Governing in the new service environment: Between Hierarchies and

Networks

Margaret F. Reid,
Associate Professor
University of Arkansas
Department of Political Science
Fayetteville, AR 72701

T: 479-575-5352 mreid@uark.edu

Session 8.5
 1

Abstract
The paper argues that the urban regime model can be salvaged as a useful approach to
examining urban policy issues if it is seen within a multi-level and multi-sectoral
governance context. The advantage of this expansion is three-fold: for one the model
reflects contingencies that explain some of the differences within country and between
country experiences; two, it expands the focus beyond its traditional interest in
(economic) elite regime actors to the interactions of key policy-makers and the resulting
choice sets that determine policy outcomes; finally it links to the developing literature of
inter-organizational networks. In contemporary service environments governance
arrangements are largely hybrids rather than pure forms-- hierarchies as well as
networks—to relate broader policy level issues (urban regime) to provision of services
(contracting regimes). It is not always clear however which services are provided and to
whom; the nature of the urban regime may shed some light on these decisions.
 2

Governing in the new Service Environment: Between Hierarchies and

Networks

Introduction

The renewed interest in engaging nonprofits and other non-governmental actors in

urban service delivery must be seen in its historical institutional context. Service delivery

has occurred via a multitude of channels from the beginning of United States and many

other countries before the creation of modern welfare states. Hall’s (1987) historical

recounting of the role of nonprofits noted their almost immediate central role as service

providers, long before they were enlisted by private philanthropies and later the public

sector for their own respective purposes.

In the second part of the 20th century, services have been delivered through a

limited number of preferred mechanisms (Savas 2002): directly through public agencies

and mediated through third party providers-- for-profit contractors or nonprofit

organizations. The recent changes in service arrangements emphasizing devolution from

the federal/national to state and/or local levels requires a renewed examination of these

institutional arrangements (Alexander 1999) and their associated “contracting regimes”

(Smith and Lipsky 1993). Policy shifts generically termed as “devolution” are driven by

several ideological factors: that the public sector is “too big”, that non-governmental

service providers or markets are more efficient or caring in what they do, and that

services are best delivered closest to where they are needed (subsidiarity). Notably, both

public and nonprofit organizations have been called upon to behave in a more business-

like manner which presumably means for them to be better stewards of their resources
 3

and to show greater responsiveness to the clients they serve. 1 The question however

remains if and how the underlying behaviors of dominant regime actors can be or are

influenced by such changes (McAdam et al. 2001). In poor urban districts in Southern

California researches Joassart-Marcelli and Wolch (2003: p.) found that while there are

increasing numbers of nonprofits serving poor communities, the poorest are the least well

supported:

Nonprofits tend to gravitate to areas where they can mobilize resources, locations
characterized by lower unemployment, a higher proportion of married families,
and higher education. Although this is a rational behavior, this may have the
indirect effect of physically separating antipoverty organizations from those most
in need.

In the international context these issues have added relevance. As fledgling

democracies are attempting to develop their social capital, encourage volunteering and

other forms of civic participation across sectarian lines, the balkanization of special

interests to the detriment of civic interaction is bound to be of concern. Backmann and

Smith (2000) for example note that reliance on volunteers and close-knit social networks

diminishes with the increased dependence on single donors or government contracts.

The rapid speed with which these new multi-actor and/or multi-purpose service

arrangements are diffused throughout the world is even more astounding in light of the

fact that “there is little evidence that governments or academics know much about how to

govern or manage networks” effectively (Milward & Provan 2000: 260; Collinge &

1
Note the recent article by Durst and Newell (2001) on the differential effects of “reinvention”
on nonprofits compared to their public counterparts.
 4

Srbljanin 2002,2003).2 Moreover, many of these discussions have not been linked to

earlier state-centered theorizing of the 1970s and thus lack a fundamental theoretical

connections to earlier bodies of literature. Salamon’s “new governance” approach

explicitly emphasizes the shift from “public agency and program to distinctive tools or

instruments through which public purposes are pursued” (p. 9). Tool choices cannot be,

however, as Peters outlines in the same volume, de-linked from institutional choices (p.

