On welfare, Indiana and Michigan are proving that states canstill be ‘labs of democracy’

For more than 80 years, the U.S. states have been considered by commentators to be ‘laboratories of democracy’. Now, there is increasing concern that the states are becoming less and less likely to generate innovative policies. Looking at the growing role of federal waivers Donald F. Kettl suggests that the truth isn’t so simple. He writes that in exchange for working with the Obama administration on issues such as healthcare, conservative-led states like Indiana and Michigan have been able to push their own pathbreaking proposals to merge policy ambitions from the left with market tactics from the right

Despite fears about overregulation, we do need to have somecaution about what our kids eat in school.

A recent incident involving Double Stuf Oreos highlights the debate over how much supervision of what children eat at school is too much. Donald F. Kettl writes that while many are concerned about the overregulation of what students eat at school, it makes sense to take precautions against exposing them to things that can that can be genuinely harmful

How Hurricane Katrina made the feds more powerful

The federal government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 permanently damaged the reputation of the then President George W. Bush, and led to a massive shift in how the government responds to similar large disasters. Donald F. Kettl writes that in the decade since the storm hit New Orleans, the federal government’s involvement in disaster relief has grown both in terms of money and oversight — and so have tensions with localities

Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks

Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global public–private partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "global agora." The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration

The compound machinery of government: The case of seconded officials in the European commission

This article explores the compound machinery of government. Attention is directed toward decision making within the core executive of the European Union - the European Commission. The article studies seconded national civil servants (SNEs) hired on short-term contracts. The analysis benefits from an original and rich body of surveys and interview data derived from current and former SNEs. The decision-making dynamics of SNEs are shown to contain a compound mix of departmental, epistemic, and supranational dynamics. This study clearly demonstrates that the socializing power of the Commission is conditional and only partly sustained when SNEs exit the Commission. Any long-lasting effect of socialization within European Union's executive machinery of government is largely absent. The compound decision-making dynamics of SNEs are explained by (1) the organizational affiliations of SNEs, (2) the formal organization of the Commission apparatus, and (3) only partly by processes of resocialization of SNEs within the Commission