Dear colleagues:

            This issue of Policy Currents brings to you a pair of articles that focus on the efficacy of government contracting as a means of delivering public goods.  The first is by Mary Marvel and Howard Marvel offers a fascinating comparison of contracts as written by public sector agencies and private sector organizations for the same goods.  Their conclusion is that the types of contracts written by public sector actors may undermine the ability of market forces to produce the outcomes so often touted as the rationale for privatization.  The second article is by Trevor Brown and Matthew Potoski.  They focus on the management of service contracts at the street-level, i.e. the choices made by agency personnel with day-to-day responsibility for monitoring the performance of vendors.  They find a degree of discernment on the part of agency personnel that suggests both an awareness of the capacity of vendors to perform and the limitations of relying too heavily on out-sourcing as a solution to public sector service delivery.

            This issue of Policy Currents marks a turning point of sorts for me.  I’ll be continuing as editor, at least for another year.  But this is the last newsletter issued under the auspices of the Indiana University Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis.  I am leaving Indiana University to assume a position as Professor of Political Science at University of Colorado-Boulder.  This is a great opportunity for me, both professionally and personally.  I am excited about joining new colleagues in Boulder. As you might guess, my family and I, most especially my two sons, are also excited about all of the outdoor recreational opportunities available in Colorado.  At the same time, I have enjoyed my tenure at IU, especially my association with Lin and Vincent Ostrom and the Workshop, which through the years of their leadership has evolved into a remarkable center for theoretically informed policy research.  The level of support in the Workshop for me and for this newsletter has been unsurpassed.  And I’d like publicly to thank everyone at the Workshop for this support.  I will miss many people at IU and will look forward to return visits often in the future.  In the meantime, if you wish to contact me, my current email address will continue to be active for the next few months.  My new email address, beginning in mid-July will be Kenneth.Bickers@Colorado.edu.  Or I can be reached, also beginning in mid-July, at CU-Boulder at (303) 492-7871.

Finally, as a reminder, the business session of the Public Policy Section is Friday, Aug 29, 6:15 p.m. during the annual meeting of the APSA.  Please consult the final program for the location of the business session.  Also, please see the panels sponsored by the Public Policy Section at http://www.apsanet.org/mtgs/program/divisions.cfm and attend as many as possible.  The greater the attendance at the panels, the more panels we will be allotted at future conferences.

I’ll look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia.

Cheers,

Ken Bickers

Editor, Policy Currents

Associate Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University