This section is intended to introduce many of the leading issues and challenges involved in public management. It will focus largely on American examples at the national government level but attempt, where possible, to engage in some comparative analysis as well as state and local management. It draws heavily from the discipline of political science and places major emphasis on bureaucratic politics. This will entail extensive examination of the behavior of bureaucrats and the institutions that they serve. It will be divided into three broad units. First, we will examine the evolution of public management in the United States and introduce competing theories that explain why, in many circles, public management is derided as highly dysfunctional. Second, we will consider the wide range of reform initiatives attempted in the U.S. and other Western democracies under the broad umbrella of the so-called New Public Management, looking at a number of alternative approaches to public management challenges. Finally, we will explore the extent to which public managers can chart ne the future, build policy networks, and even take lead roles in designing and implementing effective public policy. Throughout these respective sections, we will consider public management across a wide range of public policy issue areas. JAMIE GILLIES is a Visiting Lecturer at the Ford School in 2009. He is completing his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation, entitled A Passion for Anonymity? Advisory Entrepreneurship and the Contemporary Presidency, is focused on the interaction between presidents and their closest advisers inside the Executive Office of the President. In 2008, he was a Tutor at the University of Glasgow in Scotland teaching courses on the American Presidency. In 2007, he was a Canada-United States Fulbright Scholar in Washington, D.C. and a Guest Scholar in the Brookings Institution Governance Studies Program and at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute.