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Public organizations rely extensively on sources of support -- political and otherwise -- external to themselves to ensure continued success in meeting policy goals. The resource-dependent nature of political-administrative relations can create performance problems for organizations, especially when perceptions of political support decline. Previous literature demonstrates how low levels of political support may amplify goal ambiguity for organizations in the public sphere. We argue that these organizations benefit from hierarchical authority, which can diffuse environmental uncertainties (such as those associated with increased goal ambiguity) to maintain performance. We develop a test of this claim using data collected in Phase II of the National Administrative Studies Project Findings confirm a contingent model of performance in which low political support and increased goal ambiguity are counteracted by varying degrees of internal hierarchical authority. Adapted from the source document.

This essay identifies two problems that impede the ability of public administration to govern effectively in dark times. First, public administration has failed to adequately acknowledge itself as an arbiter of political conflict and as a discipline responsible for shaping societal affairs. Second, the field is entrenched in a bureaucratic pathology that limits its capacity to address complex policy problems. We argue that these issues show a clear need for the reinvigoration of democratic ethos as the foundation for public administration. Building on the ideas of some Minnowbrook III working groups, we pose questions to help begin discussions about both democratic ethos and the ability of public administration to govern in dark times. Adapted from the source document.

The tension between managerialism and legalism in public administration has been a recurring theme at Minnowbrook conferences. This tension, increasingly evident in the literature, is couched in the often-conflicting values of efficiency and performance, on one hand, and legal and democratic values such as accountability, equality, and transparency, on the other hand. Building on conversations we began at Minnowbrook III, we specify a three-part proposal through which the legal and managerial approaches to US public administration might be better integrated. At a time when public administrative reforms potentially exacerbate the law management tension, our proposal's primary implication is the simultaneous achievement of public service delivery that is efficient, effective, and defendable in the US constitutional democracy. Adapted from the source document.

Using a sample of U.S. counties, this article explores the relationships between community level resilience, represented by capacity (social capital), information (uses of technology), and motivation (perception of threats to county,) on the one hand, and county levels of emergency management (EM) collaboration on the other. We hypothesize that the greater relative presence of bridging social capital networks will be associated with greater levels of collaboration in county EM planning, while the greater relative presence of bonding social capital networks will be associated with lower levels of collaboration. Results indicate that first there are two collaborative environments to assess—the formal and informal—and, second, the presence of political networks (seen as predominantly bridging) relative to the presence of religious networks (viewed as predominantly bonding) has a significant and positive effect on informal collaboration levels, but not on formal collaboration levels. These findings provide insight into how community context in the form of network social capital matters for collaborative EM planning efforts. These results add to prior research that focuses primarily on organizational and institutional sources of collaboration and much less on the community level contextual factors at play.