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Local Government Management

This special issue of ARPA seeks to fill a void in the public administration literature by bringing to the forefront analyses of local government and metropolitan challenges from the perspective of public administrationists: Those who manage cities and counties, and those who both teach and study local government management. The public administration perspective on local government and metropolitan governance has traditionally been grounded in jurisdictions—cities, counties, school and special districts. Today, however, there is often a disjuncture between problems to be solved and jurisdictional boundaries. Accordingly, local governments have changed, and continue to change in response to boundary-crossing challenges as Wheeland, Paulus and Wood evaluate, and new patterns of metropolitan governance are emerging, as Leland and Thurmeier analyze. According to Agranoff, these patterns of change are both horizontal, between and among connected units of local government and vertical, among local governments, states, and the national government. Civic engagement in local public affairs is growing in creative new ways as citizens seek to participate, a topic probed by Nabatchi and Amsler. In the same way that all politics is local, all policy is also local and none is more important than the need to balance the risk of disaster with the need for preparedness, as Donahue, Eckel, and Wilson explore. Together these articles are a timely treatment of compelling challenges facing governments and governance nearest at hand: Our cities, counties, districts and metropolitan areas.