<p> Beginning with the notion that the dominant economic ideology in society is in a position to direct and serve the public interest, it is reasonable to ask if the public interest is well served by that ideology. That is the objective of this dissertation. In contemporary America, the dominant economic ideology is neo-liberalism, an evolutionary form of capitalism with its foundation in market fundamentalism, and characterized by an acute focus on profit and material acquisition and minimal involvement of government in the economy. The prefix <i>neo</i> derives from the ostensible return of liberalism to those free market values after a detour in the mid-20th century when it appeared that state intervention in the economy would result in redistributionist social welfare policies. </p><p> This dissertation examines the research questions: Does neo-liberalism serve the public interest? If not, what alternatives to neo-liberalism exist that better serve the common good? Answering these questions requires the subject to be parsed into a number of additional questions, each of which is explored in an independent essay. The essays discuss the nature of the public interest and role of self-interest in forming neo-liberal values. In addition, the essays examine the institutional responses to neo-liberalism through business as manifested by the corporate social responsibility movement and through government as manifested by welfare capitalism and, in particular, social democracy. </p><p> The conclusion drawn is that neo-liberalism is not conducive to the public interest and that social democracy offers a structure for a more economically efficient and morally just society. Policy prescriptions and arguments favoring social democracy are offered.</p>

<p> Since it was first identified in the early 1980's, HIV/AIDS has become one of the world's most devastating epidemics, disproportionately affecting people in developing countries, particularly in Africa. A number of domestic and international efforts emerged to address the epidemic, including the creation of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, which brought a huge surge in U.S. funding for global HIV/AIDS programs. Given the historical, political and public opposition to increasing funding for foreign assistance programs, this sudden spike in U.S. spending on global HIV/AIDS raises questions over how the policy process resulted in broad bipartisan political support for the creation of PEPFAR. While some previous literature focuses on various components of the politics surrounding the creation of PEPFAR, there has been little academic research which attempts to provide a complete picture of the policy making process that led to PEPFAR. In particular, previous research has not adequately addressed certain aspects of the policy making process, or provided a comprehensive explanation of the interests and events that shaped the policy process. In addition, previous research has not utilized existing theories of policy making or agenda setting. </p><p> This dissertation used punctuated equilibrium theory and the advocacy coalition framework as complementary lenses to explore the political processes and identify the key factors that generated and reinforced the emergence of PEPFAR. This research utilized a detailed case history, which drew on a range of primary and secondary sources, and was supplemented by analysis of quantitative data. The overarching research question, which guided this dissertation, was: how did the politics of global HIV/AIDS and the process of policy formation result in the creation of PEPFAR? Additionally, this dissertation examined the interests and events that shaped the policy process leading up to PEPFAR; issue framing as well as public and congressional attention to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic leading up to PEPFAR; and the political agreements that were negotiated to satisfy the competing interests of various stakeholders. </p><p> My findings highlight a number of key elements of the policy process which enabled PEPFAR, including the importance of: both congressional and presidential leadership on global HIV/AIDS leading up to PEPFAR; the formation of broad coalitions resulting from activism among a range of interest groups; successful use of humanitarian rationales by Congress and the President to justify the program; and the evolution in the framing of global HIV/AIDS away from prevention and sexual behavior toward treatment and innocent victims. This dissertation builds on previous literature on the influences on decision-making around U.S. foreign assistance programs and contributes to research on policy change. By better understanding the process that led to a major change in one particular area of foreign assistance, academics, policymakers, and advocates can gain greater insight into how such factors can be employed to build potential political support for future large-scale humanitarian endeavors.</p>

<p> This dissertation suggests that network governance theory may have reached an impasse, and in order to pursue its advance, new methods need to be used. It tests the viability of actor-network theory on providing new insights on network governance, which could contribute to the strengthening of network governance theory. The author suggests that actor-network theory may offer both an epistemology and ontology that intents to not impose current definitions and divisions of traditional social science. By doing so, actor-network theory focuses on the performance of associations rather than on the traditional categories of structures, institutions, individuals or groups &mdash; characteristic of most network governance studies.</p><p> This study tests the viability of actor-network theory in a complex international environmental policy network in the Andean Amazon. It employs Latour&rsquo;s three-movement method of deployment of controversies, rendering associations traceable again, and reassembling governance. The methodological strategy provides a clean slate to search for a new perspective of network governance, which is based on participants&rsquo; perspectives. It is found that associations are established among programs, projects, public policies, among others; and that this associations seem to remain even if organizations, programs, and projects leave the network. Actor-networks&rsquo; roles in network governance appear to be not static, and their degree of affiliation ranges from formal to informal associations.</p><p> Applying actor-network theory in the study of network governance suggests that action is dislocated, and that groups are in continuous formation. Groups&rsquo; boundaries are define and redefine based on participants&rsquo; perspectives and associations. Finally, a discussion in regards to the implications of this research for both network governance and actor-network theory is offered. </p>

