programs—spill over the boundaries of the government bureaucracies created to
manage them. Where the problems strain the boundaries, they also strain the
theories created to guide the hands of bureaucrats. Network approaches to gov-
ernment have arisen to manage these tough, boundary-spanning problems. But
these approaches have grown faster than the theories to guide them. The theories of
government bureaucracyWnd themselves challenged to devise new arguments to
guide and control bureaucracy. Problems ranging from terrorism to health care
demand government’s best eVorts. Governments are struggling with empowering
bureaucracies enough to attack these tough problems while avoiding the trap of
making them so powerful as to challenge democratic rule.
Moreover, as the reform movements that have bubbled constantly since the 1980 s
have shown, both practitioners and theorists of bureaucracy have struggled to devise
new approaches to governance. Some, like the ‘‘new public management,’’ have been
top-down. Others, like ‘‘reinventing government,’’ have been bottom-up. None have
proven to be fully satisfactory, but that has only fueled the reformers’ inventiveness.
The rich tradition of hierarchical bureaucracy provides a strong foundation for
governance. However, the problems facing governments increasingly strain its
precepts. That leaves practitioners and theorists alike with the twin task of
safeguarding its basic principles while experimenting with new approaches, which
might perhaps betterWt society’s tough problems but which pose new challenges to
the ageless puzzles of bureaucratic power, coordination, and accountability.
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382 donald f. kettl