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The relative influences of the unique and traditional elements of the Clinton‐Gore National Performance Review (NPR) episode of bureaucratic reform are examined here as a means of exploring the underlying dynamics of executive‐bureaucratic relationships. The first section of the article outlines the reinvention theory underlying NPR. This is followed by an analysis of how NPR deviated from that theory. The third section of the article considers what reforms might have been proposed by NPR had it taken reinvention theory more seriously. And fourth, the author discusses the deeper problems of presidential implementation of any reform not founded on enhanced hierarchical control of the bureaucracy by the White House. Finally, a unidirectional cycle of presidential reform is described, a cycle that seems impervious to and unconnected with scholarly work on management.

The apparent hegemony of the public-choice approach to metropolitan governance has been sharply challenged on a number of fronts during the 1990s with a series of new arguments for consolidation emphasizing the role of boundaries in defining interests & property rights so as to structure the distribution of political transactions costs within metropolitan areas. These new arguments have yet to be organized, however, into a coherent critique of the public-choice approach. This article provides such a statement. (1) The nature of individual decision making implicit within the new case for metropolitan consolidation is examined. (2) Its core institutional propositions on boundaries are discussed. (3) The key outcome hypotheses flowing from the new consolidationist case's assumptions about institutions & individual choice are evaluated in light of the public-choice case for jurisdictional fragmentation. 117 References. Adapted from the source document.

Discusses public choice theory and urban service delivery, focusing on citizen participation, public administration reform, research, and policy implications; US.

A neoprogressive research agenda is developed to challenge public choice theory's position as the new orthodoxy in both understanding and guiding policy choices about urban service delivery. Such a challenge requires more than accumulating negative empirical tests. Rather, we must accept the new burden of proof laid on proponents of progressive reform institutions by the theories of nonmarket failure and quasimarkets, ideas that undermined the intellectual pillars supporting progressive reform institutions and can only be challenged by new ideas. Public choice theory itself, broadly considered, is proposed as a valid source of such new ideas. Three research programs, in part already underway, are outlined as essential building blocks in the research agenda, focusing, respectively, on blunting the rough edges of the theory of nonmarket failure, coordinating the empirical critiques of quasimarkets in a new theory of quasimarket failure, and developing the new institutionalism so that it can provide the basis for comparing the production outcomes of alternative urban institutions.