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Effective administration of public organizations requires timely responses to emerging risks, yet communicating those risks up the hierarchy can expose operational managers to blame in politicized accountability environments. This study examines how public managers navigated that tension in an analysis of 130 risk reports filed over a seven-year period associated with two major procurement and maintenance projects in the Danish Defence. Using an abductive qualitative approach, we develop a dynamic model of risk management with four phases: (1) risk as an operational concern, (2) turning risk into an organizational problem, (3) assigning blame and accountability, and (4) initiating mitigation and response. We find that risk and accountability communication are interdependent processes rather than independent sequential processes. Operational managers attempt to raise awareness of emerging risks while simultaneously deflecting potential blame and catering to higher-level concerns about public scrutiny. This tension generates pressure to only report when it is absolutely necessary, while higher-level managers often postpone action to avoid political exposure. These practices contribute to delays, projects not meeting specifications, and significant budget overruns. The study advances a dynamic theory of public sector risk management and explains how hierarchical communication practices influence whether, when, and how emerging risks are addressed.

Predictive algorithms are increasingly used to support frontline decision-making in public administration, but evidence remains limited on how they affect bureaucratic capacity. This study examines county-level adoption of predictive screening tools in U.S. Child Protective Services using NCANDS data (2010–2023) and a stacked difference-in-differences design. Leveraging staggered adoption, I find no change in the total number of investigations opened and a sizable decline (about 15%) in the share of investigations that are substantiated. These results are inconsistent with operational capacity gains and more consistent with misclassification that erodes analytical capacity. These findings are consistent with a mechanism of routinized deference: under workload and accountability pressures, algorithmic recommendations can become procedurally defensible defaults. Overall, this study argues that predictive screening is not capacity-enhancing by default, as routinized deference can undermine the professional judgment central to bureaucratic work.

Public administrators are increasingly called upon to create “generative spaces” that foster emergent processes of collaboration, learning, and innovation. This article presents an inductive and ethnographically grounded study of one relatively novel but increasingly popular generative space—a regulatory sandbox. A regulatory sandbox is a controlled and defined space and set of processes that are established by regulators to work with innovators to collaboratively explore, test, and learn about early-stage products and innovations and understand emerging regulatory implications. Investigating a sandbox to explore the regulation of new artificial intelligence technologies conducted by a national healthcare regulator, we identify the organizing practices of the sandbox that make it “generative” of collaboration, learning, and innovation. An inductive analysis identified three key organizing practices: providing distinct and varied social spaces separated from normal regulatory demands (protection); enabling participants to collaboratively examine innovations and iteratively develop new knowledge and regulation (adaptation); and supporting focused and immersive examination of innovations from a diverse range of perspectives (participation). A theoretically driven secondary analysis suggests that generative spaces can be understood as liminal experiences that foster detachment, equivalence, and reconstruction.

Governments receive simultaneous cues from superior authorities, peer jurisdictions, and societal audiences, yet existing research rarely explains how they decide which cues warrant scarce agenda space. We develop a cross-source corroboration perspective on governmental attention and argue that signals become more consequential when they are corroborated by cues from structurally different sources, because convergence reduces ambiguity and makes an issue appear important, legitimate, and actionable. Using Government Work Reports and the Baidu Index to measure attention to digital government, we estimate two-way fixed-effects models for 283 Chinese cities over 2012–2024. We find that superior, peer, and public attention are each positively associated with local attention. The signals also reinforce one another: superior attention strengthens the associations of both peer and public attention with local attention, while peer attention strengthens the association of public attention with local attention. Temporal patterns also differ: the association of superior attention with local attention becomes stronger in the later period, that of peer attention remains broadly stable, and that of public attention tends to strengthen. These findings advance attention–allocation theory by showing that governmental attention is a relational and configurational outcome of signal interpretation rather than an additive response to isolated institutional pressures.

