EVENTS
Plenary Speaker, INCLUSION AND INTEGRITY IN ELECTION ADMINISTRATION, Auburn University, Oct. 13-15, 2019
American Elections in a World of Contradictions
Beryl A. Radin
I’m very pleased to join you at this symposium. I’ve learned about your work as the editor of a book series that includes a forthcoming volume on election management. But I’ve learned most about the activities of the Election Center from Kathleen and recognize how important your work has been. One can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the tv without confronting some issue related to your work. I think about issues such as gerrymandering, buying appropriate voting machines, corruption allegations, intimidation, court cases, and voter turnout among others.
But I want to make it clear that I’m not a formal student of elections but a person who has always believed that your role is essential. I’m not someone who might be expected to show up inside your community but rather a person who cares about elections and citizenship. In a sense, I’m one of your customers.
I’ve thought a lot about what I can say to you. I’ve decided to do something that may be viewed as somewhat unusual. I’ve decided to talk to you about elections and citizenship from my personal experience – where I’ve lived, where I’ve travelled, and what I have studied. These experiences have shaped the way I think about U.S. elections and citizenship. The title of my remarks may not directly communicate these ideas but it is meant to link the work you do with some of my personal experiences and work in public policy and public management. I have been struck over and over again by the contradictions that are built into the US system that cannot be ignored. And that is clearly relevant to the work that you do.
I’ve found that there are three sets of contradictions that Americans seem never to be able to escape. First, contradictions that flow from the structural dimensions that emerge from our shared power system. Second, unlike the private sector, we are forced to deal with multiple and conflicting values. And third, there is significant overlap as well as conflict between players and values involved in almost all policy areas in the US.
You could ask, what do these three elements have to do with elections and citizenship? To explain that I have chosen to give you some autobiographical information.
I am a first generation American. Both my mother and father came to the US with their parents early in the 20th century as Jewish immigrants from what has become Belorussia. The world they came from did not allow either family to be viewed as citizens (both because of their religion and where they were required to live). Thus voting – if it existed at all -- was unavailable to them. It was clear that one of the lures that brought them to the US was the possibility of becoming citizens (as well as a range of other opportunities). Jobs brought them far from New York City where their ship landed.
One family came to St. Paul, Minnesota, the other to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As soon as they could, they attended citizenship classes and were able to qualify as voters. While they had different backgrounds, both sets of my grandparents found that their opportunities increased, especially educational opportunities for their children and grandchildren.
Although they married in the midst of the depression, my parents moved away from Milwaukee and St. Paul because of my father’s job. I grew up in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It is probably obvious to you that eastern South Dakota was not an area that had large numbers of Jewish immigrants.
But I had the opportunity to see how elections took place in a small city and how population movements from farms and small towns to that small city defined different election results. The New Deal produced a new Post Office in town which also served as the headquarters for the few federal agencies that had offices in the state. Aberdeen was the headquarters for the Bureau of Indian Affairs where staff kept in touch with the multiple reservations located within the state.
As long as I can remember, family conversations included discussion of elections and indicated how much they valued the opportunity to vote. One of the members of the small Jewish community was elected to the state Senate and I was aware that was somewhat unusual but very important. I have a treasured photograph of me at about 7 years old marching in the local Victory Garden parade. Since I grew up during World War II, the contrast between what was available to me and what was not available to members of the family who were trapped in Europe during that war was very real.
As a result, I began to understand that it was possible to be both a member of a community and yet outside of it. My family’s commitment to Judaism was not a secret and my mother especially reached out to friends and neighbors to include them in many celebrations. There were occasional experiences that did suggest that anti Semitism was still active but I did not focus on them. I did know that I would leave town when it was time for college and saw Aberdeen as a stop along the way.
As I remember my experience I don’t think I ever missed an opportunity to vote. I had to wait until I turned 21 to vote and, as a result, sometimes found myself voting absentee. Both for educational reasons and personal wanderlust I lived in a number of different locations in the US. That allowed me to appreciate the incredible differences between communities in the US. I began to understand the differences between urban and rural settings and between cities that continued the political bossism of the immigration of the early 20th century and the experience of cities that dealt with the post World War II migration from the south. As I remember it, I was first exposed to voting machines in Philadelphia and found them difficult to deal with. I lived in Philadelphia where I was a part of the early civil rights movement in the north but very aware of the developments in the south. I worked in a political campaign in Pennsylvania but found it was hard to combine both party politics and civil rights advocacy.
I left Philadelphia on Nov. 22, 1963 to take a job with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. I arrived in Washington expecting to become part of the Kennedy administration but found myself in a dark and uncertain environment created by Kennedy’s assassination. My two years at the Commission occurred during a time when it became more and more obvious how complex it was for the federal government to take its place in what had been seen as state and local responsibilities. Voting issues were clearly a major part of that complexity.
I left Washington and the Commission to embark on a new adventure that eventually turned into a pattern for me. My wanderlust called out for travel outside of the United States. Unlike today’s generation, few people I knew saw that their professional development included a global pattern. But I had met people who were involved in the British version of the civil rights movement and I took advantage of those contacts.. Unlike the US of the time, however, it was a movement that focused on race and immigration. Because many of the immigrants came from the British Commonwealth, they arrived in the UK with citizenship but without employment and educational opportunities. Despite their passports and ability to vote, working with the Survey of Race Relations in Britain provided me with an opportunity to see that these citizens experienced similar patterns to those in the US.
The year that I spent in London opened my eyes. But I still was unable to commit myself to a professional role. I returned to Washington and operated as a consultant but without a real sense of what I might do professionally. The morning after the 1968 presidential election I decided it was time to leave Washington again. This time it would be different. I decided that it was time to return to school to work on a PhD. As an advocate I was very disappointed with the result of federal civil rights activity, especially in education policy. I found a doctoral program at the University of California at Berkeley that gave me an opportunity to examine the effectiveness of relatively new federal programs.
