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Networks in Public Administration Scholarship : Understanding Where Erschienen in: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory ; 21 (2011), Suppl. 1. - S. i157-i173 https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muq061 Networks in Public Administration Scholarship: Understanding Where We Are and Where We Need to Go à Kimberley R. Isett*, Ines A. Mergel , Kelly LeRoux , Pamela A. Mischen§, R. Karl Rethemeyer** à *Columbia University; Syracuse University; University of Illinois-Chicago; §Binghamton University; **University at Albany-SUNY ABSTRACT This article examines the road that network scholarship has followed in Public Administration. We look at the historical drivers of the use of networks in practice and scholarship in the field and discuss how that has shaped the current literature. The body of the article focuses on the current challenges that network scholars face in the discipline, specifically basic theoretical issues, knowledge about formal networks, knowledge about informal networks, and methodological issues. We close the article with a look to the future and some suggestions for the future of network scholarship in Public Administration. INTRODUCTION In recent years, there have been several ‘‘retrospective’’ articles about network scholarship in other disciplines that facilitate academic naval gazing at what has been accomplished, what still needs to be done, and the connections between disparate strains of the literature (e.g., Brass et al. 2004; Provan, Fish, and Sydow 2007). However, each of the different disciplines involved in network studies has its own foci and emphases that are important to their brand of work. As such, we take this opportunity to provide a commentary on the development of network studies in Public Administration and suggest the main challenges that we face as a community. The focus on networks in Public Administration has grown rapidly in the past decade and a half. The use of networks by practitioners has exploded as well as the number of scholars of public organizations who study them or who find the conceptualization useful. At the last National Public Management Research Conference held in Tucson, AZ, organ- izers noted the upsurge of submissions dealing with this topic. So we ask: How did we get from little network scholarship 20 years ago to such a preoccupation with the topic today? This work is the product of group discussion from the Minnowbrook III New Scholars workshop held in September 2008. The authors gratefully acknowledge the input of the other group members who chose not to be included on the work of this article, Charlie Schweik, and Maja Holmes. We would also like to acknowledge the participants of the breakout discussion at the Minnowbrook conference and their stimulating discussion to refine some of our initial ideas. Address correspondence to the lead author at [email protected]. Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-0-357178 i158 The answer is not entirely straightforward. We can identify three main streams of research on networks that appear in the current literature. The oldest effort focuses on pol- icy networks. Policy networks are a set of public agencies, legislative offices, and private sector organizations (including interests groups, corporations, nonprofits, etc.) that have an interest in public decisions within a particular area of policy because they are interdepen- dent and thus have a ‘‘shared fate’’ (Laumann and Knoke 1987). The original conceptu- alization of policy networks concerned decision making about public resource allocation. Networks focusing on the provision and production of collaborative goods and serv- ices are the second important stream of literature. Collaborative networks are collections of government agencies, nonprofits, and for-profits that work together to provide a public good, service, or ‘‘value’’ when a single public agency is unable to create the good or ser- vice on its own and/or the private sector is unable or unwilling to provide the goods or services in the desired quantities (cf. Agranoff and McGuire 2001, 2003; Mandell 2001; Nelson 2001; O’Toole 1997a). Collaborative networks carry out activities on behalf of the public. They may be formal and orchestrated by a public manager or they may be emergent, self-organizing, and ad hoc, with many variants in between. The third stream of literature is on governance networks. Governance networks are entities that fuse collaborative public goods and service provision with collective policymaking—for instance, business improvement districts or some environmental mit- igation efforts (Bogason and Musso 2006; Klijn and Koppenjan 2000; Klijn and Skelcher 2007; Rhodes 1997; Sørensen and Torfing 2005). These networks focus on the coordination of organizations toward a common goal rather than the policies or products that the networks actually produce. As Berry et al. (2004) note, each of these programs of research have their roots in other disciplines, though public administration scholars have written on all three (and sometimes have confused all three—see Bo¨rzel 1998). However, until the recent work on governance, scholars pursued programs of research that fell broadly into either the policy or collaborative literature.1 Historical Roots As Kettl (1996, 2000), Salamon (1981, 2002), and others have pointed out, government no longer directly creates public ‘‘value’’ (to use Moore’s [1995] phrase). Instead, nearly 19 of every 20 dollars of federal spending are funneled through third parties (Salamon 2002, 4). This rather startling movement toward third-party public goods production occurred over 30 or 40 years as a set of social and economic changes took hold in the United States and across the world. Though some movement away from bureaucratic service provision began earlier, a key component in this transformation was the reemergence of conservative parties in the United States, the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent in Europe. The Reagan and Thatcher Administrations in particular were swept into power by anti-tax/small govern- ment movements that reinvigorated debate on the proper division of labor between the public and private sectors. Reagan and Thatcher both began rapid programs of privatization and marketization of the public sector. 1 In the conclusion to their influential volume on ‘‘managing complex networks,’’ Kickert, Klijn, and Koppenjan (1997:181 3) explicitly address the division between those who view networks as solely instrumental and those who see them as integrative of decision and implementation. i159 In response to the call for the ‘‘third-party governance’’ of Reagan and Thatcher, the ‘‘New Public Management’’ (NPM) emerged with its market-based prescriptions providing rationales and templates for the marketization of public goods and services and ‘‘priva- tized’’ (i.e., made voluntary) regulation. However, the NPM program in theory and practice ran up against several realities: many services cannot be sufficiently homogenized so that contracting out is possible, centralized regulation marched on as citizens continued to demand more governance but less government (Osborne and Gaebler 1992), and the prob- lem of small numbers bargaining and transaction-specific capital (Williamson 1981) atten- uated the expected efficiency benefits of marketization. Moreover, there were classes of problems—what Rittel and Webber (1973) had earlier termed ‘‘wicked problems’’—to which markets seemed poorly suited for classic contracting. Wicked problems require ex- perts from disparate fields to cooperatively construct a reasonable and feasible way to ad- dress the complexities inherent in the problem at hand. No one organization or individual possesses the tools needed to adequately address problems that do not respect political, disciplinary, and industrial boundaries (Kettl 2006). In these classes of problems—which are becoming increasingly common—NPM’s prescriptions were insufficient. Networks, then, are in part a response to the insufficiencies of NPM in the face of complexity, mission expansion, government de-legitimization, and knowledge creation needs that are posed by wicked problems. Networks provide flexible structures that are inclusive, information rich, and outside the scope of direct bureaucratic control. These structures allow public agencies to manage public problems by leveraging expertise held outside its scope of authority. Thus as O’Toole (1997b), echoing earlier work on alternative forms of governance by Ostrom (1990) and other ‘‘sociologists and public choice special- ists’’, pointed out, networks are an alternative when markets and bureaucracies fail. As several commentators have noted (cf. McGuire 2006; O’Toole and Meier 2004), much of the research on collaboration has been optimistic about the quality and nature of resulting goods and services. However, another strain in the literature has been more skeptical of networks on performance and accountability grounds (e.g., Freeman 1965; Heclo 1977; Laumann and Knoke 1987; McCool 1989, 1990). Preaching What Is Already in Practice There is little doubt that practitioners have sprinted ahead of the academic research with regard to networks. Network forms of organization emerged and spread during the 1970s but seem to have flowered during the 1990s when the Clinton Administration embraced government reinvention in the face of renewed political resistance to expanded govern- ment. The primary program of academic research in public administration, however, can probably be dated to the late 1990s—though prescient scholars such as Salamon
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