<p> Savvy and opportunistic fraudsters increasingly target smaller governmental organizations. Insufficient transparency and disjointed accountability over controls nurture the hidden nature of occupational fraud and allow wrongdoing to escalate during decades of routine operations. Criminal sentencings confirm local government and education officials misusing their positions and placing their own interests above those of their communities. Both primary case studies&mdash;a municipal crime in the City of Dixon, Illinois and corruption inside Roslyn, New York&rsquo;s Union Free School District&mdash;illustrate how embezzling more than $65 million remained undetected over thirty years until tip disclosure. The extension of unmerited trust created insufficient segregation of duties among employees and low monitoring left public resources vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption. The project holds ternary importance for risk management since one-third of small entities experience fraud, traditional external auditing identifies fraud in less than five percent of instances, and receiving anonymous tips through reporting hotlines improves detection by up to 20% and reduces losses (ACFE, 2016). The project examined stakeholder speak-up strategies including whistleblower protections and tips hotline (WP&amp;TH) initiatives to understand how organizational context, willful blindness, information access, and citizen engagement affect local government&rsquo;s focus on fraud detection and remediation. Case studies show WP&amp;TH initiatives to be financially and operationally superior in identifying risk and promoting transparency in small local governments. Third-party, 24/7 call centers and anonymous, two-way dialog web/text are underutilized tools for recognizing fraud precursors and stopping them before they aggregate, escalate, or become institutional norm.</p><p>

<p> Problem: The problem this study investigated is the phenomenon of a small but growing group of activist political leaders who are redefining public sector governance by reshaping the organizations they lead, thereby improving the institutional environments of hitherto moribund public agencies. The study explored the unique dispositions, skills, values, and/or behaviors of this class of leaders in order to provide an understanding of their emergence in terms of their development, decision-making and other personal leadership characteristics that evolved into their 'activist' nature. The purpose of this research was to develop a grounded theory regarding how the leadership competencies/qualities exhibited by this new breed of public sector leaders support the achievement of &lsquo;above-the-norm&rsquo; organizational performance in the public sector, despite the constraints of weak governance institutions within their specified contexts. The study has its conceptual framework drawn from the notions of effective leadership from a personal leadership perspective, as described in the works of Greenstein (1979) and, Mumford (2006). </p><p> Method: The method of investigation adopted for this study was a &lsquo;grounded theory&rsquo; approach (Strauss &amp; Corbin, 1994, p. 273), a general methodology of qualitative research designed to build substantive theory based on the systematic collection and analysis of data. Data collection was primarily by open ended narrative interviews with a purposive sample of seven public sector leaders who had been (a) identified by perceived improvement in organizational performance during their tenure in public office (b) their leadership activism as demonstrated in their use of public office to effect social change within their leadership context (c) held public sector leadership role for a minimum of three years (d) in leadership at national and/or sub-national levels and (e) validated by a subject matter expert. In addition, four (4) key informants were interviewed &ndash; who is either a past/present associate/subordinate of five (5) of the leader(s) interviewed in the study. </p><p> Results: Three major themes emerged from my interviews with the leaders: (a) their managerial and personal approach; (b.) their cognitive disposition to achieving good governance outcomes; and (c.) their pragmatic leadership approach to resolving leadership challenges of weak institutional contexts. These leaders are able to deliver effective leadership despite weak institutional/governance frameworks, not by using a specific leadership technique; but rather by manifesting their own personal convictions for achieving results&mdash;convictions that emerges from a matured conceptualization of their self-integration process. </p><p> Conclusion: The study concludes that leaders&rsquo; personal characteristics, understanding of self-concepts, and a pragmatic approach empower them to successfully create a compelling personal vision that has a clear ethical framework. They combine these with the capacity to use their social and emotional competencies to achieve results. The study further claims that producing leaders who successfully lead public organizations effectively is the responsibility of many parts of the &ldquo;ecosystem&rdquo; of public leadership.</p><p>

<p> This study explores whether and how government services originally designed to meet the needs for homeless veteran men are being modified to address the unique needs and circumstances facing the current population of homeless veteran women. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

