Public managers who operate within cross-jurisdictional governance regimes face substantial difficulties in facilitating network collaboration. Scholars have long suggested that non-congruence of geographic borders can create coordination problems among the political communities within...

Combining data on federal contract awards by agency and location, agency attributes, and the political dynamics at play over the course of a twenty-year panel, we model the relative change in contract awards within and across states as a function of the three-dimensional relationship among...

In theory, students of democracy hold that voting is the hallmark of a responsive government. One measure of responsive government is the fit between citizens' policy expectations and those of their agents, the elected officials. We examine fluctuations in federal awards and assistance to House...

George W. Bush assumed the presidency with the ill-fated political aim of creating a permanent electoral alignment favoring Reagan Republicanism in America by pursuing a “big government conservatism” agenda. We define the logic of big government conservativism as a strategy for electoral...

This study introduces a measurement approach to test a core precept in the study of bureaucratic politics and public organizations. First, we quantify James Q. Wilson's famous agency typology by the relative observability of agency outcomes. We code over 20,000 stated objectives from Performance...

We analyze presidential appointee positions subject to Senate-confirmation (PAS) without a confirmed appointee in office. These “vacant” positions are byproducts of American constitutional design, shaped by the interplay of institutional politics. Using a novel data-set, we analyze PAS...

In this essay, we explore the question of “who, if anyone, controls the federal bureaucracy?” In doing so, we look at the issue of delegation — a fundamental of American representative democracy. We focus on the two constitutional institutions imbued with direct electorally delegated...

This article assesses the field of public administration from a conceptual and methodological perspective. We urge public administration scholars to resolve the ambiguities that mire our scholarship due to the inadequate treatment of levels of analysis in our research. Overall, we encourage...

Most studies in diversity management analyze race, gender, and age in the workforce as separate categories with less attention paid to intersectionality. This study looks at which groups engage in uncompensated extra-role behaviors and experience emotional exhaustion. We find that the...