ABSTRACT
Much has been made in the public administration literature about how the past thirty years of government downsizing and privatization in combination with “wicked” policy problems reaching the policy agenda have led to increasing reliance on nongovernmental actors for government problem-solving and service delivery (Rittel and Webber 1973; Lowndes and Skelcher 1998; Agranoff and McGuire 2001; Weber and Khademian 2008). Accompanying this rise of networked government has been an equal expansion of public policies, or policy tools, designed to aid in the leveraging of these networks to attain public sector goals (Peters 2002; Salamon 2002; Howlett 2005). As a result, researchers have increasingly focused on the development, selection, and performance of policy instruments at the state and regional levels, particularly in the areas of economic development, energy policy, and environmental regulation (Bressers and O'Toole Jr. 1998; Agranoff and McGuire 2003; Feiock, Jeong and Kim 2003; Howlett, Kim and Weaver 2006; Feiock, Tavares and Lubell 2008). At the same time, research examining how public management strategies at the individual and interpersonal levels have adapted to this new governance environment has grown, creating a theoretical foundation for network management practice (Agranoff and McGuire 2003; McGuire 2006; Ansell and Gash 2008).
