Making Multilevel Public Management Work

Public management increasingly takes place in multilevel settings, since most countries are decentralized to one degree or another and most problems transcend and cut across administrative and geographical borders. A collaboration of scholars in the Transnational Initiative on Governance Research and Education (TIGRE Net), Making Multilevel Public

Public management increasingly takes place in multilevel settings, since most countries are decentralized to one degree or another and most problems transcend and cut across administrative and geographical borders. A collaboration of scholars in the Transnational Initiative on Governance Research and Education (TIGRE Net), Making Multilevel Public Management Work: Stories of Success and Failure from Europe and North America brings together two strands of literature—multilevel governance and public management—and draws conclusions on practices of public management in multilevel governance settings. The book focuses on how to make multilevel public management work. Using an inductive logic, the editors study a particular case or a few selected cases, highlight lessons learned and implications, and identify trends and concerns. The book underscores factors essential to making multilevel public management work, namely coordination and collaboration, and new skills and leadership capacities. It discusses the pitfalls of creating networks instead of managing them and the importance of finding the right leadership skills, institutional design, and network management mechanisms to avoid deadlock and manage conflict effectively. Multilevel public management creates multiple opportunities and their accompanying challenges. By bringing together case studies in Europe and North America, this book identifies conditions for success and those under which such governance arrangements fail. Demonstrating the insights gained by the cross-fertilization of ideas, the book has also been strengthened by the participation of researchers from various disciplines, including public management, political science and international relations, economics, as well as administrative law. The interdisciplinary nature of the scholarship provides a complete and compelling portrait of multilevel public management as practiced and studied on two continents. The book opens the debate on what is needed to make it work

State Management offers a comprehensive yet concise introduction to the new field of state management, presenting an analysis of basic questions within the theories of bureaucracy, policy-making, principal-agent modelling and policy networks. Focussing upon recent state transformation, it illuminates public sector reform strategies such as New Public Management as well as incorporation, tendering and bidding, decentralization, team production and privatization. This book argues that we should look upon the variety of models or approaches to public management or public administration as all belonging under "state management". The so-called "working state" in a well-ordered society involves government delivering services, paying for social security and respecting the rule of law. In this text, Jan-Erik Lane systematically examines the key approaches to the study of how government attempts to achieve these goals, discussing the pros and cons of alternative frameworks of analysis. Each chapter discusses a different issue within state management that is integral to the broader debate, including: Public regulation The relationship between the law and the state Combining ecology and policy making Multi-level governance The virtues and vices of public-private partnerships Policy implementation Presenting a clear overview of how the state operates when government sets out to deliver public services, and generating questions to encourage new research, State Management is a valuable new text for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in political science, public administration and public management.

Public Management deals with various aspects of public management, such as the public management environment and functions. It also deals with the skills needed and applications for public management.

New public management is a topical phrase to describe how management techniques from the private sector are now being applied to public services. This book provides a completely up-to-date overview of the main theoretical models of public sector management, and examines the key changes that have occurred as more and more public services are contracted out to private organisations, as the public sector itself grapples with 'internal markets'. Drawing on economics, organisational theory and poliltics, Jan-Erik Lane presents new public management from an analytical perspective. This book uses game theory and empirical studies in order to assess the pros and cons of new public management.

Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This open access book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. The authors argue that Switzerland is an interesting case, from a theoretical, scientific and a more practice-oriented perspective. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.

This edited volume provides a comprehensive overview of the diverse and multi-faceted research on governance in multilevel systems. The book features a collection of cutting-edge trans-Atlantic contributions, covering topics such as federalism, decentralization as well as various forms and processes of regionalization and Europeanization. While the field of multilevel governance is comparatively young, research in the subject has also come of age as considerable theoretical, conceptual and empirical advances have been achieved since the first influential works were published in the early noughties. The present volume aims to gauge the state-of-the-art in the different research areas as it brings together a selection of original contributions that are united by a variety of configurations, dynamics and mechanisms related to governing in multilevel systems.

Ongaro has made a major contribution to understanding the political and adminstrative systems of Southern Europe. The work goes beyond that, however, by providing an excellent example of comparative analysis in general. This book should be read by all students of comparative administration. B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US and City University of Hong Kong This is an important book for several reasons. Public sector reform debates and policies have been heavily perhaps too heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxon models, and literature on reforms in the Latin part of Europe has, until now, only been available in a fragmented way. However, this unique new book offers a coherent vision across Southern Europe. It refers to important parts of our history and how these still influence current times. It also shows that culture does make a difference, and that contingencies are important. European public sector reform is as diverse as the range of its administrative histories, and this book is therefore crucial in our understanding of the future in relation to the past. Geert Bouckaert, Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and European Group for Public Administration This systematic, thorough and insightful book offers one of the very rare comparative studies of public management reform in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. A unique and most valuable study. Walter Kickert, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands Scholars of public management reform have been at it for many years but there was always a gap little was really known about southern Europe, those countries that come from the Napoleonic tradition. Now, Professor Edoardo Ongaro of Bocconi University has filled that gap, and we will all profit from his diligent and insightful work. Jeffrey D. Straussman, Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, US Theoretically eclectic and empirically rich, this is a much-needed volume on the dark side of the moon, that is, public management reform outside the Anglo-Saxon world. Edoardo Ongaro sheds light on Italy and four other Napoleonic systems by producing a far-reaching comparative analysis that also captures the effects of Europeanization and multi-level governance on public management reforms. Ambitious yet ultimately accessible, this book is a must-read for those who want to explain and understand the trajectories of reform in their historical context. Claudio Radaelli, University of Exeter, UK The reader will find in Professor Ongaro s book a clear and thorough discussion of the public sector reform process both in Italy and southern European countries based upon a systematic comparative framework. This is a very useful and original work that any student in comparative politics or public administration will highly appreciate. Luc Rouban, CNRS, Centre de Recherches Politiques de Science Po (CEVIPOF), Paris, France This scholarly volume makes an interesting and distinctive contribution to the global public management reform debate by offering an analysis of reform trajectories in an important but rather neglected group of Southern European countries. Ewan Ferlie, King's College London, UK Since the 1980s, a wave of reforms of public management has swept the world. The investigation into the effects of such major transformations has, however, been unbalanced: important countries have received only limited attention. This timely book fills the gap by investigating the dynamics of contemporary public management reform in five European countries that gave shape to the Napoleonic administrative tradition France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain. Edoardo Ongaro presents an in-depth investigation of the reform of public management in these countries, revisiting major topics of theoretical interest in the study of public administration. He addresses key issues regarding the influence of the past on the transformation of the public se