Intensified globalization, especially the necessity to learn more about how administrative reforms work effectively in different cultural contexts, requires public administration research to embrace comparative perspectives. How well is the field advancing in that direction? This article presents the results of a content analysis of 151 comparative public administration articles from 2000 to 2009. Results indicate that comparative research is building on theory and empirical research, making use of purposive samples, and using a mix of causal, descriptive, and exploratory methodologies. Subject matter varies widely, but most research focuses on European, Asian, and North American countries. Comparative research is primarily qualitative, making extensive use of existing data. The authors recommend enhanced application of mixed methods, increased use of culture as a key concept, and integration of a broad range of social sciences to encourage more students, practitioners, and scholars to think and work comparatively. Three senior comparative scholars respond, sparking a fascinating and insightful dialogue on this seminal topic in public administration.

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This paper evaluates an Air Force performance-based service contract against the contracts that were prescriptive in the past. Department of Defense mandated that all service contracts be performance-based by 2005. The goal of the paper is to determine whether this contract, after becoming performance-based, is achieving greater cost savings and better outcomes for government, contractor, and taxpayers. The paper assesses the contract performance standards and how they are measured. The authors analyze the language of the Statement of Work (SOW) before and after it became performance-based. The contractor's performance is evaluated. Positive incentives are identified and described. Finally, the paper addresses risk assessment issues.

Strategic human resource management (SHRM) is an enhancement in the effectiveness of personnel management which has developed out of pressures for change in the way organizations manage human resources. It consists of common elements found in a variety of public and private employers: recognition that human resources are critical; a shift from position management to work and employees; more innovation; asset development and cost control; and a transition from EEO/AA compliance to work force diversity.

Politics can be viewed as the search for consensus on underlying values to foster a sense of community. This search challenges contemporary political and administrative leadership because the policy process increasingly involves interactions among amorphous and unstable issue-oriented coalitions rather than a smaller number of actors with more stable and predictable roles. Within this volatile political climate, increased emphasis on market-based values and privatization as one manifestation of the new public management (NPM) has complicated expectations of accountability for public managers beyond the relationships represented by traditional notions of politics and administration. This article discusses politics, administration and markets as separate ways of thinking-as decision-making perspectives-that produce a variety of expectations of accountability, often at odds. It presents a case study involving contracting out of foster care services in Kansas to illustrate these competing perspectives, and examines how market-based challenges to traditional political and administrative perspectives complicate expectations of accountability. The result is a situation where the challenge of accommodating three crosscutting expectations of accountability (derived from the three competing perspectives of politics, administration and markets) makes the already-complex job of public management even more difficult.