How to read Michelle Obama

ABSTRACT

Michelle Obama's role as the first African American First Lady is more than merely symbolic. Her self-representation as a professional woman, mother and spouse is directed towards a wider representativeness that is new in American political discourse. As a descendant of slaves and slave owners whose American ancestry can be traced back to the 1850s, she can lay claim to an African American legacy that the President lacks. As a result, some of her more controversial statements during the presidential campaign about the black family, class mobility and national pride need to be read in the context of an African American literature and historiography that challenges the American creed of equality, liberty and unconditional love of one's country. Michelle Obama's family history, her Princeton undergraduate thesis and her own words in interviews are analysed here in the discursive context of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave-girl, as well as the historiography of the civil rights movement. Such a reading reveals how Michelle Obama's background weaves the legacy of slavery into the American fabric, and shows that a redemptive construction of American history—in which the success of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the Obama presidency are taken as fulfilment of the American creed (and of Martin Luther King's dream)—must be refused if a new national self-definition with African America at its heart is to take its place.     

Last Thoughts on <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Last Intellectuals</Emphasis>

Over twenty years ago my book The Last Intellectuals put into circulation the phrase “public intellectual.” The term unexpectedly enjoyed great success. It encapsulated a new division between a professional or academic intellectual focused on his or her specialty and an intellectual orientated to a larger public. The former tend to disappear into the university, while they latter write for the educated public. In the twenty years since its publication, my book has been sharply challenged. Moreover the emergence of African-American and women intellectuals, and well as new developments such as Internet, have possibly undermined my thesis. Yet these phenomena amount to revisions, not refutations, of my thesis. Moreover the role of intellectuals in France and Germany suggest that the same process of academization is taking place in other advanced industrial nations. What is called for is not nostalgia or its opposite, a celebration of everything that happens, but a consideration of the real shifts that affect the lives and work of intellectuals.

When a Career Public Servant Sues the Agency He Loves: Claude Ferguson, the Forest Service, and Off-Road Vehicles in the Hoosier National Forest

Claude Ferguson, who in his own words “met the test of his lifetime,” deviated from the norms of the U.S. Forest Service articulated by Herbert Kaufman in The Forest Ranger to became a government guerrilla against the organization he loved. This profile highlights several enduring themes: the inherent tensions between democracy and bureaucracy, the many masters of career bureaucrats, how organizational culture can both empower and constrain employees, and what it means to act responsibly, ethically, and with integrity as a public servant. In addition, this case demonstrates how the Forest Service has evolved since Kaufman's classic study. First, Kaufman depicted forest rangers as “valuing the organization more than they value[d] getting their own way,” yet this profile underscores that public servants do not check their worldviews, mores, or ethics at the door. Second, Kaufman described the Forest Service's efforts to routinize the decisions of its employees in an effort to prevent allegiances to, or co‐optation by, local populations. Yet in this Administrative Profile, Ferguson's hidden strategic tactics co‐opted local stakeholders to enlist their support for a cause he deeply felt was right and just.     

Frances Harriet Williams: Unsung Social Equity Pioneer

Frances Harriet Williams was an unsung social equity pioneer in the field of public administration. Long before the Minnowbrook I Conference convened in the 1960s to discuss the importance of fairness in the provision of public services, Williams successfully promoted values of social equity and racial fairness within public administration scholarly and practitioner communities. Raised by progressive parents in the South, Williams was the only high‐ranking African‐American woman in the federal government during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. She was directly involved in leading the Office of Price Administration to a staff that was at least 13 percent black when the rest of government was no more than 1 percent black. This work was the focus of her 1947 article in Public Administration Review, the first publication on racial equity to appear in the field's flagship journal. Her efforts and accomplishments undergird many of the ideals and practices that constitute the concept of social equity in public administration today.     

European Professors as Public Intellectuals

Historically, European economists, compared to their American counterpart, were more involved in public discussions of policy. In this paper it is argued that this has likely changed. The chief reasons seem to involve the European imitation of the academic ethos that is more prevalent in America. Features of this academic ethos include a more formalist orientation in graduate programs and an academic incentive system wherein professional journal publication is paramount and public discourse is relatively devalued. I suggest there is an inescapable ideological dilemma in addressing the costs and benefits of professors’ neglect of public discourse. The ideological character of academics compared with our own political sensibilities affect whether we want academics to influence public discourse or not. I use the history of academics as public intellectuals in Sweden to substantiate the change, and I use new data on Swedish social science academics to see whether those who participate in public discourse tend to have certain political and social views.

Helen Holt: A Centenarian's Reflections on a Lifetime of Public Service

Women have made great strides in the past 100 years. As the iconic cigarette commercial told us almost 50 years ago, “You've come a long way, baby!” Yet women are still underrepresented in the highest leadership ranks, including state and federal office. Before being asked to “lean in” or share valuable insights, a small group of very capable women were leaders long before those two words were seen in the same sentence. One such remarkable woman, Helen Holt, was a “servant‐leader” throughout her illustrious and inspiring career as a member of West Virginia's House of Delegates, then as secretary of state (1957–58), and later as a presidential appointee charged with developing the nation's nursing home system. Holt's work in state and federal government, her appointment by seven U.S. presidents to develop and implement the national nursing home program that is still in use today, and her leadership in civic and nonprofit organizations have made her an inspiration to countless women and men.     

