ABSTRACT
The challenge of homeland security has brought to the fore the observation of Lester Salamon that the administration of government services is moving from a hierarchical structure to the management of organizational networks (Salamon 2002). Homeland security requires (1) detection of potential threats, (2) effective incident response, and (3) improvement of systems and infrastructure to prevent or mitigate hostile acts. In each of these areas, the federal government must act through what Salamon has called third-party government, including state and local governments and private actors. Even in areas where a hierarchical model of governance may be called for, such as security of air travel, “high-reliability organizations depend on effective management of their horizontal boundaries with other organizations” (Fredrickson and LaPorte 2002).
