Sanctions play a pivotal role in ensuring accountability among local government officials. The existing literature, however, falls short in characterizing sanction measures and examining how sanction decisions are made in practice. We address this critical research gap by leveraging an innovative data set encompassing all sanction announcements against local officials during the most recent public health crisis in China. Beyond a rich descriptive analysis of sanction measures, our empirical analysis consistently indicates that, at the city level, the application of sanctions follows the principle of “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down first”. At the individual level, we find that poor managerial performance and central government on-site inspections escalate the punitive degree of sanctions on senior local leaders, while political patronage appears to mitigate the severity of sanctions and potentially influence their political career.

Drawing on theoretical perspectives from the literature on childhood socialization and cultural capital, we investigate how the socioeconomic status (SES) background of public administrators shapes their relationships with elected political officials and their staff. Analyses of over 30 years of survey data indicate that American state agency directors from higher SES backgrounds report more frequent interaction with political principals, suggesting that early-life exposure to elite norms and the accumulation of cultural capital facilitate access and ease in elite political spaces. In addition, these administrators report lower levels of perceived gubernatorial influence on major policy changes and agency rules and regulations, indicating the potential for high SES socialization to buttress bureaucratic autonomy and administrative discretion. These findings underscore the importance of class background as a formative social identity, and suggest that scholars should take it seriously in public administration research, particularly as a dimension of social equity and elite political navigation.

How does populism affect public sector innovation, and can innovation persist despite populist context? Using Israel as a case study, we examine this relationship through a two-stage mixed-methods approach: focus groups with former senior officials followed by interviews with mid-level managers who successfully implemented innovative initiatives. We find that contemporary populism manifests differently across hierarchical levels – senior officials experience direct interference through centralization, delegitimization of expertise, and politicization; while mid-level managers encounter operational constraints under indirect populist pressures. Nevertheless, innovation can persist through sophisticated adaptive strategies: building informal networks, creating protected spaces and leveraging existing frameworks to avoid political scrutiny. Our findings contribute by revealing both the differential impact of populism on innovation barriers across bureaucratic levels and identifying specific work around strategies that enable innovation to flourish despite these constraints, though with hidden transactional costs.

This article makes the following fundamental arguments. First, that the importance of democratic governance represents a central priority in modern public administration, particularly given the normative significance of the ‘public’, or what we’ll refer to as ‘publicness’. It is further argued that the case for publicness at the macro-societal level is essential for public administration to sustain its normative and intellectual integrity in meeting the daunting challenges contributing to the erosion of democratic principles and governance. This article begins stating several normative priorities of what publicness at this macro-societal level denote in protecting democratic principles and norms when threatened and undermined. Second, it is argued that the concept of ‘the public’ requires an affirmative role for public administration, which is highlighted in the approaches of the ‘enterprise as a whole’ and the ‘principle of democratic transparency’ in playing a crucial role strengthening the field's civic implications in this era of democratic backsliding. Finally, suggestions for future research are offered, and how both practitioners and academicians might proceed on certain important civic initiatives.

Despite its growing prominence in public administration scholarship, social equity remains insufficiently embedded in local sustainability actions. This study applies an institutional lens to investigate the mechanisms through which sustainability is institutionalized and to assess their impact on equity-oriented actions. Specifically, we investigate four mechanisms of institutionalization: embedding sustainability in formal plans, organizational structure, operational budget and performance evaluation. Drawing on data from a 2015 nationwide survey, we find that embedding sustainability in performance evaluation exerts the greatest influence, followed by task forces, dedicated staffing, and budget allocations, yet the inclusion of sustainability in formal plans fails to drive equity-oriented actions. These findings underscore the importance of institutionalizing sustainability through routine evaluation processes and leveraging flexible, resource-efficient structures to advance social equity. By integrating the institutionalization theory into the analysis of local government equity practices, this study contributes to public administration scholarship and offers actionable insights for policymakers and public managers aiming to promote more inclusive and enduring sustainability development.

Property taxes serve as the largest own-source revenue source for local governments in the United States. Unlike property values, which fluctuate with the economy, assessed values—the foundation of property taxes—are not routinely updated and reassessments often occur infrequently. The timing of these reassessments holds significant implications, particularly during economic fluctuations. For instance, reassessing during periods of depressed property values can result in reduced revenues, necessitating rate hikes or service cutbacks. Therefore, counties may strategically time reassessments to mitigate adverse financial effects. This study investigates whether property reassessment delays served as strategic financial management tools in North Carolina counties from 2000 to 2019. The findings indicate that counties did employ reassessment timing strategically, particularly in the periods immediately following recessions. Moreover, counties that delayed reassessments exhibited marginally higher property valuation compared to those that did not delay.

The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events require organizations to effectively manage the threats these phenomena pose. To respond to these challenges, public agencies often turn to their organizational memories for guidance. Organizational memories support information processing capacity, facilitate sensemaking, and legitimize and speed up decision-making processes. While memories influence different aspects of organizational life, little is known about their antecedents and the mechanisms behind the retrieval of past events. This study contributes to the broader literature on organizational memory by investigating the elements shaping public agencies’ retrieval of extreme weather events. Integrating weather data from the National Center for Environmental Information's (NCEI) Storm Event Database with a national survey of the 300 largest transit agencies in the US, we find that public agency memories are influenced not only by the nature of the events experienced, but also by the processes that govern organizational attention, storage, and information processing.

Fragmentation among local governments often leads to inefficiencies in public service delivery. This challenge is particularly salient in delivering services for small communities. This study applies the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework and network analysis to examine how inter-local collaborative agreements can improve cost efficiency in water and wastewater services in Iowa. Integrating the theories of economies of scale and transaction costs, this study provides a nuanced understanding of how inter-local collaborative networks lower costs in service delivery. The findings reveal that while collaboration is widely considered a means to achieve economies of scale, local actor's network structure could play a more significant role in shaping actual efficiency gains. Specifically, in water services, cities in more tightly clustered networks experience lower efficiency. Conversely, in wastewater services, clustering is associated with higher efficiency by fostering resource sharing and enforcement mechanisms, but network centrality is associated with lower efficiency. These results suggest the importance of strategic management of collaborative ties to balance the benefits of economies of scale with the transaction costs of collaboration. The findings provide implications for policymakers aiming to improve public service efficiency through inter-local collaboration.

Network approaches to collaborative leadership suggest that local leaders’ success depends on activities that connect their organization to diverse stakeholders and resources. Drawing on the literature on managerial networking and a mixed-methods approach that includes 38 semi-structured interviews and a survey of 185 New York State municipal leaders, we explore the impact of leaders’ networking efforts on food access and security in their communities. We hypothesize that different forms of leaders’ social capital (bridging, bonding, and linking) has an impact on policy success. Our results suggest that only bridging social capital has an impact on food access. We conclude with some suggestions for future research and offer policy recommendations.

This exploratory study surveyed 330 U.S. public record requesters on their local, state, and federal experiences and behaviors. Findings showed requesters with more experience submitting requests to local and state governments had better odds of successfully receiving their records. Federal requesting experience was negatively associated with receiving requested records. Structural equation analysis also showed a significant relationship between local requesting experience and satisfaction with the requesting process. However, local and state requesters were more likely to report problems with fees, rudeness from government officials, and barriers from privacy exemptions. Unwarranted delay, an enduring complaint among the requesting community, was found to be a more severe problem for those with more federal requesting experience, whereas local and state requesting experience was negatively associated with a belief that delay was a serious problem. The study advances the understanding that local and federal freedom of information processes are experienced as distinct mechanisms with differing requester bodies, behaviors, and results.