Category: Policy Viewpoints

Ash Co-Authors Study Questioning Rogoff/Reinhart Findings

Post author By policy
Post date April 17, 2013

CPPA faculty member Michael Ash is co-author of a new report that highlights serious flaws in a 2010 study that’s being used to justify various austerity policies in this country and abroad.

The 2010 study, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, presented evidence showing a negative relationship between debt and growth rates for countries carrying high debt loads–that is, the authors argued that countries with debt-to-G.D.P. ratios of more than 90% on average experience falling growth rates.

The Reinhart and Rogoff study has been used by many policymakers, including in the U.S., to call for major budget cuts as a strategy for reducing national debt and getting economies back on track following the most recent recession.

But in trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results, Ash and his UMass Amherst colleagues Thomas Herndon and Bob Pollin found math errors and data omissions that challenge the conclusions of the 2010 study. Indeed, according to Herndon, Ash and Pollin, their analysis shows that “the average real G.D.P. growth rate for countries carrying a public debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -.1 percent,” as reported by Reinhart and Rogoff.

This new analysis challenges international austerity measures that may, in fact, have contributed to the slow economic recovery and kept many people in the ranks of the unemployed.

The Herndon, Ash and Pollin study has received national and international attention in the media, including the Washington Post, Reuters, the Guardian, and Salon.

The new study is available through the UMass Political Economy Research Institute.

Badgett Authors New York Times Op-Ed About Workplace Discrimination

Post author By policy
Post date February 7, 2012

CPPA Director M.V. Lee Badgett (economics) has penned an editorial published in the Feb. 7, 2012, edition of the New York Times. The op-ed, titled “What Obama Should Do About Workplace Discrimination,” highlights how presidents dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt have used executive orders to strengthen anti-discrimination standards for workers employed by federal contractors.

In addition to heading the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Badgett is the research director at UCLA’s Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy. The New York Times op-ed comes on the heels of a study Badgett just released titled “The Impact of Extending Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Requirements to Federal Contractors.”

According to the study, between 14.3 and 15.3 million additional workers could offer health care benefits to their same-sex domestic partners if federal contractors were required to provide coverage for same-sex partners. Badgett points out, however, that employers would not likely incur large increases in their health care costs, as “only 40,000 to 136,000 of these employees would sign up a same-sex partner for coverage, and they would be spread out across tens of thousands of federal contractors.”

The New York Times piece appears in the wake of recent news that defense contractor DynCorp International changed its policies and now bans discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Read Badgett’s full piece here.

Events Faculty Honors & Awards Faculty Research Governance Policy Viewpoints

Fountain Keynoter at GovCamp Singapore

Post author By policy
Post date November 15, 2011

Jane Fountain, professor of political science and public policy, will give the keynote address on November 18th, 2011, at GovCamp Singapore. The conference will assemble leading thinkers from government, academia, industry and citizen organizations to share ideas about how to improve citizen engagement and government services in Singapore through technology.

The conference is based on the international GovCamp model that applies a government context to evolving Web 2.0 technologies. GovCamp rests on three central pillars–transparency, collaboration and participation in government.

Additional information about the event, and to follow the Twitter and other real time streams, visit the GovCampSG website. You can also visit the GovCampSG Facebook page.

Tags e-government, Fountain

Faculty Research Policy Viewpoints Public Engagement Project

Schalet’s New Book Featured on NPR, Salon, Huffington Post

Post author By policy
Post date November 4, 2011

A new book by Amy Schalet, assistant professor of sociology and a CPPA faculty associate, is attracting widespread media attention.

Schalet’s book, Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex, compares attitudes toward teen sex in the U.S .and Holland, where teen pregnancy rates are significantly lower than in our country.

The book, which was released on November 1 by the University of Chicago Press, also calls for a new comprehensive sex education system in the U.S. that focuses on strategies such as encouraging teen autonomy and helping teens to build healthy relationship with parents and peers.

Schalet’s book has now been featured nationally on National Public Radio, including WBUR and “The Takeaway,” as well as Salon and the Huffington Post.

In Canada, stories have been featured by MacLean’s and Ontario Today.

A book launch party will be held on Monday, November 14, at 7 p.m. at Food for Thought Books Collective in downtown Amherst.

Additional information about Schalet’s book can be found at the University of Chicago Press’ Facebook page.

Schalet is also a founding member of the UMass Public Engagement Project.

Events Policy Viewpoints

Michael D. Jones to Discuss the Narrative Policy Framework on October 26

Post author By CPPA
Post date October 12, 2011

Michael D. Jones, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, will speak on Wednesday, October 26, from 3-4:30 p.m. in the Campus Center 803 about his research on narratives and public policy. The talk is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the UMass Public Engagement Project.

Jones’ talk, “Studying Stories That Can Change Policy: Narratives in Science Communication, Policy Analysis, and the Policy Process,” will draw on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), an approach to studying public policy that Jones helped to develop, elaborate and empirically test.

NPF recognizes political speeches, interest group letters, media reports, policy briefs and other related materials as narratives, or stories, that shape people’s understanding of themselves and their communities. According to Jones, NPF can significantly contribute to explaining policy processes and outcomes.

Jones has applied NPF to understanding public perceptions of solutions to climate change, opinions about gay and lesbian parenting, and mass attitudes toward campaign finance reform.

