Center for Public Administrators
A civil society organization that strengthens democratic checks and balances .
Thank you to the Northeast Conference on Public Administration for awarding Best Practitioner Paper to “Whistle Polishing: A Strategy for Guerrilla Government” https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6gba2/
Sometimes you don’t blow the whistle, just polish it bright and shiny so officials see it and worry that somebody might blow it. My working paper on Whistle Polishing has been accepted by the SocArXiv moderator and is now open-access. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6gba2/
My proposal has been accepted to present Whistle Polishing: A New Strategy for Guerrilla Government, at NECoPA 2023. I’m looking forward to a great conference. https://northeastpublicadmin.org/
If you will be teaching Innovation, Open Government, or Civic Activism in the fall, consider our teaching case on Independent Demonstration Projects, published in JPAE at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15236803.2023.2188150?journalCode=upae20
It’s serious and also fun, featuring the “passive-aggressive sheet cake” pictured here. We also have free class slides—just ask.
I am pleased to announce that I have been appointed an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Public Integrity. I look forward to helping to maintain the high quality of this journal. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=editorialBoard&journalCode=mpin20
Independent Demonstration Projects is a strategy to innovate in government without first getting support from officials. My new teaching case in Journal of Public Affairs Education explains the strategy and illustrates it with a real-life case of making Virginia’s records of who owns business entities available to the public.
The case is at https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2023.2188150.
If you hit a paywall, you can use this free link for friends of Center for Public Administrators https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YDJE8ZZKS9MM2XTSQFKX/full?target=10.1080/15236803.2023.2188150
My review of The Ethics of Dissent by Rosemary O’Leary shows that this classic about guerrilla government is not just for ethics courses.
(If you hit a paywall, use this free link for friends of Center for Public Administrators https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TEXWXUR9UYAWMVET5XGH/full?target=10.1080/15236803.2023.2182170 )
UPDATE: The friends link has been used up, so if you hit a paywall you can send me your email address and I’ll send you a pdf.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15236803.2023.2182170
I’m pleased my work was cited in this very interesting article by Stephen Osborne, Tie Cui, Katharine Aulton and Joanne Macfarlane published in Administrative Theory and Praxis. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10841806.2022.2158638
I am grateful to have received a grant from the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County. The grant supports our ongoing research, writing and teaching to strengthen the role of public sector workers in democratic checks and balances.
I presented a teaching case on Independent Demonstration Projects at the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) Social Equity Leadership Conference on June 10, 2022. NAPA will post a video of the presentation, but in the meantime my slides are at social-equity-leadership-conference-.pdf
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