{"product_id":"agency-theory-in-public-administration","title":"Agency Theory in Public Administration","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis Element advances an agency-theoretic approach to public administration through comparative analysis of the United States, China, and EU. It examines how principals – such as legislatures, executives, or ruling parties – can align the actions of diverse agents, including civil servants, public agencies, street-level bureaucrats, and contractors, with the public interest. Drawing on an extensive review of 146 key studies and AI-assisted analysis of 8,400 articles from Public Administration Review, Part I outlines fundamental concepts: goal divergence, moral hazard, adverse selection, and information asymmetry and traces its history, debates, and criticisms. These concepts are then applied to key themes in public administration – performance management, federalism\/decentralization, contracting, politics-administration, and institutional drift. Part II investigates how these problems manifest and tackled in the US, China, and Europe. Part III concludes with a synthesis of findings, debates, extensions, and future directions for theory and practice.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cambridge University Press Bookshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56669769236866,"sku":"9781009704205","price":18.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0475\/2031\/7597\/files\/9781009704205i.jpg?v=1779712241","url":"https:\/\/www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk\/products\/agency-theory-in-public-administration","provider":"Cambridge University Press Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}