Homeland security and citizen response to emergency situations: a perspective on the need for a policy approach to information access

Open access to public information is a hallmark of American political culture; however, the terrorist attacks on and before September 11, 2001 have prompted a reevaluation of how “freedom of information” should be balanced against the need for enhanced homeland security. This essay begins with a summary of legislative and executive actions that have led to restriction of environmental and health-related information formerly available to the public. Drawing on studies of disaster behavior, it is argued that citizen responders may be significantly hampered by restriction of environmental and public health-related information formerly available by means of public access web sites. The Lasswellian policy decision process is examined to explore the basis for a balancing test for agencies contemplating restriction of information related to environmental and public health-related threats. It is suggested that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) implement guidance for federal agencies in weighing decisions concerning the public status of information.

Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t: Title VII and Public Employee Promotion Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact Litigation

What has been the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Ricci v. Destefano on the selection and promotion practices of public employers?; Relying solely on circumstantial evidence, the Supreme Court held that the Civil Service Board of New Haven, Connecticut, had engaged in Title VII disparate treatment discrimination by refusing to certify the results of a promotion examination that led, in turn, to a disparate impact on African American firefighters. To limit the discretion of public employers to disregard such selection and promotion exam results, the Ricci majority held that a public employer must “have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate‐impact liability if it fails to the take the race‐conscious discriminatory action.” This article argues that the decision effectively prohibits public employers from rejecting the results of selection and promotion instruments, even though there is evidence that screening instruments inequitably affect protected groups. It also forces public employers to become more careful in developing selection and promotion examinations or face the possibility of costly Title VII litigation.     

The Attitudes of the Chinese Middle Class Towards Democracy

Little has been done to quantitatively establish the connection between the middle class and a specific regime type. In an effort to fill in the gap, this study uses Asian Barometer survey dataset to examine the attitudes and orientation of China’s rising middle class. We find that the Chinese middle class does show higher democratic orientation than those we categorize as lower class, but only if class is defined by occupation or by self-identification, and not by income level. We interpret this result to mean that economic development offers new life experiences with the creation of new types of professions and enhances people’s agreement with modern democratic values by arousing people’s consciousness of their new social class status.

The effects of tone,focus, and incivility in election debates

Previous research has found mixed evidence for the effectiveness of negative campaigning. Therefore, scholars have recently turned their attention to the question whether there are different dimensions of negativity. The present study contributes both empirically and methodologically to this debate by investigating the effects of three German chancellor debates using real-time response measurements of audience reactions. Following Brooks and Geer (2007. “Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00233.x), we distinguish between debate statements along three different dimensions: negative versus positive tone, policy- versus person-focus, and civility versus incivility. Also, we demonstrate how debate content and real-time response measurements of audience reactions can be analysed using econometric time-series techniques. Our analyses show that civil policy-focused statements have a positive impact, as expected, while person-focused or uncivil statements rarely have positive effects. In the concluding section, the implications of our findings are discussed and directions for further research identified.     

Representation and Collaboration: Exploring the Role of Shared Identity in the Collaborative Process

Public managers must regularly engage and interact with stakeholders in the external environment to deliver meaningful policy outcomes. Examining the motivations behind such behavior is a critical component of understanding management in the modern era. Some studies suggest that actors with similar interests are more likely to form collaborative partnerships. Using an original mail survey of 150 American Indian education directors in public school districts, this article examines how shared identity and individual attitudes affect levels of interaction with Native American communities. Findings suggest that public school officials who share both a racial and a tribal/co‐ethnic identity with Native American nations in their service area have higher levels of interaction with these groups than public school officials who are either members of Native American nations outside their service area or non‐Indian. This research has broad implications for incorporating theories of representation and social construction into our understanding of collaboration.     

Reading <Emphasis Type="Italic">The American Political Tradition</Emphasis> in the 21st Century

Brilliantly written, powerfully argued, The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstadter, published in 1948, is flawed for readers today because of serious gaps and omissions, in particular its lack of reference to African American figures and sources. Late in his career, Hofstadter began to broaden his range of reference, calling attention in vivid prose to the horrors of slavery during the long period of American settlement and colonization. This later emphasis exposes all the more the shortcomings of The American Tradition, yet, at the same time, it does not diminish the rhetorical power and insight of this important book. It remains a significant work of American history but, even more, we should read and respond to it now as a major achievement, a distinguished act of writing, in the field of American literature.     