557). Only by dismantling or re-focusing institutional choice sets could certain

approaches become the preferred policy and program tools for those who wield the power

to select them. On normative grounds, some observers have begun to question the

“marketization” of both public and nonprofit organizations with its attendant problems

for the sustenance of democratic and civic values (e.g.,Denhardt & Denhardt 2002;

Eikenberry & Kluver 2004). The boundaries between polis and market however are

artificial ones and in constant flux. Thus prescribed policy tools can never be solely

justified by their “efficacy”—whether associated with an outcome or a process. Such

argument misses a more important issue: efficient/effective to do what and for whom?

What is suggested here is that no one governance arrangement is inherently better

or worse. Rather, governance involves a continuum of contingent choices that under the

2
Multi-purpose alliances are typical outcomes of policies that require direct collaboration and
coordination of public agencies, of public agencies with private employers (e.g., workforce
development) or nonprofits (e.g.,CDCs)
 5

best of circumstances provide for input from many of the players. All produce temporary

arrangements that are sufficient to resolve outstanding problems – until they are replaced

by others as the needs or the power constellation shifts. In contemporary service

environments governance arrangements are hybrids rather than pure forms: hierarchical

for one purpose, to e.g., assure accountability, resembling networks for improved

information and decisionmaking purposes (Oliver 1990). Such service arrangements are

similar to border regions between countries: some for either historical, economic or

political reasons produce hierarchical modes of interaction while others prefer more

cooperative policy making modes (see e.g. Blatter 2000). In other words, the choice of

instruments is influenced both by the preferences of network actors, but also constrained

by political, cultural or institutional experiences that may limit available choice sets (see

e.g. Breyer 1982; Majone 1976; 1989). In other words, we currently lack an effective way

of explaining how service delivery choice sets are influenced by regime level choices

and/or extant power relationships.

Against this backdrop, urban regime scholarship remains somewhat arrested by

the paucity of systematic comparative studies that can shed light on the

intergovernmental and intersectoral relationships that form the institutional backdrop of

local regimes (see e.g. Davies 2002). Empirically, arguments favoring the adoption of

these evolving practices are often derived from a very limited number of cases or

“success stories.” Moreover, many of these cases are not studied longitudinally or reflect

specific institutional or historical preconditions that produced specific governance

arrangements in the first place.

 6

The purpose of this paper is three-fold: to start, I will briefly sketch why an

expanded urban regime model is needed. Second, I will examine --using the fragmented

urban social service environment as an example-- how institutional choices can increase

urban service providers’ dependence on increasingly powerful external stakeholders that

are bound to affect service choices and policy implementation structures.

I will conclude with a sketch how such an extended, multi-level urban governance

model might serve to enhance the explanatory power of the urban regime model.

Specifically, the paper will propose a fusion of regime theories (policy level) with

contracting regime theory (provider level) to reflect these more complex decisional

environments.

Background: Urban governance in transition—the advent of multilevel service

arrangements

The last two decades have witnessed a tremendous restructuring of social service

environments that leaves the traditional top-down authority structure as only one of many

options for policy design and implementation (Agranoff and McGuire 2001).

Increasingly, horizontal relationships complement or even replace centrally mandated

policy or service relationships. In their stead a plethora of new coordinating devices have

emerged (Mandell & Steelman 2003) that involve both market and non-market actors in

sometimes fluid alliances with formalized, structured and informal relationships. What

holds successful collaborations together is goal commitment, experience with working in

non-hierarchical settings and the ability to marshal the resources needed to bring the task

to fruition (see Stoker 1985; Stone 1993). For governmental actors the greatest challenges
 7

associated with the presence of multiple principals (Bardach & Lesser 1996) arise from

the diminished transparency and perceived lack of accountability to their citizens (Dicke

& Ott 1999).

Conceptualizing governance arrangements reflective of these complex policy and

service environments and their likely impact on the extant and future role of urban

governments is thus of great urgency. Systematic comparative studies as much as they

exist are widely dispersed and often inaccessible to US and international service

providers. International comparisons are often hampered by insufficient funding, political

impediments and research design issues. Theorizing about these arrangements is in its

infancy. While some of the network research has begun to incorporate these discussions

(Mandell 2001; Forrest 2003; MacClean 2003; April 2003 and others in a special issue of

the International Journal Public Administration), more widely used urban policy

frameworks such as regime theory have been slow in incorporating the increasingly

complex layering of these service networks (e.g. Clark 2001; Davies 2003).