Thus I became an academic. But I am a somewhat untraditional academic. I call myself a pracademic. Once again I became someone who tries to live in two worlds; in this case the academy and the world of practice. My research often focused on the incredible differences between states and different communities. I found it jarring to hear Washington based players talk about “the states” and “the localities” as if they were all alike. And federalism was also defined for me in terms of specific policy areas. I found different patterns of federalism associated with different policies; education, human services, health policy, and rural policies all had different federalism definitions. Yet the conversations in Washington rarely acknowledged those differences. I have often said that any way that one defined “federalism” was true somewhere, at some time. Through people in my classes – many of whom were midcareer officials --- I learned that it was very difficult to establish clear national policies in agencies such as the FBI and IRS that were resistant to changes in their cultures.
I studied performance measurement processes and learned that the reality of federalism made attempts at performance measurement extremely difficult, especially when it was tempting to use private sector experience as the model for public sector decisionmaking. I saw how my students from IRS tended to use private sector experience as the standard for the introduction of technology into the agency. Their experience was difficult and was probably similar to that involved with the purchase and introduction of voting machines years later. In general I learned that governmentwide pronouncements from OMB had little if any impact on policy implementation realities.
Over the past two decades my interests, research and teaching became increasingly globalized and actually made me more aware of differences between voting systems of other federal systems and those of the U.S. While India – a large, diverse and conflictual society -- has a number of attributes that are similar to those in the U.S. they have a very different voting culture. You are more likely to vote in India if you are poor than if you are rich. Anthropologists have characterized voting day as comparable to a religious celebration. Voters wear new clothes as part of that celebration. And the national Indian Election Commission has power and status. Similarly while Canada claims that its provinces are more independent than American states, their national election commission does establish national requirements that are acknowledged and largely observed. And my multiple visits to Australia always amazed me when I observed citizens taking compulsory voting seriously.
These personal experiences provide the backdrop for me when I vote. I walk into my DC voting location (that allows early voting) trying to define the meaning of this act. What should I expect from it? I try to be realistic so I have to return to the three sources of contradictions that I mentioned earlier. Americans seem never to be able to escape from them. First, structural dimensions. Too often we fall back into acting as if we have traditional and clear hierarchical structures. Yet we have a system that is clearly characterized by shared powers between executive, legislative, and judiciary players as well as federalism -- shared powers between the federal government, states and localities.
Second, unlike the private sector, we are forced to deal with multiple values and approaches. Our history involves a movement back and forth between optimistic vs. pessimistic views about government. And it is not clear how we can deal with and balance the traditional three values that comprise the goals of public sector action: efficiency, effectiveness, and equity.
Third, there is significant overlap as well as conflict between players and values. Thus it is difficult to establish clear boundaries between what is public and what is private and between political and substantive policy differences.
What, then, have I learned? Voting and election processes will never be absolutely clear nor totally consistent across the US. Instead, they are likely to move back and forth between conflicting values and approaches. It seems that policy players are not likely to come to agreement about radical changes of any sort in the process. Even if once agreed to, contradictions in this country’s structure, constant change, and conflicting values are likely to lead at best to incremental change that is subject to shifting processes.
While this situation is not unique to voting and elections, I know that the tie between elections and citizenship makes the impact of these contradictions dramatic. I can only applaud you for working in this difficult and important policy area.
Beryl A. Radin
I’m very pleased to join you at this symposium. I’ve learned about your work as the editor of a book series that includes a forthcoming volume on election management. But I’ve learned most about the activities of the Election Center from Kathleen and recognize how important your work has been. One can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the tv without confronting some issue related to your work. I think about issues such as gerrymandering, buying appropriate voting machines, corruption allegations, intimidation, court cases, and voter turnout among others.
But I want to make it clear that I’m not a formal student of elections but a person who has always believed that your role is essential. I’m not someone who might be expected to show up inside your community but rather a person who cares about elections and citizenship. In a sense, I’m one of your customers.
I’ve thought a lot about what I can say to you. I’ve decided to do something that may be viewed as somewhat unusual. I’ve decided to talk to you about elections and citizenship from my personal experience – where I’ve lived, where I’ve travelled, and what I have studied. These experiences have shaped the way I think about U.S. elections and citizenship. The title of my remarks may not directly communicate these ideas but it is meant to link the work you do with some of my personal experiences and work in public policy and public management. I have been struck over and over again by the contradictions that are built into the US system that cannot be ignored. And that is clearly relevant to the work that you do.
I’ve found that there are three sets of contradictions that Americans seem never to be able to escape. First, contradictions that flow from the structural dimensions that emerge from our shared power system. Second, unlike the private sector, we are forced to deal with multiple and conflicting values. And third, there is significant overlap as well as conflict between players and values involved in almost all policy areas in the US.
You could ask, what do these three elements have to do with elections and citizenship? To explain that I have chosen to give you some autobiographical information.
I am a first generation American. Both my mother and father came to the US with their parents early in the 20th century as Jewish immigrants from what has become Belorussia. The world they came from did not allow either family to be viewed as citizens (both because of their religion and where they were required to live). Thus voting – if it existed at all -- was unavailable to them. It was clear that one of the lures that brought them to the US was the possibility of becoming citizens (as well as a range of other opportunities). Jobs brought them far from New York City where their ship landed.
One family came to St. Paul, Minnesota, the other to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As soon as they could, they attended citizenship classes and were able to qualify as voters. While they had different backgrounds, both sets of my grandparents found that their opportunities increased, especially educational opportunities for their children and grandchildren.
