overseers, Allies, and Competitors

Public organizations both work together and fight with one another. The participants in this contest represent all the different levels of government, the various agencies, and certain oversight bodies concerned with personnel administration, budgeting, and central purchasing. Later chapters describe many examples of ways in which this affects management within public organizations.

In the U.S. federal system of government, higher levels of government direct and regulate the lower levels in various ways. Some federal programs, such as Social Security, are actually carried out by state personnel following federal guidelines. Behind this generally cooperative structure, however, patterns of mutual influence operate.

Grants from higher levels of government exert some of this influence. Merit systems have been disseminated throughout the personnel departments of state and local governments in the United States, in part because federal grants were made available to set up such systems. Federal laws can mandate that federal money for programs be matched in certain ways by states and localities. For example, states must contribute to Medicare payments for individuals, adding to the amounts paid by the federal government. With these funding arrangements come influences on state and local governments’ structures and procedures.

Laws and regulations, whether or not they are attached to grants or other funding instruments, also exert such influences. State and federal environmental protection regulations and growth and economic development mandates dictate how programs must be managed by lower levels of government. Federal legislation sometimes directs a federal agency to do certain things in every state unless the states do them in a way that meets certain minimum standards established by the federal government. An example of this is the federal government’s policy regarding mine safety regulations, under which it must oversee mine safety within a state unless the state can finance and manage the program itself, at least at the level required by federal standards.

The relationships between the different levels of government may be very smooth in many instances, but the lower levels do not necessarily accept higher-level influences and requirements lying down. During the Reagan administration, some state governments refused to carry out directives from the Social Security Administration requiring them to review the cases of many disability payment recipients and deny payments to some of them under more stringent rules. During a later administration, many states were slow to comply with federal laws requiring that they increase their share of Medicare payments (Tolchin, 1989). Localities also work hard to influence state and federal legislation that may bear significantly on their activities. Associations such as the League of Cities lobby at the state and federal levels for legislation that they feel they need.

Organizations at a given level of government also cooperate and compete in many ways. Johnson (1989) described how, as of the late 1980s, the “intelligence community” of the U.S. government involved more than forty federal agencies with responsibilities for intelligence operations. The delivery of many local services in the United States often involves a complex network of joint agreements and contracts among localities. State and federal agencies typically have overlapping responsibilities and engage in joint planning and activity. The EEO Coordinating Commission was established to coordinate the various agencies at the federal level that had responsibilities for carrying out affirmative action and EEO policies. Agencies also compete with each other for the time and attention of higher-level executives (Chase and Reveal, 1983) and over turf, seeking to block other agencies and authorities from gaining control over their programs (Wilson, 1989).

Public Managers’ Perceptions of the Political Environment

Later chapters describe a variety of studies that pertain to how public managers respond to the components of their political environments and how those environments influence public organizations. Some studies mentioned earlier, however, provided evidence of how public managers perceive various aspects of the political context, such as the relative influence of chief executives, legislatures, and interest groups (Abney and Lauth, 1986; Brudney and Hebert, 1987; Elling, 1983). These studies indicated that state agency managers see their legislatures as the most influential, with the governor coming second (although there are variations among the states in the relative power of the governor and the legislature). Local managers see the chief executive—the mayor—as the most influential actor. State and local agency managers rate interest groups as much less influential than legislatures and chief executives but often see them as valuable contributors to decision making.

Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman (1981; see also Aberbach and Rockman, 2000) provided a similar account of the strong influence of the legislative branch at the federal level. They analyzed contacts between administrative officials and other actors in the federal systems of the United States and in five other industrial democracies. In the United States they found much higher levels of contact between civil service administrators in agencies and congressional committee members than either of these two groups had with the executive heads of the agencies. The civil service managers had even more contacts with constituent groups than with Congress, however. Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman referred to this pattern as the “end run” model, because it involves civil servants and legislators going around executive agency heads, and they discovered that it occurs more often in the United States than in any of the other countries they studied.

Studies identifying how public managers perceive the nature of their own political activities are rare, but Olshfski (1990) identified three conceptions of politics that emerge in state agency executives’ descriptions of their political activities: political astuteness—the understanding of the political system and the processes of government and their own departments; issue politics—the political activities, such as bargaining and coalition building, necessary to advance an issue or achieve an objective; and electoral politics—the knowledge and activity related to gaining general political support for themselves, an elected official, or their departments.

