Collaborative Research: Effectiveness, Control and Competence in Public Agencies

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

This project will enhance and test new game theoretic models of a "Competence-Control" dialectic in public administration. Specifically, it will explore how opportunities for promotion affect the propensities of bureaucrats to develop policy and policy-implementation expertise. As part of this project, the research team will develop a new, publicly available database of federal agencies that will allow them to test hypotheses about tradeoffs between promotion criteria and agency competence. Results from this work will provide insight into how incentives in government agencies affect the expertise, competence, and, ultimately, performance of those agencies. In the public arena, this is a crucial question: agencies must be responsive to the public will, yet a government without expertise lacks the capacity to deliver effective services to its citizens. The insights are also relevant to non-public organizations, as tradeoffs between interventions by principals and implementations by agents are common in many settings.