Communiqué The Magazine of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and InnovationSpring 2015 Volume 16

Welcome to the 16th issue of the Ash Center’s Communiqué magazine, inwhich we highlight the important work of those engaged with the Center. Forexample, the #Hack4Congress event (p.6) we cohosted with the OpenGovFoundation provided a dynamic and unique forum for teams comprised ofstudents, academics, public servants, and technologists to address the dysfunction and partisanship that has so significantly impaired the ability of Congress to do its work. And, we recently announced this year’s diversecohort of 124 Bright Ideas (p.10), which is an initiative of the Innovations in American Government Awards designed to recognize, disseminate, andencourage the replication of a wide range of innovations across all areas of government and within all jurisdictional levels. Finally, as part of ourChallenges to Democracy public dialogue series, we cosponsored two JFK Jr.Forum events (p.17) this semester, one on “The Future of Policing” and theother on the state of the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary, both ofwhich are issues very much at the forefront of the American conversation atthis time. There is much more to be found in this issue and I hope you willenjoy reading about the efforts of our students, alumni, and scholars as theywork to make the world a better place.

As always, you can find more information about the work of the Ash Centeron our website at ash.harvard.edu.

Tony SaichDirector, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation

Daewoo Professor of International Affairs

Harvard Kennedy School

Letter from the DirectorCommuniquéSpring 2015, Volume 16

Ash Center for Democratic Governanceand InnovationHarvard Kennedy School 79 John F. Kennedy StreetCambridge, Massachusetts 02138

617-495-0557www.ash.harvard.edu

DirectorTony Saich

Associate Director for CommunicationsDaniel Harsha

EditorJessica Engelman

Designforminform

PhotographyBen Dannerbpperry / iStockFDNY Photo UnitChones / iStockCribb Visuals / iStockMai JiadiStephanie Mitchell / Harvard GazetteZaineb MohammedMaisie O’BrienGail OskinEngr. Restituto PolilloKinan Al ShaghouriMartha Stewart

Cover illustration:Sophie Chousophiechou1229@gmail.com

IN THE NEWS

4Q+A with Ed Cunningham

5Ash Center News and Announcements

17Event Snapshots

FEATURES

6Hacking the Hill: #Hack4Congress Helps Unlockthe Power of Democratic Participation

10Innovating for America’s Future:The Ash Center Honors 124Bright Ideas in Government

In this Issue

RESEARCH BRIEF

16Fellows FocusMeet Our New Fellows

19On the Bookshelf

IN THE FIELD

13Alumni in the FieldHumayun Sarabi

14Student FocusTravel Grants Support StudentResearch

15Student FocusMarshall Ganz’s Students Spreadthe Power of Community Organizing Across the Globe

4

10

13 15

17

14

5 6

4 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

IN THE NEWS

Edward Cunningham is

director of the Ash Center's

China Programs and

the HKS Asia Energy and

Sustainability Initiative, and

an Adjunct Lecturer in

Public Policy.

Q+A with Edward Cunningham

With China now the largest global economy asmeasured by purchasing-power parity, how has its dramatic growth affected international energymarkets and the development of alternativesources of energy?China’s rise onto the world economic stage has had afascinating set of conflicting effects in energy mar-kets, but its rise onto the energy governance stage isperhaps even more interesting and important in themedium to long term. Most broadly, China’s post WTOaccession boom since late 2001 provided in part a sig-nificant shift to higher energy demand at a globalscale, which supported the expectation of ever-higherprices in a range of commodities, from coal to oil tonatural gas. Higher fossil fuel prices in turn lead to in-teresting outcomes. For example, fossil producers areable to produce more fossil fuel because the higherprices merit exploration deeper and in higherrisk/higher reward areas of the earth, as well as en-able investment into unconventional fossils such asthe tar sands of Canada. Such effects of a high-priceworld work their way through the economic systemindirectly. In more direct terms, China’s active indus-trial policy in the form of high feed-in tariffs (FITs) forwind initially, and then solar, have also dramaticallyreduced the installed cost of renewable power. Whileinvestors of Solyndra and other US solar panel man-ufacturers that went bankrupt from such a shift in costended up bearing the brunt of this swing, US con-sumers, US solar installation workers, and the climatebenefited from a revolution in the economics of windand solar components.