The Public Policy Process

Analyses of public policy have burgeoned over the past several decades, and so has the recognition that public organizations play an essential role in the formation and implementation of public policy. The policymaking and policy implementation processes are an extremely important aspect of the environment of public organizations and public managers.

Many Arenas, Actors, Levels, and Instruments

Government activity at all levels encompasses a diverse array of functions and policy domains. Without any standard nomenclature, scholars and government officials refer to policy categories such as defense, health, science and technology, social welfare and poverty, environmental protection, energy, economic and fiscal policy (including tax policy), agricultural policy, industrial development policy, educational policy, and regulatory policy. Government activities at state and local levels, sometimes referred to as service delivery rather than public policy, include a similarly diverse list: industrial development, zoning and land use, police and firefighting services, transportation (including streets and roads), garbage collection, prisons and jails, parks and recreation, and many others. As mentioned earlier, state and local governments are also part of the policymaking process for major federal policies. Within these policy areas and spanning them, many specific programs operate at various levels of scope, size, and complexity. All these institutions, levels, authorities, and groups play a part in shaping policy and carrying it out, making the influences on policy implementation numerous and complex (O’Toole, 2000). Adding to these complexities, governmental policies draw many private for-profit and nonprofit organizations into the processes of making and carrying out public policy. Many government programs operate largely through grants, purchases, and contracts with nongovernmental organizations, such as weapons manufacturers or private nonprofit organizations that seek, for example, to help troubled youths. Besides contracts and grants, governments utilize many additional instruments or “tools” of government action, such as loan programs, regulations, insurance programs, vouchers, user charges, permits, and tax policies (Salamon and Elliot, 2002).

Policy Subsystems

For a long time, political scientists have observed that within this complex public policy system an array of subsystems operates, handling different areas of policy. Also for a long time, political scientists described these domains as being dominated by “iron triangles,” which are alliances of congressional committees, administrative agencies, and interest groups that control major policy areas such as defense and environmental policy. Key people in the committees, agencies, and interest groups in the triangle exchange political favors and support. Authorities outside the triangle, even the president, can wield little influence over it. This situation has long been lamented as one of the fundamental problems of government in the United States. Ronald Reagan complained about iron triangles in one of his last public statements as president.

Although the iron triangle analogy refers to a very significant problem, political scientists now point out that it oversimplifies the true complexity and dynamism of these coalitions. Competition and conflict among groups and agencies may flare within the so-called triangles, making them much less solid than the analogy implies. Lawyers may fight doctors over a change in legislation on malpractice suits. One group of large corporations may line up on the other side of an issue from another group of equally large corporations. In addition, as problems change, different groups, organizations, and individuals move in and out of the policy arena. The iron triangle analogy fails to depict the instability and flux in the process. It also suggests that grim power politics is the driving force behind patterns of influence in the public sector (Kingdon, 1995).

To better characterize the situation, scholars began to coin new terms. Heclo (1978) referred to “issue networks” of experts, officials, and interests that form around particular issues and that can shift rapidly. Milward and Wamsley (1982) described what they call “policy networks”: complex and shifting aggregations of groups, experts, public and private organizations, governmental authorities, and others whose interplay shapes the formation and implementation of policy. Others referred to “subgovernments’ implementation structures” (Hjern and Porter, 1981), “public service industries” and “policy subsystems” (Rainey and Milward, 1983), and “policy communities” (Kingdon, 1995). These subsystems or networks prove unwieldy and resistant to external control or coordination with other networks. Yet the depiction of the problem as one of staunch control by self-serving bureaucrats, politicians, and private interests oversimplifies the problem. Often the difficulties in coordination and control result largely from the flux and complexity of the issues, interests, and participants involved in the process.

Because government and government agencies at all levels have increasingly contracted out portions of their functions and used the tools or instruments just described, government now delivers more programs and services through organizations that are not formally owned or operated by government. These developments involve increased sharing of power with these nongovernmental organizations, with government providing a proxy to private organizations to carry out its programs and policies (Kettl, 1993, 2002). Privatization has continued to expand in many policy areas, such as human and social service programs (Smith and Lipsky, 1993), environmental and energy programs, and prisons.

