Local Governments in Multilevel Governance

Local governments serve their communities in many diversified ways as they increasingly engage in multiple connections: international, regional, regional-local, with nongovernmental organizations and through external nongovernmental services county actors. The book discusses how the shift in emphasis from government to governance has raised many management challenges, along with shifting expectations and demands.

Robert Agranoff is the doyen of collaborative public management. Local Governments in Multilevel Governance explores the way multi-level government impacts public management. He explores how the shift from government to governance has changed the relationships between networks and bureaucracy, especially in local government. It will be a career defining book and a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in managing the complex webs of organizations that typify modern governance., Robert Agranoff’s broad sweep of the administrative challenges of local government in the current era of global and multi-level governance is both exhaustive and compelling. Synthesizing the rapidly growing literature on multi-level governance and drawing on his vast research experience in cross-national public management, Agranoff’s monograph provides the most comprehensive and contemporary understanding of the managerial challenges facing governments whether a federal or quasi-federal or emerging federal system. Indeed, as Agranoff claims, multi-level governance issues transcend federal systems as various networks define the complexity of MLG governance in the contemporary era. The work is grounded in extensive analyses of NGOs and governmental agencies, their interactions, and the promise for greater intergovernmental collaboration. The frame for understanding MLG complexity is from that of local governments, which given the enormous variation in structure, form and style across the local government terrain creates the dynamic texture of Agranoff’s analysis. Local Governments in Multi-Level Governance will be required reading for all scholars of government, governance, and political systems in general., This book is a great contribution to our understanding of a crucial yet undervalued governance actor: local government. By one of the most renowned scholars in the field of intergovernmental relations and network management, the volume achieves both to conceptually analyze the complex changes transforming public administration and to pragmatically provide tools and managerial insights for practitioners. Agranoff exquisitely describes how local governments are today a) vertically linked all the way up to international institutions, b) horizontally embedded in multiple inter-local bodies, c) organizationally related to external for profit and nonprofit providers, and d) politically permeated by citizen groups and initiatives. The author also reviews in depth the managerial consequences of these phenomenal transformations. The book is a necessary counterpoint to both the simplistic legal characterization of local governments as isolated bureaucracies and to the unsophisticated rhetoric of government hollowing-out. The book’s international comparative approach makes it even more valuable to both researchers and practitioners.

Robert Agranoff is professor emeritus at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington.