The Political Economy of Public Sector Governance

by Anthony Michael Bertelli

• ISBN13: 9780521736640
• ISBN10: 0521736641
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book provides a general, nontechnical introduction to core ideas in positive political theory as they apply to public management and policy. Anthony Michael Bertelli helps readers understand public-sector governance arrangements and their implications for public management practice policy outcomes. By offering a framework that applies to specific administrative tasks, The Political Economy of Public Sector Governance allows readers to think clearly about many aspects of the modern administrative state and how they fit into a larger project of governance.

Author Biography

Anthony Michael Bertelli holds the C. C. Crawford Chair in Management and Performance in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development and the USC Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Madison's Managers: Public Administration and the Constitution (with Laurence E. Lynn, Jr.) as well as more than thirty articles and serves as co-editor of the Journal of Public Policy.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Some Building Blocks	p. 2
Defining Governance	p. 6
Political Economy and Reform Movements	p. 10
Political Economy and Public Management	p. 13
Plan of the Book	p. 17
Methodological Foundations	p. 19
The Principal-Agent Model	p. 20
Hidden Action	p. 22
Hidden Information	p. 28
Conclusion	p. 35
Theory
The Power of the Purse	p. 39
The Budget as Political Constraint	p. 41
The Characteristic Bureaucrat	p. 43
The Political Economy of Budgeting	p. 52
Signaling Approaches	p. 63
Conclusion	p. 75
Delegation and Discretion	p. 78
Agency Problems in U.S. Government	p. 80
The Spatial Model	p. 91
The Decision to Delegate	p. 95
Modeling Policy Implementation	p. 108
Conclusion	p. 119
Applications
Contracts and Partnerships	p. 123
Make or Buy?	p. 125
Contractible Attributes	p. 131
Enforcement	p. 136
The Right Contractor	p. 141
Some Normative Implications	p. 143
Conclusion	p. 145
Responsibility and Good Governance	p. 146
The Good Agent	p. 147
Monitoring Responsibility	p. 156
Conclusion	p. 164
Conclusion	p. 166
Propositions from Chapters 3 and 4	p. 173
Recommended Readings	p. 176
References	p. 185
Index	p. 199
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