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Abstract
This article examines whether and how the capacity of a street-level organization moderates its ability to perform effectively in the context of a public program reform. We use the case of California probation departments during the phased implementation of the state's Low-Income Health Program, a major Medicaid reform that offered critical new services for many probation citizens/clients, namely, mental health and substance abuse treatment. We exploit six years of monthly California county-level probation department data to conduct quasi-experimental difference-in-differences analyses. Results indicate that in those counties that had activated the reform, probation departments with greater capacity achieved higher rates of probation completion success when compared to departments with lower capacity. The analysis implies that organizations improved most when departments benefitted from a combination of reform-generated resources and more robust organizational capacity.

Representative bureaucracy theory suggests that demographic representation among street‐level bureaucrats will improve outcomes for minority citizens receiving a given public service. Scholars of representation in public bureaucracies argue that the effect of bureaucrats' demographic profile on outcomes for minority citizens becomes particularly salient in contexts where bureaucrats exercise relatively high amounts of discretion. Empirical evidence has documented this relationship in education, policing, and a variety of public programs. We extend this literature to the context of prisons, where street‐level corrections staff exercise considerable discretion over inmates' daily lives. Using prison violence and disciplinary actions to proxy for the potential effects of a representative staff on the experiences of prison inmates, we find that prisons with greater representation have fewer assaults and exercise fewer disciplinary actions. We offer evidence that the positive effects of demographic representation may not hold in privately managed prisons. We speculate that differential organizational socialization and managerial incentives may help to explain this result.

Theory tells us that competition is the chief driver of improved efficiency and effectiveness in government contracting, yet contract provider markets are often noncompetitive. This study offers a detailed, contextualized examination of public administrative responses to thin contract markets. Following an inductive approach with data from semistructured interviews with contract administrators, the authors offer a preliminary typology of the conditions that give rise to thin markets, and the "market management" strategies used to create, enhance, and sustain competition in the markets from where governments purchase goods and services. The authors then review the efficacy and implications of these strategies for public services to citizens.

This analysis of state social service contracts identifies sources of system instability and explores the impacts of instability on service delivery networks. The authors examine social welfare service contracts explicitly as networks and assess the effects of network instability on the management of contracts, contract effectiveness, the performance of network organizations, and clients. They offer observable patterns and detailed examples that indicate that instability imposes significant costs on service delivery networks—costs that impair organizational and network performance and that divert resources from services for vulnerable clients. The high costs associated with instability undermine arguments for more market-based service delivery.

Investigates the administrative experience resulting from the intersection of two popular public management trends -- social service reform & contracting out -- offering a case study of a reform in which KS contracted with nonprofit agencies to provide Medicaid case management services. Implementation of the reforms entailed substantial changes in the roles & scope of administrative activities for the agencies involved & significant challenges to the administrative cultures of each. As a result, nonprofit agencies now play a more central role in state policy deliberations & encounter higher levels of interagency political conflict than they did prior to their contracting role. While some of the rationales for the policy reform have been realized, others have been more elusive, including cost savings & the single-point-of-entry organizing principle of the reform. Implementation challenges due to turf issues, tensions over external monitoring, & differences in administrative cultures have contributed to a lack of policy subgroup cohesiveness, which could facilitate intra- & intergovernmental relationships. 1 Exhibit, 1 Appendix, 53 References. Adapted from the source document.