Posts from the ‘Courses’ Category

New course on human rights and public administration

In Spring 2024, I’ll teach a new graduate course on human rights and public administration. The draft overview is below. I’ll post more details in September.

All people are entitled to certain fundamental rights.  This principle, sometimes known as the doctrine of human rights, became central to governance after World War II.  Today, debates about the role of government around the world are shaped by understandings about the scope of human rights.  For decades, policymakers had invented agencies and programs to protect different rights.  Some of these experiments have worked better than others.  Governments have learned about the most effective techniques for advancing rights, and the extent to which rights protection may be constrained by realities of administration. 

This course will examine the relationship between high-level thinking about human rights and more concrete problems of policy design and implementation.  Our objectives are to:

1. Understand the origins and content of the doctrine of human rights, and how it compares with other approaches to the definition of a good society.
2. Understand how human rights doctrine has shaped the development of government agencies and programs since World War II.
3. Consider how the application of human rights doctrine may be constrained by problems of administration.
4. Consider how innovations in administration might improve the prospects for successful application and enforcement of human rights doctrine.

In 2024, the course will draw mainly on American experience since World War II, although there will be frequent references to experiments in governance in other countries.

Brint Milward visits with Governance & Public Affairs class

Professor Brint Milward of the University of Arizona visited with PhD students in my Governance and Public Affairs class this morning.  Professor Milward discussed his work on dark networks as well as his working paper on the neglect of the state in public management research.

Don Kettl visits with Governance and Public Affairs class

Professor Don Kettl of the University of Maryland visited with students in my PhD course on Governance and Public Affairs this morning.  We had a great conversation, focusing mainly on Professor Kettl’s book The Next Government of the United States.

Assessing public service reforms in the age of neoliberalism

In June I completed a seminar on Public Sector Reform in the MPA program of the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University.  The aim was to review and assess the main elements of public sector reforms during the age of neoliberalism (roughly 1978 to 2008.)   We had a great discussion.  The question for the final short paper was: The ‘crisis of governability’ of the 1970s produced a new paradigm about the role and organization of government that guided reform over the next three decades. What do you think is the most important legacy of this period?

Excerpts from the responses: Read more