Emerging new approaches must focus on advancing designs that allow us to

combine a complex system of intergovernmental (or federalist where appropriate),

intersectoral and policy-sector spanning arrangements to evolve governance theories that

can explain the existence of localistic regime characteristics and attendant service

arrangements. This requires a level of theoretic sophistication that none of the extant

regime or governance conceptualizations have as yet fully attempted. To be sure,

traditional principal-agent or other related economic models are incapable of capturing

these dynamics.
 8

We might benefit from models advanced in the comparative politics literature or

from the intergovernmental and attendant interorganizational (network) discussions to

better understand political and economic resource dependencies and resulting

collaborative choice sets. The objective of a theory of multi-level governance is to bridge

the gap between all levels of authority (public and private) involved in a particular policy

area and to identify avenues for effective policymaking under such conditions while

understanding the limits of urban regime level theorizing (see Stone 2004, p. 6-7).

Moreover, it would be of considerable value to link Benson’s earlier work to these

discussions. Benson (1975) argued that for interorganizational networks to function

properly, there must be agreement across four dimensions: ideological consensus, domain

consensus (i.e. the role of each agent); support from those working within the networks;

and sufficient coordination of work and organizational cultures.

Urban Regimes Revisited

The previous discussion leaves little doubt that in contemporary societies

coordination of purposes and work efforts across policy sectors, intergovernmental and

interorganizational domains require a different response than calls for more command-

and-control leadership, clearly identifiable realms of authority –all hallmarks of

traditional hierarchies. The advent of the concept of urban regime was in many ways an

acknowledgement of the complexities of governing diverse urban areas: the need to pool

limited resources; the recognition of extant local power structures that shape policy

agendas; the need for a stable coalitions of actors to provide for continuity of policy.

formation and the inclusion of players from governmental and non-governmental arenas.
 9

Urban regimes are the outcome of institutional, political and policy process

choices. How to incorporate the many combinations of institutional/policy conditions

with the various forms of collaborations and partnerships between urban actors remains

an ongoing discussion. It is not clear at this point if the urban regime concept should be

abandoned altogether for lack of comparative applicability, used more or less for the

American setting, or if it can be expanded sufficiently to capture the varieties of regime

characteristics beyond US settings without losing its explanatory usefulness (see e.g.

Davies 2003). Certainly, regimes should not be confused with networks or partnerships.

All share the need for collaboration, but conceptualized at different levels of analysis.

Urban policy climates and political preferences shift over time with economic,

demographic and other conditions that may not only induce a realignment of urban

regimes but also the ideological foundations that supported the existence of particular

local power structures (Stone, 1993; DiGaetano & Klemanski 1999). Moreover, the

prevailing nature of intergovernmental relations creates opportunities and constraints

beyond the urban context. Agranoff and McGuire capture these complexities when they

characterize the contemporary intergovernmental environment in the US as follows:

“The operational reality for many cities at the end of the twentieth century is a milieu of

multiple incentives, organizations, actors, and agencies (Judd and Swanstrom 1997).”

The substantial variety and variability that these conditions produce has not been

sufficiently captured by the regime literature to even satisfactorily theorize about US

conditions far less serve as a foundation for comparative analyses (see e.g. Davies 2002).

It is unfortunate that the regime theory construct until recently has been largely

limited to elite economic actor relationships even though Stone’s own writings seemed
 10

to suggest a broader view of urban power relationships that extend beyond the economic

bases of power (most recently, Stone 2004). In an era when policies and events outside

the local environment influence power relationships as much as do those inside the

community, such elaborations of the model could produce added explanatory power. Its

lack of accounting for both formal and informal policy relationships has limited its

usefulness for comparative work. In its focus on governing coalitions it also misses

potential early indicators for regime change as new players, organizations or ideas enter

the fray (Moore 1988). Here the interorganizational and network literature could be

carefully grafted onto the regime concept to produce a multilevel governance theory that

includes both elite and non-elite actors while alos acknowledging the influences of extra-

local players such as the states in the US context or supra-national agencies and actors for

the European context. This must be the subject of another project and cannot be tackled

here. The focus for this paper will focused largely on the urban level.

Examining relationships at the level of the elite policy actors, the neighborhood

level and the degree of isolation of one from the other might (a) generate a more multi-

dimensional picture of the political (in)stability of urban regimes over time, (b) identify

reasons for the selection of preferred policy choices/responses to weather political or

economic turmoil, and (c) explore its ability to transform itself when faced with such

challenges.

