Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF EXPENSE DISAGGREGATION AS A FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT TOOL IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH A MIXED METHODS APPROACH(2024) Baker, Dylan R; Joyce, Philip; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This mixed methods dissertation investigates the impact that cost-disaggregating tools like the Delaware Cost Study (DCS) have on the expenditure patterns at large, public research universities. It draws on public budgeting and higher education finance literature to form a theory of action that hypothesizes that expense management at such institutions will result in the internal realignment of resources but will not alter the total amount spent. The quantitative model employs a 15-year panel data set comprised of financial and operational activity data for 69 R1 universities to tests the influence of DCS participation against this idea. The primary quantitative outcome shows that total costs are indeed not altered by cost disaggregation efforts, but that spending at universities employing such approaches is, on average, higher for Instruction and Scholarships and lower for Institutional Support and Student Service activities than the spending at non-DCS participants. The results inform the contrasting case selection strategy that highlights three similar constituted universities with differing quantitative results in an extensive interview-based qualitative analysis. The interviews detail the varied positive and negative outcomes of the use of DCS and similar tools, sheds light as to why the quantitative results occurred at each university, and documents the commonalities. Recommendations derived from the combined results of the two research methods signal key tenets that policy makers may utilize to enhance the effectiveness of public financial management for large, complex state-sponsored universities.Item The Media-Policy Relationship: Anti-Hunger Policy in America as an Example of Bridging Media and Policy Theory Through Better Definitions(2017) De Munbrun, Ronald Noah; Oates, Sarah; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A central purpose of journalism is to inform the public. Public policy is one area where such information is critical to citizens. With respect to hunger, many credit media reporting in the 1960s with creating the political will to implement anti-hunger policies such as the Food Stamp program. Fifty years later, the media’s role is different. In 2014, the number of Americans receiving aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rose to almost 15% of the population. The bi-partisan Congressional response was to cut SNAP funding. The editorial boards of the New York Times, USA Today and Washington Post response to this apparent disconnect between need and funding was to support the cuts. Anti-hunger advocates fault the media’s framing of hunger for the cuts to SNAP and imply the public is not being properly informed. To investigate these claims required filling a major gap in both public policy and framing research: the lack of precise definitions of the unit of study. Though media framing theory is useful in explicating the “media-policy link,” neither the public policy nor the media literature consistently identify frames in terms meaningful to both disciplines. This dissertation argues that grouping existing definitions of key public policy concepts into the collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories of public problem, public policy, public policy tools, public policy goals, and public policy ends resolves the inconsistency problem and fosters communication across disciplines. Using key points in the last 55 years of anti-hunger policy in America, it explores how utilizing these categories to group media “frames” allows for generalizable results for future studies as well as the ability to reorganize the results of data from previous studies in both disciplines. They also provide the means to operationalize what is meant by “informing” the public by explicating the media’s relationship to the interactions between these categories in the policy process. Using these categories, the study reveals that the media focus on anti-hunger policy tools while ignoring the problem of hunger they are intended to remedy.Item REFUGEES AND RESETTLEMENT: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF REFUGEE INTEGRATION THROUGH SOCIAL & SUPPORT SERVICES(2016) Enekwe, Blessing; McIntosh, Wayne; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies refugee resettlement in the United States utilizing the Integration Indicator’s framework developed by Ager and Strang for the U.S. context. The study highlights the U.S. refugee admissions program and the policies in the states of Maryland and Massachusetts while analyzing the service delivery models and its effects on refugee integration in these locations. Though immigration policy and funding for refugee services are primarily the domain of the federal government, funds are allocated through and services are delivered at the state level. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, was established after the Refugee Act of 1980 to deliver assistance to displaced persons. The ORR provides funds to individual states primarily through The Refugee Social Service and Targeted Assistance Formula Grant programs. Since the inauguration of the ORR three primary models of refugee integration through service delivery have emerged. Two of the models include the publicly/privately administered programs, where resources are allocated to the state in conjunction with private voluntary agencies; and the Wilson/Fish Alternative programs, where states sub-contract all elements of the resettlement program to voluntary agencies and private organizations —in which they can cease all state level participation and voluntary agencies or private organizations contract directly from the ORR in order for all states to deliver refugee services where the live. The specific goals of this program are early employment and economic self-sufficiency. This project utilizes US Census, state, and ORR data in conjunction with interviews of refugee resettlement practitioners involved in the service delivery