I am honored to receive a 2025 Artists & Scholars Project Grant from the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County. The grant will support my research and writing on Guerrilla Government.
Reed receives grant for Guerrilla Government
Tag: Guerrilla Government
Empowering Public Administrators just released in paperback and ebook
This peer-reviewed book includes David Reed’s chapter, “How Public Administrators Empower Themselves”. The chapter reveals lesser-known strategies by which public sector workers act against the wishes of their superiors to serve the public interest as the worker sees it.
https://www.routledge.com/Empowering-Public-Administrators-Ethics-and-Public-Service-Values/Olejarski-Neal/p/book/9781032651750
Reed’s new article in Online Library of Liberty: James Madison made the case for Guerrilla Government
James Madison proposed the radical idea that individuals working in subordinate offices of the government should be “sentinel over the public rights” rather than just obeying their superiors. What convinced him of that? He had been involved in the nascent nation’s first whistleblower scandal. David Reed’s new article in Online Library of Liberty tells the story. https://oll.libertyfund.org/reading-room/2023-11-20-reed-madison-disobedience-public-interest
Our research is awarded Best Practitioner Paper by the Northeast Conference on Public Administration
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/
Whistle Polishing working paper is now on SocArXiv
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/
Whistle Polishing: A New Strategy for Guerrilla Government
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/
A Teaching Case for your Fall Syllabus
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.
Independent Demonstration Projects: A Teaching Case on Innovation
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 just published
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
Teaching the Role of Public Sector Workers in Democratic Checks and Balances
Public sector workers are part of the web of checks and balances in democracy. Public administration schools are already teaching the ethics of whether and when public sector workers should act as checks and balances, but very little about how to fulfill this role. Case studies and several streams of public administration research provide a basis for teaching future public sector workers how to be effective as democratic checks and balances.
Our new working paper about this is on SocArXiv at https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hy32x/
Center for Public Administrators 