Local governments and metropolitan areas within the US provide venues in which to explore fundamental questions about the links between professional public management and a democratic society. The progressive reform era brought attention to the importance of professional management in local government, and the expansion of the council-manager plan of government during the twentieth-century brought professional administrators into city halls across the country (Stillman 1974; Frederickson et al. 2004). The context in which local government managers work has grown more complex over time. Metropolitan areas are increasingly diverse by measures of race, age, and economic composition (Hanlon et al. 2010). Cities and metropolitan regions now compete for residents and business in a global economy (Katz and Bradley 2013). Public managers have been pressured to be responsive to a wider range of professional values beyond government efficiency, including public engagement and transparency (Nalbandian 1991; Porumbescu 2015). Amid this change, the borders and legal organization of local governments in the US have remained relatively stable (Miller and Cox 2014). Public administration scholarship can inform the gap between the static political borders of local governments and the growing complexity of the challenges that they face. What role do local government managers play in the development and management of collaborative local governance? Governance problems in metropolitan areas have been the focus of critique from many government reformers, policymakers, and scholars.
Zeemering, E. S. (2019). Local politicians’ advice networks and the prospect of metropolitan civil society. Journal of Urban Affairs, 43(1), 201–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2019.1599293