and refugees. The findings show that delivery models emphasizing job training, English instruction courses, institutional collaboration, and monetary assistance, increases refugee acclimation and adaptation, providing insight into their potential for integration into the United States.Item The Educational Imaginary in Radical Reconstruction: Congressional Public Policy Rhetoric and American Federalism, 1862-1872(2016) Steudeman, Michael Joseph; Parry-Giles, Trevor; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Facing the exigencies of Emancipation, a South in ruins, and ongoing violence, between 1862 and 1872 the United States Congress debated the role education would play in the postbellum polity. Positing schooling as a panacea for the nation’s problems, a determiner of individual worth, and a way of ameliorating state and federal tensions, congressional leaders envisioned education as a way of reshaping American political life. In pursuit of this vision, many policymakers advocated national school agencies and assertive interventions into state educational systems. Interrogating the meaning of “education” for congressional leaders, this study examines the role of this ambiguous concept in negotiating the contradictions of federal and state identity, projecting visions of social change, evaluating civic preparedness, and enabling broader debates over the nation’s future. Examining legislative debates over the Reconstruction Acts, Freedmen’s Bureau, Bureau of Education, and two bills for national education reform in the early 1870s, this project examines how disparate educational visions of Republicans and Democrats collided and mutated amid the vicissitudes of public policy argument. Engaging rhetorical concepts of temporality, disposition, and political judgment, it examines the allure and limitations of education policy rhetoric, and how this rhetoric shifted amid the difficult process of coming to policy agreements in a tumultuous era. In a broader historical sense, this project considers the role of Reconstruction Era congressional rhetoric in shaping the long-term development of contemporary Americans’ “educational imaginary,” the tacit, often unarticulated assumptions about schooling that inflect how contemporary Americans engage in political life, civic judgment, and social reform. Treating the analysis of public policy debate as a way to gain insights into transitions in American political life, the study considers how Reconstruction Era debate converged upon certain common agreements, and obfuscated significant fault lines, that persist in contemporary arguments.Item National Partisanship and State Policy Diffusion: The Impact of Polarized Parties on State Policy Decisions(2014) Wantz, Joseph P.; Morris, Irwin; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project is an examination of patterns of state policy adoption, and provides a new theory for policy diffusion research. While traditional policy diffusion research focuses on geographic proximity as the main mechanism for policy adoption, I argue that states are more likely to rely on partisan proximity and adopt policy from partisan neighbors. This is, primarily, a result of heightened polarization nationally. In the absence of national policymaking, states will feel both more pressure to create more policy as well as leeway to enact more partisan policies. In order to test this theory, I look at three cases: same-sex marriage, right-to-work, and state lottery adoption. I utilize interviews with state lawmakers and interest group staff as well as quantitative methods to show the relationship between partisanship and policy diffusion. Overall, this work adds an important element to a vast and well-established literature and provides a new way of understanding the policy creation in the American states.Item Does the Policy-Making Process Affect Farmer Compliance? A Three-State Case Study of Nutrient Management Regulations(2010) Perez, Michelle Reid; Nelson, Robert H.; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A series of fishkills in 1997 in the Chesapeake Bay were linked to Pfiesteria piscicida, a rare toxic microorganism, and to nutrient pollution from agricultural sources. Manure from poultry production on the Delmarva Peninsula was regarded as the primary source of the excess nutrients. These fishkills served as a focusing event for policy-makers in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware to update their scientific guidance on phosphorus management, promulgate agricultural regulations, and depart from decades of relying on voluntary technical and financial assistance to improve farm-related water quality problems. This dissertation conducts a comparative case study of these three states to determine if 1) the policy-making process in each state affects compliance by farmers and 2) if the laws improved farmer nutrient management behavior. Data sources include information gathered from interviews with 60 corn farmers on the Peninsula that use broiler chicken manure as fertilizer; interviews with over 60 policy stakeholders; and reviews of primary and secondary documents. Analytical methods include: political analysis of the main stages of the policy development process; policy analysis of the effectiveness of plan-based regulations; statistical tests to determine significant differences between states regarding farmer responses to Likert Opinion Statements and questions about their nutrient management practices; logit regression analysis to determine factors influential to low manure application rates; and a review of compliance data collected by the state regulatory agencies. Answers to both research questions are, overall, "yes," though this answer depends on which dataset of compliance and which metric of improved nutrient management behavior is reviewed; there are "no" answers as well. Results of this dissertation highlight the serious difficulty of regulating dispersed nonpoint source agricultural nutrient pollution through nutrient management plans. Several findings arise, including: plan-based agricultural regulations are in reality voluntary; plans prepared by private and public sector planners result in non-uniform standards; gaining "buy-in" from rather than "alienating" the