This paper explores the idea that empathetic concern has the potential to influence preferences for distributive justice. A theoretical model is proposed in order to examine conditions in which empathetic concern might influence individual preferences These hypothetical results are tested empirically using data from the General Social Survey. During the years 2002 and 2004, the survey contained information on variables designed to measure empathetic concern. Using this measure, this paper examines the influence of empathetic concern on national issues like the distribution of wealth, Social Security, welfare, aid to the poor, and foreign aid as well as more local issues like giving food or money to the homeless, volunteering for charity, and giving money to charity. Overall, a general pattern emerges suggesting that empathetic concern has a statistically and economically significant influence on preferences for distributive justice. However, empathetic concern does not seem to have much of an influence on preferences for welfare or foreign aid.

This study represents a review of existing flood response, exploration into potential improvements, and possible enhancement technologies. Research includes gathering information from individuals associated with response, searching for and testing emergent technologies, and gauging interest in possible improvements. National Weather Service and Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division staffers contribute details, unavailable through published literature, on forecast development and dissemination, and coordination of flood response in Iowa. These details help influence the design of questionnaires distributed to emergency managers and city officials. The questionnaire respondents provide a real-world base for speculation in the usefulness of map and communication technologies. Augmented Reality, spatial triggers, dynamic routing, and social media are all primary focuses of literature research and experimentation within the study. Developmental problems in Augmented Reality, spatial triggers, and dynamic routing are also described. Based on the results of this research, future work should include a focus on development of these map technologies, a survey of private citizens, and experimentation in social media. Involving private citizens is an especially important consideration due to the blurring line between data sources and outputs in forecasting, and the increasing ability of officials to provide efficacy to an information aware public.

This dissertation considers the epistemic problem of adapting expert knowledge to an established political goal. Its particular focus is the failure of scientific and technical experts in different fields to effectively communicate across their disciplinary boundaries in order to provide coherent advice. The information needed to meet the goals of environmental policy is rarely limited to the domain of any individual scientific discipline or technical field. Each discipline has its own technical language, experimental procedures, problem solving strategies, exemplars, scale of application, factors that are included in models, factors which are considered exogenous to models, and background assumptions — all elements of what might be termed the “cognitive map” of a discipline. Because experts produce knowledge within the context of their field’s cognitive map, and these cognitive maps vary greatly between disciplines, there are significant epistemological difficulties involved in the provision of interdisciplinary expertise for policy purposes. Using the Clean Water Act as a case study, I will argue that these epistemic divisions between different disciplines are an important part of the reason why a group of technical advisors who are honest, competent, attempt to be objective, and have similar goals for the policy can still manage to fail to communicate, or even to have productive disagreements about the technical advice they provide to lawmakers. I will also explore the extent to which a philosophy of epistemic mediation might be possible； making some suggestions of how philosophers of science might help not only to clarify but also to bridge some of the divides between disciplinary fields of expertise.

It is estimated that 75% of the sexually active population has had an HPV infection. In June 2006 the FDA approved Gardasil, the first vaccine on the market to prevent cervical cancer by protecting against certain types of HPV infections. In 2007 there were bills in 41 state legislatures promoting the vaccination of young girls from HPV through funding, education and/or requiring vaccination as a condition of school attendance. This research examines the utility of the path-dependent model for value driven issues to evaluate the influence of state institutions on the balance of interests and the terms of legislative debate. Six states were selected for examination: California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Vermont and Virginia. Telephone interviews were conducted with bill sponsors and interest group representatives to assess bill sponsor motivation, the political mobilization of interest groups and the use of rhetorical resources. Content analysis was done to identify evidence of the constructs of the path-dependent model for value driven issues. The results suggest that the effects of state institutions on HPV vaccine proposals in California, Maryland and Massachusetts were greatly influenced by the political mobilization of actors in the balance of interests. Conversely, the influence of state institutions on the policy outcome of HPV vaccine proposals in Vermont and Virginia was determined by the terms of legislative debate established by bill sponsors. For most of the states in the study, the evidence suggests that the HPV vaccine mandate bills were value-driven； however, the policy trajectory in New Mexico suggests that the progression of HPV vaccines mandates in New Mexico was an interest driven issue instead of value-driven issue. The results also highlight the power of rhetorical resources as tools to garner support or bolster opposition for value-driven issues. In sum, the path-dependent model proved a useful tool in examining HPV vaccine proposals by identifying positing specific trajectories for value-driven issues. The path-dependent model lends itself as an additional lens through which policy analysts and evaluators can understand the deviations created by legislative proposals dealing with issues of morality from interest driven political process models.

