Lipsky's seminal concept of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) focuses on their role as public servants. However, in the course of new modes of governance, private actors have gained an additional role as implementation agents. We explore the logic of private SLBs during the implementation of the...

Due to their nodal position in economic and social development, metropolitan areas give impetus to globalization. In turn, they are themselves transformed by this process. However, the question of how metropolitan areas transform by participating in the process of globalization is subject to...

Our aim in this paper is to explain the international strategies of cities by focusing on market conditions. Drawing on a critique of the glocalisation thesis we show that the design of these strategies can plausibly be explained by the specific characteristics of urban capitalism found in the...

The paper aims at explaining the adoption of policy programs. We use the garbage can model of organizational choice as our theoretical framework and complement it with the institutional setting of administrative decision-making in order to understand the complex causation of policy program...

This paper investigates the interrelation of policy implementation and policy change by addressing the question of whether and how the Swiss energy program “EnergieSchweiz” influenced policy decisions. We discuss different ways in which a policy program may influence policy change: by...

In the present paper, we argue that the existing data collections fail to map specific features of modern public administration in Switzerland, namely new modes of governance with hybrid state structures. After presenting the Swiss federal administration in a nutshell, we discuss the challenge...

How best to define performance measures is a much-debated issue. Mismatches between goals and indicators can lead to distortions that undermine impact-oriented steering. This article presents a model of goal and indicator development and explains its applicability, benefits and limitations.