Public Policy Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2803
Browse
59 results
Search Results
Item CLIMATE CHANGE AND POLITICAL CONTENTION – A MECHANISM BASED FRAMEWORK(2019) Imran, Zafar; Gallagher, Nancy W; Patwardhan, Anand; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation proposes a framework to systematically analyze the potential of climate change to cause social and political unrest. Extant literature generated on the topic seems to have come to a standstill in establishing whether such a link exists, as there is no clear evidence that climate-related stresses directly contributed to civil war onset. The framework put forth in this research makes the case that climate change process, contrasted from climate change variables aggregated at the country-year level, unfolds in a varied manner within and across societies. It is the interaction of changes in the natural system with a society’s preexisting social, economic, and political processes, in addition to coping responses from vulnerable populations, that determine the nature and trajectory of social and political stresses. The dissertation contends, most notably, that the fundamental problem with the extant analytical approach has more to do with ontological assumptions than explanatory approaches (qualitative vs. quantitative). Given the complexity and emergence inherent in the phenomenon under consideration, the positivist ontology is unsuited and incapable to reveal causal pathways linking climate change with predictors of social and political instability and conflict. This research uses critical realism as an ontological basis for the mechanism-based framework proposed in this dissertation. The framework is applied on the case study of Pakistan where direct and indirect effects of climate change are interacting with the country’s political economy, and imposing social and political stresses to the extent of stoking a social movement organized and run by vulnerable farmers. Intra-annual changes in the Indus stream-flows, as well as temporal and spatial changes in the long-term trends of temperature and rainfall have destabilized Pakistan’s agricultural sector. Coping responses taken by vulnerable populations appear to be not just ineffective but are producing system effects with society-wide implications. The result is a farmers’ movement that is although in its early phases, has become a potent political force, and has resulted in more than 700 large increasingly violent protests in the last few years alone.Item Institutions, Poverty, and Tropical Cyclone Mortality(2019) Tennant, Elizabeth; Patwardhan, Anand; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tropical cyclones can result in thousands of deaths when the exposed population is unprepared or ill-equipped to cope with the hazard. Evaluating the importance of institutions and socioeconomic conditions for these deaths is challenging due to the extreme variability in hazard exposure. Studies of socioeconomic risk factors that do not account for exposure will be imprecise and possibly biased, as a storm’s path and intensity are important determinants of mortality and may be correlated with socioeconomic conditions. I therefore model and then control for hazard exposure by spatially interacting meteorological and socioeconomic data, allowing me to develop novel evidence of socioeconomic risk factors. In essay 1, I construct a global dataset of over one thousand tropical cyclone events occurring between 1979 and 2016. Controlling for population exposure to strong winds and rainfall, I find that higher levels of national government effectiveness are associated with lower tropical cyclone mortality. Further, deaths are higher when exposure is concentrated over a subset of the population that is already less well off. In essay 2, I investigate whether local government capacity and poverty alleviation can reduce tropical cyclone deaths, using panel data from 78 provinces and 1,426 municipalities in the Philippines. Tropical cyclone exposure is concentrated in wealthier regions of the Philippines, but once wind exposure and rainfall are controlled for I find robust evidence of a link between local poverty rates and cyclone deaths. In essay 3, I investigate the potential for leveraging policy experiments for causal inference about the effects of development interventions on disaster mortality using an existing randomized control trial in the Philippines. This empirical example illustrates how randomization overcomes issues of multicollinearity and omitted variable bias; however, the presence of outliers in exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards interact to make average treatment effect estimates highly imprecise. Strong evidence of an association between government effectiveness and cyclone deaths suggests that capacity constraints need to be addressed in tandem with risk-specific strategies and financial transfers. Further, evidence that local poverty rates and socioeconomic