What Have We Learned since September 11, 2001? A Network Study of the Boston Marathon Bombings Response

In light of recent disasters, it is evident that more research is needed to understand how organizations can effectively coordinate disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery efforts. This research assesses the effectiveness of interorganizational coordination and collaboration in response to the Boston Marathon bombings. After reviewing the major changes in federal emergency management policies and frameworks since September 11, 2001, this article applies a social network analysis to compare the disaster response networks embodied in formal disaster preparedness plans with the actual response networks. Data come from content analyses of the Boston Emergency Operations Plan, national and local newspaper articles, after‐action reports, and situation reports. The timely response to the bombings is attributable to long‐term institutionalized planning efforts; multiple platforms established for frequent interorganizational interactions through formal plans, training, and exercises prior to disasters; and an integrated communication system.     

Exploring the Role of Nonprofits in Public Service Provision: Moving from Coproduction to Cogovernance

This article investigates the determinants of nonprofits' involvement in cogovernance, or the planning and design of public services, using a unique data set of park‐supporting nonprofit organizations in large U.S. cities. The results indicate that nonprofits are more likely to get involved in cogovernance when they are younger, larger, and operate in communities that are more resourceful and stable. In addition, the likelihood of nonprofits' involvement in cogovernance is negatively associated with the level of social capital and government capacity to provide corresponding public services. The article points to an emerging mode of government‐nonprofit collaboration that goes beyond the production and delivery of public services. As public managers face extensive challenges in sustaining the desired level of public services, these findings have important policy implications for efforts to promote citizen participation and cross‐sector solutions to complex social problems.     

Mega‐Disasters and Federalism

Measured in dollar terms, Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in American history. Mega‐disaster response recovery and mitigation put federalism to an especially difficult test because they require speed, efficiency, decisiveness, and effective coordination. This essay focuses on the response to and recovery from Katrina in order to probe the implications of mega‐disasters for federalism. It understands federalism as being composed of four dimensions: the three levels of government and the civic realm. It tests key defenses of federalism against civic and government performance during Katrina. It offers examples of successes and failures involving all four dimensions and provides specific recommendations for improving mega‐disaster mitigation, response, and recovery while maintaining an appropriate constitutional balance among the three levels of government and between the civilian government and the military.     

E‐participation Opportunities and the Ambiguous Role of Corruption: A Model of Municipal Responsiveness to Sociopolitical Factors

Municipalities ostensibly scale the ladder of e‐participation improvement to gain legitimacy. However, research has not yet addressed how e‐participation initiatives are affected by serious legitimacy concerns such as corruption. One municipal response to corruption is to use e‐participation offerings as a remedial effort to gain citizen trust, but window‐dressing strategies might also be used. In this article, the authors attempt to make sense of this ambiguity by hypothesizing that the effects of perceived corruption on e‐participation offerings depend on the type of e‐participation as well as the level of local social capital and local public accountability demand. Analysis of data from 104 municipal websites in South Africa between 2013 and 2017 reveals support for two moderation mechanisms: (1) a positive remedial response to corruption in the presence of strong social capital and (2) a negative avoidance response to corruption in the presence of high demand for accountability.     

Does social capital increase public support for economic globalisation?

The dominant explanation of public attitudes vis‐à‐vis economic globalisation focuses on re‐distributional implications, with an emphasis on factor endowments and government‐sponsored safety nets (the compensation hypothesis). The empirical implication of these theoretical arguments is that in advanced economies, on which this article focuses, individuals endowed with less human and financial capital will be more likely to experience income losses. Hence they will oppose economic openness unless they are compensated by the government. It is argued here that including social capital in the analysis can fill two gaps in explanations relying on factor endowments and the compensation hypothesis. First, generalised trust – one key aspect of social capital – constitutes a personal endowment alongside human and financial capital. Second, structural social capital – another key aspect of social capital – can be regarded as a nongovernmental social safety net that can compensate for endowment‐related disadvantages of individuals. Both aspects of social capital are expected to contribute, for distinct reasons, to more positive views on economic openness. The empirical testing relies on survey data for two countries: Switzerland and the United States. For both countries, the results indicate that generalised trust has a strong, positive effect on public opinion of economic globalisation, whereas structural social capital has no effect.     