Although they married in the midst of the depression, my parents moved away from Milwaukee and St. Paul because of my father’s job. I grew up in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It is probably obvious to you that eastern South Dakota was not an area that had large numbers of Jewish immigrants.
But I had the opportunity to see how elections took place in a small city and how population movements from farms and small towns to that small city defined different election results. The New Deal produced a new Post Office in town which also served as the headquarters for the few federal agencies that had offices in the state. Aberdeen was the headquarters for the Bureau of Indian Affairs where staff kept in touch with the multiple reservations located within the state.
As long as I can remember, family conversations included discussion of elections and indicated how much they valued the opportunity to vote. One of the members of the small Jewish community was elected to the state Senate and I was aware that was somewhat unusual but very important. I have a treasured photograph of me at about 7 years old marching in the local Victory Garden parade. Since I grew up during World War II, the contrast between what was available to me and what was not available to members of the family who were trapped in Europe during that war was very real.
As a result, I began to understand that it was possible to be both a member of a community and yet outside of it. My family’s commitment to Judaism was not a secret and my mother especially reached out to friends and neighbors to include them in many celebrations. There were occasional experiences that did suggest that anti Semitism was still active but I did not focus on them. I did know that I would leave town when it was time for college and saw Aberdeen as a stop along the way.
As I remember my experience I don’t think I ever missed an opportunity to vote. I had to wait until I turned 21 to vote and, as a result, sometimes found myself voting absentee. Both for educational reasons and personal wanderlust I lived in a number of different locations in the US. That allowed me to appreciate the incredible differences between communities in the US. I began to understand the differences between urban and rural settings and between cities that continued the political bossism of the immigration of the early 20th century and the experience of cities that dealt with the post World War II migration from the south. As I remember it, I was first exposed to voting machines in Philadelphia and found them difficult to deal with. I lived in Philadelphia where I was a part of the early civil rights movement in the north but very aware of the developments in the south. I worked in a political campaign in Pennsylvania but found it was hard to combine both party politics and civil rights advocacy.
I left Philadelphia on Nov. 22, 1963 to take a job with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. I arrived in Washington expecting to become part of the Kennedy administration but found myself in a dark and uncertain environment created by Kennedy’s assassination. My two years at the Commission occurred during a time when it became more and more obvious how complex it was for the federal government to take its place in what had been seen as state and local responsibilities. Voting issues were clearly a major part of that complexity.
I left Washington and the Commission to embark on a new adventure that eventually turned into a pattern for me. My wanderlust called out for travel outside of the United States. Unlike today’s generation, few people I knew saw that their professional development included a global pattern. But I had met people who were involved in the British version of the civil rights movement and I took advantage of those contacts.. Unlike the US of the time, however, it was a movement that focused on race and immigration. Because many of the immigrants came from the British Commonwealth, they arrived in the UK with citizenship but without employment and educational opportunities. Despite their passports and ability to vote, working with the Survey of Race Relations in Britain provided me with an opportunity to see that these citizens experienced similar patterns to those in the US.
The year that I spent in London opened my eyes. But I still was unable to commit myself to a professional role. I returned to Washington and operated as a consultant but without a real sense of what I might do professionally. The morning after the 1968 presidential election I decided it was time to leave Washington again. This time it would be different. I decided that it was time to return to school to work on a PhD. As an advocate I was very disappointed with the result of federal civil rights activity, especially in education policy. I found a doctoral program at the University of California at Berkeley that gave me an opportunity to examine the effectiveness of relatively new federal programs.
Thus I became an academic. But I am a somewhat untraditional academic. I call myself a pracademic. Once again I became someone who tries to live in two worlds; in this case the academy and the world of practice. My research often focused on the incredible differences between states and different communities. I found it jarring to hear Washington based players talk about “the states” and “the localities” as if they were all alike. And federalism was also defined for me in terms of specific policy areas. I found different patterns of federalism associated with different policies; education, human services, health policy, and rural policies all had different federalism definitions. Yet the conversations in Washington rarely acknowledged those differences. I have often said that any way that one defined “federalism” was true somewhere, at some time. Through people in my classes – many of whom were midcareer officials --- I learned that it was very difficult to establish clear national policies in agencies such as the FBI and IRS that were resistant to changes in their cultures.
I studied performance measurement processes and learned that the reality of federalism made attempts at performance measurement extremely difficult, especially when it was tempting to use private sector experience as the model for public sector decisionmaking. I saw how my students from IRS tended to use private sector experience as the standard for the introduction of technology into the agency. Their experience was difficult and was probably similar to that involved with the purchase and introduction of voting machines years later. In general I learned that governmentwide pronouncements from OMB had little if any impact on policy implementation realities.
Over the past two decades my interests, research and teaching became increasingly globalized and actually made me more aware of differences between voting systems of other federal systems and those of the U.S. While India – a large, diverse and conflictual society -- has a number of attributes that are similar to those in the U.S. they have a very different voting culture. You are more likely to vote in India if you are poor than if you are rich. Anthropologists have characterized voting day as comparable to a religious celebration. Voters wear new clothes as part of that celebration. And the national Indian Election Commission has power and status. Similarly while Canada claims that its provinces are more independent than American states, their national election commission does establish national requirements that are acknowledged and largely observed. And my multiple visits to Australia always amazed me when I observed citizens taking compulsory voting seriously.
These personal experiences provide the backdrop for me when I vote. I walk into my DC voting location (that allows early voting) trying to define the meaning of this act. What should I expect from it? I try to be realistic so I have to return to the three sources of contradictions that I mentioned earlier. Americans seem never to be able to escape from them. First, structural dimensions. Too often we fall back into acting as if we have traditional and clear hierarchical structures. Yet we have a system that is clearly characterized by shared powers between executive, legislative, and judiciary players as well as federalism -- shared powers between the federal government, states and localities.
