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This chapter summarizes the propositions that are emphasized within the proposed macro-level approach to public administration. These propositions suggest that the fundamental unit of political organization is the state. Every state has leaders; that is, a relatively small group of people who have substantial influence over the ordering of state goals and the means by which those goals are pursued. Generally, leaders try to maintain and improve their own positions within the state apparatus; increase power and legitimacy within the state system; increase power and legitimacy within the state's own territory; and increase national prosperity. In addition, leaders ought to advance human rights for the population that is subject to their authority. The behavior of leaders is guided by governance strategies that describe priorities and the means by which those priorities will be pursued. The chapter then details the aspects of the governing environment which must be taken into account as leaders set priorities and decide how those priorities will be pursued. Ultimately, scholars and practitioners in the field of public administration should be experts in the overall design, construction, administration, and renovation of those institutions that constitute a state. They should use this expertise to help leaders craft governing strategies that are effective, durable, and normatively defensible.

This chapter highlights another habit of thought that compromises one's ability to think clearly about strategies for governing in the United States: the doctrine of exceptionalism—the idea that there is something unique about governance in the American context. This mistaken belief makes it harder to learn from the experience of other states. There is a temptation to suggest that the United States is exceptional only because of the emphasis that Americans put on their own exceptionality. But even this is not true. People in most countries see something special about their own circumstances. Indeed, the feeling of exceptionality is shared almost universally, and rightly so. Conditions facing leaders in any one state are different from those facing any other state. Governance strategies must fit those conditions, and consequently one should expect policies and institutions to vary as well. This is why one should be wary about “one size fits all” prescriptions for governmental reform. Still, one should not get too carried away with this emphasis on variation. Even if circumstances change, there is one important commonality: leaders in all states, at all points in time, deal with the realities of building and maintaining a state.

This chapter argues that the goal of developing a new way of thinking about public administration is not only to improve research and teaching but also, ultimately, to improve professional practice. This can be done in two ways. Most directly, one can show leaders how to improve in crafting, executing, and adapting strategies for governing. All leaders use some sort of strategy to guide their decision-making, but these strategies may be poorly reasoned simply because leaders are unaware that they are engaged in strategy-making. As a result, they make strategies unconsciously and haphazardly. One's purpose should be to show leaders how strategy-making can be done deliberately, through an explicit assessment of goals, contexts, and methods. In particular, one wants leaders to think carefully about the challenge of executing strategy through the design and administration of state institutions. Decisions about strategy ought to be driven by an understanding of what institutions can or cannot do, as well as an understanding of the work involved in renovating existing institutions and building new ones. The connection between strategy and state architecture is critical, and it is a subject in which public administration scholars should have distinctive competence.

This chapter describes how state leaders encounter five difficulties while crafting strategies for governing. The first is conflict between the goals identified in Chapter 5. A familiar conflict of goals is that between internal order and human rights. Another conflict among goals arises between external security and internal order. Moreover, the desire to promote economic growth may collide with several other goals, such as national security, internal order, and human rights. A second challenge in crafting governance strategies is uncertainty about the techniques to use to achieve goals. Even when leaders are clear about their priorities, they may be unsure about the most effective ways to pursue them. A third challenge in crafting governance strategies is managing cultural and institutional inheritances, while the fourth challenge derives from turbulence in the governing environment. Some aspects of the environment may remain relatively constant, but other aspects change quickly. This can throw a leader's calculations into disarray. The final challenge is analytic complexity—that is, the difficulty of absorbing knowledge and making judgments about large and complicated questions.

This chapter explores the European governance both as the management of difference and the expression of coherence in the form of an imagined unity. It notes that the borders and boundaries of this unity are the site of political contestation around our understanding of the people who are the subjects of governance strategies and policy interventions.

This chapter analyses the experience of ‘joining’ Europe from the perspective of one of the Accession Countries, Hungary, as it encounters and attempts to interpret the governance strategies of the EU.

Innovative preventive vaccines against emerging and neglected infectious diseases, such as Zika, dengue, influenza, and HIV/AIDS, are examined from a global sustainability perspective in this chapter, aiming to integrate public health and innovation governance approaches. Innovation-intensive vaccines with reduced adverse effects can have an enormous impact on life expectancy and on the quality of life of the global population, but in contrast only one of the SDGs, SDG3, refers directly to vaccines (3.b.1). However, this chapter also identifies seven other SDGs strongly related to vaccines and six additional SDGs related to vaccines, leading to a total of 14 vaccine-related goals in 17 SDGs. Two of these goals are related to innovation and technological development of vaccines (SDG9 and SDG17). The authors examine vaccine performance indicators and current technological and regulatory obstacles to achieve these goals, particularly affecting developing countries, and propose STI governance strategies to overcome these gaps and increase access to vaccines. Policy recommendations for vaccine funding and incentives for innovation, development, and vaccine production are made. Recommendations are also given for specific vaccine STI performance indicators and strategies to achieve the 14 vaccine-related SDGs.

