228 9: Th eories of Governance
Lynn et al.’s concept and model of governance underpin their call for an ambi-
tious research agenda to help explain and improve the performance of the decen-
tralized administrative state. As a motivation and guide to research, their work
is yielding some dividends, but its potential to mature into a full-blown theory is
questionable. As preface to theory, their arguments have two central problems.
First, and most importantly, neither their concept nor their model is par-
ticularly parsimonious. Th eir model “comes close to the economist’s criticisms
of political science: by including everything, one runs the danger of explaining
nothing” (Ellwood 2000, 329). Even as a heuristic, their model is so all encom-
passing that its use as a systematic guide is questionable. Rather than imposing
a causal order on governance, the model may do nothing more than provide a
handy list of broad conceptual elements that can be selectively mined to fi t a par-
ticular case. Th is is a useful service, but it does not provide the heavy explanatory
lift ing required for theory. Indeed, the comprehensiveness of Lynn et al.’s model
creates diffi culties in terms of drawing distinct disciplinary boundaries because
“there appears to be little diff erence between studying the whole of government
and politics and studying public administration” (Frederickson 2005, 287).
Th e second problem is that even if a more parsimonious and general model
could be constructed from these elements, it would probably be unable to gen-
erate general conclusions. Governance regimes seem to be shaped by their pol-
icy domains, and diff erent types of policies lead to diff erent sorts of governance
problems. What works for, say, welfare, may not work for environmental protec-
tion. Th e basic problem of public policy is that it is inherently a political process.
Its design, implementation, and administration involve multiple actors with
multiple objectives and multiple agendas. Governance as outlined by Lynn et al.
acknowledges this reality rather than explains it systematically (Ellwood 2000,
329–330).
Lynn et al.’s model has other, more technical diffi culties. Th ese include per-
suading scholars to adopt more complex research methodologies and overcom-
ing some diffi cult measurement issues. For example, it is one thing to include an
abstract and loosely defi ned concept, such as management in a heuristic model,
but empirically capturing that concept in a study seeking to assess its impact on
agency performance is quite another matter. Some of the diffi culties of corralling
a large and amorphous explanatory target into a research agenda characterized
by conceptual and methodological coherence seem to be at least implicitly rec-
ognized by Lynn et al. Almost out of necessity, their call to action narrows as it
moves from its broad conceptual ambitions toward dealing with the diffi cult de-
tails of putting that vision into practice. Operationally, their model devolves into
a proposal for creative econometric models of agency performance or outputs
(Lowery 2002).
Although we do not discount these problems, the criticisms may turn out
to be premature. Lynn et al. never claimed to have a fully functional theory of
governance; their goal was simply to foster a research program that theoretically