Second, unlike the private sector, we are forced to deal with multiple values and approaches. Our history involves a movement back and forth between optimistic vs. pessimistic views about government. And it is not clear how we can deal with and balance the traditional three values that comprise the goals of public sector action: efficiency, effectiveness, and equity.
Third, there is significant overlap as well as conflict between players and values. Thus it is difficult to establish clear boundaries between what is public and what is private and between political and substantive policy differences.
What, then, have I learned? Voting and election processes will never be absolutely clear nor totally consistent across the US. Instead, they are likely to move back and forth between conflicting values and approaches. It seems that policy players are not likely to come to agreement about radical changes of any sort in the process. Even if once agreed to, contradictions in this country’s structure, constant change, and conflicting values are likely to lead at best to incremental change that is subject to shifting processes.
While this situation is not unique to voting and elections, I know that the tie between elections and citizenship makes the impact of these contradictions dramatic. I can only applaud you for working in this difficult and important policy area.
Plenary Speaker, Comparative Policy Analysis Theme, 20th Anniversary Celebration of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Montreal, Canada, June 2019.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? TIME TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR
QUESTIONS FOR COMPARATIVE POLICY ANALYSTS
Beryl Radin, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University
We are here celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. During those two decades, the field called comparative policy analysis has changed dramatically, providing testimony to the ability of the journal’s founder, Iris Geva May, to provide a setting for its growth and visibility. There are people in this room who have identified with this field from the journal’s earliest years. They saw the importance of comparing public sector activities across the globe and many used using a political science lens as their point of departure.
But there are others in this room, like me, who didn’t expect the extent of the changes that have taken place in a field that has experienced significant expansion. This conference has participants drawn from around the globe. They will raise issues and use theoretical frameworks that that we couldn’t have envisioned 20 years ago. How did this happen? At one level, we know that some important part of that expansion occurred as a result of the growth of globalism as well as our recognition of a wide range of concepts and relationships that have developed in the study of public policy.
As a result there are a range of insights that are likely to emerge during this workshop that have developed in some unusual ways. Today I have chosen to focus on my own academic work and how it has developed in a way that does emphasize comparative dimensions. Yet that journey travelled along an unusual path.
When you read my vita, the items in it only occasionally included the term “comparative” in their title. Those few items were mostly published in JCPA. But my confrontation with the field really came about in a different, somewhat unusual way. Over the years Iris regularly appointed me to the JCPA sponsored Comparative Paper award committee judging papers that were presented at the APPAM Research Conference. Each year I struggled to figure out what made a paper comparative. Members of the committees rarely used similar definitions of the term “comparative” and it was always difficult to come to an agreement. That experience eventually led to a relatively recent article in JCPA that David Weimer and I wrote entitled “Compared to What? The Multiple Meanings of Comparative Analysis.” But rather than assisting me come to a clear definition, that work expanded the term’s meaning far beyond the traditional definition used by political scientists.
My first thought was to simply acknowledge that I would not define my work as comparative. For years I was focused on the US system and tended to see the policy analysis world and profession as predominantly American. My international experiences did make me sensitive to other systems and I was often critical of the US experience and warned people not to follow the American practice. That sometimes confused people. For example, colleagues in India expected me to talk about the US experience as the model for change in a democracy. Instead, I often used the American experience as a negative experience and warned my Indian colleagues to avoid those mistakes.
This skeptical stance continued for many years; my work involving policy implementation had started in the Kennedy-Johnson years in the US when the expansion of national government activity pointed to conflict within the federal system between different perspectives of individual states, localities and others involved in the process. In fact, some of the people working in the federalism field did try to develop comparisons between states. Federalism seemed to be one way to clarify the meaning of “comparative.” I defined my work as a critique of “one size fits all” approaches developed in Washington. I joined others who argued for inclusion of bottom up rather than simply top down approaches developed by inside the beltway Washington. Those bottom up approaches showed us how difficult it was to generalize about implementation. Even geography didn’t help one understand why neighboring states or provinces, because of their population composition and history, failed to behave in similar ways.
Despite this realization, I continued to avoid the term “comparative analysis”. Yet the case studies we produced were, indeed, a form of comparative analysis. When my work in public management focused on performance management efforts, I found that the structure of different policies and their diverse goals made it difficult to define expectations from a clear or centralized position. I probably got closer to acknowledging that I was using a comparative approach when I collaborated with Richard Simeon on a comparison of federalism in Canada and the United States. I also was involved in an analysis of state level rural development programs in the US where some of our best information came from observing peer to peer technical assistance processes where states found that technical assistance provided by “experts” with single answers was not very useful.
But where are we today? The theoretical implications of different concepts of causation promise to be a rich source for one group of scholars. But my remarks, drawn from my own experience, have a different goal. I am trying to encourage this group to think about issues in somewhat untraditional ways. I’ve chosen to focus on eight areas that I believe are important that grow out of my experience with what I now define as comparative analysis.
I’ve tried to capture this experience because the issues that emerge from it are rarely discussed by researchers. Utilizing a comparative framework brings a range of issues to the surface that are not usually identified nor acknowledged. In a sense this approach asks us to look in the mirror to see what baggage as individuals we bring to the research task as we deal with comparative issues.
During the 20 years of JCPA’s life, it has become clear that there have been many variations and developments in the field that has come to be termed comparative policy analysis. The assumptions and approaches associated with this academic field have provided challenges for academics who have labored in that field, reflecting an attempt to respond to those changes.
This presentation highlights eight questions that have emerged from my research activity over this period. These questions can be viewed as crucial to contemporary work. But they also provide a set of queries that stimulate some areas of controversy in our work. You may agree with my focus on these specific questions. But you may not always agree with my answers.
