Is Hierarchical Governance In Decline? Evidence from Empirical Research

The growing acceptance of ‘‘governance’’ as an organizing concept for public management reform reflects a widespread, though not universal, belief that the focus of administrative practice is shifting from hierarchical government toward greater reliance on horizontal, hybridized, and associational forms of governance. Recent arguments to this effect, however, make limited recourse to the body of empirical evidence that might shed light on the actual extent of this transformation. In this article we report on our review of over eight hundred individual research studies in order to assess what we know about governance based on available empirical evidence across a range of disciplines and substantive fields. We find that hierarchical investigations of the nature and consequences of governmental action predominate in the literature. We supplement this primary finding with additional analyses of research on performance and on public management. We then discuss possible reasons for the observed hierarchical orientation of research. While we cannot rule out the possibility that our findings reflect researchers’ biases rather than actual governance, we infer that the shifts away from hierarchical government toward horizontal governing reflect instead a gradual addition of new administrative forms that facilitate governance within a system of constitutional authority that is necessarily hierarchical. In conclusion, we propose additional research that might confirm or refute this inference and that could fill the gaps of our understanding of public governance. ‘‘Governance’’ fever is catching: Many of public administration’s leading scholars have embraced the concept of governance to frame the ongoing discourse on public management reform (Garvey 1997; Kettl 2000, 2002; Peters and Pierre 1998; Salamon 2002). A group of scholars at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government are engaged in a multi-year, multi-publication project, ‘‘Visions of Governance in the Twenty-First Century,’’ and the Brookings Institution recently changed the name of its ‘‘Governmental Studies’’ program to ‘‘Governance Studies.’’ The momentum behind this idea is sufficiently strong for Frederickson and Smith to suggest that governance has become ‘‘a virtual synonym for public management and public administration’’ (2003, 225). We are grateful for the research assistance of Melissa Bradley and Amy Brimer, and for the comments of JPART reviewers. Address correspondence to Carolyn J. Hill at [email protected]. doi:10.1093/jopart/mui011 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory a 2005 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc.; all rights reserved. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory Advance Access published December 16, 2004