Fulfilling John Rohr’s Challenge

• Author: Richard T. Green,Douglas F. Morgan
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399713515874
• Date: 01 March 2014
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

2014, Vol. 46(2) 190 –198

© The Author(s) 2013

DOI: 10.1177/0095399713515874

aas.sagepub.com

Article

Fulfilling John Rohr’s

Challenge: Toward a

Theory of Regime Values

for Local Governance

Richard T. Green1 and Douglas F. Morgan2

Abstract

In the early 1980s, John Rohr expressed a challenge; he hoped that one or

more students would find a way to apply his regime values framework to

local governments in the United States.

Keywords

regime values, local government, John Rohr

In the early 1980s, John Rohr expressed a challenge to a small group of doc-

toral students in the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia

Tech. He hoped that one or more students would find a way to apply his

regime values framework to local governments in the United States. He

called their attention to the silence of the U.S. Constitution on the matter of

local governments, and to the fact that local governments typically do not

share in the tripartite structuring provided for in the Constitution. Most local

governments operate through structures that fuse executive and legislative

powers in ways that more closely resemble parliamentary systems. For this

and other important reasons discussed below, the dynamics of local gover-

nance take on a very different cast from what Rohr addressed at federal and

1University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA

2Portland State University, OR, USA

Corresponding Author:

Richard T. Green, University of Utah, OSH 214, 260 South Central Campus Dr., Salt Lake

City, UT 84112, USA.

Email: rick.green@mpa.utah.edu

515874AAS46210.1177/0095399713515874Administration & SocietyGreen and Morgan

research-article2013