The questions follow:
1. What kind of theories are most useful in analyzing the turbulent environments that surround many comparative issues? Are researchers attracted to grand theories rather than modest or tentative theories? Comparative analysis frequently involves players and situations that are constantly changing. Rarely do they have stable environments. As such, our observations are more likely to be accurate if they are modest and tentative. While this is partially true for studies of single players and behaviors, it is important that we acknowledge that variables are likely to emerge midway through the comparative analytic process, involve different players in diverse ways, and thus complicate research. Yet often the theories that are used are based on assumptions that the situation examined is static. The changes that develop can have a major impact on behaviors that emerge from any of the players. They can range from political shifts, natural disasters, or simply personnel changes. Changes that are likely to develop suggest that it makes sense to avoid grand theories in our choice of theories.
2. Should we be searching for similarities or for differences in the way that we approach our analysis? Have we acknowledged the importance of the choice between a focus on similarities or differences? My impression is that more researchers are likely to search for similarities in the ways that players respond to situations than to seek areas of differences. This is most likely to emerge when the research is stimulated by a “hunch” that similar behaviors are found across very different environments. The choice of similarities or differences seems to be attached to personal styles of a researcher. Some people are attracted to identifying conflict situations while others emphasize areas of agreement. I recommend that we include both approaches as we structure our work.
3. Should comparative researchers try to find new ways to involve multiple researchers in the research design process rather than relying on a single researcher to make those decisions? Replicating the multiple perspectives usually uncovered in comparative can provide perspectives and information that is useful to the research itself. My advice is to find a way to organize the research effort that reflects the complexity of most comparative topics. I’ve found that there are at least two decision points in the organization and structure of the research project that are especially useful toward meeting that goal. The first involves a preliminary process where the research methodology and approach are negotiated with all members of the research group and not imposed by a single person. The second involves assignment of a specific research team member to the specific players being analyzed. In that way, it is more likely that the team itself provides a voice for each of the players in the comparison process.
4. Have we assumed that researchers have been sensitive to differences in definition of basic terms used in the work? Definitions are not only affected by language differences but also situations where English words do not have agreed-upon definitions. In a sense, our Tower of Babel problem is not language differences but differences in meaning. Too frequently the research that is produced avoids attention to different perspectives on specific concepts and terms and avoids conflicting views that are embodied in those perspectives. It creates a very confusing situation.
5. Have we acknowledged the historical baggage that may be attached to an issue? There seems to be an ahistorical perspective buried in many comparative analyses. It is rare that researchers pay attention to earlier efforts to deal with contemporary issues. As a result, they seem to assume that current efforts operate in a tabula rosa environment without historical baggage. That baggage can result from a range of impacts such as those that are actually a vestige of colonialism or issues that developed in racially or ethnically separated systems. Its surprising when those vestiges turn up in unexpected ways. Similarly, the historical relationship between the public and private sectors can make a significant difference in many situations.
6. How much attention have we paid to the assumptions built into existing data systems? Such systems may contain significant differences between sources of data from diverse players and, as well, disparities between the reasons for original collection of the data and the comparative analysis. Researchers are always searching for data. And as a result, comparative policy researchers may ignore the way that data is collected. This is especially problematic in federal systems where individual states or provinces have the ability to define their data collection approach differently..
7. Have we paid attention to the impact of different political structures on the task? Efforts to compare activities in dramatically different political structures have minimized attention to the limitations and biases built into different systems. For example, there has been minimal attention to differences between parliamentary systems and shared power systems, between unitary systems or decentralized systems, or between democratic systems and non democratic systems. Granted that these differences are difficult to describe but they are usually very important in the comparison process.
8. Has the comparative policy analysis field tried to develop typologies that capture the diversity of behaviors within the comparative field?
It is obvious that there are multiple ways to respond to this question. There are many important and rich attributes that could be included in such a response. Some typologies may emphasize macro issues and others may focus on very micro behaviors. Without attention to the development of typologies we often seem to be reinventing the wheel. We fail to build on each other’s work.
I hope that these questions are useful to this audience. I look forward to the presentations that will take place in this workshop and hope that our shared goals lead to future productivity.
QUESTIONS FOR COMPARATIVE POLICY ANALYSTS
Beryl Radin, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University
We are here celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. During those two decades, the field called comparative policy analysis has changed dramatically, providing testimony to the ability of the journal’s founder, Iris Geva May, to provide a setting for its growth and visibility. There are people in this room who have identified with this field from the journal’s earliest years. They saw the importance of comparing public sector activities across the globe and many used using a political science lens as their point of departure.
But there are others in this room, like me, who didn’t expect the extent of the changes that have taken place in a field that has experienced significant expansion. This conference has participants drawn from around the globe. They will raise issues and use theoretical frameworks that that we couldn’t have envisioned 20 years ago. How did this happen? At one level, we know that some important part of that expansion occurred as a result of the growth of globalism as well as our recognition of a wide range of concepts and relationships that have developed in the study of public policy.
As a result there are a range of insights that are likely to emerge during this workshop that have developed in some unusual ways. Today I have chosen to focus on my own academic work and how it has developed in a way that does emphasize comparative dimensions. Yet that journey travelled along an unusual path.
When you read my vita, the items in it only occasionally included the term “comparative” in their title. Those few items were mostly published in JCPA. But my confrontation with the field really came about in a different, somewhat unusual way. Over the years Iris regularly appointed me to the JCPA sponsored Comparative Paper award committee judging papers that were presented at the APPAM Research Conference. Each year I struggled to figure out what made a paper comparative. Members of the committees rarely used similar definitions of the term “comparative” and it was always difficult to come to an agreement. That experience eventually led to a relatively recent article in JCPA that David Weimer and I wrote entitled “Compared to What? The Multiple Meanings of Comparative Analysis.” But rather than assisting me come to a clear definition, that work expanded the term’s meaning far beyond the traditional definition used by political scientists.
