Market-Based Governance: Supply Side, Demand Side, Upside, and Downside (Visions of Governance in the 21st Century)

This volume examines the use of market means to pursue public goals. "Market-based governance" includes both the delegation of traditionally governmental functions to private players, and the importation into government of market-style management approaches and mechanisms of accountability. The demand side section deals with forms of interaction between government and the market where the public sector is the "customer". The supply side section deals with the unsettled questions about government's role as a provider within the market system. A third section explores experiments with market-based arrangements for orchestrating accountability outside government by altering the incentives that operate inside market institutions. A final section examines both the upside and downside of the market-based approach to improving governance. A Brookings Institution Press and Visions of Governance for the 21st Century publicationThe latest in a series exploring twenty-first-century governance, this new volume examines the use of market means to pursue public goals. Market-based governance includes both the delegation of traditionally governmental functions to private players, and the importation into government of market-style management approaches and mechanisms of accountability.The contributors (all from Harvard University) assess market-based governance from four perspectives:The demand side deals with new, revised, or newly important forms of interaction between government and the market where the public sector is the customer. Chapters in this section include Steve Kelman on federal procurement reform, Karen Eggleston and Richard Zeckhauser on contracting for health care, and Peter Frumkin.The supply side section deals with unsettled questions about government's role as a provider (rather than a purchaser) within the market system. Contributors include Georges de Menil, Frederick Schauer and Virginia Wise.A third section explores experiments with market-based arrangements for orchestrating accountability outside government by altering the incentives that operate inside market institutions. Chapters include Robert Stavins on market-based environmental policy, Archon Fung on social markets, and Cary Coglianese and David Lazer.The final section examines both the upside and the downside of the market-based approach to improving governance. Contributors include Elaine Kamarck, John D. Donahue, Mark Moore, and Robert Behn.An introduction by John D. Donahue frames market-based governance as an effort to engineer into public work some of the intensive accountability that characterizes markets without surrendering the extensive accountability of conventional government. A preface by Joseph S. Nye Jr. sets the book in the context of a larger inquiry into the future of governance. The past quarter century of experiments with market means for pursuing public goals has deepened the reservoir of evidence on a hotly controversial topic. In this book sixteen authors assess this evidence -- from a full circle of scholarly vantage points -- to clarify the potential, and the risks, of market-based governance. A preface by Joseph S. Nye Jr. sets the tone for the inquiry, and the first chapter by John D. Donahue casts market-based governance as an effort to crossbreed the "intensive accountability" that defines markets with the "extensive accountability" characteristic of government. The chapters that follow explore particular aspects of market-based governance.The first section examines the "demand side" -- issues surrounding the public sector's role as a customer. Karen Eggleston, Richard Zeckhauser, and Peter Frumkin illuminate the debate over whether and when government should turn to the market to accomplish its missions, while Steven Kelman engages the often-neglected issue of how. Next, Georges de Menil, Frederick Schauer, and Virginia Wise engage the "supply side," taking up unsettled questions about government's role as a provider within the market system.In the third section Robert Stavins, Archon Fung, Cary Coglianese, and David Lazer review the evidence on efforts to orchestrate accountability outside government by altering the incentives that operate inside market institutions. Elaine Kamarck, John D. Donahue, Mark Moore, and Robert Behn map both the upside and the downside of the market-based approach to improving governance in a final section.

Thirteen chapters examine the use of market means to pursue public goods. Focusing on the privatization of government functions and the application of corporate management strategies within government, Harvard scholars consider the government's role as a consumer, its role as a service provider within a market system, market-based accountability mechanisms outside of government, and the advantages and disadvantages of the market approach. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,Portland, OR

Market-based governance is the handing over of traditional governmental functions to private players. Logically it is the next step on the way to the dismantling of democracy as exemplified for example in the Enron/Andersen outrage Annotation The latest in a series exploring twenty-first-century governance, this new volume examines the use of market means to pursue public goals