Market-Based Governance: Supply Side, Demand Side, Upside, and Downside

The 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.