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49 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 1 of 3

Shadows of Integrity in Public Administration

Shadows of Integrity in Public Administration
  • Survey Experiments on Ethics and Corruption
  • Luis Garrido-Vergara
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Corruption is a complex phenomenon that challenges ethics and integrity in public administration. Over the past decade, increased societal monitoring – particularly through the media and civil society organizations – has brought corruption back to the forefront of public concern and political debate. Since most state bureaucracies are formally grounded in a Weberian ethos of meritocracy, competition, and discipline, this raises fundamental questions: What causes corruption in the public sector, and what factors shape the likelihood that a public servant will engage in corrupt or unethical behaviour? This Element addresses these questions by advancing survey experiments as a central methodological approach for studying corruption in public administration. By reviewing existing experimental research and outlining research protocols for the design and analysis of survey experiments, this Element aims to contribute methodologically and substantively to the study of corruption and integrity in the public sector.
Public Administration and the Illiberal Challenge

Public Administration and the Illiberal Challenge
  • Michael W. Bauer
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • This Element addresses the illiberal challenge facing public administration amidst the rise of authoritarian populism and democratic backsliding. It investigates how populist governments seek to reshape state bureaucracies, often undermining liberal democratic principles such as pluralism, expertise, and constitutional safeguards, and examines how public administration must respond to safeguard democratic integrity. Drawing on global examples, the Element identifies strategies of populist administrative manipulation, patterns of bureaucratic compliance and resistance, and critical gaps in scholarly understanding. It develops a framework for analyzing these dynamics and proposes normative principles to defend active democratic bureaucracy. Through theoretical inquiry and practical recommendations, it advocates for robust, ethically grounded public administration capable of countering illiberal pressures. Its central thesis underscores the need to restore the intellectual foundation of public administration as a social science deeply embedded in and committed to the democratic policy process. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Agency Theory in Public Administration

Agency Theory in Public Administration
  • A Comparative Study of the US, China, and EU
  • Eduardo Araral
  • Published online:
    15 April 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
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  • This Element advances an agency-theoretic approach to public administration through comparative analysis of the United States, China, and EU. It examines how principals – such as legislatures, executives, or ruling parties – can align the actions of diverse agents, including civil servants, public agencies, street-level bureaucrats, and contractors, with the public interest. Drawing on an extensive review of 146 key studies and AI-assisted analysis of 8,400 articles from Public Administration Review, Part I outlines fundamental concepts: goal divergence, moral hazard, adverse selection, and information asymmetry and traces its history, debates, and criticisms. These concepts are then applied to key themes in public administration – performance management, federalism/decentralization, contracting, politics-administration, and institutional drift. Part II investigates how these problems manifest and tackled in the US, China, and Europe. Part III concludes with a synthesis of findings, debates, extensions, and future directions for theory and practice.

Trumpism and the Future of Public Administration
  • Donald F. Kettl
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • Donald Trump saw the federal bureaucracy as the breeding ground of the 'deep state,' a powerful, unresponsive collection of bureaucratic experts determined to undermine the policies for which he was convinced he had a mandate. He translated that into a furious assault on the basic principles of both the theory and practice of public administration. One of the points of his genius was his incomparable skill in identifying issues that resonated with voters, and his attacks on public administration identified unarguable problems. But those attacks also eroded government's capacity to get work done and the strategies for accountability that had carefully grown since the founders wrote the Constitution. Transforming administration into instruments of political symbols and political power undermined the basic values of public administration – and created fundamental challenges to which the field must rise in charting a public administration for 2035 and beyond.
Managing Public Sector Contracts

Managing Public Sector Contracts
  • Market Frictions and Human Resources Solutions
  • Matthew Potoski, Ole Helby Petersen, Lena Brogaard, Trevor Brown
  • Published online:
    20 January 2026
    Print publication:
    19 February 2026
  • This Element presents a framework for analyzing the complexities of contracting, how these vary across circumstances, the ways contract managers can address challenges, and the skills of contract managers. The framework is grounded on central concepts. Market frictions are underlying imperfections that cause common contracting problems; contract management activities are the tasks and procedures that contract managers perform to prepare and execute the purchase; and skills are the ability to perform contract management activities that identify and mitigate frictions. These concepts are interdependent – market frictions can influence the efficacy of contract management activities, activities may reduce or increase the presence of frictions, and skills may influence both the choice and effectiveness of activities in addressing contracting challenges. Omitting any of these components is likely to result in misleading accounts of the root causes and potential solutions to contracting challenges.
Design Strategies in Public Services