This concluding chapter looks at the National Academy of Public Administration's project in which they made a public call for comments about the “grand challenges of public administration.” Specifically, it sought advice on two questions, capitalizing for emphasis: “WHAT government must do over the next decade and HOW it should do it.” In other words, the academy wondered what the strategy for governing the United States should be in the coming decade. The field of public administration has been caught out at a critical moment. The problems that will confront the American state in the mid-twenty-first century are no less substantial than those of writer Walter Lippmann's time. Climatic disruption, shifts in the global power balance, demographic changes, technological revolutions, fiscal pressures, infrastructural shortfalls-all of these trends could jeopardize security, order, and citizens' well-being if government does not anticipate the dangers and organize itself properly in response. And people know from experience that it takes years to build agreement on strategy and reconstruct institutions so that they give expression to it. Choices made in the next few years will shape the contours of American public administration for decades to come.

This chapter focuses on the third dilemma in the design of governance strategies: When leaders devise governance strategies, they must decide whether borders will emphasize separation or connection with the rest of the world. Such a decision is not easy, and different considerations—national security, economic growth, internal cohesion, human rights—may pull in opposite directions. In the early years of the republic, American leaders often emphasized separation from the rest of the world. In the twenty-first century, there are good reasons why American leaders must look beyond their borders. Some dangers—climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, economic instability—can be addressed properly only by building international institutions that promote cooperation among states. The challenge for leaders is to build these institutions without appearing to betray people back home. The doctrine of universal human rights, consolidated over the last seventy years, complicates strategy-making even further, because it sometimes demands that foreigners be given treatment comparable to that of citizens. However, this doctrine might not be well understood or generally accepted by many people within the United States.

This chapter aims to identify the particular structure of rights and duties that ought to apply to the use and storage of bodily material. This requires an assessment of whether the rights that arise in items of bodily material are conceptually consistent with property rights. It is argued here that a right in bodily material that is in-itself is conceptually consistent with property rights and therefore such rights ought to obtain the legal structure of property rights. However, rights in bodily material that is for-itself or for-others are exclusive but non-contingent rights. In addition, insofar as these items of bodily material are self-ascribed, such rights are ambiguous. Rights in bodily material that is for-itself or for-others therefore ought to adopt a structure that is akin to the common law right to privacy. Hence, the law ought to develop a dualist approach to the legal status of bodily material.

This chapter identifies several factors that typically influence governance strategies. The first two are aspects of nature: geography and climate. For example, geography determines the vulnerability of a state to attack by other states as well as the manner in which that state must be defended. The expanse and contours of land and water also influences the capacity of a state to assert control within its borders, and it shapes decisions about centralization or decentralization of governmental authority. Similarly, the ability of states to stoke economic growth or exercise influence abroad hinges on their endowment of natural resources. Climate also affects prospects for economic growth as well as patterns of disease and susceptibility to extreme weather events. A second factor is the profile of the population within the territory controlled by the state. A third factor is the structure of the economy. A fourth factor is the inventory of available technologies, including physical technologies such as those used to capture, distribute, and convert energy. A final factor is the distribution of power within the society of states.

This chapter addresses institutional stewardship and how leaders focus heavily on institutions, because institutions are the means by which life is breathed into governance strategies. Leaders must attend to four tasks: the design and consolidation of new institutions and the administration and adaptation of existing institutions. Leaders and critics outside the state are constantly engaged in debate about institutional design. The pressure to invent new designs is felt most intensely where threats to the state are perceived to be severe—in the field of national defense or internal security, for example. Leaders often borrow designs from powerful or rival states in addition to learning from their own experience. Meanwhile, the term “consolidation” is often used by experts in peacebuilding and statebuilding—that is, the job of shoring up fragile states. Consolidation has also been described as the process of solidifying or “locking in” new arrangements. Once established, institutions must be administered. Administration encompasses the running of organizations, the enforcement of laws, and the execution of programs. The final aspect of institutional stewardship is adaptation: the renovation or reform of institutions in response to changing conditions.

