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This article analyzes performance and organizational issues revealed by the governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. It reviews and analyzes the organizational changes made in the federal government to address homeland security and presents several proposals for reorganization suggested by policy makers in the aftermath of Katrina. A management approach rooted in adaptive management is presented for use in the ongoing process of organizing for homeland security.

Public services in many states have been placed under federal court supervision. In our 1991 PAR article, we examined the implications of the federal judicial decisions in supervising the Kansas City Metropolitan School District for the "new triumviate" governing public services—public officials, legislators, and judges. In this article, we examine judicial decisions affecting the same school district a decade later to reveal the impact of judicial supervision on the school district and to discern the implications for policy termination. We find that, once begun, judicially mandated federal court supervision of public institutions is not readily terminated, even pursuant to the wishes of the United States Supreme Court.

Federalism jurisprudence shapes the powers that public administrators have to achieve policy priorities. Federalism, however, is neither static nor simplistic as a concept, and a proper understanding of the environment in which public administrators work rests on a careful analysis of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The authors review claims that a 2005 decision, Gonzales v. Raich, terminated a federalism revolution that had been ushered in a decade earlier. Does Raich in fact mark the end of the Supreme Court's federalism doctrine? Analysis of this question clarifies whether the past and current Court has articulated any direction touching on administrators' powers at both the national and state levels. The authors argue that before the federalism revolution is declared dead or alive, public administration can better understand the realities of the Supreme Court's doctrinal boundaries by examining a more detailed analysis of jurisprudence for what is says about the foundations of federalism such as the commerce clause, Fourteenth Amendment, Tenth Amendment, Eleventh Amendment, spending clause, and statutory interpretation issues.

We hypothesize that the structural characteristics (i.e., centralization versus decentralization) of government affect the availability of training in values and skills that are fundamental to democratization. We test our hypothesis in statistical models predicting anticorruption training and policy skills training, using a model of technical skills training for comparison. We find that centralized government structure significantly increases the odds of receiving both anticorruption training and policy skills training. In contrast, we find no statistical correlation between government structure and receipt of technical skills training. In light of these empirical results, we describe a theoretical paradox in civil service reform associated with democratization: While the end goal of such reform is decentralized government with local services and a professionalized civil service, reform itself may best supported by a centralized environment to achieve the democratic value and skills training needed to support transition to democracy.

Federal courts play a significant role in the management and execution of public programs. Judicial intervention is evident in examples ranging from prisons to mental hospitals to schools. To clarify the appropriateness of federal judicial intervention, the authors construct a so-called full and fair judicial and administrative capacity standard. Where state judicial and administrative capacities are evident, federal courts do well to refrain from exercising jurisdiction. The analysis of the authors also reflects consideration of the capacity of the federal judiciary to manage a state administrative scheme.