1 - Bureaucracy & democracy

A Matter of Taste 💻

Strengthening trust in tap water—and in government—means taking aesthetics seriously the ultimate consumer confidence indicator (Photo by Engin Akyurt) A great irony—and in some ways, a great tragedy—of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

Variable Flow Moves Fast and Breaks Things💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. u needz bettur sooer purrmit Hooray? The US Supreme Court's handed sewer utilities a win last week in

Profits of Distrust: The Comic 📖

Healthier water makes a healthier Republic When writing The Profits of Distrust, Samantha Zuhlke, David Switzer and I wanted to craft a book that had the theoretical depth and empirical rigor of an academic

Profits of Distrust at Seminary Co-op Bookstore 🎦

A conversation with Sabina Shaikh, University of Chicago The burgeoning bottled water industry presents a paradox: Why do people choose expensive, environmentally destructive bottled water, rather than cheaper, sustainable, and more rigorously regulated tap

The Profits of Distrust 📖

Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water, and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government Cambridge University Press, 2022 The choices people make about drinking water reveal deeper lessons about trust in government and civic life. The burgeoning

Art of the Possible 💻

Why water should be the Biden Administration’s top environmental priority Manny's electoral map The Biden administration’s environmental policy priorities are likely to be quite different from the Trump administration’s, and the impending change at

Smart People 💻

Water Sector Reform #4: Human Capital People + Pipes With a major federal investment in water infrastructure possibly on the horizon, the United States has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage that money into a

Boys Will Be Superintendents 🎓

School leadership as a gendered profession PDK: Phi Delta Kappan Robert Maranto, Kristen Carroll, Albert Cheng, and Manuel P. Teodoro Even though the teaching profession is dominated by women, men hold more superintendent positions.

Gendered Ambition 🎓

Men’s and Women’s Career Advancement in Public Administration ARPA: The American Review of Public Administration Robert Maranto, Manuel P. Teodoro, Kristen Carroll, and Albert Cheng My kids. Clinton, NY. 2009 We explore the relationships

Public Administration & the Border Crisis 💻

Public Administration Professionalism at the Flashpoint Presidents issue orders, Congress passes laws, and courts make judgments, but immigration policy really succeeds or fails when bureaucrats interact with people seeking entry to the United States.

What’s up with the Blue Angels? 💻

One of my favorite things about growing up in Seattle was Seafair, an annual three-week festival, featuring hydroplane races, ethnic celebrations, beauty pageants, a Navy flotilla on Elliott Bay, and a wild nighttime torchlight

Roses by other names 💻

Ever notice that people hate government but love certain government agencies? A couple years ago I was shopping at Target and noticed racks full of NASA-branded merchandise for sale. The idea that bureaucraphobic Americans

Citizen-Based Brand Equity 🎓

A Model and Experimental Evaluation JPART: Journal of Public Administration and Theory Manuel P. Teodoro & Seung-Ho An Government agencies carry reputations in the public imagination. Agency names, images, and icons help form a

Institutions and Democracy in Africa 📖

Chapter 7 - The Bureaucracy: Policy Implementation and Reform Cambridge University Press M. Anne Pitcher & Manuel P. Teodoro New bureaucratic agencies – most commonly central banks, privatisation agencies and regulatory commissions – multiplied

Contingent Technocracy 🎓

Bureaucratic independence in developing countries Journal of Public Policy Manuel P. Teodoro & M. Anne Pitcher This study investigates the effects of formal bureaucratic independence under varying democratic conditions. Conventional accounts predict that greater

Drinking from the Talent Pool 🎓

A Resource Endowment Theory of Human Capital and Agency Performance PAR: Public Administration Review Manuel P. Teodoro & David Switzer This article advances a resource endowment theory of human capital and performance in government

Water Utility Executive Leadership for the 21st Century 📜

Water Research Foundation Manuel Teodoro & Linda Reekie This study developed a summary of the drinking water community executive ranks, including their demographics, educational qualifications, professional backgrounds, skills, career paths, and personalities. This information

Moving In, Managing Up 🎓

Executive job formation and political behaviour Journal of Public Policy Manuel P. Teodoro Public agency executive jobs are temporary matches of individual bureaucrats with government employers. Together, the buyers and sellers of executive labour

Bureaucratic Ambition 📖

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011 Careers, Motives, and the Innovative Administrator Teodoro explains the systems that foster or frustrate entrepreneurship among public executives. Through case studies and quantitative analysis of original data, he shows

Bureaucratic Job Mobility & the Diffusion of Innovations 🎓

AJPS: American Journal of Political Science Manuel P. Teodoro In studies of innovation, policy entrepreneurs recognize latent demand for new policies and then expend resources to promote them. But studies of policy entrepreneurs have