These developments complicate the lines of accountability and make public managers responsible for organizational activities they can control indirectly, through contracts and grants or other mechanisms. In some cases, private and nonprofit contractors and grant recipients, instead of providing a competitive private sector alternative, become part of the political lobby for the programs with which they are involved (Smith and Lipsky, 1993). In other cases, government officials use private contractors to justify the pursuit of certain political and social objectives that they might not be able to justify through the normal legislative process. Moe (1996) argued that in these ways, privatization may involve more of a governmentalization of the private sector than a privatization of government.

In some policy areas, privatization has extended so far that government has become “hollow,” with private contractors taking over most or all of its authority and activity (Milward and Provan, 2000; Milward, Provan, and Else, 1993; Provan and Milward, 2001). Mental health programs, for example, may be provided by networks of private or nonprofit organizations, with government funding but virtually no involvement by government employees and fairly high autonomy on the part of the providers in making decisions about services and programs. Government policies and programs are increasingly carried out by networks of government agencies, private firms, and nonprofit organizations that are supposed to collaborate in the delivery of the program or policy (Kettl, 2002). Obviously they make contract management and the management of other network or third-party arrangements more important skills for many public managers (see Chapter Six). Accordingly, Chapter Fourteen covers the management of privatization in considering managerial excellence in the public sector.

The Agenda-Setting Process and the Agenda Garbage Can

Public policy researchers also help characterize the complex context of public management by analyzing how certain matters gain prominence on the public agenda while others languish outside of public notice. Kingdon (1995) said that this process resembles the “garbage can model” of decision making developed by March and his colleagues (Cohen, March, and Olsen, 1972). As described in more detail in Chapter Seven, the garbage can model depicts decision making in organizations as being much less systematic and rational than is commonly supposed. People are not sure about their preferences or about how their organization works. Streams of problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities flow along through time, sometimes coming together in combinations that shape decisions. (An example of a choice opportunity is a salient problem that has to be addressed by a newly formed committee with sufficient authority to have a chance at getting something done.) The process is more topsy-turvy than the organizational chart might suggest. Sometimes solutions actually chase problems, as when someone has a pet idea that he or she wants to find a chance to apply. Sometimes administrators simply look for work to do. Choice opportunities are like garbage cans in which problems, solutions, and participants come together in a jumbled fashion.

Kingdon revised this view when he applied it to public policy, referring to streams of problems, policies, and politics flowing alongside one another and sometimes coming together at key points to shape the policy agenda. Problems come to the attention of policymakers in various ways: through indicators, such as unemployment figures or figures on budget deficits; through events, such as crises that focus the policymakers’ attention on them; and through feedback, such as citizen complaints and reports on the operation of programs. Policies develop within the policy community as various ideas and alternatives emerge from the “policy primeval soup.” Like microorganisms in a biological primeval soup, they originate, compete, evolve, and prosper or perish. They are evaluated in think tanks, conferences, staff meetings in legislative bodies and government agencies, and interest-group activities. They may be partially tried out in programs or legislation, and a long period of “softening up” often follows the original proposal, in which the alternative becomes more and more acceptable. Some alternatives have a long history of implementation, shelving, alteration, and retrial. For example, various versions of public works and job-training camps have appeared at different levels of government since the days of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the New Deal and the Job Corps during the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty. At times, events in these streams converge to open windows of opportunity in which political forces align in support of a policy alternative for a particular problem, moving this combination to a central place on the public agenda.

In Kingdon’s portrayal, the agenda-setting process appears difficult to predict and understand, but not wildly out of control. The processes of gestation and evaluation focus considerable scrutiny on ideas and alternatives and their workability. Still, this analysis illustrates the dynamism of the policymaking environment in which public managers must operate. In later chapters, the idea of identifying windows of opportunity will figure usefully in the discussion of managing change in public organizations. Many of the challenges facing a public manager turn on effective assessment of the political feasibility of particular actions and alternatives and of the array of political forces shaping or curtailing various opportunities.

Public managers, especially at higher levels, must skillfully manage their relationship with the external authorities, actors, networks, and policy processes described in this chapter. They also have to operate effectively within the pattern of interventions and constraints from their environments. The following chapters examine major dimensions in organizing and managing in the public sector. At many points, the discussion illustrates and shows evidence of how the political and institutional environments of public organizations affect their characteristics and the behaviors of the people who work in them.