In his talk, Jones will discuss the role of NPF in synthesizing findings from such disciplines as communication, marketing, neuroscience, and public policy, and also how NPF can improve the communication of scientific information and the practice of policy analysis.

In addition to his work this year at Harvard, Jones is a collaborator with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Oklahoma.

The UMass Public Engagement Project supports and helps to train faculty members who want their research to make a difference in the world, and is a collaborative project of the Center for Research on Families, the Center for Public Policy and Administration, the Department of Sociology, and the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program.

For additional information about Jones’ visit, please contact M.V. Lee Badgett (lbadgett@pubpol.umass.edu).

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McDermott Publishes New Book on Education Policy

Post author By policy
Post date September 16, 2011

Kathryn McDermott, associate professor of education and public policy, is the author of a new book on education accountability policies.

McDermott’s book, High-Stakes Reform: The Politics of Educational Accountability, will be released by Georgetown University Press in September.

High-Stakes Reform draws on policy developments in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut to examine how testing and other forms of accountability in the schools have been shaped by important political and historical processes. McDermott’s work is an important contribution to our understanding of such controversial issues as testing in the public schools.

A more complete description of McDermott’s book is available on the UMass website.

Faculty Research Governance Policy Viewpoints

Mednicoff Leads Workshop in Spain’s Basque Region

Post author By policy
Post date June 14, 2011
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David Mednicoff (public policy) led a workshop from May 26-28, 2011, in Oñati, Spain on “Comparative Sociolegal Processes of Secularization: Political Variations on the Theme of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.”

The workshop, co-led by Shylashri Shankar of India and co-sponsored by the International Institute for the Sociology of Law and Princeton University, assembled a cross-national group of scholars to develop a common analytical approach to the comparative analysis of secularism, law and politics in global perspective.

The workshop was conceived as a follow-up to two earlier workshops on secularism, law and politics. The Oñati meeting used Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age as a jumping off point to consider whether and how secularity has become integrated into legal and political institutions in a wide range of cases outside the scope of Taylor’s North Atlantic focus.

Cases included China, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal and Turkey. Participants included authors of papers concerning the topic and several prominent discussants.

Proceedings from the workshop will appear in a forthcoming volume co-edited by Mednicoff.

The Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law was established in 1988 to create academic links and collaborations between European and non-European universities. Since then, it has developed into an important base for the global network of scholars who work on law and social science issues.

Additional information about the Institute, which is located in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, is available here.

Prof. Mednicoff holds a B.A. from Princeton, and an M.A., J.D. (international law) and Ph.D. (political science) from Harvard. He is a specialist on contemporary Middle Eastern politics and U.S. foreign policy in Arab states.

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Carpenter, Tomaskovic-Devey ’10 Publish Report on Transnational Advocacy Networks

Post author By policy
Post date June 1, 2011
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CPPA faculty associate Charli Carpenter (political science), CPPA alumna Anna Tomaskovic-Devey ’10, and Kyle Brownlie (PhD candidate, political science) are co-authors of a report about why transnational advocacy networks take up particular issues and not others.

The report, Agenda-Setting in Transnational Networks: Findings from Consultations with Human Security Practitioners, is based on research supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation and conducted partly during Tomaskovic-Devey’s tenure as a graduate assistant for the project.

The research used focus groups with practitioners at 39 human security organizations, along with computer-assisted analysis provided by the UMass Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) coding lab, to determine four general factors influencing the likelihood that a particular issue will receive attention: 1) the nature of the issue, 2) the attributes of the actors involved, 3) the broader political context, and 4) the structural relationships within advocacy networks.

According to the authors, the findings in the report have important implications for all “issue entrepreneurs” working for social change, including those outside of the human rights arena.

Carpenter teaches a CPPA course on global agenda-setting, which analyzes politics in the human security area and is built around the model Carpenter developed through her NSF-funded study on transnational networks. As part of the course, CPPA students have presented findings from their research projects to relevant practitioners at nonprofits in Washington, D.C.

The full report is available here, and additional information is available at the project’s website.

Policy Viewpoints Public Engagement Project

McDermott Comments on Local Laws Governing Backyard Use

Post author By policy
Post date May 24, 2011
No Comments on McDermott Comments on Local Laws Governing Backyard Use

An op-ed in the Daily Hampshire Gazette by Katherine McDermott, associate professor of education and public policy, argues for changing local zoning ordinances that impose unnecessary barriers to complying with rules governing backyard chickens.

According to McDermott, who is raising chickens that her family acquired from her son’s first-grade class at Wildwood, Amherst has a legitimate interest in knowing where hens are being kept in town and ensuring that they’re being raising in safe and humane conditions.

But the cost and considerable red tape required to obtain the necessary permits–which includes completing the same form as that used for construction projects and involves a site visit by the Zoning Board of Appeals–means that many residents who wish to raise chickens in their backyards forgo the process.

According to McDermott, “the town would be better off with the proposed hen and rabbit zoning ordinance, since it permits the town to monitor its hen (and rabbit) populations without imposing irrational amounts of red tape on people who are trying to follow the rules.”

The Amherst Town Meeting is expected to take up proposed changes in rules regarding backyard chickens, according to the Gazette.

McDermott’s full column, which appeared on May 24, 2011, is currently available at this link (may require a subscription).