<p> This dissertation contains three essays on state and local economic development incentives. The primary mission of state and local governments is to reduce unemployment and bolster tax revenues. One way in which governments accomplish these goals is by using economic development subsidies and policies at their disposal. States statutorily authorize a range of economic development incentives (e.g. tax abatements, tax increment financing, enterprise zones, etc.). Local governments are empowered to take advantage of this authorization and use these tools to attract firms and people as a means to grow their own economies. However, not all state governments authorize every type of economic development incentive. Additionally, local governments do not utilize each type of economic development incentive, even when authorized to do so by the state. What determines the usage of these policies at the local level has been the subject of much research; however, this literature has failed to account for state-level authorization. Therefore, what is known about the &ldquo;determinants&rdquo; of economic development incentive utilization at the local level is theoretically and empirically flawed. The first essay addresses this issue by restricting the analyses to only those local governments that have statutory authorization to make use of these incentives, and compares these findings to the full set of cases with and without state authorization as is characteristics of the previous literature. Differences in magnitudes and significance levels are highlighted.</p><p> Increasingly governments are interested in determining the economic impact of their policies. The second essay uses difference-in-differences and triple differences models to evaluate the employment, payroll, and establishment effects of state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) in metropolitan areas that span more than one state where one side of the border has an EITC and the other does not. Given that states decide whether, when, and at what level to authorize these credits, this variation across states allow for a test of the impact of these policies on local economic outcomes.</p><p> While a good deal is known about why state and local governments use economic development policies, and how to evaluate these policies, little is known about the factors that contribute to the abandonment of economic development policies at state and local levels of government. Essay three explores the characteristics and context for policy abandonment of economic development policies at both levels of government. Using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), and regression-based models, this essay estimates the impact that political, economic, and social factors have on the abandonment of these policies. Additional research within local governments highlights the relative importance of each of factor in determining the propensity for policy abandonment.</p>

<p> Over the past two decades, development assistance for health and government health expenditure have both increased substantially. Despite the rise in public attention and funding levels internationally, there has been little empirical exploration of budgetary trends in global health funding. Through the use of public budgeting and finance theories, these three studies in aim to increase understanding of the flow of health funds between and within donor and recipient countries through time. Application of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) to multiple datasets of national health financing data illustrates a leptokurtic distribution for both own domestic health (government health expenditure) and other health (development assistance for health) spending. The distribution of change in government health expenditure by 15 OECD donor countries was found to be less punctuated that their development assistance for health to developing countries from 1990-2012, suggesting smoother, more constant pressures for &ldquo;own health&rdquo; spending versus spending for global health. Comparison of country-level annual changes in government spending on domestic health for 145 countries between 1995 and 2012 illustrated that overall, and when grouped by income, the distributions of countries&rsquo; pooled annual changes in government health spending were leptokurtic. There was a greater departure from the normal distribution as country income decreased across the highest and two lowest income groups, and the proportion of annual changes that were positive decreased. However, the high-income non-OECD and upper-middle income groups diverged from this trend in interesting ways. Empirical exploration of the changing organizational composition of the field through the lens of population ecology provides greater context for the funding trends in global health with a particular focus on the emergence of public private partnerships. Application of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) found a decrease in concentration in the organizational field of global health between 1990 and 2000, followed by stability in the field despite the introduction of a new organizational form. Over this period, there were increases in &lsquo;market&rsquo; shares for non-profit organizations and PPPs within the global health organizational population. The grant making-behavior directed through PPPs by a significant US bilateral agency was explored to identify patterns in decision-making related to PPP lifespan, disease focus, program type, regional focus, implementing partner categories and financial commitment, as well as recession impact. The limited empirical research concerning actors in global health funding emphasizes the need for further exploration of this phenomenon.</p>

<p> This dissertation examined the literature of cutback management in the context of the Great Recession. Specifically, it studied the relationship between cutback management policies used by county governments during the recession and revenue changes. </p><p> The purpose of this dissertation was to test whether or not the percent change in revenue had an impact on the probability that cutback management policies were used in the recession. According to the cutback management literature developed in the 1970s and 1980s, there should be a relationship. </p><p> The theoretical framework used for this study was the rational-approach framework, which proposes that every expenditure reducing and revenue increasing policy is enacted based on the percent decrease in revenue the government faces. This suggests that the cutback management policies are a proportional response to revenue decline. The framework was operationalized by using a binary logistic regression that used policy enactment as the dependent variable and the percent change in revenue as the independent variable. Eighty-six counties were sampled and 7 years of each county&rsquo;s budget book were examined for policies and financial data. </p><p> The research found that eleven expenditure policies and three revenue policies had a statistically significant relationship with the percent change in revenues. This resulted in the conclusion that the framework and, therefore, the cutback management literature were useful in explaining primarily expenditure policies.</p>

<p> Since the inception of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), considerable emphasis has been placed on the use of prospective policy analysis tools that aim to inform environmental decisions, including cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment. However, compared to the prevalence of <i> ex ante</i> analysis at the EPA to inform decisions, relatively little evaluation of these same environmental policies is conducted after implementation, to inform future policy development or to modify existing policies. </p><p> This dissertation applied accountability, organizational learning, evaluation capacity, and institutionalism literature in consideration of processes and determinants that affect evaluation supply at the EPA. The dissertation relied on archival documents, semi-structured interviews, and three embedded case studies of EPA&rsquo;s ambient air, hazardous waste, and performance partnership programs. Ten key factors were identified across the three case studies in this research that affect EPA's production of program evaluation to inform decision-making, and a new emergent model of evaluation capacity was proposed for EPA given the agency's regulatory structure. This research concludes that evaluation has much to offer EPA decision-makers, and efforts to improve evaluation capacity will present organizational learning opportunities that can further support the agency's evidence-building practices, specifically improving the application and use of program evaluation at EPA.</p>