Networks and Collaboration in Public Management and the Public Policy Process

In a recent interview, a federal manager discussed his role in implementing the new steps required for the Affordable Health Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare. The Act mandates the creation of insurance exchanges where individuals can purchase health insurance. The federal manager said that his group was reaching out to their “partners” in various other federal, and state agencies, and to representatives of private firms. The Labor Department, for example, has responsibility for the provisions of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), that makes available insurance coverage for people recently unemployed or in certain other circumstances. The design of the insurance exchange needed to be coordinated with the requirements and needs of those responsible for COBRA. While very recent, this example of a current implementation process illustrates a reality of government that has existed for a very long time. Government programs and policies have always involved complex clusters of individuals, groups, and organizations. Johnson (1989), for example, pointed out that for decades the “intelligence community” included an array of entities such as the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Council, the intelligence activities of the branches of the armed forces, and many other agencies and activities. A diagram of the entities and their relationships resembled a complex wiring diagram for a piece of electrical equipment.

Networking has become even more prevalent in recent decades (Goldsmith and Eggers, 2004; Isett, Mergel, LeRoux, Mischen, and Rethemeyer, 2011; Vigoda, 2002). A variety of developments have fueled this trend, including the increased privatization and contracting out of public services, greater involvement of the nonprofit sector in public service delivery, and complex problems that exceed the capacity of any one organization. This growing significance of networks raises challenges for research, theory, and practice in public administration, including defining and identifying networks and different types of networks, analyzing how they operate, and assessing their effectiveness and accountability (Agranoff, 2007).

What Is a Network?

O’Toole (1997, p. 44) defined networks as “structures of interdependence involving multiple organizations or parts thereof, where one unit is not merely the formal subordinate of the others in some larger hierarchical arrangement.” Such situations do not involve typical or traditional chains of command and hierarchical authority.

For managers, in networks the lines of accountability and authority are loosened, and the management of a network requires more reliance on trust and collaboration than programs operated within the hierarchy of one organization (O’Toole, 1997). Managers also face varying degrees of responsibility to activate, mobilize, and synthesize networks (McGuire, 2002). In his recent intensive study of networks, Agranoff (2007) characterizes their structures as involving “collaborarchy” rather than hierarchy, and “soft guidance” rather than hierarchical authority.

The Nature of Networks.

Researchers have analyzed the operations, structures, and effectiveness of networks. In the most widely cited empirical study of networks, Provan and Milward (1995) analyzed the mental health services of four urban areas in the United States. They found that networks of different organizations provided these services, with each organization providing some type of service or part of the package of mental health services available in the area. Significantly, virtually none of the organizations was a government organization. The federal government provided most of the funding for the mental health services in these areas, but networks of private and nonprofit organizations provided the services.

Provan and Milward pointed out that for such networks of organizations, a real measure of effectiveness should not be focused on any individual organization. Instead, one must think in terms of the effectiveness of the entire network. Provan and Milward focused on clients in measuring the network’s effectiveness, using responses from clients, their families, and caseworkers concerning the clients’ quality of life, their satisfaction with the services of the network, and their level of functioning. They then examined the characteristics of the network in relation to these measures of effectiveness. They found that the most effective of the four mental health service networks was centralized and concentrated around a primary organization. The government funds for the system went directly to that agency, which played a strong central role in coordinating the other organizations in delivering services.

Milward and Provan (1998, 2000) developed the findings of their study into principles about the governance of networks. A network will most likely be effective when a core agency integrates the network, when the government’s mechanisms for fiscal control are direct and not fragmented, when resources are plentiful, and when the network is stable. In addition, assessing the effectiveness of networks requires evaluation on multiple levels, including the community level, the level of the network itself, and the level of the organizations participating in the network.

In another analysis of the internal characteristics of networks and of different types of networks, Agranoff (2007) studied fourteen “public management networks” (PMNs). Operating in Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kentucky, the networks deal with such policies as metropolitan planning, economic and rural development, river restoration, environmental infrastructure, and geographic information systems. Agranoff found important variations among the networks. Informational networks share program and policy information, while development networks do such sharing but also help their members develop capacities that they want to improve. Outreach networks go beyond these first two functions to include the development of interagency strategies for such purposes as assisting local governments in identifying and attaining resources they need; for example, they help the governments to maintain their water and wastewater systems. Finally, action networks, including four of the fourteen, are the only networks with the capacity to take actions that direct interagency policies and programs.