conditions matter highlights the need for equitable and inclusive approaches to mitigating the risk from tropical cyclones.Item Do regional integration plans promote joint prevention and control of air pollution? - Lessons from China’s major city clusters(2019) He, Linlang; Hultman, Nathan E; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)China has been actively developing its city clusters in recent years, hoping to use them as levers for both integrated economic development and the attainment of other goals such as collaborative environmental management (CEM). According to the existing literature, an important share of China’s CEM experiments focuses on air pollution abatement. However, to what extent have China’s city clusters promoted joint prevention and control of air pollution? The empirical evidence has lagged behind practice. Most of the research on China’s regional air pollution management either focuses on just the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, or discusses the characteristics of an ideal CEM framework and the challenges that CEM present. Very few have paid attention to CEM experiences from the rest of China or discussed the actual outcomes of such practices. Using a three-essay approach, this research first looks at the city clusters along the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, also known as the Central China Triangle, and answers whether this regional integration plan and its embedded call for CEM have brought observable process changes to the involved cities’ air quality management system. It then looks at how the venture capital investors, an increasingly important type of private capital provider, have perceived this policy, and whether a more collaborative environmental governance framework has any influence on how these investors make their cleantech investment decisions. Lastly, this research creates an original dataset containing 137 Chinese cities’ information on their local environmental protection bureaus’ (EPBs’) resource adequacy and regulatory enforcement power, industrial polluters’ degree of compliance, and these cities’ average air quality outcomes for the Year 2017, and uses Structural Equation Modeling method to analyze whether clustered cities and their un-clustered counterparts exhibit observable variations, both in terms of how the enforcement-compliance mechanism functions, and how this mechanism influences the environmental outcomes. I found improvements in joint prevention and control of air pollution in both the clustered cities and their un-clustered counterparts since 2015, and learnt that certain CEM practices may mobilize private capital in cleantech investment. Moreover, I identified important elements of the enforcement-compliance mechanism that could potentially explain differences in cities’ air quality outcomes. ALTERNATE ABSTRACT: 近年来，中国一直在积极开展城市群建设，希望将其作为促进区域协同发展、城乡协调发展、生态文明共建等发展目标的核心力量。现有研究显示，中国目前大量的环境共治实践都集中在空气污染治理领域，但是，鲜少有人系统地研究城市群建设在多大程度上促进了不同区域间的大气污染联防联控。另外，大多数环境共治领域的研究主要关注京津冀地区的过往经验，或者着重讨论联防联控的先决条件和潜在困难。很少有研究深入挖掘中国其他地区的环境共治经验，以及这些实践带来的实际结果。 本研究综合定性和定量的方法进行实证分析，分三篇文章来讨论，中国近年来大力发展的国家级城市群是否给相关区域的大气污染联防联控带来实质性影响。第一篇文章分析长江中游城市群（也称“中三角”）自2015年正式上升为国家级城市群以来，是否给相关区域的空气污染治理带来系统性的变化。所谓系统性变化指的是在政策制定与执行、行政架构、人力财力等各方面的改变。第二篇文章采用实地调研的形式，采访几家国内一线风险投资公司对区域一体化政策和环境共治机制的解读，分析这些规划和机制的实施是否影响风险投资人在清洁技术领域做出的投资决策。在第三篇文章中，作者构建了一个包含中国若干个国家级城市群、共计137个城市的原始数据库，并运用结构方程模型来研究，城市群发展是否给集群中的城市带来了更好的空气质量，是否帮助当地的环保局通过增强执法能力来提高工业污染源在排污方面合法守规的程度。 核心的研究结论如下：1）长江中游城市群成立以来，城市群内外的城市在大气污染联防联控方面均取得了客观的进展，但这些进展与城市群发展的直接关联不大。2）某些环境共治的实施举措（比如区域间的联合监测和联合督察）有可能推动风险投资人进行清洁技术投资。3）环保局执法能力的某些方面能有效影响工业污染源的合法守规程度，并有望提升城市的空气质量。Item Post-Hurricane Recovery in the United States: A Multi-Scale Approach(2019) Kerr, Siobhan Elizabeth; Patwardhan, Anand; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As we increasingly consider resilience as a central strategy for addressing climate change, recovery emerges as an important dimension that is often the focus of public policy. The progression of global climate change will cause an increase in the scale and magnitude of disasters, so it is more important than ever to understand how we can not only prevent impacts, but also recover from them. This research was carried out with the primary goal of examining recovery at multiple scales, while simultaneously considering the social and economic forces and community behaviors that influence recovery outcomes. This dissertation proposes new ways of conceptualizing and quantifying recovery and analyzes the way that neighborhood characteristics and community engagement influence the recovery process. The findings emphasize the importance of assessing recovery progress on multiple timescales and highlight the opportunities that emerge as a result of community engagement with local government throughout the recovery process. The first analytical chapter considers the interaction between vulnerability and recovery by studying power outages and restoration following Hurricane Isaac in