The Transformation of Governance

Abstract

The latter 20th and beginning of the 21st century have ushered in new forms of governance, opening the gates to what has been variously described as a “new public service,” a “multisectored public service,” and a “state of agents.” As government authority is dispersed, we increasingly rely on these new public servants for service delivery and policy implementation. But who are now the agents of the state? How might the changed makeup of a new public service alter our expectations about democratic governance? The questions we investigate in this study are, first, now that the public sector has been transformed, what are the characteristics of the agents of the new governance? And are the new public servants, in the words of Charles Goodsell, “ordinary people”? We use the General Social Survey to shed light on our focal question. Our results suggest that public servants in for-profit settings resemble traditional civil servants in many ways. The growing ranks of social, health, and education public servants in nonprofit settings are distinct in many ways from civil servants and for-profit public servants. Implications of the changing composition of the public sector in an era of transformed governance are discussed.