Policymakers and public managers around the world have become preoccupied with the question of how their goals can be achieved in a way that rebuilds public confidence in government. Yet because public policies and programs increasingly are being administered through a complicated web of jurisdictions, agencies, and public-private partnerships, evaluating their effectiveness is more difficult than in the past. Though social scientists possess insightful theories and powerful methods for conducting empirical research on governance and public management, their work is too often fragmented and irrelevant to the specific tasks faced by legislators, administrators, and managers.
Proposing a framework for research based on the premise that any particular governance arrangement is embedded in a wider social, fiscal, and political context, Laurence E. Lynn Jr., Carolyn J. Heinrich, and Carolyn J. Hill argue that theory-based empirical research, when well conceived and executed, can be a primary source of fundamental, durable knowledge about governance and policy management. Focusing on complex human services such as public assistance, child protection, and public education, they construct an integrative, multilevel "logic of governance," that can help researchers increase the sophistication, power, and relevance of their work.
Table of Contents
Preface
About the Authors
List of Tables and Features
1. Governance in a Democracy
What is Governance?
Complications of Governance Research
Purposes of this Book
Limits to Governance
A Caveat
Notes
2. A Logic for Governance Research
Challenges for Governance Research
The Logic of Market Governance
Public-Sector Governance: An Institutional View
Levels of Governance
Notes
3. Institutional Governance
Legal Idealism
Political Economy
The New Institutionalism
Notes
4. Organizational and Technical Governance
The Organizational (Managerial) Level
The Technical (Primary Work) Level
Notes
5. Designing Research: Applying a Logic of Governance
Questions and Issues
A Reduced-Form Model
Summary
Notes
6. Designing Reseach: Models, Methods, and Data
Identifying a Literature of Governance
Critiquing a Literature of Governance
Summary
Notes
7. Governance Research: Scholarly Applications
Governance Research in Three Policy Domains
More Extensive Reviews of Individual Governance Studies
Conlcuding Comment
Notes
8. Governance: Research and Practice
The Nature of Research
The Nature of Practice
Enlightening Practice: Utilizing a Logic
Enlightening Practice: Prospects
Conclusion
Notes
References
Names Index
Subject Index
Reviews
"Provides insights that come from practical experiences and research disappointments. Improving Governance is a valuable book for those who undertake organizational and policy research and for those desiring to do so."—American Political Science Review
About the Author
Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., is Sydney Stein Jr. Professor of Public Management at the University of Chicago.
Carolyn J. Heinrich is an assistant professor of public policy analysis at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Together they coedited Governance and Performance: New Perspectives (Georgetown, 2000).
Carolyn J. Hill is assistant professor in the Georgetown Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University.