This dissertation is a collection of three essays in poverty mapping and targeting in China. The first essay uses a recently developed small-area estimation technique to derive geographically detailed estimates of consumption-based poverty and inequality in rural Shaanxi, China. The first chapter also investigates whether including environmental variables in the equation used to predict consumption and poverty improves upon typical approaches that only use household survey and census data. I found that ignoring environmental variables in statistical analyses that predict small-area poverty rates appears likely to produce targeting errors. Using information on locations that are, in fact, receiving poverty assistance, I found evidence that official poverty policy in Shaanxi targets particular areas which may not be the poorest. The second essay uses a spatial econometric approach in estimating specifications that incorporate spatial dependence in the first stage of consumption model of the poverty mapping exercises. The results presented in this essay offer a rough test of the ELL methodology and point to some tentative conclusions that may inform future applications of the ELL poverty mapping methodology. Using geo-referenced survey data from rural Shaanxi I found the evidence of spatial autocorrelation in the data, as a consequent, the conventional methodology could significantly over-state the precision of local-level estimates of poverty in the second stage of the analysis. The empirical results also seems to suggest that spatial error framework is more effective in capturing location effect in comparison to the standard random effect model even after the inclusion of location means of household-level variables from census and environmental data. The conventional small area estimation method used for poverty analysis involves using household unit level data from a census. Researchers, however, do not always have access to the household-level census data because they are regarded as confidential. One alternative is to census data that has been aggregated to a higher level such as township or county). It is not clear to policy analysts how much reliability being traded off for easier data access. In the third essay, I generate poverty estimates using Chinese census data that have been aggregated to different levels and compare the results to those obtained from household level census data and assess the question of how much precision is lost in generating poverty maps from aggregate census data using the Chinese data set. I found that if household level census data is not available to researcher, it is still possible to get a reasonably accurate estimate of the incidence of poverty using aggregated census data. The errors due to aggregation are more likely to be small if the level of aggregation of census data is relatively low.

This study examines and chronicles the change in public funding for postsecondary education in Colorado from 1970 to 2010. Colorado was ranked sixth among states in per capita funding for public higher education in 1970 and declined to 48th in 2010. The study analyzed state appropriations over this time period in five broad categories of spending: K-12 education, health and human services, courts and criminal justice, higher education, and the category entitled “other” combining all remaining functions of state government. Findings demonstrate that since 1970, after adjusting for inflation, the total state general fund budget appropriations have increased by 231%, K-12 appropriations increased by 314%, health and human services increased by 662%, the courts and criminal justice program increased by 712%. Public higher education general fund appropriations increased 8.9% over this time period and other parts of state government declined by 55%. Since 1970, higher education enrollment in Colorado grew by 138%, thus, in inflation adjusted terms, state spending on higher education on a per student basis declined by 55%. This study also shows that higher education and the other category of state government functions have increased the use of fees or cash funds to offset the loss of the historical share of general fund. The mixed methods study includes interviews with many current and former Governors, legislators, and higher education officials with knowledge in key areas of the budget and the political process, and chronicles significant events influencing the budget including the Taxpayers Bill of Rights TABOR), expanding federal mandates in Medicaid, Constitutional amendments protecting K-12 funding, the growth of the corrections and criminal justice system, the 2008-10 recession, and other political and public policy choices that led to these changes in Colorado. The study culminates with the drastic funding cut looming for the state budget following the expiration of temporary federal stimulus funds. The resulting cuts expected for higher education will place the burden of increasing tuition on students. The study recommendations call for leadership to address the underlying problems that are forcing public higher education in Colorado dangerously close to privatization.

The primary purpose of the underground storage tank (UST) regulations is protection and clean up of groundwater resources used by millions of Americans as the source of their drinking water. Annual expenditures to clean up fuel releases from leaking UST systems are in excess of $1.5 billion, a significant portion of which is derived from public funds. Government programs have a responsibility to ensure that such funds are used effectively and efficiently for their intended purpose. One of the UST program’s policy initiatives designed to promote more effective and efficient cleanups is risk-based corrective action (RBCA). RBCA differs from conventional cleanup decision making in that cleanup levels are established on a site-by-site basis according to the relative risk associated with contaminants at the site, the physical characteristics of the site, and the threat posed to potential receptors. Cleanup decisions based on actual risks posed, rather than uniform standards that are characteristic of conventional decision-making, were anticipated to result in an increase in the number of completed cleanups and a decrease in the average cost per cleanup. Though RBCA was first launched in 1995, the impact of RBCA has not been systematically evaluated. This dissertation evaluates whether RBCA has been effective in meeting expectations, and whether these expectations have been met in a cost-efficient manner. With regard to the question of effectiveness, evidence suggests that some states have experienced an increase in the number of cleanups completed due to RBCA, while other states have not. With regard to the question of efficiency, there is some evidence that the cost-savings anticipated due to RBCA implementation have not been realized in all states. Weaknesses in the data available for this investigation point to the need for collection and reporting of more accurate and useful information to support better quantitative evaluations of the impact of RBCA specifically and environmental programs and policies more generally. Prior to implementation of new policies, meaningful and measurable indicators of performance should be identified and appropriate steps taken to ensure that relevant data are collected so that efficacy of a new program or policy can be accurately evaluated. The findings of this investigation are a substantial improvement over previous reviews of UST program reported in the literature and merit consideration by policymakers.