My first thought was to simply acknowledge that I would not define my work as comparative. For years I was focused on the US system and tended to see the policy analysis world and profession as predominantly American. My international experiences did make me sensitive to other systems and I was often critical of the US experience and warned people not to follow the American practice. That sometimes confused people. For example, colleagues in India expected me to talk about the US experience as the model for change in a democracy. Instead, I often used the American experience as a negative experience and warned my Indian colleagues to avoid those mistakes.
This skeptical stance continued for many years; my work involving policy implementation had started in the Kennedy-Johnson years in the US when the expansion of national government activity pointed to conflict within the federal system between different perspectives of individual states, localities and others involved in the process. In fact, some of the people working in the federalism field did try to develop comparisons between states. Federalism seemed to be one way to clarify the meaning of “comparative.” I defined my work as a critique of “one size fits all” approaches developed in Washington. I joined others who argued for inclusion of bottom up rather than simply top down approaches developed by inside the beltway Washington. Those bottom up approaches showed us how difficult it was to generalize about implementation. Even geography didn’t help one understand why neighboring states or provinces, because of their population composition and history, failed to behave in similar ways.
Despite this realization, I continued to avoid the term “comparative analysis”. Yet the case studies we produced were, indeed, a form of comparative analysis. When my work in public management focused on performance management efforts, I found that the structure of different policies and their diverse goals made it difficult to define expectations from a clear or centralized position. I probably got closer to acknowledging that I was using a comparative approach when I collaborated with Richard Simeon on a comparison of federalism in Canada and the United States. I also was involved in an analysis of state level rural development programs in the US where some of our best information came from observing peer to peer technical assistance processes where states found that technical assistance provided by “experts” with single answers was not very useful.
But where are we today? The theoretical implications of different concepts of causation promise to be a rich source for one group of scholars. But my remarks, drawn from my own experience, have a different goal. I am trying to encourage this group to think about issues in somewhat untraditional ways. I’ve chosen to focus on eight areas that I believe are important that grow out of my experience with what I now define as comparative analysis.
I’ve tried to capture this experience because the issues that emerge from it are rarely discussed by researchers. Utilizing a comparative framework brings a range of issues to the surface that are not usually identified nor acknowledged. In a sense this approach asks us to look in the mirror to see what baggage as individuals we bring to the research task as we deal with comparative issues.
During the 20 years of JCPA’s life, it has become clear that there have been many variations and developments in the field that has come to be termed comparative policy analysis. The assumptions and approaches associated with this academic field have provided challenges for academics who have labored in that field, reflecting an attempt to respond to those changes.
This presentation highlights eight questions that have emerged from my research activity over this period. These questions can be viewed as crucial to contemporary work. But they also provide a set of queries that stimulate some areas of controversy in our work. You may agree with my focus on these specific questions. But you may not always agree with my answers.
The questions follow:
1. What kind of theories are most useful in analyzing the turbulent environments that surround many comparative issues? Are researchers attracted to grand theories rather than modest or tentative theories? Comparative analysis frequently involves players and situations that are constantly changing. Rarely do they have stable environments. As such, our observations are more likely to be accurate if they are modest and tentative. While this is partially true for studies of single players and behaviors, it is important that we acknowledge that variables are likely to emerge midway through the comparative analytic process, involve different players in diverse ways, and thus complicate research. Yet often the theories that are used are based on assumptions that the situation examined is static. The changes that develop can have a major impact on behaviors that emerge from any of the players. They can range from political shifts, natural disasters, or simply personnel changes. Changes that are likely to develop suggest that it makes sense to avoid grand theories in our choice of theories.
2. Should we be searching for similarities or for differences in the way that we approach our analysis? Have we acknowledged the importance of the choice between a focus on similarities or differences? My impression is that more researchers are likely to search for similarities in the ways that players respond to situations than to seek areas of differences. This is most likely to emerge when the research is stimulated by a “hunch” that similar behaviors are found across very different environments. The choice of similarities or differences seems to be attached to personal styles of a researcher. Some people are attracted to identifying conflict situations while others emphasize areas of agreement. I recommend that we include both approaches as we structure our work.
3. Should comparative researchers try to find new ways to involve multiple researchers in the research design process rather than relying on a single researcher to make those decisions? Replicating the multiple perspectives usually uncovered in comparative can provide perspectives and information that is useful to the research itself. My advice is to find a way to organize the research effort that reflects the complexity of most comparative topics. I’ve found that there are at least two decision points in the organization and structure of the research project that are especially useful toward meeting that goal. The first involves a preliminary process where the research methodology and approach are negotiated with all members of the research group and not imposed by a single person. The second involves assignment of a specific research team member to the specific players being analyzed. In that way, it is more likely that the team itself provides a voice for each of the players in the comparison process.
4. Have we assumed that researchers have been sensitive to differences in definition of basic terms used in the work? Definitions are not only affected by language differences but also situations where English words do not have agreed-upon definitions. In a sense, our Tower of Babel problem is not language differences but differences in meaning. Too frequently the research that is produced avoids attention to different perspectives on specific concepts and terms and avoids conflicting views that are embodied in those perspectives. It creates a very confusing situation.
5. Have we acknowledged the historical baggage that may be attached to an issue? There seems to be an ahistorical perspective buried in many comparative analyses. It is rare that researchers pay attention to earlier efforts to deal with contemporary issues. As a result, they seem to assume that current efforts operate in a tabula rosa environment without historical baggage. That baggage can result from a range of impacts such as those that are actually a vestige of colonialism or issues that developed in racially or ethnically separated systems. Its surprising when those vestiges turn up in unexpected ways. Similarly, the historical relationship between the public and private sectors can make a significant difference in many situations.