Agranoff (2007, p. 44) shows that the four types differ in their attributes and activities, including their internal power and authority, communication and external promotion, strategic planning and implementation, and organization. Many observers characterize networks as co-equal collaborative activities, but his evidence shows that power figures importantly. All the networks depend on influential members with political and administrative authority in the organizations from which they come, and on influential technical staff. These power configurations figure more importantly in the action networks than in the others. Agranoff also analyzed the networks’ performance by asking the network participants about the “value added” to their organization by the network. For many of the networks, the perceived added value comes in the form of communication processes and informational inputs, as opposed to ultimate impacts and results. For action-oriented networks, however, the added value involves more tangible results such as enhanced funding, funding allocations, and establishment of policies and plans. For all the networks, cohesion is essential, and the cohesion must be based on trust and mutual respect, and consensus building around a common purpose. Agranoff also points out that while networks have characteristics distinct from those of more formally structured organizations, many of the topics in this book apply to them, such as formalization and centralization, incentives, communication, and decision making.

Network Governance and Effectiveness.

Provan and Kenis (2008) examine network effectiveness, which they define as the attainment of positive network-level outcomes that individual organizational participants cannot achieve by acting independently. They identify three forms of network governance that relate to effectiveness. These include shared governance networks that are participant-governed and decentralized, with network members on an equal basis in the governance process. A lead organization form has a single vertical power holder, but with high decentralization. Networks with network administrative organizations, or NAOs, have a separate entity established specifically to govern the network and activities. These forms of network governance and the management of related tensions of the governance form have a major influence on network effectiveness (Provan and Kenis, 2008).

Leadership Networking and Organizational Effectiveness.

O’Toole and Meier (2004) analyzed all the school districts in Texas over a multiyear period, to show how structural features of intergovernmental networks and school district administrators’ networking behavior influence performance. Using a model of public management described later in Chapter Eleven, they found that when top administrators show higher levels of networking behaviors, these behaviors show positive relations to students’ performance in their districts, on standardized tests required of all students in the state. They also found that stability in a district relates to more effective networking activity. It provides a “platform for risk-taking, entrepreneurial action in networks. . . .” (O’Toole and Meier, 2004, pp. 491–492). Additional research employing the Meier and O’Toole (2001; O’Toole and Meier, 2011) public management model has found positive relations between networking behaviors and proactive management, organizational performance, management tenure, time in a given network, and gains for a given organization (see Goerdel, 2006; Hicklin, O’Toole, and Meier, 2008, Juenke, 2005).

Negative Networks?

Other studies have examined potential difficulties and negative implications of networks. Van Bueren, Klijn, and Koppenjan (2003) examined cognitive uncertainty, strategic uncertainty, and institutional uncertainty in the context of wicked policy problems faced by policy networks. These factors lead the networked actors to become dependent on each other to solve policy problems through joint action. The joint action, however, faces difficulties due to institutional barriers, cognitive differences and other dynamics of interaction (van Bueren, Klijn, and Koppenjan, 2003). Raab and Milward (2003) also turned to complex problems in their study of “dark networks,” or how network structures and governance are used for criminal or immoral ends.

Collaboration in Public Management

Networks, and other methods by which public, private, and nonprofit organizations work, increasingly involve collaboration among diverse actors and organizations. Organizations of all types often engage in cooperative and collaborative arrangements rather than competitive or go-it-alone modes (for example, Acar, Guo, and Yang, 2008; Bryson, Crosby, and Stone, 2006; O’Leary and Bingham, 2009). Among other topics, researchers have analyzed bargaining and negotiation in collaborative situations (Agranoff and McGuire, 2004); leadership frameworks (Crosby and Bryson, 2005); resource sharing, dependency or interdependency (Guo and Acar, 2005; Huang and Provan, 2007; Lundin, 2007; Tschirhart, Amezcua, and Anker, 2009); information sharing and human services (Page, 2008; Ryu and Rainey, 2009); tensions among collaborators and client confidentiality (Perri 6, Bellamy, Raab, Warren, and Heeney, 2007); and collaboration in disaster response and emergency management (Hicklin, O’Toole, Meier, and Robinson, 2009; McGuire, 2009; Waugh, 2009). Analysts have sought to define collaboration, to show how it differs from other concepts such as partnership, and to specify how to manage collaboration effectively (Smith, 2009; Thomson, Perry, and Miller, 2009).