The Present Challenges to ASPA as an Association That Promotes Public Professionalism

What is ASPA's place among core public professional organizations as well as public official associations? All public organizations are affected by tough competition for membership. Relatively few members of other public associations join ASPA, and vice versa. Only a minority of faculty members who teach in public affairs programs belong to ASPA, and at top schools, the proportion is even lower. When comparing ASPA to other public official associations, it is smaller in size and broader in scope, yet it remains a uniquely pan‐generalist organization. Its pan‐generalist character puts it at a disadvantage, but also offers distinct advantages. Like all public associations and nonprofits, ASPA faces stiff competition from increasingly specialized associations for membership. Its key future challenge, the authors suggest, will be to match its membership benefits effectively to the rapidly shifting expectations and needs of current and prospective members.     

Social Capital and Public Policy – The Current Challenge Facing the Victorian Government

Social capital, since Putnam's 1993 work, has captured the imagination of policy‐makers the world over, and Australia is no exception. In 2005 the Department of Victorian Communities launched its Actions for Community Strengthening policy statement, which draws heavily on social capital theory. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings of the government's policy and critiques its failure to deal adequately with the causal relationship between social capital and its supposed community benefits. The article then seeks to isolate the missing factors through a look at recent research on volunteerism and argues that the institution of collaborative/interactive governance needs to be underpinned by sound socio‐economic reform.     

Putting the “Public” Back in Public Values Research: Designing Participation to Identify and Respond to Values

This article seeks to put the “public” back in public values research by theorizing about the potential of direct citizen participation to assist with identifying and understanding public values. Specifically, the article explores eight participatory design elements and offers nine propositions about how those elements are likely to affect the ability of administrators to identify and understand public values with regard to a policy conflict. The article concludes with a brief discussion about potential directions for future research.     

Assessing and Managing Environmental Risk: Connecting Local Government Management with Emergency Management

Ensuring that a community is prepared to deal with a disaster is among the many tasks public managers are charged with addressing. Disaster preparedness and response requires adherence to standard planning practices, yet disasters are typically unpredictable. Dealing with disasters, therefore, requires a blend of traditional management skills and improvisation. Furthermore, like other aspects of administrative leadership, the top administrator must blend initiation and responsiveness in interactions with elected officials and a careful delineation of responsibility in handling actual emergencies. This article discusses how local administrators assess risk and balance preparedness needs within a universe of daily operational needs. Managing environmental risk is also explored from a political and legal context.     

Does Agency Autonomy Foster Public Participation?

Allocation of public resources is an area in which considerations of both economic efficiency and democratic legitimacy are likely to be present. Public administrators are often blamed for being too devoted to the norms of bureaucratic ethos, such as efficiency, effectiveness, and top‐down control, and less so to the norms of democratic ethos, such as inclusiveness and bottom‐up decision making. This article examines whether managers in agencies with greater budget autonomy are more likely to include the public when allocating resources. Because participation offers an opportunity for agencies to enhance the legitimacy of their decisions, it is expected that the value of citizen input will increase with the degree of agency autonomy. Using data on the practices of citizen participation in budgeting in two state departments—transportation and environment—this study finds that agencies with a higher degree of autonomy tend to be more open to public comment than agencies with more centralized budget processes.     

Organising for Effective Emergency Management: Lessons from Research1

The February 2009 bushfires have prompted a debate with regard to contemporary arrangements for dealing with large‐scale disasters. In this article, we seek to contribute to that debate by culling lessons learned from the literature on crisis and disaster management. We discuss what constitutes an effective disaster response system, we identify some key barriers to the effective functioning of such a system, and offer some suggestions for improvement.     

Theory to Practice: Policy Recommendations for Fostering Economic Development through Social Capital

Proponents of social capital theory have long argued not only that it is in the best interest of civic life to build social capital but also that social capital is vital for the economic health of communities. This has been confirmed by recent research showing that social capital, especially in its bridging form, is positively associated with job creation at the metropolitan statistical area level. At the same time, social capital is often viewed as something either inherent or absent within a community. This article takes on that assumption by presenting a policy‐based approach to developing social capital. It provides two theoretical explanations for how social capital affects economic development and identifies four lessons for economic development practitioners to use to enhance social capital. These research‐based recommendations for economic development practitioners and policy makers seek to improve the social capital and, consequently, the economic development of their community.     