Understanding Democracy as a Prerequisite for Spreading Democracy

The cultural underpinnings of American democracy are discussed with emphasis on ideas made famous in Max Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In particular there is emphasis on the way America built upon the British cultural tradition so that the American working class would not be dependent upon bread and circuses offered by a political elite, a tradition in Europe dating back to the Roman Empire. Instead cultural emphasis on moral integrity and the self-respect of the American working class, the underpinnings of moralistic individualism as a key component of democratic culture in America but not necessarily in many other parts of the world, is emphasized. These ideas are elaborated with discussion of a certain decay of these values in present-day America, and the problems the American government has had in conveying the importance of these values to other nations seeking to democratize partly under our influence.

Gender and the Personal Shaping of Public Administration in the United States: Mary Anderson and the Women's Bureau, 1920–1930

Scholars of public administration in the United States traditionally view the 1920s as a decade when the administrative orthodoxy, emphasizing efficiency and organizational structure, dominated the field. This viewpoint recently has been challenged by arguments that the social justice–oriented views of women progressives and the philosophy of pragmatism also influenced public administration. However, no one has examined how women public administrators implemented exceptions to the prevailing, masculine viewpoints of administrative objectivity and the strict dichotomy between politics and administration during the 1920s. Using Mary Anderson (1872–1964), the longtime director of the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau, as a case study, this article examines how her experiences as a woman worker and labor organizer influenced her advocacy of an alternative view of public administration, and how, from 1920 through 1930, she established the Women's Bureau within the prevailing orthodoxy yet also made the government agency a notable exception through its vigorous support of social justice feminism, particularly during and after the 1926 national Women's Industrial Conference.     

Public Intellectuals 2.1

Despite renewed interest in public intellectuals, the consensus view is that they are in a state of decline. Furthermore, the Internet is viewed as one of the factors accelerating their decline. This essay takes the contrary position: the growth of online venues has stimulated rather than retarded the quality and diversity of public intellectuals. The criticisms levied against these new forms of publishing seem to mirror the flaws that plague the more general critique of current public intellectuals: hindsight bias and conceptual fuzziness. Rather, the growth of blogs and other forms of online writing have partially reversed a trend that many have lamented what Russell Jacoby labeled “professionalization and academization” in The Last Intellectuals. In particular, the growth of the blogosphere breaks down or at least lowers the barriers erected by a professionalized academy. They also provide a vetting mechanism through which public intellectuals can receive feedback and therefore fulfill their roles more effectively.

Administration and Governance in a Compound Republic: Martha Derthick’s Contributions to the Study of American Federalism

Martha Derthick is among the most influential scholars of American federalism, administrative behavior, and domestic policy making. Her work over a half century has pioneered the study of policy implementation, administrative and political relationships in federal grant programs, intergovernmental policy making, as well as the evolution of the federal system. This essay reviews her major intellectual contributions to the fields of federalism, public administration, and intergovernmental relations.     

‘Just Thinking:’ Attitude Development,Public Opinion,and Political Representation

The role of public opinion polls in electoral democracy is undeniable because, for good or for bad, they affect, in part, the kinds of laws and policies elected officials enact. But the voices measured in polls are not perfectly representative of their populations of interest. More precisely, polls generally sing with a more “knowledgeable” accent than those they represent because of the greater tendency of the less knowledgeable to remain silent. This distortion, however, can be palliated by providing conditions more propitious to attitude development. By relying on survey-experiments conducted in Brazil and in the U.S., I present evidence that inducing people to think more carefully before answering attitude questions reduces substantially the likelihood of the less knowledgeable, which compose most of the Brazilian and American populations, to express a nonopinion response. Thus providing people with greater opportunity to think about politics—something most of them do not do very frequently—makes for more representative measures of public opinion. But the analyses also suggest that increased thought induces greater uncertainty or ambivalence among the most knowledgeable. As a whole, this paper improves our understanding on how people come to develop political attitudes and on the conditions that lead to greater attitude uncertainty or ambivalence. It also carries important lessons and implications for survey design more generally.

Brenda Bryant: There Is Nothing More Practical than a Good Theory

Public administration values the relationship between theory and practice. Regrettably, theory and practice are regarded more often than not as separate purviews of two different groups—academics and practitioners—resulting in a perceived gap between the two. The doctorate of public administration program at the University of Southern California's Washington Public Affairs Center sought to span both worlds. This article by Beryl A. Radin of American University profiles one of its graduates, Brenda L. Bryant. The author traces her career development, experience in the doctoral program, as well as subsequent professional activities, ultimately highlighting why “there is nothing more practical than a good theory.”     

Born Weak,Growing Strong: Anti‐Government Protests as a Signal of Rebel Strength in the Context of Civil Wars

All rebel organizations start weak, but how do they grow and achieve favorable conflict outcomes? We present a theoretical model that allows for rebel organizations to gain support beyond their “core” and build their bargaining power during fighting. We highlight that rebel organizations need to win over crucial parts of society to generate the necessary support that allows them to attain favorable civil conflict outcomes. We find empirical support for the argument that low‐income individuals who initially fight the government (rebel organizations) have to convince middle‐class individuals to turn out against the government to gain government concessions. Empirically, we demonstrate that government concessions in the form of peace agreements and the onset of negotiations become more likely when protest occurs in the context of civil conflicts.

Replication Materials

The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MYDZNF .