Credible Commitment and Council‐Manager Government: Implications for Policy Instrument Choices

Richard Clark Feiock · Moon‐Gi Jeong

171 citations0/0 files storedPublic Administration Review

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Public Policy and Administration Research Local Governance and Planning Local Government Finance and Decentralization

Abstract

The credible constraint of morally hazardous or opportunistic behavior can enhance efficiency. This idea is applied to an examination of local government institutions to identify how council‐manager government constrains opportunism in economic development by substituting low‐power bureaucratic incentives for high‐power electoral incentives. A panel design isolates changes in the use of development strategies or instruments in 516 cities. The central argument presented here is that the Progressive ideology of the separation of politics and administration, institutionalized in the council‐manager plan, allows administrators and elected officers to more easily resist opportunistic behavior. Economic and political forces have significant effects that are different for mayor‐council communities than for council‐manager communities. The influence of strategic planning is evident in council‐manager cities, but not in mayor‐council communities. Under council‐manager government, development is carried out in a discriminating manner, leading to lower levels of financial incentives but more loan and business‐attraction programs. In conclusion, the authors discuss how the career patterns of city managers are shaped by the incentive structures created by the council‐manager plan.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 171 citations exist upstream.

References

1966The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.1960The Strategy of Conflict 1973The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.1983The Tools of Government 1989Policy analysis : concepts and practice 1990Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice 1956The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R 1989Instruments of Government: Perceptions and Contexts

Cited by

2014Structural and Institutional Determinants of Influence Reputation: A Comparison of Collaborative and Adversarial Policy Networks in Decision Making and Implementation 2015What Have We Learned about the Performance of Council‐Manager Government? A Review and Synthesis of the Research 2006Professional Versus Political Contexts: Institutional Mitigation and the Transaction Cost Heuristic in Information Systems Outsourcing1,2 2008Bureaucratic Job Mobility and The Diffusion of Innovations 2015Bureaucratic Structure, Regulatory Quality, and Entrepreneurship in a Comparative Perspective: Cross-Sectional and Panel Data Evidence

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.