6. How much attention have we paid to the assumptions built into existing data systems? Such systems may contain significant differences between sources of data from diverse players and, as well, disparities between the reasons for original collection of the data and the comparative analysis. Researchers are always searching for data. And as a result, comparative policy researchers may ignore the way that data is collected. This is especially problematic in federal systems where individual states or provinces have the ability to define their data collection approach differently..
7. Have we paid attention to the impact of different political structures on the task? Efforts to compare activities in dramatically different political structures have minimized attention to the limitations and biases built into different systems. For example, there has been minimal attention to differences between parliamentary systems and shared power systems, between unitary systems or decentralized systems, or between democratic systems and non democratic systems. Granted that these differences are difficult to describe but they are usually very important in the comparison process.
8. Has the comparative policy analysis field tried to develop typologies that capture the diversity of behaviors within the comparative field?
It is obvious that there are multiple ways to respond to this question. There are many important and rich attributes that could be included in such a response. Some typologies may emphasize macro issues and others may focus on very micro behaviors. Without attention to the development of typologies we often seem to be reinventing the wheel. We fail to build on each other’s work.
I hope that these questions are useful to this audience. I look forward to the presentations that will take place in this workshop and hope that our shared goals lead to future productivity.
Beryl Radin - Leaving South Dakota: a Memoir of a Jewish Feminist Academic
Sunday, March 5, 2017 at 5 p.m.
Currently on the faculty of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Radin also edits the Georgetown University Press series, Public Management and Change. Her extensive career includes a stint as president of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and as a senior Fulbright Lecturer in India. Her contributions to public policy have been recognized with the John Gaus Award in 2012, the 2009 H. George Frederickson Award for lifetime achievement, and many others. The author of dozens of articles, chapters, and books, Radin now tells her own story. As she traces her extraordinary path from the small Jewish community of Aberdeen, South Dakota, to the life of an academic and public policy expert in Washington, Radin surveys nearly eighty years of changes in personal and American history, offering telling observations on feminism, civil rights, and activism.
5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
Currently on the faculty of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Radin also edits the Georgetown University Press series, Public Management and Change. Her extensive career includes a stint as president of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and as a senior Fulbright Lecturer in India. Her contributions to public policy have been recognized with the John Gaus Award in 2012, the 2009 H. George Frederickson Award for lifetime achievement, and many others. The author of dozens of articles, chapters, and books, Radin now tells her own story. As she traces her extraordinary path from the small Jewish community of Aberdeen, South Dakota, to the life of an academic and public policy expert in Washington, Radin surveys nearly eighty years of changes in personal and American history, offering telling observations on feminism, civil rights, and activism.
5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
Remarks at IRSPM Conference, Ottawa, Canada, May 2014
I am very honored to receive this award and to join the individuals who have received it in the past. I am especially honored because I am the first American to be chosen. While much of my work focused on the US, I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past decade or two looking at public management issues around the globe. My international work has sharpened my insights about the diverse ways that structure, culture and practice mediate implementation. I’d like to use these few minutes to reflect on my career, hoping that my comments might be of interest to you since they that don’t usually emerge from a traditional CV.
My involvement with public management is somewhat unusual. Maybe some people in this room always knew they wanted to be public management scholars – but I wasn’t one of them. I came to an interest in bureaucracy in the 1960s when I was a part of the US civil rights movement, involved both in direct action as well as an advocate for policy change. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was proposed, it contained a provision that prohibited the federal government from supporting programs that discriminated on the basis of race. I had great hopes for this initiative and thought it made sense to be a part of the development of that policy.
As a result, I joined the staff of the US Commission on Civil Rights as the Assistant Information Officer and was present when the Civil Rights Act was passed. This role gave me an opportunity to learn about the federal bureaucracy. From that perspective, I saw how difficult it would be to use an existing bureaucracy as an instrument of change but how important that task was.
That initial experience was the basis for the three themes that have been consistent in my career.
First, a policy focus. I am interested in administrative processes largely because they are so important in terms of meeting substantive policy goals. I went back to school to do a PhD and became a part of the early policy implementation group; I found that was a way to link issues of public management with policy concerns. That focus became an important part of my subsequent research.
Second, an interest in federalism. Attempting to make change in most domestic US policy areas requires an understanding of the complex relationship between the national government and the states. Traditional public management rarely gives attention to that relationship. My field work involving state responses to national policies and programs made me very aware of the strong differences between states in the US and the difficulty of generalizing about them. I’ve found that is true in other federal systems. As a result, my motto became “anything one says about states is true somewhere.”
Third, a commitment to link theory and practice. I started out as a practitioner and have tried to maintain my relationship with the world of practice since then. I’m one of the people who calls herself a “pracademic” because I think it is very important to keep one’s ear on the ground – to listen to what’s happening, to get as close as I can to the world of the practitioner. That’s occurred for me through full time bureaucratic assignments, consultancies, and by teaching students who are practitioners. I’ve tried to write both books and articles that might be of interest to those practitioners.
To some of you, this sounds very US centric. But actually it was not. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those themes led me to a more global focus. Before I returned to graduate school, I spent a year in the UK looking at race issues there. My experience doing research on states gave me a comparative focus and an attempt to determine what was similar and what was different in diverse settings. Increasingly US policies cannot be understood without acknowledging globalization. And it didn’t hurt that I like to travel and always found a way to merge work, play and tourism in a range of countries, including Australia, India, the UK, Denmark, Israel, Azerbaijan, and most recently Hong Kong. I’ve found that learning from my students turned out to be a great underpinning for research.
So that’s who I am. And I am delighted to be here.
