Public administration has evolved into a tremendously complex form of governance based on collaborative networks of nongovernmental organizations as well as governmental institutions. Analyzing and improving government performance--a matter of increasing concern to citizens, elected officials, and managers of the organizations themselves-has thus also become a much more complex undertaking, calling for new research approaches. This book presents a body of research based on a new framework of governance (first put forth in Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research) that identifies how the relationships among citizens, legislatures, executive and organizational structures, and stakeholder assessments interact, in order to better understand and solve problems in public management. This volume breaks new ground in linking alternative institutional and administrative structures to program performance in different policy areas and levels of government. Collectively, the chapters shed new light on how management matters throughout the policy process, the variation of the influence of management at different levels of an organization and the role of leadership, the significance of the structure of the systems, and the importance of alternative organizational forms for the delivery of government services.