Design Strategies in Public Services
  • Maria Cucciniello, Greta Nasi, Gregory Porumbescu, Rosanna Tarricone
  • Published online:
    08 January 2026
    Print publication:
    05 February 2026
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  • This Element explores the transformative impact of integrating service design principles into public management and administration, championing a user-centred approach and co-design methodology. By reviewing existing literature, the authors define the scope and applications of service design within public administration and present three empirical studies to evaluate its implementation in public services. These studies reveal a trend towards embracing co-design and digital technologies, advancing a citizen-centred strategy for public service design. This approach prioritizes value creation and responsiveness, highlighting the importance of involving users and providers in the development of services that meet changing needs and promote inclusion. Combining theoretical insights with practical solutions, the Element offers a comprehensive framework for public management research. It highlights the need for ongoing engagement and integration of user experiences, presenting an effective strategy to navigate the complexities of public service design. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Value-Based Governance

Value-Based Governance
  • Gjalt de Graaf
  • Published online:
    17 December 2025
    Print publication:
    22 January 2026
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  • Public governance is inherently normative, so it is important to study the values of public governance – particularly in the present-day context, where, given increasingly differentiated Western public governance, many different values come into play and new value conflicts arise. In this Element, a value-based governance (VBG) perspective is presented. In this perspective, values take center stage as the guiding concept in the theory and practice of public administration and are used as a heuristic to understand and analyze public governance. One section focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of coping strategies used by actors and institutions when dealing with value conflicts. In the final section, the author returns to the practice of public governance: the VBG paradigm entails public governance with normative reasoning. Value-based governance is about bringing the value rationality back in and recognizing intrinsic values. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Bureaucratic Resistance in Times of Democratic Backsliding

Bureaucratic Resistance in Times of Democratic Backsliding
  • João V. Guedes-Neto, B. Guy Peters
  • Published online:
    26 September 2025
    Print publication:
    16 October 2025
  • This Element investigates how public employees react to illiberal policies proposed by authoritarian leaders during democratic backsliding. Using survey experiments employed with 942 bureaucrats from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil, the research explores their willingness to resist the implementation of illiberal policies. Findings show a significant readiness for resistance. The results indicate varying levels of resistance across countries, with Brazilian bureaucrats showing the highest, followed by British and American counterparts. Additionally, within-country analysis identifies individual characteristics affecting the intent to resist. The Element explores the dynamic relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, the autonomy of civil servants, and the perils of working under autocratic leadership. It also underscores the need for tailored strategies in recruiting and retaining public employees to uphold democratic values. These findings shed light on the complex dynamics between bureaucrats and democratic governance, emphasizing the importance of safeguarding institutions in times of authoritarian challenges.
Sustainable Inclusion through Performance-Driven Practices

Sustainable Inclusion through Performance-Driven Practices
  • An Evidence-Based, Dynamic Systems Framework
  • Ruth Sessler Bernstein, Paul Salipante
  • Published online:
    24 April 2025
    Print publication:
    24 April 2025
  • How can organizations better achieve inclusion, equity, and superior performance from diversity? Decades of stalled progress require a wider range of policies. Applying a system thinking approach to a transdisciplinary synthesis of research findings, the authors' comprehensive framework guides inquiry and practice by identifying problematic dynamics. Comparative case studies reveal, in contrast, favorable dynamics of intergroup contact that result from an evolved elaboration of practices for inclusive interactions, socialization, and accountability. Over time, when promoted for mission attainment, applied to all members, and customized to the workgroup, the practices generate inclusion, equity, and superior performance.
Court-Ordered Community Service

Court-Ordered Community Service
  • The Experiences of Community Organizations and Community Service Workers
  • Rebecca Nesbit, Su Young Choi, Jody Clay-Warner
  • Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
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  • Community service is a common court-ordered sanction in many countries. Individuals sentenced to community service must work a specified number of uncompensated hours at an approved community agency, typically as a condition of probation. A core expectation of court-ordered community service is that the community agencies benefit from this labor. However, very little research examines the organizational and interpersonal dynamics involved when community organizations work with court-ordered community service workers. What are local public and nonprofit organizations' experiences with court-ordered community service workers? How do the workers, themselves, experience court-ordered community service within community agencies? This Element addresses these questions through interviews with thirty-one volunteer managers and thirty-four court-ordered community service workers in two court jurisdictions in northeast Georgia. The Element frames its findings within the volunteer management literature and suggests practices that could improve experiences for both the court-ordered community service worker and the community organization. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Public Service Explained

