Governance as a Unifying Framework for Public Administration? 235
Kingdom, the British government experimented with “pay for success bonds” or
“social impact bonds.” In such cases, nonprofi t groups invest in public programs
traditionally provided by the state. If, aft er several years, the program is success-
ful, the government will reimburse the nonprofi t entity (Leonhardt 2011). Both
examples expand and build upon the notion of governance as a series of collab-
orative networks and relationships among public, private, and nonprofi t sectors.
Peters and Pierre (1998) make a strong case for separating governance and
NPM as distinct intellectual frameworks, but in doing so, they leave governance
in something of an undefi ned status as a theory. Despite its ideological stripes,
NPM rests on solid theoretical foundations supplied by public choice and the
broader literature of organizational theory. In Peters and Pierre’s conception,
governance borrows from this, too, but it also draws from the much broader well
of democratic theory. Th e result is enough to make a strong case that governance
is diff erent from NPM, but although NPM emerges as a sharply defi ned public
management model (albeit one sporting clear ideological stripes), the same can-
not be said of governance. Governance is more encompassing, is less hostile to
orthodox models of public administration, and is wedded to no particular point
of the ideological spectrum, but as a theory it is left rather vague.
Governance as a Unifying Framework for Public Administration?
If governance is not NPM, then what is it? Peters and Pierre (1998) conclude that
in many ways the governance debate simply shows that academics are catching up
to the reality of changed times. Th e rise of the fragmented state and the growing
obsolescence of existing public administration frameworks have forced the disci-
pline to undertake a sometimes painful search for new intellectual foundations.
H. George Frederickson (1999b) refers to this search as the repositioning of
public administration. Th is process, in the making since the late 1970s, is produc-
ing a new form of public administration that has a new language and a unique
voice. Th e repositioning of public administration, Frederickson suggests, rep-
resents something of a watershed era for public administration. A half-century
aft er the collapse of theoretical hegemony in public administration, aft er decades
of colonization by theories originating in other disciplines (especially econom-
ics, policy analysis, and organization theory), the repositioning movement is fos-
tering a line of theoretical thinking that is indigenous to public administration.
Th ese original contributions directly tackle the problem of governance in a frag-
mented state.
Th e core of Frederickson’s repositioning argument can be best described by
comparing its theoretical orientation to that of political science, the discipline
most closely associated with public administration (the latter is considered by
many to be a subcategory of the former). In political science, theory is directed
toward the clash of interests, electoral competition, strategic games, and win-
ners and losers. Given this orientation, it is unsurprising to fi nd rational choice,