ABSTRACT
Over the past five decades, the practice of public management in the US, as well as many other parts of the world, has evolved in such a way that administrative action is rarely carried out through conventional notions of bureaucracy involving authoritative, hierarchically structured action. Rather, the structure of US government administration now resembles, and indeed requires, extensive horizontal webs of actors, none of whom have an exclusive claim to power. In recent years this transformation of government from vertical hierarchies to horizontal networks and public—private partnerships has been recognized with increasing frequency in the public management literature (Goldsmith and Eggers 2004; Salamon 2002; Kettl 2000; Frederickson 1999; Agranoff and McGuire 2004; O'Toole 1997).
