Public Management

Abstract This article views public management broadly as encompassing the organizational structures, managerial practices, and institutionalized values by which officials enact the will of sovereign authority, whether that authority is prince, parliament, or civil society. Public management, in other words, is regarded as synonymous with public administration. As for whether or not there is a distinctive public management, there is widespread professional acknowledgement that constitutions, collective goods production, and electoral institutions create distinctive managerial challenges that justify a separate field. Thus defined, the field of public management is surely of older vintage than American scholars have been wont to assert and is arguably even older than the popular starting point for administrative histories.