This article asks a central question in digital government research: why do local governments operating under similar institutional conditions follow sharply different digital transformation trajectories over time? Drawing on theories of gradual institutional change, the study conceptualizes digital transformation not as a discrete adoption outcome, but as a process of institutional conversion through which technological capacity is translated into sustained digital service provision. Information governance is theorized as the key conditioning mechanism linking technological resources to durable organizational outcomes. The analysis combines longitudinal panel models, fixed-effects estimators, and trajectory-based clustering using a panel of all Brazilian municipalities (MUNIC/IBGE; N = 5,569) across seven waves between 2004 and 2024. Results show that increases in technological capacity are associated with subsequent gains in digital services, but these effects are gradual and conditional. Information governance significantly shapes how municipalities mobilize and stabilize technological resources over time, while interaction models reveal nonlinear and diminishing returns consistent with institutional coordination limits. Trajectory analyses identify four distinct patterns of digital transformation, ranging from “institutionalized pioneers” to “persistent stagnation,” demonstrating that digital development unfolds through path-dependent and institutionally anchored trajectories rather than through simple convergence. The article contributes to public administration research in three ways: provides rare longitudinal evidence on local digital transformation over two decades; integrates institutional change theory into digital government research by conceptualizing governance as a mechanism of institutional conversion; and advances a trajectory-based explanation of digital transformation that shifts attention from episodic technological adoption to cumulative institutional processes shaping long-run administrative performance.

Local police officers are among the most prominent frontline public servants, interacting daily with people, communities, and other agencies and stakeholders. They are, in the most literal sense, street-level bureaucrats. These interactions were greatly tested in the summer of 2020. Police managed – or in some cases refused to manage – enforcement orders for a global pandemic while at the same time policing in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. This article explores how officers in three local jurisdictions navigated these dual, compounding crises – which we can certainly expect many more of in the future – and the implications for police interactions, discretion (including de-policing) and job satisfaction. The article concludes with a discussion of how police leaders, local officials and community advocates can better support law enforcement professionals during times of crises.

Government workers often take shortcuts when making decisions about delivering public services. When these shortcuts are influenced by stereotypes or bias, citizens may receive unequal treatment. This research examines whether bureaucrats in U.S. housing authorities and parks departments discriminate based on citizen political ideology. Using a pre-registered 2 × 3 email audit experiment ( n = 974), we test whether responsiveness varies when citizens signal conservative views, liberal views, or no political views. The results show that street-level bureaucrats are more likely to respond to citizens signaling conservative views than to citizens with no stated political views. Responsiveness does not differ between citizens signaling liberal views and citizens with no stated political views. However, when a reply is provided, citizens signaling liberal views receive more helpful responses. Interaction models suggest that responsiveness to citizens signaling liberal views differs across public housing authorities and parks departments. These findings suggest that political ideology may shape bureaucratic responsiveness in ways that have implications for fairness in public service delivery.

Public participation is widely recognized as an important component of democratic governance, yet empirical studies often evaluate participation by the methods employed rather than the institutional structures through which participation is organized within administrative processes. Drawing on an analysis of 289 local jurisdictions receiving federal block grants, this study examines participation as structured administrative practice rather than simply a collection of engagement methods. Using inductive analysis of Consolidated Plans, the study develops a typology of four participation structures: Minimal Compliance, Structured Consultation, Institutionalized Consultation, and Embedded Participation.

As public service delivery increasingly involves non-governmental actors, public administration theory needs to examine how its core frameworks operate beyond traditional bureaucracies. This study extends representative bureaucracy theory to private philanthropy, an increasingly crucial actor in local public service delivery, by testing whether racial representation in leadership corresponds with equitable grantmaking outcomes. Analyzing longitudinal data from 912 U.S. community foundations between 2012 and 2016, this study finds that racial representation in foundation leadership corresponds with increased grantmaking to organizations serving communities of color when leadership retains sufficient discretion, but that this relationship weakens as donor control rises, particularly through donor advised funds. These patterns are consistent with representative bureaucracy theory's emphasis on discretion as a key mechanism linking passive and active representation. These findings advance theoretical understanding by illuminating the interplay between representation and discretion within private philanthropy, while carrying implications for equitable resource distribution as public services increasingly involve non-governmental actors.

