Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item The States on the Hill: Intergovernmental Advocacy in American Federalism(2013) Creek, Heather M.; Gimpel, James G.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Federal lawmakers often praise the American state governments as "laboratories of democracy" conducting policy experiments from which other governments can learn. However, federalism scholarship recognizes that the federal government has strong incentives to preempt state policy and impose federal mandates in trying to achieve national policy goals. The safeguards of state power in the federal system - political, institutional, and democratic constraints - have changed and weakened over time, leaving the state governments vulnerable to the political interests of the national government. Like other interest groups, the states have developed techniques to safeguard the balance of power in the federal system as well as communicate their policy interests to national lawmakers and educate others about their unique policy developments. Prior studies of American federalism have relied on the behavior of public official associations representing multiple state governments as the source of information about intergovernmental advocacy and state policy goals. This dissertation argues that the study of aggregate intergovernmental interests through the positions of the associations conceals variation in the advocacy activity and goals of the individual state governments. Quantitative analysis of patterns in state lobbying behavior as well as qualitative analysis of congressional hearings is conducted using a unique database of the hearing testimony by state government officials and public official associations from the 103rd-108th Congress (1993-2004). This demonstrates that the state governments are dynamic participants in federal policymaking but their influence is not constant across all policy areas. Individual states are found to have varying levels of activity in federal policymaking which are dependent on the committee placement of members from the state's congressional delegation. In some cases the states' capacity to develop policy expertise and craft innovative policy is predictive of its participation in congressional hearings but this is not as important a factor as expected. Members of Congress are most likely to invite intergovernmental witnesses based on their relationship to the state government and, less frequently, based on the state's record of distinction in policy innovation.Item Public Relations in a "Jolted" Political Environment: An Exploratory Study of Boundary-Spanning Government Relations Professionals in Maryland(2006-05-30) Tuite, Leah Simone; Grunig, Larissa A; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This qualitative study examined government relations, an academically underexplored specialized form of public relations. It explored the individual lived experiences of boundary-spanning government relations professionals (GRPs), those organizational members who manage organizational interdependence with political stakeholders, in organizations enduring a major "jolt" (A.D. Meyer, 1982) in the political environment. The jolt in question is the election of Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., in November 2002, as Maryland's first Republican governor in nearly four decades. The study then explained the implications of this jolt for GRPs, their work, and their organizations. Further, the study considered those experiences and implications in light of whether the jolt was perceived as a boon or a bane to an informant's organization. From the conceptual framework built from public relations and organizational theories, the study specifically looked at GRPs' perceptions of the jolt and the political environment, organizational worldviews, communication practices, their work activities and responsibilities, and organizational political legitimacy. Active interviews were conducted with forty "informants" who functioned as either in-house or for-contract GRPs for IRS-designated 501c nonprofit organizations in Maryland. Among other findings, the analysis demonstrated the ways in which partisan conflict among political stakeholders, a polarized political environment, and changes in organizations' political legitimacy affected in the work-lives of informants. Of greatest concern to them were the jolt's effects on their networks of social and professional contacts ¾ their social circles (Kadushin, 1968). Social circles were found to be the ultimate linchpins to GRPs' effectiveness and success. The analysis also revealed that dialogue, used in the course of jointly implementing the personal influence and cultural interpreter models of public relations, best described both the positive and normative practices of government relations. This study made significant contributions to the body of knowledge on public relations and government relations. It advanced a positive-normative theory of government relations, resolved speculation about why government relations is an anomaly to the Excellence theory of public relations (J.E. Grunig, 1992), filled gaps in the scholarly literature, and suggested organizational justice (Thibaut & Walker, 1975) as a conceptual framework for understanding symmetry and dialogic processes in government relations.