Given the influence and impact of public bureaucracies in policy implementation, and the accountability they owe to the American public, their performance must be assessed in a systematic manner. With this new edition, Gormley and Balla revisit their four key perspectives bounded rationality, principal-agent theory, interest group mobilization, and network theory to help students develop an analytic framework for comprehensively evaluating bureaucratic performance.
Thoroughly updated, the third edition includes: new sections on education reform, the response to the financial crisis, and Obama's support for "evidence-based" decision making; new cases of government intervention in crisis with the H1N1 pandemic and the recent tornadoes in the Midwest; new material on public opinion and perceptions of government employees; expanded discussion of networks and their increasingly important role in exchanging information and delivering public services; and a new case study on the BP oil spill that systematically applies the book's four perspectives.