My involvement with public management is somewhat unusual. Maybe some people in this room always knew they wanted to be public management scholars – but I wasn’t one of them. I came to an interest in bureaucracy in the 1960s when I was a part of the US civil rights movement, involved both in direct action as well as an advocate for policy change. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act was proposed, it contained a provision that prohibited the federal government from supporting programs that discriminated on the basis of race. I had great hopes for this initiative and thought it made sense to be a part of the development of that policy.
As a result, I joined the staff of the US Commission on Civil Rights as the Assistant Information Officer and was present when the Civil Rights Act was passed. This role gave me an opportunity to learn about the federal bureaucracy. From that perspective, I saw how difficult it would be to use an existing bureaucracy as an instrument of change but how important that task was.
That initial experience was the basis for the three themes that have been consistent in my career.
First, a policy focus. I am interested in administrative processes largely because they are so important in terms of meeting substantive policy goals. I went back to school to do a PhD and became a part of the early policy implementation group; I found that was a way to link issues of public management with policy concerns. That focus became an important part of my subsequent research.
Second, an interest in federalism. Attempting to make change in most domestic US policy areas requires an understanding of the complex relationship between the national government and the states. Traditional public management rarely gives attention to that relationship. My field work involving state responses to national policies and programs made me very aware of the strong differences between states in the US and the difficulty of generalizing about them. I’ve found that is true in other federal systems. As a result, my motto became “anything one says about states is true somewhere.”
Third, a commitment to link theory and practice. I started out as a practitioner and have tried to maintain my relationship with the world of practice since then. I’m one of the people who calls herself a “pracademic” because I think it is very important to keep one’s ear on the ground – to listen to what’s happening, to get as close as I can to the world of the practitioner. That’s occurred for me through full time bureaucratic assignments, consultancies, and by teaching students who are practitioners. I’ve tried to write both books and articles that might be of interest to those practitioners.
To some of you, this sounds very US centric. But actually it was not. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those themes led me to a more global focus. Before I returned to graduate school, I spent a year in the UK looking at race issues there. My experience doing research on states gave me a comparative focus and an attempt to determine what was similar and what was different in diverse settings. Increasingly US policies cannot be understood without acknowledging globalization. And it didn’t hurt that I like to travel and always found a way to merge work, play and tourism in a range of countries, including Australia, India, the UK, Denmark, Israel, Azerbaijan, and most recently Hong Kong. I’ve found that learning from my students turned out to be a great underpinning for research.
So that’s who I am. And I am delighted to be here.
BERYL RADIN RECEIVES LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
McCourt School Professor Beryl Radin is the recipient of the 2014 Routledge Award from the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM). The award recognizes Radin for her public service and excellence in public management research topics such as performance indicators, administrative reform, accountability, and leadership. Radin received the award in April at the 18th Annual IRSPM Conference at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
“I am especially honored because I am the first American to receive this award,” said Professor Beryl Radin. “While much of my work focused on the United States, I have spent a fair amount of time over the past decade or two looking at public management issues around the globe. My international work has sharpened my insights about the diverse ways that structure, culture, and practice mediate implementation.”
Radin joined the faculty at the McCourt School of Public Policy in January 2012 and is the editor of a Georgetown University Press book series entitled “Public Management and Change.” She is a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration. Radin previously served as a scholar in residence in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University and also was a member of the faculty at the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Southern California, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2012, Radin received the John Gaus Award from the American Political Science Association for career achievement.
“I am especially honored because I am the first American to receive this award,” said Professor Beryl Radin. “While much of my work focused on the United States, I have spent a fair amount of time over the past decade or two looking at public management issues around the globe. My international work has sharpened my insights about the diverse ways that structure, culture, and practice mediate implementation.”
Radin joined the faculty at the McCourt School of Public Policy in January 2012 and is the editor of a Georgetown University Press book series entitled “Public Management and Change.” She is a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration. Radin previously served as a scholar in residence in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University and also was a member of the faculty at the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Southern California, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2012, Radin received the John Gaus Award from the American Political Science Association for career achievement.
New APSA Pracademic Program Announced Supported by the Beryl Radin Fund
Based on a generous future bequest by the 2013 APSA Gaus Lecturer Beryl A. Radin, APSA announced the creation of the APSA Pracademic Program supported by the Beryl Radin Fund. Professor Radin described herself as a "pracademic" because she has moved back and forth between the world of the practitioner and that of the academic. Beryl A. Radin's government service included an assignment as a special advisor to the assistant secretary for management and budget of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as well as other experiences in the Office of Management and Budget and HHS. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, editor of the book series "Public Management and Change" at Georgetown University Press, past president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, former head of the APSA public administration section, and has held faculty positions at the University of Southern California, the University of Albany, and American and Georgetown universities. As the title suggests, this will be a fellowship aimed at providing APSA member academics in the fields of public policy and public administration with practical, hands-on experience that the recipients can take back to their institutions and classrooms to help build bridges between the worlds of academe and applied politics. MORE >>
Beryl Radin Chosen to Delivered the 2012 John Gaus Lecture of the American Political Science Association (APSA)
As others have done before me, I am honored to receive the APSA John Gaus Award. As I prepared this lecture, I realized that the Gaus award has been given by APSA 26 times; mine is the 27th. The first was awarded to Herbert Kaufman whose work set a very high standard for this honor. Reviewing the list of the other Gaus award recipients provides a picture of the development of our field. It includes a variety of individuals who represent different approaches to the intersection of public administration and political science. Among the recipients are seven individuals who had a major and personal influence on my work: Aaron Wildavsky, Frank Rourke, George Frederickson, Martha Derthick, Lou Gawthrop, Larry Lynn, and David Rosenbloom. Others are people who have been important to my own intellectual development. MORE >>