Robert Agranoff

This volume emanates from the papers and commentaries delivered at the Deil S. Wright Symposium at the 2014 Annual Conference of the American Society for Public Administration. The late Professor Wright’s work made deep contributions to the field of intergovernmental relations (IGR) and intergovernmental management (IGM). The symposium was designed to further the scholarly endeavors he inspired over the past decades, which are anchored in Wright’s definitive text, Understanding Intergovernmental Relations, last published in 1988. These current papers, now published in Stenberg and Hamilton’s volume, assess the significant changes that have taken place over the past half-century and identify future directions, tensions, and trends. The authors include notable federalism/IGR/IGM program thought leaders, scholars, and experienced practitioners.

In this article, the local government (LG) administrative implications of the movement from government to governance, involving multiple ties and externalized services operations, are examined from a cross-national perspective. Derived from a series of studies of LGs in multilevel systems, this article examines key patterns of cross-agency administration. First, administrative intergovernmental relations (IGR) are defined. Then common trends in local governments in their IGR arenas are identified. Next, changing managerial paradigms in outward as well as inward directions are introduced. Then a series of managerial challenges, including system development, IGR politics, collaborative knowledge development, network management, and interoperability are introduced. A research agenda for multilevel system local governments in IGR in the governance era concludes the article.

Programming for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities has shifted from state institutional care to community‐based services, facilitated by federal government support as well as services delivered by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For persons with mental retardation, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and autism, these programs not only have moved into the health care orbit but also are in search of more holistic ways to maintain persons with their families and in communities. Three major forces have led to this shift: federal financing, particularly under Medicaid; integration of services around clients; and externalized service delivery by NGOs. These are increasingly connected forces, facilitated particularly by the Medicaid Home and Community‐Based Services Waiver. They have transformed state‐operated systems. Increasingly, states are working with NGO case management and service delivery providers to organize and integrate services to face this continuing challenge.

This paper offers practical insights for public managers as they work within interorganizational networks. It is based on the author’s empirical study of 14 networks involving federal, state, and local government managers working with nongovernmental organizations. The findings suggest that networks are hardly crowding out the role of public agencies; though they are limited in their decision scope, they can add collaborative public value when approaching nettlesome policy and program problems.

The basic research concepts of intergovernmental and network management are examined with regard to blending the two into a unified theory of collaborative management. A substantial literature in b...