Public Service Explained
  • The Role of Citizens in Value Creation
  • Greta Nasi, Stephen Osborne, Maria Cucciniello, Tie Cui
  • Published online:
    09 December 2024
    Print publication:
    19 December 2024
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  • This Cambridge Element aims to advance theory by investigating the nature of participation in public service delivery. It situates itself under the theory of Public Service Logic to advocate for a strategic orientation to participation as an element of value creation in public services. It introduces the concept of participation and discusses the motives, incentives, and tools to engage citizens in public service delivery processes. Then, it frames citizens' participation under the approach public service ecosystem to capture the dynamic relationships among citizens, other actors, processes, and structures that may contribute to determining value in public service delivery. It presents the dynamics of value creation and destruction in public service. The Element concludes with implications for research and practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Topics in Public Administration

Topics in Public Administration
  • Perspectives from Computational Social Sciences and Corpus Linguistics
  • Richard M. Walker, Jiasheng Zhang, Yanto Chandra
  • Published online:
    29 November 2024
    Print publication:
    09 January 2025
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  • This inductive examination of the topics in the public administration literature using computational social science and corpus linguistics (17 journals, N=12,760 articles, 1991–2019) reveals a new landscape of public administration topics, changes in topics over time and their distribution: Topic modelling of the stock of the whole corpus identifies 50 topics: the top ten topics included health care, federal government, performance management, environmental regulation, HRM and networks and accounted for just over a third of scholarship between 1991–2019. Focal topics identified in individual journals identified similarities with popular topics in the whole corpus – networks, health care, HRM – and less frequently examined topics including gender and diversity and partnerships. Analysis of topics over time shows a substantial flow in topics moving from a country and practice focus in the early stages of our study period to concepts such as governance, networks and citizens in the late stages (2015–2019).
Standing Up for Nonprofits

Standing Up for Nonprofits
  • Advocacy on Federal, Sector-wide Issues
  • Alan J. Abramson, Benjamin Soskis
  • Published online:
    23 May 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
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  • This Element examines the recent history of nonprofit sector-wide advocacy at the federal level, focusing on work done by national nonprofit infrastructure organizations and national charities, to advocate on issues, such as tax incentives for charitable giving, that affect a broad range of nonprofits. The Element draws on interviews with thirty-nine national and state nonprofit leaders and federal policymakers as well as published papers and journalistic accounts. It finds that many policymakers are only weakly supportive of the nonprofit sector. In the end, this Element points to an uneasy, shifting balance in nonprofit sector advocacy between informal, decentralized, issue-based coalitions focused on short-term, if vital, legislative victories, on one hand, and the public good mandate embraced by some sector-wide advocates, which attends to longer time horizons and a broad conception of the defense of civil society, on the other. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Courts and the President

The Courts and the President
  • Judicial Review of Presidential Directed Action
  • Charles Wise
  • Published online:
    22 May 2024
    Print publication:
    20 June 2024
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  • Despite voters' distaste for corruption, corrupt politicians frequently get reelected. This Element provides a framework for understanding the conditions under which corrupt politicians are reelected. One unexplored source of electoral accountability is court rulings on candidate malfeasance, which are increasingly determining politicians' prospects. I find that (1) low-income voters – in contrast to higher income voters – are responsive to such rulings. Unlike earlier studies, we explore multiple tradeoffs voters weigh when confronting a corrupt candidate, including the candidate's party, policy positions, and personal attributes. The results also surprisingly show (2) low-income.
Can Governance be Intelligent?

