Reexamining the Claim of Public Authority Efficacy

Abstract

Public authorities, a form of special purpose government, have often been associated with an effective, if authoritarian, implementation of public policy objectives. In the late 1980s, a group of counties in New York State made a choice about whether or not to create a public authority to site and develop an incinerator or landfill. Although the practitioners who created the public authorities expected them to perform well in a contentious political setting, a survey of the state indicates that the public authorities actually completed very few projects. This finding holds even controlling for key task and environmental variables.