Democratic accountability assumes that the citizens who bear the costs of government decisions can sanction the officials who make them. We identify a structural break in this assumption. When a city funds itself through taxes that fall partly on nonresidents (highway travelers, commuters, and regional shoppers who cannot vote in local elections) the electoral link between bearing costs and imposing sanctions weakens. Analyzing two decades of Texas municipal data (2000–2019) with two-way fixed effects and generalized synthetic control methods, we find that cities better positioned to shift costs onto nonvoters raise resident fiscal exposure more, after they adopt dedicated local sales taxes. This pattern is strongest for cities on or near major metropolitan areas and highways, whereas geographically isolated cities, where residents bear nearly all costs, show little change. It reverses the relief that classical tax-exportation theory predicts and reveals an accountability gap that funds discretionary fiscal expansion. The gap proves temporary: fiscal outcomes across contexts converge within six to thirteen years. Geography, we conclude, shapes democratic accountability as powerfully as electoral rules.

This study aims to address a core theoretical and practical question: Under the dual constraints of institutional limitations and resource scarcity, how does the Communist Youth League, as a mass organization, actively produce service spaces to fulfill its service functions? To explore this question, our analysis integrates Lefebvre’s theory of space production with the institutional logics perspective to construct an analytical framework of “institutional logics–empowerment structure–organizational space production.” Through a case analysis of the “Youth Homeland” project in City G, this study finds that the Communist Youth League is not passively constrained by institutional environments and resource limitations. Instead, it proactively leverages its “structural hole” advantage at the intersection of multiple institutional logics—political, social, and professional—by employing a combined strategy of administrative empowerment, social empowerment, and technological empowerment to secure critical resources for the production of service spaces. Among these, administrative empowerment defines the core boundaries and legitimacy of service spaces, social empowerment expands their peripheral boundaries and resource networks, and technological empowerment reshapes the processes and effectiveness of service delivery. The investigation further reveals that institutional logics determine the empowerment structure, the integration of institutional factors opens windows of opportunity for space production, and institutional changes drive the transformation and restructuring of service spaces. The article’s theoretical contribution lies in expanding the study of organizational space production from an internal material analysis to an external social field perspective. It introduces “institution,” “agency,” and “co-production” into organizational space research, uncovering the micro-mechanisms through which mass organizations strategically employ empowerment to expand their action spaces by leveraging institutional logics in an authoritarian context. This offers a new analytical perspective for understanding the service functions and transformation of mass organizations and similar institutions in contemporary China.

Effective digital communication is a strategic imperative for government service delivery, yet the emerging information dissemination model emerging remains underexplored. Drawing on Chongqing’s digital-policing reform, this study develops an analytical framework centered on visibility-driven flexible re-hierarchization, based on interviews and observations. The analysis identifies three mechanisms: upward visibility and vertical bypass produce functional flattening without formal delayering; cross-boundary horizontal linkage dissolves departmental silos while preserving centralized coordination; and dual-mode switching shifts the information order between routine networked and mobilizational hierarchical communication. Digital technology does not flatten bureaucracy but endows it with an elastic capacity to switch between the two orders.

Multifamily housing is common in urban areas, and neighbor noise is a frequent problem. In this study, a governance-based approach was designed for managing and preventing noise problems, marking an advance from conventional noise-reduction technologies. Using qualitative methods, including interviews with residents and professionals, the proposed framework categorizes five key sectors: individual, community, society, industry, and public. It highlights sector interactions, identifies key actors, and suggests sector-specific activities for resolution. Rather than offering a fixed solution, the proposed governance model is adaptable to various contexts, promoting sustainable and context-sensitive approaches to noise management.

Citizens play a crucial role in public-private partnerships (PPPs). Yet, such citizens often are poorly engaged and excluded from decision-making, leading to situations where their interests do not align with the public and private partners. Recognizing the importance of private sector behaviors in PPPs, we aim to identify how their behaviors play a role in aligning these interests to meet citizen expectations. We use the Economies of Worth framework and a comparative case study to identify behavioral mechanisms to support alignment, such as being available to citizens in person, adaptability, engaging in small goodwill gestures, and sustaining these behaviors over time.

This study examines the contracting behavior of U.S. transit agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess two competing predictions: (1) New Public Management expects increased contracting to achieve cost savings and shift risk, and (2) institutional inertia predicts stability due to structural barriers. Our findings demonstrate overwhelming support for institutional inertia. Despite confirming the pandemic was a major disruption, contracting behavior and perceptions remained stable. The mechanism for this inertia is that contracting is not associated with improved operational outcomes, suggesting the absence of economic incentives for change. The stability observed reflects externally insulated resilience of core public management structures.