regulated community likely results in better overall outcomes; regulations that account for on-the-ground realities of farming and state regulatory capacity likely achieve better overall outcomes; and focusing events that turn out to be weak can undermine the justification for new regulatory policies.Item Defending Giants: The Battle over Headwaters Forest and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics, 1850-1999(2010) Speece, Darren Frederick; Sicilia, David B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The redwoods have long been a source of inspiration and conflict. By the end of the twentieth century, disputes over logging Redwood Country had helped transform American environmental politics. Historians have largely neglected the redwood wars, but their impact on environmental politics was great. After 1945, the redwood wars ended official corporatist timber regulation in California, established a series of legal precedents governing private property management, and prompted the reordering of the federal environmental protection regime. This dissertation describes those transformations in detail, and helps situate the long history of conflicts over logging the redwoods in American history. The history of the redwood wars demonstrates the ways in which local activism influence the development of environmental politics, Northcoast activists complicate our understanding of radical environmentalism and wilderness ideals, and conservation methodologies persist in the priorities of modern environmentalism. The redwood wars were one of the longest and most violent environmental disputes in American history, beginning during the 1970s and lasting into the twenty-first century. Northcoast residents had grown increasingly concerned about the future of the ancient forest, timber jobs, and their rural culture as the rate of clear-cutting increased and as corporate giants swallowed up land. Some residents organized and challenged the industrial logging regime because of its threat to the health of their rural society. Eventually, the Northcoast was awash in daily direct actions, persistent litigation, and intense media scrutiny. After 1986, the citizen activists focused more and more on Pacific Lumber's plans to harvest its remaining old growth groves in Humboldt County. Pacific Lumber owned nearly all of the unprotected ancient redwood forest in the world, and the forest complex that contained those old-growth groves became known as Headwaters Forest. In 1999, after more than a decade of violent and protracted conflict, Pacific Lumber, California, and the federal government consummated an agreement to publicly acquire several old-growth groves and manage the rest of the company's land under a comprehensive land management plan. Even so, the wars continued because of the uncompromising nature of the local activists.Item Psychosocial Dimensions of Fatherhood Readiness in Low-Income Young Men(2009) Waters, Damian M; Roy, Kevin; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Researchers have a limited understanding of how men become ready for fatherhood, especially among young, low-income men in the transition to fatherhood. The present study draws a diverse sample (n = 53) enrolled in fatherhood programs in Midwestern cities. Life history interviews were conducted with the participants and grounded theory was employed to identify common themes among the narratives. Four cognitive dimensions of fatherhood readiness were identified by the current investigation: presumptive paternity and acknowledged paternity that one is a father, fatherhood vision, maturity, and men's perceptions of their provisional capacity. These contributed to the construction of narratives that describe fatherhood--trial readiness and decided readiness. Implications for social policies and programming are discussed.Item Essays on Budgetary Institutions: Theory and Evidence(2006-11-27) Amoroso, Nicolas Emiliano; Drazen, Allan; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The dissertation offers an analysis of the role of budgetary institutions on the determination of fiscal outcomes. In the second chapter I provide a theoretical model that rationalizes differences in fiscal outcomes of two countries that are supposed to obey the same set of numerical constraints on the budget. I argue that these differences arise from heterogeneity in the degree of budgetary transparency that make these rules more or less binding. Moreover, the model is able to accommodate not only long run results, where stronger institutions will always cause more constrained fiscal outcomes, but also short run implications, where countries with relatively stronger institutions can be paired with relatively unconstrained outcomes. The main lesson of the chapter is that, in a democratic environment, transparency of the budgetary process is the main ingredient responsible for the good behavior of the government, and that numeric constraints will have very different effects depending on the level of transparency. In the third chapter I conduct an empirical investigation across a set of countries, of the effects of budgetary institutions on fiscal outcomes. I exploit a new dataset on budgetary practices across countries, to construct several measures of the three recognized budgetary institutions: numerical rules, procedural rules, and budgetary transparency. The main finding of the chapter is that among budgetary institutions, transparency is the only one that is consistently associated with more fiscal discipline, a finding that goes in hand with the results of the model in the previous chapter. The fourth chapter provides an empirical investigation of the effects of budgetary transparency on fiscal outcomes in the American States. I construct a transparency measure across time from the mid 1980s that allows me, not only to look at the evolution of transparency in the American States, but to take account of possible fixed effects in the estimations. My results essentially corroborate those obtained elsewhere in the literature, that greater fiscal transparency among the American States is associated with larger size of government, but I show that this effect is less robust and economically relevant than previously thought.