Louisiana. This approach uses power restoration as a metric by which to better understand short-term recovery of a specific infrastructure system, building a model for recovery that takes into account antecedent conditions, impact, hazard and prioritization. The next chapter considers 311 requests in Houston TX as a potential proxy measure for civic engagement and social capital. This chapter analyzes 311 contact volumes across the City of Houston and identifies the neighborhood characteristics that influence proclivity to call. Finally, the 311 data is used to better understand system-level recovery and community engagement in the recovery process in Houston TX following Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The chapter compares neighborhood-level use of 311 services prior to Hurricane Harvey to the way it was used for storm-related concerns in the weeks directly following the storm.Item A MIXED METHODS STUDY OF MARYLAND’S MONETARY INCENTIVES TO IMPROVE CHILD CARE(2019) Lee, Erica Schmeckpeper; Reuter, Peter; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 2016, 1.37 million children received subsidies under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ $8.7 billion Child Care Development Fund, though care is often low-quality. One way a state can incentivize providers to offer higher quality care is by providing larger child care subsidies to higher quality providers through a tiered reimbursement system. This research used a sequential explanatory equal status mixed method design to answer the question, Does Maryland’s tiered reimbursement system incentivize child care providers to attain a rating on Maryland’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) that results in a higher reimbursement rate? The first stage of research consisted of multilevel logistic regressions to determine the association between child care centers’ and family child care providers’ reliance on subsidy payments and whether the provider was rated highly enough on Maryland’s QRIS (called Maryland EXCELS) to receive an incentive payment. The regressions used administrative data from the Maryland State Department of Education and demographic data from the U.S. Census. The analyses included all providers in Maryland that received payments from Maryland’s Child Care Subsidy Program in January 2018. The second stage of research consisted of 14 interviews with child care center directors across five counties to understand how they made decisions about which EXCELS rating to attain, how tiered reimbursements factored into their decisions, and general experiences with EXCELS. Results from my quantitative research found that for both child care centers and family providers, a greater subsidy density (i.e., number of children receiving a child care subsidy divided by the provider’s licensed capacity) was associated with a greater likelihood of a provider being rated higher quality (level 3 or higher in EXCELS) and receiving a tiered child care payment. However, results of my qualitative research found that few center directors reported that EXCELS payments factored into their decision on what EXCELS level to reach and none of the centers were singularly motivated by the bonuses. Rather, directors reported being intrinsically motivated to improve EXCELS ratings or motivated by technical assistance providers. Challenges to improving EXCELS ratings included a lack of capacity and difficulty finding qualified staff.Item RISK AND COMMITMENT: CRITICAL DIMENSIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE TO COUNTER INSURGENCIES(2019) Glubzinski, Andrew Joseph; Swagel, Phillip L; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Studies of development assistance in Afghanistan have found the impact of such assistance for reducing violence and countering insurgents to be weaker than in Iraq, not connected to improvements in Afghan perceptions of the quality of their governance, and inconsequential in the long term. While these previous results seem disappointing, existing frameworks offer only a limited perspective on why development assistance has not been more impactful in Afghanistan. My research analyzes development assistance in contexts that are more closely related to the reality of how insurgents fight within the geographic environment in Afghanistan compared to the existing literature, while also focusing on the longer-term effects of assistance rather than the short-term impacts previously examined. My framework identifies the concepts of risk and commitment as critical factors for countering insurgents. Risk refers to the risk tolerance for counterinsurgents, specifically the degree to which counterinsurgents emplace development assistance in areas that favor insurgent control. Commitment refers to the persistence of efforts aimed at development assistance, capturing the period of time over which counterinsurgents make investments in a local area. My empirical work coupled with qualitative interviews indicate that