238 9: Th eories of Governance
negotiated agreements tend to produce tight coupling; informal agreements result
in looser links between jurisdictions. Yet regardless of whether the cooperation is
formally mandated or informally agreed upon, most forms of administration are
organized, maintained, and operated voluntarily by public service professionals.
Th is latter point is important because it implies that the world of conjunction has
little hierarchy, few transaction costs, and no apparent need to restructure the
public sector when introducing marketlike behavioral incentives. Central author-
ity in conjunction is simply replaced by voluntary cooperation and networks that
evolve out of professional interests and values.
Frederickson argues that, although conjunction itself is nonhierarchical, hier-
archy is necessary for conjunction to exist. Administration conjunction will not
happen without the institutional structure that is still tied to political jurisdictions,
namely, the formal, hierarchical structure that still characterizes most govern-
ments. If these hierarchical structures are thought of as buildings that house the
politics of a given jurisdiction, then administrative conjunction can be thought of
as a series of pedestrian bridges that connect these buildings. Th e bridges will not
stay up if the buildings come down. And although any given bridge gives the im-
pression of a small carrying capacity, considered as a whole the bridges constitute
a strong and capable network for coordination and cooperation.
With its motivational force coming from values and professional interests,
and cooperation between institutional actors as its objective, administration con-
junction is a theory that stands in fairly stark contrast with NPM. NPM draws
heavily from market theory, emphasizing self-interest and competition, neither
of which is particularly good at explaining the interjurisdictional behavior of ac-
tors in conjunctions. Conjunction seems to be driven by the values and beliefs of
public service professionals, and by the innate and learned instinct to cooperate
shared by all humans. Underlying conjunctions are professional concepts of the
public interest and an obligation among public servants to represent an inchoate
public outside of a particular jurisdiction. Th e end result is not just coordination
among the various units of the disarticulated state, but also the reappearance of
the meaningful representation that has leaked steadily from elected offi ces as ju-
risdictional borders become less relevant to policy problems.
Th e theory of administration conjunction is not just the abstract musing
of academics. It also has considerable backing from various empirical studies
(Frederickson 1999b). In studying the metropolitan Kansas City area through
the prism of administration conjunction, Frederickson (1999b, 708) reports that
high-ranking government appointees (department heads and above) spend ap-
proximately 15 percent of their time engaged in conjunction activities. Th ere
are, of course, limits to administration conjunction and a regime theory of
governance. Politics in any given jurisdiction may produce powerful forces
opposing cooperation. Given the highly personal nature of the interactions be-
tween administrative units, something as trivial as a personality clash between
two department heads could potentially narrow the scope and the success of a