Enhancing and Measuring Organizational Capacity: Assessing the Results of the U.S. Department of Justice Rural Pilot Program Evaluation

A significant goal of public administrators in this era of shrinking public funds has been to find ways to enhance and measure organizational capacity and sustainability with minimal outlays of resources. One attempt to address this goal was the Rural Pilot Program, funded by the Office of Violence Against Women in the U.S. Department of Justice. Based on the evaluation of the program, this article (1) describes how capacity was measured, (2) discusses the validation and utility of a self‐administered instrument, and (3) examines whether and to what extent organizational capacity is enhanced by an intermediary funding model. Modest positive changes were found in two areas—organizational staffing and information technology—but no changes were found in other areas. The article concludes with recommendations for designing future programs to enhance capacity and sustainability and for public administrators and grant makers in utilizing self‐administered capacity instruments.     

Why societies need public goods

The most distinctive features of public goods are usually understood to be the difficulty of excluding potential beneficiaries and the fact that one appropriator’s benefits do not diminish the amount of benefits left for others. Yet, because of these properties (non-excludability and non-rivalry), public goods cause market failures and contribute to problems of collective action. This article aims to portray public goods in a different light. Following a recent reassessment of public goods in political philosophy, this contribution argues that public goods are particularly suitable for sustaining a well-ordered society. Public goods contribute to social inclusion, they support the generation of the public, and they strengthen a shared sense of citizenship. This article scrutinizes these functions of public goods and offers a discussion of the interventionist thesis which states that governments should sustain public goods.     

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.     

Radical civic virtue: women in 19th‐century civil society

This article contests the conservative revisionism that emphasizes the importance of traditional families, pietistic religion, individual moral virtue, and small government for undergirding democratic self‐government. The first part exposes the conservative misreading of American history and political theory. The second part uses the civic engagement of middle‐ and upper‐class women in 19th‐century America to construct a progressive alternative to conservative narratives. It shows that women did not stay home and focus on the family during the 19th century but instead entered civil society to address the problems created by industrialization, formed social reform movements, built institutions to pursue a social justice agenda, and demanded that the government take an active role in solving public problems. Their civic engagement built on and created social capital, grew out of and produced a sense of civic virtue (defined as public‐spiritedness), and resulted in the demand for progressive government.     

Trouble Keeping Promises? An Analysis of Underfunding in State Retiree Benefits

This article examines the funding of two key components of state government total compensation: pensions and other postemployment benefits (OPEB), the latter consisting primarily of retiree health care. A brief overview of the economic, political, and legal environments of state pensions and OPEB is followed by an analysis of the unfunded liabilities for these respective benefits. Regression results suggest the importance of state management capacity, per capita income, and public employee density in understanding differences in the states' pension and OPEB funding performance. Additionally, employers' level of pension contributions, legislative professionalism, and fiscal constraint are significantly related to pension funding, while political ideology and levels of state pension funding are significantly related to OPEB funding. The article concludes by discussing the tensions that states face in attempting to balance the fiscal imperative of funding retiree benefits liabilities with the human capital challenge of attracting and retaining a professional workforce. Failure on either could be costly to state government.     

Impact of natural disaster on public sector corruption

This paper uses inter-country panel data from 1990 through 2010 to examine how the occurrence of natural disasters affects corruption within the public sector. For a closer analysis, disaster is classified into various categories, including general floods, other floods, tropical storms, other storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides. Furthermore, this paper explores whether natural disasters have different impacts on corruption levels in developed and developing countries. The study reveals a number of novel findings. (1) Natural disasters that cause substantial damage increase public sector corruption in both developing and developed countries. (2) Natural disasters have a greater impact on public sector corruption in developed countries than in developing countries. (3) In developed countries, natural disaster frequency has a significant impact on the level of corruption. Hence, foreseeable disasters increase corruption in general. In developed countries, an incentive may exist to live within disaster-prone areas because of the potential for disaster compensation payments.     

Commercial Relationships and Spaces after Disaster

Sociological research on the relationship between social bonds and economic activity typically focuses on how social bonds facilitate economic activity. There is, however, a growing and important literature on the development of commercial relationships into social friendships and the important role that commercial spaces can play in facilitating social connections. To date, however, this research has not focused on the important role that these commercial friendships and spaces can play in facilitating an individual’s recovery efforts after a major disaster like a tornado, hurricane or flood. It has also not focused on the effect that major disasters can have on commercial ties. Moreover, while the sociological literature on post-disaster recovery has emphasized the important role of social capital, it has not emphasized the role that social networks developed within commercial contexts can play in helping individuals to rebound from disaster. This article is an effort to fill these gaps in the literature. Using interview data collected in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina, we argue and describe how meaningful social bonds that emerge out of and are facilitated by commercial activity as well as the social spaces provided by commercial entities can facilitate community rebound after a major disaster.