Across Agency Lines: Policy Entrepreneurship in Public-Private Service Provision

• In Event: Shape Shifters: The Influence of Civil Society on Public Policy

Abstract

One of the central questions in policy is how the public sector can best respond to issues that seem intractable. Sometimes conceived of as “wicked problems,” these issues present a level of complexity that make all parts of the policy process difficult, especially given the constraints from within which most public institutions operate (Rittel and Webber 1973; Peters 2017; Head 2022). One characteristic of many of these problems is that they defy the sectoral bounds that divide the public sector; for instance, issues in public education are tightly connected to what’s happening outside the school walls. However, public institutions tend to be siloed and generally under-resourced, and, thus, not well-suited for working closely together on the shared problems they are tasked with addressing. This paradox highlights important questions of public governance: where have public institutions been able to begin working closely together, and how has such collaboration been developed and sustained? This paper investigates these questions using qualitative analysis of elite interviewing, documentary analysis, and literature review. This research is based on a longitudinal case study of a highly unique program developed in Tacoma, Washington by the local public housing authority and the public school district, along with a wider network of nonprofit organizations, philanthropic groups, and professional and advocacy organizations. The characteristics of this network, the composition of which changed over the course of the program, were significant drivers from agenda-setting to evaluation, with each institution’s capacities and resources influencing the trajectory of the overall process. The results of this study highlight the importance of several factors in public-private collaborative governance, including: motivated and steady leadership, goodness of fit between public and private partners, secure funding sources, and explicit focus on “translation” between sectors as well as between levels of organizational hierarchy. Emphasizing these factors, this paper builds upon extant literature surrounding policy entrepreneurs (Mintrom 1997; Mintrom and Norman 2009; Petridou and Mintrom 2021) and instrument constituencies (Béland and Howlett, 2015; Béland et al. 2018).

Author

• Mary Carnett Madsen, CUNY Graduate Center