What Is Collaboration?

Page (2003), in his examination of efforts to foster community collaboration to improve children and family services in Georgia and Vermont, identified five principle elements of collaboration. They are (1) agreeing to work together, (2) planning, (3) assessing progress, (4) improving performance, and 5) allocating and mobilizing resources. He found that managers can use participatory, inclusive processes to make and implement decisions in collaborative environments. These collaborative managers may also need to use depersonalized leadership techniques that are not aligned too closely with a particular organization in order to avoid alienating partners in the collaboration (Page, 2003).

Thomson, Perry, and Miller (2009) offer another definition of collaboration:

a process in which autonomous or semi-autonomous actors interact through formal and informal negotiation, jointly creating rules and structures governing their relationships and ways to act or decide on issues that brought them together; it is a process involving shared norms and mutually beneficial interactions (Thomson, Perry, and Miller, 2009, p. 25).

The authors further contend that collaboration is a multidimensional, variable construct composed of five key dimensions: governance and administration, which are both structural in nature; mutuality and norms, which are considered social capital dimensions; and organizational autonomy, which is a dimension of agency (Thomson, Perry, and Miller, 2009). Thomson and her colleagues measured these dimensions of collaboration by using data from a survey administered to directors of organizations that participated in the large national service program AmeriCorps. The evidence supported this conceptualization of collaboration and the five dimensions.

Ansell and Gash (2008) have developed the concept of “collaborative governance” as a system that “brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision-making” (p. 543). They define collaboration as

A governing arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets (Ansell and Gash, 2008, p. 544).

Their definition of collaborative governance consists of six criteria (pp. 544–545):

While these six criteria may characterize collaborative relationships, Smith (2009) points out that collaborative forums are not always initiated by public agencies or institutions.

Different Forms of Collaboration.

Sowa (2008) identified variations in interagency collaborations used to deliver services. She examined twenty cases of interagency collaborations in child care and education. She observed three different models of collaboration: shallow collaboration involving collaborative contracts, medium collaboration involving capacity building, and deep collaboration that involved community building. Shallow collaboration mostly involves the sharing of financial resources with relatively little interaction among agencies beyond the fiscal partnership. Medium collaboration, in addition to jointly receiving and sharing financial resources, involves sharing human and professional development resources that build the capacity of the organizations delivering the service and produces tangible benefits with the possibility of improving services. Deep collaboration encompasses the facets of both shallow and medium collaboration, but also provides for additional benefits including a greater understanding of the service provided and an enhanced vision of the collaboration’s role that potentially produces larger rewards that extend beyond the immediate organization boundaries.

Collaboration and Related Concepts.

Does collaboration differ from other cooperative forms such as policy networks and partnerships? Ansell and Gash (2008) contend that policy networks and collaborative governance are similar, but that collaborative governance places more emphasis on formal strategy for developing multilateral consensus-oriented decision-making processes. Cooperation in policy networks is usually more informal and less explicitly acknowledged.

Rethemeyer and Hatmaker (2008) distinguish between policy networks and collaborative networks. Policy networks involve a set of public sector agencies, legislative offices, and private sector organizations that include interest groups, nonprofits, and other groups that share interests in the decision making in a specific area of policy. These organizations constitute networks “because they communicate intensively about issues they care about and must exchange money, political support, and other ‘resources’ to influence public decisions and—most basically—to survive” (Rethemeyer and Hatmaker, 2008, p. 619). Collaborative networks, on the other hand, are collections of government agencies, nonprofits, and for-profits that work in concert to provide public services, goods, or “value” when a single agency is unable to create the good on its own and the private sector is unwilling to do so (Agranoff and McGuire, 1998, 2001; Brinkerhoff, 2002; Herranz, 2008; O’Toole, 1997; Rethemeyer and Hatmaker, 2008).

However one might distinguish between networks and collaboration and other concepts related to political power and public policy processes, the vital role of networks and collaborative relationships is clear. Public managers and policymakers need the skills to engage effectively in networks and collaborative situations. Researchers need to continue to build understanding of these processes.