Crossing Boundaries for Intergovernmental Management

Robert Agranoff

Sep 2017 · Georgetown University Press

About this ebook

Today, the work of government often involves coordination at the federal, state, and local levels as well as with contractors and citizens’ groups. This process of governance across levels of government, jurisdictions, and types of actors is called intergovernmental relations, and intergovernmental management (IGM) is the way work is administered in this increasingly complex system. Leading authority Robert Agranoff reintroduces intergovernmental management for twenty-first-century governance to a new generation of scholars, students, and practitioners.

Agranoff examines IGM in the United States from four thematic perspectives: law and politics, jurisdictional interdependency, multisector partners, and networks and networking. Common wisdom holds that government has “hollowed out” despite this present era of contracting and networked governance, but he argues that effective intergovernmental management has never been more necessary or important. He concludes by offering six next steps for intergovernmental management.

About the author

Robert Agranoff is professor emeritus at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and is affiliated with the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset in Madrid. He is the author of Collaborating to Manage, Managing within Networks, and coauthor of Collaborative Public Management, for which they received the Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration and the Martha Derthick Award from the American Political Science Association.