Nonhierarchical Approaches to the Organization of Public Activity

Abstract

Recent emphasis on the management of intergovernmental relations raises questions about patterns of governance in a federal system that rely more upon the nonhierarchical modes of organization implied by management principles. Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, explicitly recognized that the American system of administration relied on nonhierarchical methods of control that manifest an invisible-hand effect in the exercise of administrative power. Modern developments in public choice theory provide another explanation for nonhierarchical patterns of organization in a public economy. Such modes of organization are consistent with the patterns of multiorganizational arrangement that one would expect to occur in a federal system of administration, in contrast to a bureaucratic system of administration.