2010

  • 2010 Mar 30

    Does Women’s Proportional Strength Affect Their Participation?

    2:30pm to 3:45pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge, MA

    Bina AgarwalGoverning Local Forests in South Asia
    Bina Agarwal, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, India

    This event is co-sponsored by the Women in Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School

    About the Seminar
    Gender and politics literature has long debated how women's proportional strength affects policy formulation within legislatures. Studies on gender and environmental governance have focused mainly on women’s limited participation in local institutions. Both bodies of work leave important aspects unexplored. The former neglects the in-between process – the impact of women’s numbers on their effective participation – such as attending and speaking up at meetings and holding office. The latter neglects to ask what impact would increasing women’s proportions have on participation and what proportions are effective. Rigorous empirical analysis is also scarce. Addressing these gaps, this seminar, based on primary data for community forestry institutions in India and Nepal, statistically tests if a group’s gender composition affects women’s effective participation, and if there are any critical mass effects.... Read more about Does Women’s Proportional Strength Affect Their Participation?

  • 2010 Mar 24

    How One Authoritarian State (Germany 1871-1914) Made the Transition to Democracy – Or Did It?

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mount Auburn, Suite 200-North, Room 226

    Margaret AndersonMargaret Anderson, University of California, Berkeley

    About the Seminar
    Can robust democratic forces develop within self-conflidently authoritarian regimes? The Germany that Bismarck created was legendarily a hard place” for democrats: headed by an hereditary monarch, whose slogan was “the will of the king is the supreme law”; governed locally by a civil service with all the arrogance that birth and expertise bestow; and aided by an agrarian (“Junker”) aristocracy whose control of the rural population brooked no dissent. Analogous powers were claimed in the Saar and the Ruhr by industrialists who disposed of the votes along with the livelihoods of their workforce. And yet this same society produced political parties (including the largest socialist party in Europe) whose candidates, in democratic elections, regularly bested those of their conservative masters; who in parliament defeated legislation dear to the Crown and its paladins; who wrung concessions from the government and forced the Right to play the parliamentary game. Was it culture or institutions that accounts for the electoral successes of Wilhelmine Germanys democratic forces? And did their success matter?

    You can watch the seminar here.... Read more about How One Authoritarian State (Germany 1871-1914) Made the Transition to Democracy – Or Did It?

  • 2010 Mar 23

    Revitalizing a Community

    5:00pm

    Location: 

    124 Mount Auburn, Suite 200-North, Room 226, Cambridge, MA

    Kingsport, Tennessee’s Higher Education Program

    About the Seminar
    Formerly a rustbelt city with an over reliance on heavy manufacturing, Kingsport, Tennessee faced the growing crises of an aging population, shrinking younger-aged workforce, and dropping education levels which threatened its already falling living standards.

    In order to reverse its impending economic crisis, Kingsport launched a successful ’Educate and Grow’ campaign to attract new business investment to the region by upgrading the quality of its workforce. This initiative won the Innovations in American Government Award in 2009.

    This event was part of the Innovation in Government Seminar Series, which explores various aspects and approaches to the study of government innovation.... Read more about Revitalizing a Community

  • 2010 Mar 10

    Democratic Deepening

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Room 226, Cambridge, MA

    Towards a Comparative Framework
    Patrick Heller, Brown University

    About the Seminar
    Brazil, India, and South Africa are three of the most successful cases of consolidated democracy in the developing world. They are also characterized by deep and durable social inequalities that have limited the effective political incorporation of subordinate groups. In this talk, Professor Heller developed a general analytic frame for assessing democratic deepening in comparative terms and identify distinct trajectories of democratic deepening in each country. These divergent trajectories were in turn linked to patterns of interaction between civil and political society.... Read more about Democratic Deepening

  • 2010 Mar 04

    Crossing the Chasm in Tough Times

    5:00pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Room 226, Cambridge, MA

    Jerry Mechling, Lecturer in Public Policy

    About the Seminar
    Innovations often have great trouble crossing the chasm” between invention and widespread use, between the culture of pioneers and that of settlers. Tough times, surprisingly, make certain kinds of chasm-crossings more likely. This seminar explored how current pioneers and settlers in government assess the problems of chasm-crossing and view their priorities for innovations related to information technology.... Read more about Crossing the Chasm in Tough Times

  • 2010 Mar 03

    Can Immigration Policy be Both Liberal and Democratic?