counterinsurgents must be willing to take risk and demonstrate commitment for development assistance to contribute to stabilizing a local area. An implication is that the weakness of development assistance for countering insurgents in Afghanistan reflects the typical situation in which development assistance has high commitment but low risk. Even when development assistance has taken risk, sporadic commitment might be constraining the effects. A hopeful implication of my research is that when development assistance involves sufficient risk and commitment, it has the potential to reduce violence in an adjoining area. In particular, I find that more risky rural development has a consistent association with less urban violence, while less risky urban development has a consistent association with more urban violence. However, the requirements of risk and commitment are steep in practice. It is possible for development assistance to reduce violence and improve stability, but the institutional headwinds are great and the costs—no matter the dimension in which they are measured—are substantial.Item AN ESSAY ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY IN ETHIOPIA(2018) Tolina, Eyob Tekalign; Crocker, David A; Destler, Mac M; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I present a political economy analysis of the post-1991 industrial policy (IP) in Ethiopia. In Chapter one, I set the context for the study and present the research methodology. In the second chapter, I present a comprehensive overview of the literature. After introducing key concepts and reviewing old and new debates on IP, I justify why a political economy framework is a promising way to analyze industrial policy. In Chapter three, I present the historical and current political and economic profile of Ethiopia. I emphasize Khan’s (2005) notion of a “political settlement” as a way of understanding the political economy of a nation in relation to its industrial policy outcomes. I also employ as a main analytic lens Whitfield et al.’s (2015) framework for the politics of industrial policy in Africa. This lens offers three conditions – mutual interest, pockets of efficiency and learning for productivity – as necessary for successful implementation of industrial policy. The Whitefield framework argues that the emergence of these three conditions is shaped by the type of clientelist (donor/client) political organizations that exist in a nation. As such, the model places strong emphasis on material incentives and constraints. In Chapters four and five, I test the relevance of this model to explain and evaluate Ethiopia’s IP. The analysis therein is divided into three politically significant time periods. The focus is to investigate the relations between the dominant clientelist political organization in each time period and the existence or absence of the three Whitfield conditions. The study shows that the Whitfield model neither adequately explains IP results nor guides Ethiopia toward better results. In a bid to establish a more credible and complete version of political economy, the study builds on and supplements the Whitfield model by defending an additional condition necessary for IP success, namely, the political and moral power of concerned citizens. Such an alternative approach I develop in Chapter six, which highlights the importance of such notions as fairness and equity, citizen rights, participatory institutions and civil society in the theory and practice of moral economy.Item ANALYTICAL TOOLS AND DECISION RULES: CREDIT BUDGETING AND TAX EXPENDITURES(2018) McClarin, Elizabeth Anne; Schick, Allen; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Numerous reforms have improved the supply and quality of federal financial, budget, and performance information. Debate persists, however, about the value of information and how to best use it to improve decisions and outcomes. To make information more powerful, some reforms move beyond enriching information to using it as the basis of decision rules that dictate or constrain decisions, actions, or outcomes. A motivation behind decision rules is the concern that information alone does not suffice, but decision rules raise fresh challenges and disagreements. The dissertation’s case studies examine the emergence and evolution of federal budget decision rules. The first case – the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA) - examines a budget decision rule that has been sustained for almost three decades. The second case - budgeting for tax expenditures – examines reforms that resulted in more analytical information but stopped short of a tax expenditure specific budget decision rule. In both cases, concerns emerged decades ago about a lack of budget oversight and control; analytical tools were improved; and budget decision rules were proposed. By juxtaposing a “successful” reform (i.e., enacted and sustained) and an “unsuccessful” reform (i.e. non-enacted) the dissertation examines the