This chapter studies how some scholars who study international relations subscribe to a way of thinking about the world called realism. Niccolò Machiavelli is considered one of the intellectual godfathers of realism. Realists believe that the world is a dangerous place, full of risks to essential state interests, and that leaders must be alert to these risks. The chapter then explains that threats managed by leaders come in many forms. Leaders try to manage such dangers by crafting strategies for governing and renovating institutions to give effect to those strategies. They are engaged in the work of threat management. Leaders hope that these strategies will provide long-lasting protection against the most serious dangers, but this hope is often dashed. Events move too quickly and strategies become outmoded. To put it another way, governance strategies are typically fragile. They require constant maintenance and renovation to accommodate an ever-changing array of risks. To protect the national interest, realists argue, leaders sometimes have to make choices that would be indefensible by the standards of conventional morality.

This chapter explores the importance of the decision about the timeframe in the development of a new approach to research in public administration. The choice of timeframe—long or short—affects one's thinking about governing in many ways. For example, it influences assumptions about the malleability of institutions. If one takes a long view, one is more likely to be struck by substantial changes in the design of institutions. The choice of timeframe has other consequences. If one takes the long view, one is more likely to recognize those social and economic forces that only operate slowly. The long view also improves one's ability to see patterns in events, avoid surprise, and learn from experience. Similarly, by taking the long view, one recognizes that devastating pandemics are a familiar part of the human experience. The chapter then considers the problem of presentism in the discipline of public administration. It also looks at another assumption that shapes one's thinking about the evolution of states: the idea of progress—or, in other words, the expectation that governance strategies will generate continual improvement in human welfare.

This chapter examines the second dilemma in the design of governance strategies, which relates to strictness of control. Leaders must choose whether to monitor and regulate behavior loosely or intensively. This is certainly true with regard to control of the everyday conduct of citizens through surveillance and policing. A similar choice must be made in the economic sphere, between a command economy and free markets. And the dilemma arises again within the apparatus of the state itself. For example, central government must decide whether to exercise more or less supervision over lower levels of government. Moreover, within each level of government, political leaders must decide whether to give more or less autonomy to bureaucrats charged with implementing their policies. In all of these contexts, similar calculations about the right measure of control must be made.

This chapter discusses the first dilemma in the making of governance strategies, which is the choice between efficiency and extravagance in the design of institutions and policies. For the past forty years, research and practice in public administration have focused on providing high-quality services at the lowest possible cost. Indeed, efficiency has been the main concern of the public management movement that emerged in the 1970s and now dominates the field of public administration in the West. The goal is to make government “work better and cost less” and to increase “value for money.” In this view, organizations are healthy if they are lean and performance focused. Wastefulness and extravagance are regarded as cardinal sins. However, the choice between efficiency and extravagance is not so clear. Sometimes it makes sense to apply more resources to a task than is strictly necessary to accomplish it. For example, this is often true when fighting wars.

This chapter distinguishes between commitment and equivocation in the design of governance strategies. For the last thirty years, “credible commitment” has been a stock phrase in scholarly writing about government. Governments are said to have a credibility problem, because citizens and businesses do not trust them to keep promises about how they will behave in the future. The task for leaders is to find techniques for demonstrating that they will keep their word, by designing institutions that make it hard to break promises. These institutional arrangements are called commitment devices. It can then be concluded that leaders are mainly concerned with finding clever ways to solve commitment problems. Commitment, it seems, is the key to prosperity, order, and legitimacy. Leaders want people and businesses to make choices that stimulate growth and deepen their own attachment to the existing order. However, the situation confronting leaders is actually more difficult than this. Sometimes equivocation rather than commitment is the sound choice. Leaders know that there will inevitably be emergencies where everyday rules have to be put aside, and they do not want to make it impossible to do this. For example, property might need to be seized in the name of national defense.

This chapter aims to identify two ‘conceptual’ features of property rights and then consider how these features align with the right to bodily integrity. Property rights enable the rights-holder to exclude others from an object or resource, which thereby preserves an open-ended set of activities with regards to the object or resource. Property rights also enable preferences and choices that can exist independently of the particular rights-holder. The right to bodily integrity is akin to property rights insofar as the right is also an exclusive right, but differs from property rights as the right to bodily integrity enables preferences and choices that cannot exist independently of the rights-holder. The extent to which the right to bodily integrity differs from property rights in this regard depends on the (first-person or third-person) perspective of the body.

This chapter looks at how leaders also think about another border as they formulate a strategy for governing. This is the temporal divide between present and future, the invisible line that separates the present generation from the generations that follow. Institutions can be designed to give more weight to the interests of future generations. Indeed, leaders have built institutions with a vested interest in tending to future threats. In the United States, the Department of Defense regularly reviews threats to national security that will likely face the next generation. However, leaders are often driven toward shortsightedness, because they must also respond to more immediate challenges. Any state, democratic or authoritarian, must deal with the reality of competition within the system of states. To maintain security and influence, leaders must keep their national economies growing, even if it causes long-term environmental damage.