Contracting—An American Way of Governance

In earlier ages, today’s modern Western states relied on nongovernmental actors to perform core “governmental” activities under contractual arrangements—tax collection, public finance, war fighting, and building and maintaining empires (Corvisier 1979; De Soto 1989; Ferguson 1999; Kamen 2002; Mallett 1999; Petrie 1999; Schama 1989; Strayer 1970: Strouse 2000; Taylor 2001; Wild 2000). ¹ In the global transformation from government to governance—the performance of public purposes by a mix of state, market, and civil society actors ² —the United States is the pioneer in the renewed deployment of private contractors to perform the basic work of government.