2. Urban Regimes and Community Based Service Networks

Collaboration among nonprofit, public, and private sector organizations is an

increasingly prevalent practice within the urban service delivery field (Agranoff and
 11

McGuire 2001;example for UK: Stephens and Fowler 2004). More significantly for our

purposes are the institutional implications of what some have called “sector blurring” (

and others refer to as “tangled” relationships; see e.g., Saidel & Harlan 1998 ).

Community based service delivery represents an interesting case for the evolution

of urban governance because of its local and extra-local components. Central mandates

(even when they are disguised in the US under the rhetorical mantle of devolution or

states’ rights) exert a powerful pull on local regime actors and their ability to govern

independently. When ideological forces at the central (or federal level) attempt to effect

changes in local behaviors --as was the case with welfare reform in the US and elsewhere

since the early 1990s --the policies produced locally may vary quite substantially . In

order for the federal/national players to effect desired behavioral changes, conflict over

ideological or policy goals must be minimized and discretion of local actors maximized

without jeopardizing the desired policy directions (see e.g. for the UK health sector

Kitchener & Gask 2003). In the UK where policy cooperation and coordination between

central and local level actors has not been well developed, the policy shifts since 1997

have led to extensive discussions how such devolution can work in a policy setting that

features comparatively large local authorities. The likely outcome is that the structure of

(inter)-local policy networks are initially minimally disrupted, but the desired behavioral

changes are also not guaranteed. Benson captured these dynamics when he wrote (1975:

237): “agencies can agree on matters of domain and ideology only to the extent that such

agreement does not threaten their interests.” Within a provider network that may

encompass many agencies, effectiveness is only assured when the member agencies are

willing to surrender some of their individual autonomy to assure the independence of the
 12

policy or provider network from unwanted intrusions that might cause disruptions to the

proper functioning of the network (see e.g. Provan & Milward 1995).

In other words, it is imperative that we conceptualize the links between policy

level changes, provider networks and associated contracting regimes to understand

reasons for changes within urban regimes.

Contracting Regimes

The increased reliance on non-state actors is not solely a function of diminished

capacity of the public sector, the “hollow state” (Milward, Provan & Else 1993; Milward

& Provan 2000). When the legitimacy of the central state as the primary source for

setting public policy parameters is challenged or questioned, accountability migrates to

the institution that can command the greatest authority or enlist the greater trust (Sabel

1993).

For nonprofits this means that their prime standard of accountability becomes

increasingly one dictated by those who they contract with. The dependence of many

nonprofit organizations on external resources has been well documented. During the

1980s, when federal programs were cut by more than 20 percent, American nonprofits

lost more than $30 billion in funding. Many organizations were forced to terminate

programs and reduce staffs (Liebschutz,1992). North Carolina, e.g., lost more than $241

million in federal funds in the first year of the devolution to the states in 1981-82 (Coble

1999). Nonetheless, the relationship with government agencies continues unabated as

nonprofits seek public funding at that same times that their private funding base

continues to shrink. Nonprofits engaged in human services now receive approximately

30-40 percent of their resources from government contracts, some of them up to 60

 13

percent or more. Likewise, the steady stream of volunteers that nonprofits were able to

count on in earlier decades is diminishing as well. Some volunteers are displaced by

government funding outright, others leave because they be “disillusioned with the

changes in the organization” (Smith and Lipsky 1993: 114), while yet others may stay on

and continue to fight for what they believe is the true mission of the organization.

While the constitutionality of such service arrangements is an important

consideration for some nonprofits, for the purpose of this discussion, the interests rests

with the broader institutional consequences of a transfer of state functions to non-state

actors -- a shadow state as Wolch (1990:41) called it: “Shadow state activities are not

formally part of the state. They do not involve the same types of direct accountability and

oversight procedures characteristic of the internal state apparatus. Instead, they are

subject to state-imposed direct and indirect constraints on their autonomy.” The

traditional urban regime discussions have reflected little on the political and economic

power of the nonprofit sector to shape local policies but also the danger to be co-opted to

lose their independent voices as a result of their increasing dependence on state contracts

(Wolch 1990).
 14

Figure 1

Three Perspectives on Nonprofit – Government Relationships

Entrepreneurial Partnership/Alliance Public Service

Rationale for Diversification Historically strong Mission driven
Involvement ties with other
organizations Fits NP’s area of
Revenue expertise or
generation Interdependence for satisfies an
mutual benefits unmet need
Normative Actors in a Political Economy Civic
perspective of marketplace-- “incubator”
NPs competition interdependence
independence

Source: adapted from Seelfeldt et al. (2001, 5)

Public private service arrangements as well as their public nonprofit counterparts

have found significant support from public managers and the general public alike. Those

arguing in their favor cite several factors: that they are a cost-effective alternative of

poorly managed public programs, that private providers have a strong incentive to

produce results (their contract can be revoked), that private partners are less risk-averse,

more flexible and innovative in their approaches to solving problems, and that private

providers supply the jobs that the public agency could never secure for its clients (see

e.g., Allen et al. 1989). These discussions leave much to be desired. Their focus on

“tools” of governing rather than the governance arrangements themselves and reasons for

their preference in one locale cannot be explained by such studies.

