Public Administration & Public Management

The Principal-Agent Perspective

A perspective on the public sector that presents a concise and comprehensive analysis of exactly what it is and how it operates.

Governments in any society deliver a large number of services and goods to their populations. To get the job done, they need public management in order to steer resources – employees, money and laws – into policy outputs and outcomes. In well-ordered societies the teams who work for the state work under a rule-of-law framework, known as public administration. This book covers the key issues of:

• the principal-agent framework and the public sector
• public principals and their agents 
• the economic reasons of government
• public organization, incentives and rationality in government
• the essence of public administration: legality and the rule of law
• public policy criteria: the Cambridge and Chicago positions
• public teams and private teams
• public firms
• public insurance
• public management policy

Public Administration & Public Management is essential reading for those with professional and research interests in public administration and public management.