We offer a theoretical approach to federalism by defining a theoretical approach as a general account of the subject. It is general in that it applies in any political situation, at any time in history when political entities that are recognizable as nations existed. It is an account in being a...

This is a review of Jody Freeman & Martha Minow, eds., Government By Contract: Outsourcing and American Democracy (Harvard Univ., 2009). After summarizing and analyzing the individual contributions to the volume, and delineating their disagreements, the review proceeds to identify areas of...

Privatization, a perennial feature of American governance, expanded significantly in the second Bush Administration but is now subject to an extensive re-assessment. Government by Contract, edited by Jody Freeman and Martha Minow, is an excellent and timely collection of essays on the subject....

When we speak of depoliticizing an administrative agency, what we mean is insulating it from direct presidential control. The resulting distinction between executive and independent agencies, however, is essentially invisible to Congress. All the mechanisms of control that Congress exercises...

Stephen Skowronek's The Politics Presidents Make argues that presidential administrations can be organized into sequences defined by distinctive paradigms of governance: one president defines or “reconstructs” a new approach to government (e.g. Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt) one or more...

This paper explores the relationship between government actions and innovation in an environmental control technology - sulfur dioxide (SO2) control technologies for power plants - through the use of complementary research methods. Its findings include the importance of regulation and the...