Public Policy
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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 Inspiring Universal Voluntary Service Among American Youth(Do Good Institute, University of Maryland, 2019-02-21) Grimm, Robert T. Jr.Chairman Heck, Vice Chair Gearan, Vice Chair Wada, and distinguished members of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to you today as our country faces an urgent need to turnaround historic declines in service and overall civic life. Just a few months ago, our Do Good Institute released research emphasizing that the percentage of Americans volunteering and giving is at the lowest point in approximately fifteen years. These negative trends are widespread across our nation: 31 states have experienced a significant decline in volunteering since the post 9/11 years while not one state in our union has experienced a significant increase in volunteering over that time period. The importance of recognizing and addressing Americans' declining participation in their communities and country cannot be overstated. As the Director of the Do Good Institute and the Levenson Family Chair in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership in the School of Public Policy and at the University of Maryland, I have the honor of leading an effort that is countering these negative national trends by equipping and empowering a new generation of young people to apply their passions and ideas to transform our world for the better. We are working to create a new model for higher education called the Do Good Campus, with an ambitious goal of engaging all University of Maryland students from orientation to graduation and beyond in multiple, high quality service experiences that will lead them to do good and serve their country and world for a lifetime. After describing the troubling trends facing our nation and underscoring the importance of your work, I appreciate the opportunity to outline our experiences implementing the University of Maryland's Do Good Campus strategy, a model that could be adapted and replicated in schools and universities across the United States. I will close my testimony with policy ideas that could inspire a movement towards universal voluntary service in the United States.1 I had the great privilege of serving in the federal government from 2002 to 2010 and ultimately worked on many of the Commission's core policy issues as the Senior Counselor to the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) as well as its Director of Research and Policy Development during the administrations of President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. The federal government will need to play an important role in advancing new, innovative models of service to address our current challenges.Item Shifting Milestones, Fewer Donors and Volunteers: 21st Century Life for Young Adults and the Impact on Charitable Behaviors(Do Good Institute, University of Maryland, 2019-10) Dietz, Nathan; Grimm, Robert T. Jr.EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The United States has experienced declines in adults’ rates of volunteering with organizations and charitable giving over the last two decades. Because these behaviors generate wide-ranging benefits for communities as well as the volunteers themselves, it is essential to figure out how to turn around these downward trends. First we need to better understand the societal factors driving these declines. Research on volunteering with organizations has frequently focused on the health benefits that older volunteers enjoy, and the positive effects of volunteering for children and adolescents. These studies fit into a larger literature on the benefits of prosocial behavior, which can include giving to charity and informal civic activities in addition to volunteering with an organization. However, with only a few recent exceptions, there are few empirical studies that address the question of why volunteering and giving rates have risen and fallen in recent years. This brief focuses on how the volunteering and giving rates of young adults (ages 22 through 35) are related to their life choices. Our study focuses on five milestones that have historically been associated with the transition to adulthood: completing formal higher education, getting a job, marrying, becoming a parent, and living independently. To address this question, we combine data featured in recent U.S. Census Bureau research, which found that Americans are reconceiving the idea of what it means to reach adulthood, with data collected from the Current Population Survey (CPS) Supplement on Volunteering (Volunteer Supplement). Every September between 2002 and 2015, the CPS Volunteer Supplement collected national statistics on volunteering through or for an organization. Starting in 2008, the Supplement also began collecting data on giving to charity.Item Where Are America's Volunteers?(Do Good Institute, University of Maryland, 2018-10) Dietz, Nathan; Grimm, Robert T. Jr.EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While the United States recently experienced record highs in total volunteer hours and charitable dollars given to community organizations, these seemingly positive numbers mask a troubling trend: fewer Americans are engaging in their community by volunteering and giving than in any time in the last two decades. The importance of recognizing and addressing this decline in American’s participation in their community cannot be overstated. Throughout the country, volunteers work with congregations, charities, and other nonprofit organizations to provide needed services of all types to people and communities. However, while people, communities, and organizations all rely on the work provided by volunteers, volunteering also generates indirect positive benefits for communities and for volunteers themselves. Given the decline of charitable behaviors among Americans and the importance of these behaviors for the well-being of individuals and communities, this brief analyzes data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) to explore – for the first time – how the recent national decline in American volunteering played out in all 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) and 215 metro areas. Every September between 2002 and 2015, the CPS collected national statistics on volunteering through a supplemental survey. Among its many strengths, the CPS sample includes more than 55,000 households that generate reliable statistics for all states and most major metropolitan areas.Item Good Intentions, Gap in Action: The Challenge of Translating Youth's High Interest in Doing Good into Civic Engagement(Do Good Institute, University of Maryland, 2018-03) Grimm, Robert T. Jr.; Dietz, NathanEXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Volunteering has long been recognized as a primary mechanism for creating productive and active citizens. A large and diverse body of research describes how volunteering promotes beneficial outcomes for young people: volunteering enables youth to develop social connections and “soft skills” that smooth the transition to adulthood and encourage lifelong community engagement. Social institutions, such as family, religion, and schools, play important roles in the development of many young people by providing paths of entry into volunteering and other forms of community engagement. Our research has shown that teenagers have volunteered at much higher rates over the last two decades (2002-2015) than they did the mid-1970s and late 1980s. Moreover, according to research by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) conducted over the last 51 years, the desire to do good is at an all-time high among entering college students. In 2016, HERI reported that record numbers of first-year college students felt “helping others in difficulty” and “becoming a comm unity leader” was an “essential” or “very important” personal objective. In this report, we analyze for the first time high school and college student data on actual student engagement taken from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is conducted monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Each September between 2002 and 2015, the CPS included a supplemental survey on volunteering that collected data from a national sample of more than 55,000 households, with representative samples in every state and the District of Columbia.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.