A once-in-a-generation event held every twenty years, the Minnowbrook conference brings together the top scholars in public administration and public management to reflect on the state of the field and its future. This unique volume brings together a group of distinguished authors—both seasoned and new—for a rare critical examination of the field of public administration yesterday, today, and tomorrow.The book begins by examining the ideas of previous Minnowbrook conferences, such ...

As the US faced its lowest levels of reported trust in government, the COVID-19 crisis revealed the essential service that various federal agencies provide as sources of information. This Element explores variations in trust across various levels of government and government agencies based on a nationally-representative survey conducted in March of 2020. First, it examines trust in agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, state health departments, and local health ca...

Growing disenfranchisement with political institutions and policy processes has generated interest in trust in government. For the most part, research has focused on trust in government as a general attitude covering all political institutions. In this book, Scott E. Robinson, James W. Stoutenborough, and Arnold Vedlitz argue that individual agencies develop specific reputations that may contrast with the more general attitudes towards government as a whole.Grounded in a treatment ...

The best decisions made by public managers are based not on instinct, but on an informed understanding of what’s happening on the ground. Policy may be directed by ideology, but it must also be founded on reality. The challenge of making the right decisions as a public manager is often, therefore, based on the need for rigorous, actionable research. Now in a thoughtfully revised second edition, this textbook shows students of Public Administration exactly how to use both qualitative and qu...

"A compelling case for transforming how research methods are taught to undergraduate students of political science." — London School of Economics Review of BooksEach year, tens of thousands of students who are interested in politics go through a rite of passage: they take a course in research methods. Many find the subject to be boring or confusing, and with good reason. Most of the standard books on research methods fail to highlight the most important con...

We live in a world where seemingly everything can be measured. We rely on indicators to translate social phenomena into simple, quantified terms, which in turn can be used to guide individuals, organizations, and governments in establishing policy. Yet counting things requires finding a way to make them comparable. And in the process of translating the confusion of social life into neat categories, we inevitably strip it of context and meaning—and risk hiding or distorting as much as we re...

This introduction applies analytic models to policymaking challenges, equipping students with tools to evaluate core policymaking dilemmas. Students are introduced to the approaches of game theory, social choice theory, research design and causal inference. Key terms, along with current research, are highlighted to build an understanding of public policy study. Exercises and thought questions enable students to develop skills to assess public policy dilemmas. The analytically rigorous styl...

Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are b...

This volume's contributors evaluate the accomplishments, limits, and consequences of using quantitative metrics in global health. Whether analyzing maternal mortality rates, the relationships between political goals and metrics data, or the links between health outcomes and a program's fiscal support, the contributors question the ability of metrics to solve global health problems. They capture a moment when global health scholars and practitioners must evaluate the potential effectiveness...

The literature on policy strategies, instruments, and styles is impressive. Still, a complex variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical tools hamper a good overview. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons proposes such a framework for the field and clearly shows how public policy instruments are classified, packaged, and chosen, while highlighting the role evaluation plays in the instruments-choice process.Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons offers a comprehensive analysis of categorie...

Every school board adopts a unique governing style which affects the way the district is managed. This book identifies some of those styles and examines their potential impact on district administration, and ultimately on student achievement. The book also clarifies the role of school boards in unequivocal terms, discusses board-superintendent relations, and offers several recommendations and critical takeaways for education stakeholders. The authors doctoral research which gave rise to th...

Across the country, our children are beginning life from very different starting points. Some have aspirations and believe they can be achieved. For too many others, aspirations are tempered, if not dashed, by the sobering realities of everyday life. These different starting points place children on distinctly different trajectories of growth and development, ultimately leading to vastly different adult outcomes.How did we get to a place where circumstances of birth have become so ...