Even fewer efforts have been undertaken to examine how contracting regimes

between public agencies and private providers are in turn defined by urban regime

characteristics, the institutional context, that prevails in the community examined (see
 15

e.g. Austin & McCaffrey 2002). Depending on the contracting motivations and capacities

of the partnering entities involved, these arrangements may be short term engagements or

long-term “strategic partnering” (Austin and McCaffrey 2002: 41) designed to

complement public and private interests, goals and resources over the longer term. The

many case studies both from the United States and Europe seem to suggest however, that

these partnerships are successful when they feature the right blend of public policy issues,

leadership, a process for the partners to sort out their different perceptions of the issue to

be resolved, and broad civic engagement. This would suggest that there are inherent

structural conditions that shape the preferences for certain provider models.

Social service-focused nonprofits most closely resemble traditional welfare

programs such as health care, daycare, job-training, or nursing home care (Seefeldt et al.

2001). On the surface, they should represent the most straightforward case for successful

partnerships as the parties:

• Share similar service philosophies

• Have been accustomed of working with other public sector service

providers in a particular community

• Have predating service experience in multi-sectoral service arrangements

On the flipside, nonprofits with a history of heavy reliance on external funding or

organizations that could be described as “low-autonomy” organizations, and “are more

fragile by virtue of the hegemony the interorganizational environment is able to assert ”

(Alexander 2000; O'Connell, 1996; Grønbjerg 1993). The survival of such organizations

is closely tied to conformity with the demands of dominant actors contracting regime. In

fact, nonprofits experience increased pressures to conform to prevailing business

 16

practices as they are forced to compete with private actors in areas that once were the

exclusive domain of nonprofits (see e.g. Rojas 2000, Ryan 1999, Rom 1999). For

organizations with specific service missions or close ties to particular clientele this may

be sufficient cause to reject any collaboration with other organizations that are likely to

compromise their work or jeopardize their ability to provide programs and services to

needed clients (Grønbjerg 1993).

Graph 1 about here

Examining the "contracting regime" (Smith and Lipsky 1993) is a useful way to

capture manifestations of the institutional shift toward publicly funded but privately

delivered human services. The work by Weick (1993), Di Maggio and Powell(1983) and

Schlesinger (1998) is instructive in this context as well. They all have argued that

external influences mediate behaviors of organizations or agencies, and by extension of

provider networks. These influences include: the growth of large purchasers who can

obtain services from organizations they prefer to interact with; the increased uncertainty

or ambivalence about organizational goals due to a multitude of factors over which the

single organization has limited control, and thirdly, the proliferation of widely accepted

professional norms and management practices. The resulting isomorphism tends to make

organizations look and act more alike over time. Differences may continue to occur when

the external pressures, such as community or regulatory influences, are sufficiently

complementary with the organization’s own normative commitments that it can continue

with its own unique practices or service foci.

Small nonprofits that have decided to isolate themselves to preserve their

independence remain largely unviable in the future or find they are unable to compete for
 17

resources with their networked counterparts. In fact, many grants now require

collaboration among community organizations as a condition of receiving funding.

Service complexity is one of the driving factors for many of these collaborative efforts.

Service partnerships are viewed as an effective and cost-efficient way to address the

needs of poor neighborhoods or to compensate for the loss of federal funding to provide

integrated services to those communities (Chaskin & Brown 1996). Similar approaches

are being considered for health care delivery. The main difference between the two policy

domains is the policy dominance of private providers in one and the dominance of public

and nonprofit providers in the other. Stability of neither of these provider networks and

their attendant contracting regimes is not assured, however. Forrest suggests (2003, 594):

But even where policy networks become well-structured and politically

entrenched, they may be hampered by the absence of a coordinating
center, rendering it more difficult to sustain a commitment to a singular
policy goal. This reflects the broader problematic that robust policy
networks often evolve with a changing array of participants, agendas, and
organizational mandates….