Can Governance be Intelligent?
  • An Interdisciplinary Approach and Evolutionary Modelling for Intelligent Governance in the Digital Age
  • Eran Vigoda-Gadot
  • Published online:
    14 May 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2024
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  • Intelligence is a concept that occurs in multiple contexts and has various meanings. It refers to the ability of human beings and other entities to think and understand the world around us. It represents a set of skills directed at problem-solving and targeted at producing effective results. Thus, intelligence and governance are an odd couple. We expect governments and other governing institutions to operate in an intelligent manner, but too frequently we criticize their understanding of serious public problems, their decisions, behaviors, managerial skills, ability to solve urgent problems, and overall governability wisdom. This manuscript deals with such questions using interdisciplinary insights (i.e., psychological, social, institutional, biological, technological) on intelligence and integrating it with knowledge in governance, administration, and management in public and non-profit sectors. We propose the IntelliGov framework, that may extend both our theoretical, methodological, analytical, and applied understanding of intelligent governance in the digital age.
New Public Governance as a Hybrid

New Public Governance as a Hybrid
  • A Critical Interpretation
  • Laura Cataldi
  • Published online:
    23 January 2024
    Print publication:
    29 February 2024
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  • This Element focuses on New Public Governance as one of the major administrative narratives of our times. It offers a critical interpretation of NPG as a hybrid tool for management, governance, and reform, arguing that NPG coexists with and is likely to gradually merge into New Public Management. Several arguments support the 'continuity and hybridization' hypothesis, whereby the transition from NPM to NPG occurred through the retention of key elements and a layering and sedimentation process. These arguments challenge the “linear substitution” hypothesis, accounting for NPM's persistence and dominance. The Element develops a new interpretation of NPG and discusses the challenges that NPG poses. Finally, it shows that exploring hybridity is critical for evaluating the potential of NPG in terms of a shift in public administration and understanding governance trajectories and reform scenarios.
Experts in Government

Experts in Government
  • The Deep State from Caligula to Trump and Beyond
  • Donald F. Kettl
  • Published online:
    18 December 2023
    Print publication:
    18 January 2024
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  • From Caligula and the time of ancient Rome to the present, governments have relied on experts to manage public programs. But with that expertise has come power, and that power has long proven difficult to hold accountable. The tension between experts in the bureaucracy and the policy goals of elected officials, however, remains a point of often bitter tension. President Donald Trump labeled these experts as a 'deep state' seeking to resist the policies he believed he was elected to pursue—and he developed a policy scheme to make it far easier to fire experts he deemed insufficiently loyal. The age-old battles between expertise and accountability have come to a sharp point, and resolving these tensions requires a fresh look at the rule of law to shape the role of experts in governance.
Redefining Development

Redefining Development
  • Resolving Complex Challenges in a Global Context
  • 2nd edition
  • Jessica Kritz
  • Published online:
    09 June 2023
    Print publication:
    06 July 2023
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  • In 2015, Old Fadama, the largest informal community in Accra, was a government 'no-go zone.' Armed guards accompanied a participatory action research team and stakeholders as they began an empirical research project. Their goals: resolve wicked problems, advance collaboration theory, and provide direct services to vulnerable beneficiaries. In three years, they designed a collaboration intervention based on rigorous evidence, Ghana's culture and data from 300 core stakeholders. Sanitation policy change transformed the community, and government began to collaborate freely. By 2022, the intervention was replicated in Accra, Kumasi and eleven rural communities, providing health services to more than 10,000 kayayei (women head porters) and addressing complex challenges for 15,000 direct and hundreds of thousands of indirect beneficiaries. This collaboration intervention improved community participation, changed policy, and redefined development in theory and practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Public Administration and Democracy

Public Administration and Democracy
  • The Complementarity Principle
  • Anthony M. Bertelli, Lindsey J. Schwartz
  • Published online:
    08 December 2022
    Print publication:
    19 January 2023
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  • This Element argues for a complementarity principle – governance values should complement political values – as a guide for designing the structures and procedures of public administration. It argues that the value-congruity inherent in the complementarity principle is indispensable to administrative responsibility. It identifies several core democratic values and critically assesses systems of collaborative governance, representative bureaucracy, and participatory policymaking in light of those values. It shows that the complementarity principle, applied to these different designs, facilitates administrative responsibility by making the structures themselves more consistent with democratic principles without compromising their aims. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Organizing and Institutionalizing Local Sustainability

Organizing and Institutionalizing Local Sustainability
  • A Design Approach
  • Aaron Deslatte
  • Published online:
    18 November 2022
    Print publication:
    15 December 2022
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  • This Element explores the role of public managers as designers. Drawing from systems-thinking and strategic management, a process-tracing methodology is used to examine three design processes whereby public managers develop strategies for adapting to climate change, build the requisite capabilities and evaluate outcomes. Across three cases, the findings highlight the role of managers as 'design- oriented' integration agents and point to areas where additional inquiry is warranted. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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