In managing complex policy problems in the federal system, state and local governments are organized into different arrangements for translating policy goals into policy outcomes. Air quality management is used as a test case to understand these variations and their impact on policy outcomes. With data from Clean Air Act implementation plans and a survey of state and local air quality managers, five separate institutional designs are identified: (1) central agencies; (2) top-down; (3) donor–recipient; (4) regional agencies; and (5) emergent governance. Findings indicate that some arrangements (donor–recipient and emergent governance) result in notably better air quality than others (central agencies, top-down). Specifically, when designed to allow bargaining between state and local officials, intergovernmental management is still the most effective approach to complex policy problems; but, in absence of this, conventional federalism arrangements are less effective than public agencies self-organizing around shared policy goals.
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:
Fowler, L. (2020). Governance, Federalism and Organizing Institutions to Manage Complex Problems. Public Administration, 98(3), 713-729.
which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12638. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/luke-fowler/32/