Networks that are under-resourced face additional dilemmas of holding the

service alliances together over extended periods of time that it may take to address most

social service problems. Economically powerful actors are notorious for the lack of

commitment to long-term solutions to social problems. The diminishing commitment to

or inability of the central state to resolve intractable policy problems such as poverty,

urban plight or educational deficiencies can in part be explained by the place-specific

manifestations of these issues. Adequate policy development require both a response at

the macro-levels of policy decision making as well as an the intense involvement of local
 18

policy actors who must fashion the structural and behavioral responses politically

acceptable for their locales.

Graph 1

Institutional design:
Authority in multi-
actor networks

Fragmentation
(internal or external)
Contracting

Regime
Service arrangement
predictability/stability

Accountability for
resource uses

Shared Values

Sources: Milward&Provan (2000), Smith&Lipsky (1993), Smith&Sosin (2001), Weick

(1990)
 19

3. Urban Regimes and Multi-Level Governance

The rapid institutionalization of the third sector – especially in the realm of urban

service delivery requires a rethinking of urban regime models. No longer can these

nonprofits be considered as a passing curiosity. The size of the sector, as well as their

increasing contributions in transitioning societies, has not gone unnoticed among

scholars. The field now has a half dozen or more reputable journals, universities have

added research centers and courses to reflect their growing significance. The huge

diversity of the sector makes generalizations about their contributions, their political

weight, and their economic clout almost impossible. Load-shedding of both public and

private sectors have contributed to the growth of the sector, but has also contributed to

the sector blurring phenomenon that produces some of the analytical dilemmas briefly

addressed in this paper. Yet despite their role as major service providers, the urban

regime models have not reflected these increasingly complex partnerships, and networks

of service providers.

Economic explanations of why the sector exists as either some form of

“institutional failure” ( market or government failure) ( see e.g. Weisbrod1988, 1997), or

as “contract failure” (Hansmann 1987, 1996) have been generally rejected (e.g. Salamon

1996) while in some other fields nonprofits have not been classified as distinctive form

other sorts of organizations. DiMaggio and Anheier, noted that “sociology . . . in

contrast to economics, law and political science has not viewed nonprofit organizations

as a useful, distinctive category of organizations” (138). It is not possible here to develop

these arguments further. They suggest however two conclusions:

 20

a. for regime theory to advance it must reflect on its embeddedness into specific macro-

institutional settings (e.g. the legal and as well as political economic roles of these

organizations)

b. regime theorists also must be more sensitive to policy contexts: some service sectors

feature intense interactions of nonprofits with the market, in others with the public sector.

The resulting differentials in norms as well as preferred structures that shape these

interactions (e.g. the emphasis or preference of the corporate form may suggest the

presence of organizational isomorphism) must be incorporated int these discussions

c. regime theory may benefit from longitudinal analyses (such as Stone’s work on Atlana)

that examine interorganizational collaborations and community systems, and changes in

their various stakeholder that make up the contracting regimes described earlier.

Graph 2 about here

 21

Graph 2

Urban Regime

Contracting Regime

Provider Network Characteristics

Resource Mission Service

Dependence/ & links to Capacities
coupling community

Local Service Environments

e.g., heterogeneity, poverty, degree of activism

Where does this leave urban regime theory?

Stone suggested many years ago (1987:295) that instead “of fragmenting our attention by

looking at discrete correlates of regime form, analysis might aim for a broad picture of

how various elements of the community fit together in a porcess of change.” Urban

regimes are not static entities but subject to structural and policy changes as well as

difficult to detect links between national mandates/policy initiatives and local responses

or lack thereof. In order for us to understand why some minority communities are

thriving while others with similar conditions are not cannot be solely explained by

national policies. A group of local activists may initiate discussions in their communities
 22

about redirecting resources or increasing participation of long-neglected members of the

community, while in another setting similar discussions may deteriorate to conflicts over

turf, power and access to valued resources and thus fail to transform service delivery in

the community. Hence, the nature of contracting regime is a visible reflection of the

larger policy priories and purposes beyond specific service provider networks within a

community or urban area. Changes in service network structure may signal that the

regime structure and its supporting norms may be shifting. Because it is so difficult to

analyze regimes per se, examining the prevailing contracting regimes may serve as a

convenient substitute or at least as an entry point.

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