Nonhierarchical Approaches to the Organization of Public Activity

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.