The rise of Christian political activism in the United States during the 1970s is often understood by both the public and historians of this period as a principally conservative force. This dissertation challenges this convention, and explores a strand of religious engagement in politics during this period through an unconventional lens, George McGoverns 1972 presidential campaign. Often remembered solely for its electoral failure, the campaign was significantly infused with the tenets of social Christianity. By using both his own religious background and the broader prophetic tradition, McGoverns ideas of collective, social sin were foundations of a presidential bid that prioritized social justice and antiwar messages. This work also connects McGoverns own campaign to the support it attracted from disparate camps within Protestant Christianity, each of whom used their campaign efforts to establish their own theological identity. One bastion of support came from the Protestant establishment in the liberal mainline churches. Many of its ministers knew McGovern personally, and found his stances not only in harmony, but also in conversation with, those drawn out by the National Council of Churches and other ecumenical organizations. Evangelicals for McGovern, in contrast, used their activism on McGoverns behalf to articulate a worldview that claimed a fully biblical theology required social action on behalf of the less fortunate. The differences between these camps are best illustrated when McGovern attempted to win over an evangelical audience at Wheaton College, where his effort to coat social gospel programs with evangelical language was a deep failure. It reinforced for his evangelical supporters how their efforts to promote biblical social justice would be blunted by caucusing with theologically liberal Christians. As an alternative, they cultivated a broad evangelical identity that emphasized social action and identification with the poor. This work posits that Christian political action in the 1970s can be better understood as a charged debate between divided camps, rather than a clear trajectory of ascendant conservatism. McGoverns Christian supporters used the prophetic tradition as a means of challenging the Religious Right in the 1970s and 1980s, stressing the condemnations of the wealthy and the warlike in the Old Testament. Yet at the same time, the keen, but discrete, prophetic elements of both mainline and evangelical groups prevented them from forming a progressive religious coalition analogous to the relative ecumenism of the Religious Right. Prophetic discourse fed into these mainliners and evangelicals tendency to place confrontation and ideological purity over coalition-building, compromise, and unity. Ultimately, this project also argues that 1970s liberalism had subtle, but intractable, religious roots. A diverse collection of Christians had, in fact, come together to support a left liberal candidate long before Christian conservatism had organized, a key counter-narrative to histories of Christian political action during this time.

This study focuses on the public administration of foster care systems in the states of Delaware, Michigan, New York, and Rhode Island in order to determine the conditions under which foster care outcomes can be improved. This study recognizes that foster care is understudied in political science, that government-by-proxy and intergovernmental relations profoundly affect the public administration of foster care, and that there is significant state-to-state variance in the public administration of foster care. This research was structured to test whether certain states became stronger-performing foster care states by placing a greater priority on building community partners, integrating the advice of mentors, providing leadership from public managers, and cultivating relationships with the federal government. Controlling for state foster care caseload per capita, the study featured top and bottom performing states based on quantitative and qualitative performance data including the federal Child Welfare Outcomes Report. In addition to conducting field research in each case state, the author obtained over fifty-five interviews with key players connected to the foster care issue. The majority of these interviews were elite level interviews, including a governor and heads of state health and human service agencies. The study found that policymakers and practitioners can foster conditions that make feasible changes in foster care administration. “Principled Agents” can develop networks, partnerships and strategies to produce positive results. More broadly, the analysis documented that the federal governments role and its relationship to the states regarding funding and management of foster care is changing. The study concludes by offering practical steps regarding how states, the federal government, and policy and program entrepreneurs can improve foster care.

Regional economic development strategies such as cluster-based development are becoming increasingly popular with policymakers. Yet, the role of government in cluster development and sustainability is not clearly understood. However, network governance theory provides an ideal framework to better understand this role. This research attempts to fill the gap between cluster theory and public administration by testing a political/institutional context model developed by Miller (2006) that attempts to explain the extent of cluster-based economic development policies considering the political/institutional context. A collective case study focusing on the shipbuilding cluster in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi was conducted. A total of 24 in-depth interviews were completed with key informants from economic development organizations, government institutions, and the shipbuilding industry. The major findings of the study indicate that (1) civic entrepreneurs, tax structures, and elected officials are not correlated with the extent of cluster-based policies； (2) the traditionalistic political subculture in the region is a major limiting factor for the development of governance structures suitable for cluster-based economic development and upgrading； (3) participants were highly satisfied with workforce and infrastructure development policies while government activities and programs had the lowest satisfaction； (4) the findings of this study show no support for a clear factor policy grouping as argued by Porter； and (5) network governance theory provides an ideal framework to build governance structures focused on linkages and formal/informal relationships that are more suitable for cluster-based development ameliorating the effects of a traditionalistic political culture. The contributions of this study become more important because of recent threats to the shipbuilding cluster in the Gulf Coast. The ability of government to adapt and facilitate the development and upgrading of the cluster will prove critical for the overall economic and social vitality of the region.