ABSTRACT
During the past century, American governance has been transformed fundamentally. The scope of government action has increased at all levels of the federal system. Moreover, the means through which government addresses public problems have changed radically. Where public functions originally were performed primarily by state actors, and later delegated to closely related agents of the state, discretion over the day-to-day operation of public programs now routinely rests not with the responsible government agencies, but with a host of nongovernmental, third-party surrogates or proxies that provide programs under the aegis of loans, loan guarantees, grants, contracts, vouchers, and other new tools of public action. This exercise of core governmental authority by non-and quasi-govemmental entities is perhaps the most distinctive feature of America’s “new governance” (Salamon 2002, pp. 1-2; Kettl 1988, 1993).
