Another Look at Bargaining and Negotiating in Intergovernmental Management

A renewed focus on the intergovernmental bargaining and negotiating employed by administrators working across governmental boundaries is the focus of this paper. Three basic concerns constitute the case for renewed attention to this venerable practice. First, the U.S. system is identified as an “open field” for negotiations, given its noncentralized nature. Second, we demonstrate that bargaining and negotiating extend beyond the grants implementation covered in the literature to include regulatory, contractual, audit, and many other transactions. Third, a set of previously unexamined research issues are identified in order to broaden public management understanding of the degree to which intersectoral adjustment contributes to program performance.