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A Study Of Public Seaport Governance In The United States, Christopher Michael Williams

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Seaports are important economic engines serving many metropolitan areas in the United States. Most seaports in the U.S. are public-owned and managed by a set of elected or politically appointed board members. Indeed, this is public governance in action but the field of port governance seems to be focused on the study of operating efficiencies and less concerned with the public governance aspects of seaports.

The term “governance” in a public organization conveys a level of democratic accountability to the citizenry for management of public-owned resources but, until now, studies of seaport governance in the U.S. have not focused on …