factors and conditions influencing whether analytical information is reformatted into a workable and sustained budget decision rule. The case study experiences suggest a cautioned approach to the establishment of federal budget decision rules with a first principle of avoiding overloading the budget and budget processes, especially when existing budget processes are not fully functioning. While sound budget principles and technical expertise help shape budget decision rules, the quest for analytical improvement must be balanced with political, institutional, and implementational realities. The case studies indicate that analytical tools and budget decision rules matter, but that those seeking to establish new budget decision rules should consider the fragile role they play, and avoid overpromising benefits and underestimating the need for careful design and continued oversight and refinement.Item FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS BETWEEN PERU, COLOMBIA AND THE UNITED STATES: EFFECTS OF NEGOTIATIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION ON FDI AND NON-TRADITIONAL EXPORTS(2018) LOMBANA, MONICA; Swagel, Phillip L; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation uses a mixed methodology that combines interviews and data analysis to evaluate the process of negotiating and implementing the U.S.-Peru and U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and to provide initial evidence on the impact of the respective agreements on foreign direct investment (FDI) and export diversification in the two Andean Countries. I find that institutional elements in each country impacted the process of negotiation and the outcomes of the two FTAs differently. Colombia had a relative initial advantage in institutional capacity and negotiating expertise, while Peru had a stronger leadership and commitment that made the FTA a reality sooner. At the same time, both Peru and Colombia had in common the continuity of their trade policies through different administrations, their pledge to maintain structured consultation mechanisms with the private sector and non-government agents, and the vision to continue to build their institutional capacity. The signing, ratification and implementation of these FTAs coincide with an expansion of non-traditional exports from the two Andean nations and an increase in inward FDI into sectors outside of commodities such as oil, natural gas and minerals. Although the external shocks and already established economic trends may play a big role in these increases, the extent to which they are related with the FTAs is analyzed in this dissertation.Item BUDGETING DURING UNCERTAINTY: BUDGETING AND PUBLIC SPENDING IN POST- REVOLUTIONARY EGYPT(2018) Abd ElMoez Hassanein, Sally; Joyce, Philip; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Most of the literature on budgeting focuses on the study of the budget process during times of political stability. There is little research on what happens to the budget process and to public expenditures when countries experience political instability and regime change. This dissertation attempts to fill this gap in the literature by studying how the political and economic uncertainty that result from revolution and regime change affect the budget process and public spending through a study of the Egyptian budget process and patterns of public expenditures following two revolutions and a transition period marked by instability. The analysis utilizes budget data and interviews with officials from Egypt’s Ministry of Finance. This dissertation identifies the challenges decision makers face in preparing and executing the budget in Egypt after the 2011 and 2013 revolutions. Findings from this research indicate that planning and preparing the budget was a challenging task as new and sudden political and economic events brought about new realities almost every day and necessitated mid-year adjustments. The political environment was characterized by rising dissent, protests, increasing public demands and security challenges. This volatility contributed to increasing expenditures on salaries of government employees, subsidies and social programs. The worsening economic situation that resulted from political instability added more pressures on the public purse and resulted in increasing spending. For the same reasons, spending on investments and developmental expenditures declined. More spending also meant increasing deficit, accumulation of more public debt and increasing interest payments which leads to further deterioration of the fiscal standing of the country. This research also finds that as the political environment started to stabilize the new government initiated bold reforms that involved cutting fuel subsidies and enacting a new civil service law to control the increase in salaries. Savings made from reducing fuel subsidies are directed to increase spending on investments, on health and education and on better targeted transfer programs.