Agency Theory in Public Administration: A Comparative Study of the US, China, and EU (Elements in Public and Nonprofit Administration)

This Element advances an agency-theoretic approach to public administration through comparative analysis of the United States, China, and EU.It examines how principals - such as legislatures, executives, or ruling parties - can align the actions of diverse agents, including civil servants, public agencies, street-level bureaucrats, and contractors, with the public interest.Drawing on an extensive review of 146 key studies and AI-assisted analysis of 8,400 articles from Public Administration Review, Part I outlines fundamental concepts: goal divergence, moral hazard, adverse selection, and information asymmetry and traces its history, debates, and criticisms.These concepts are then applied to key themes in public administration - performance management, federalism/decentralization, contracting, politics-administration, and institutional drift.Part II investigates how these problems manifest and tackled in the US, China, and Europe.Part III concludes with a synthesis of findings, debates