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    Pop Center, 9 Bow Street, 1st Floor Conference Room

    Gary Freeman, University of Texas, Austin

    About the Seminar
    Are liberal immigration policies compatible with democratic policymaking? Contemporary migration to Western countries has well-known implications for their ethnic and religious compositions but less well-known implications for democratic governance. In no Western country, with the exception of Canada, are current immigration policies supported by majorities. Countries with liberal policies (the United States) rarely enjoy broad support for their programs; countries with more democratic policy processes (Switzerland) run the risk of having their liberal policies scuttled by the voters. The immigration that has turned Europe into a destination region and has recently approached historic magnitudes in traditional immigration countries is driving the most far-reaching social transformation of Western countries since the industrial revolution. That such portentous changes are taking place without unambiguous popular consent and persist in the face of significant opposition identifies a serious democratic deficit at the heart of Western political systems.... Read more about Can Immigration Policy be Both Liberal and Democratic?

  • 2010 Mar 01

    Strategies for Fostering Social Innovation in U.S. Cities

    8:30am

    Location: 

    Belfer Center, Bell Hall

    Panel of Social Innovators

    About the Seminar
    Guests joined us for breakfast with a panel of social entrepreneurs and urban leaders to discuss different approaches to encourage and support social innovation in American cities. Moderated by former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, current director of the Innovations in Government Program at the Ash Center, the panel included:

    Christopher Gergen, Director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative at Duke University

    David Harris, President and CEO of the Mind Trust in Indianapolis

    Paul Vandeventer, President and CEO of Community Partners in Los Angeles... Read more about Strategies for Fostering Social Innovation in U.S. Cities

  • 2010 Feb 22

    Public Policies and Private Behaviors

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Room 226, Cambridge, MA

    Achieving Policy Goals through the Tapping of “Moral Resources”
    Claus Offe, Hertie School of Governance in Berlin

    About the Seminar
    All policies have target actors (“policy takers”) whose courses of action are to be changed from what they would be in the absence of a particular policy. In this seminar, Claus Offe started with the distinction of three mechanisms by which public policies can reach their goals. Apart from laws and their enforcement through (the threat of) coercive sanctions, there are mechanism of taxing and spending which appeal to the rational interest of policy takers. In addition, there are “soft” mechanisms of appealing to social and moral norms, the compliance to which is held to promote public goods and collectively desirable changes. He focused upon policy areas in which neither deterrence through coercion nor incentivization through taxes, benefits, or transfers are promising tools of public policy. One of many such examples is the issue of parental preventative care for child obesity through appropriate nutritional practices.... Read more about Public Policies and Private Behaviors

  • 2010 Feb 18

    Why Replication Rarely Happens

    5:00pm

    Location: 

    Allison Dining Room, Taubman Building, 5th Floor

    Professor Robert Behn, Kennedy School of Government

    About the Seminar
    In this seminar, Professor Behn explained how although experimentation designed to achieve a public policy objective can result in innovation – an innovation that could benefit other jurisdictions and agencies – true, meaningful replication of such innovations rarely happens. Why?

    This event was part of the Innovation in Government Seminar Series, which explores various aspects and approaches to the study of government innovation. This year-long series seeks to educate and inform the next generation of government innovators.... Read more about Why Replication Rarely Happens

  • 2010 Feb 17

    A Theory of State Formation

    4:10pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    124 Mount Auburn, Suite 200-North, Room 226

    Carles Boix, Princeton University

    About the Seminar
    To explain the transition from stateless, relatively equal communities to agrarian, unequal and state-governed societies, that has taken place since about 8,500 BC, this seminar discussed a model with the following traits:

    • income-maximizing agents, who may either choose between a productive strategy or an expropriatory strategy, coordinating on peace without permanent political institutions, provided their economic conditions are relatively equal;

    • as soon as inequality rises (due to a biased technological shock), their spontaneous coordination around peace becomes unfeasible;

    • agents sort out into different types and states are formed, either of a monarchical type (where the more productive agents make a transfer to the less productive ones in exchange for permanent protection) or a republican system (where the former invest directly on some defensive structures to deter the latter from looting them).... Read more about A Theory of State Formation

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