This energy “demand shock” of rapid economicgrowth in China is quite interesting because theworld’s energy governance system has been domi-nated by the need to moderate and respond to en-ergy supply shocks—the vestige of major oil supplycrises in 1973 and 1979 that had global effects.China’s rise has affected prices in a significant manner, but in one that is harder for other majorconsumers and producers to adjust to. The ways inwhich China’s growing strategic oil reserves are op-erated—either to smooth markets in a more activemanner or respond to supply crises—increasinglymatter and require transparency. As a result, China’seconomic weight and impact on energy input andoutput prices are creating significant strains onChina’s historical unwillingness to engage in the sov-ereignty of other nations, and require degrees oftransparency and cooperation in an area historicallylinked tightly to national security.

What was President Xi’s motivation to agree to theUS-China Joint Announcement on Climate Changeand Clean Energy Cooperation and will China meetits targets? I believe the US-China Joint Announcement is impor-tant as a bellwether of change in how the world’smajor emitters will treat climate change negotiationsmoving forward, but its realistic targets do not rep-resent a radical departure from the policies alreadyin place by the US and China. It will also be insuffi-cient. Of course, it is difficult to reach any meaning-fully sophisticated level of policy engagement onclimate change mitigation without the active partic-ipation of the world’s largest emitter—China. Chinaburns nearly as much coal as the rest of the worldcombined, and has rapidly built a power system that now surpasses that of the US, as well as a frag-mented and inefficient industrial heating system thathas little emissions policy regulating it. Precisely be-cause the US and China together emit over 40 per-cent of global C02 gasses, this “G-2” of climate actionis the necessary but not sufficient foundation of realpolicy change at the global level. With the United Na-tions Climate Change Conference, or COP21, in Parisnearing in late November, this bilateral agreementwill provide much-needed momentum and credibilityto a multilateral UN process that seemed to be grind-ing to a halt. I think it will make it harder for India,South Africa, and other key emitters to skate throughthe process without real commitments. As with mostpolicy pronouncements in China, this perceived pivotwas largely the result of internal decisions that hadbeen made well over a year ago, combined with use-ful and consistent diplomacy from the US for sometime. Domestic pressures to restructure both a highlyenergy-inefficient industrial sector and China’s coaldependency towards increased natural gas and re-newables are more about diversifying and improvinga national fuel supply and local environmental con-cerns than global environmental concerns; but this isan example of where global and local interests coin-cide fairly well in the long term. Because of reformsin coal pricing, plant closings, and economic restruc-turing, China was well along on this reform path. Sim-ilarly in the US, non-policy drivers that were reallyabout economic changes—i.e., fuel switching to acheaper natural gas alternative to coal in the powersector, slowing economic growth post-2008—com-bined with some legislative changes that also put theUS on its emissions target course well before theagreement. The key will now be for the US and Chinato widen the national participants in this negotiationand to deepen the integration to include financialmechanisms, legal mechanisms, clear metrics, andsome aspects of common vocabulary when it comesto the inevitable—mutual adaptation to climatechange and the externalities that will entail. C

5www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

IN THE NEWS

Christopher Winship, the Diker-Tishman Professor ofSociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a member of the senior fac-ulty at the Harvard KennedySchool, recently joined theAsh Center as a faculty affili-ate. Professor Winship’s re-search focuses on changes inthe social and economic sta-tus of African-Americans during the 20th century,particularly changes in youth unemployment, maritalbehavior, and prison incarceration. Since 1994, he hasbeen working with and studying a group of blackinner-city ministers known as The Ten Point Coalitionand their efforts with the Boston Police Departmentto deal with youth violence. In 2007, he coauthoredCounterfactuals and Causal Inference (CambridgeUniversity Press) with Stephen L. Morgan.

The Ash Center welcomed Geoff Mulgan as asenior visiting scholar on January 1 for a three-yearappointment. Between 1997 and 2004, Mulgan hadvarious roles in the UK government including direc-tor of the government's Strategy Unit and head ofPolicy in the prime minister'soffice. Currently, Mulgan ischief executive of Nesta (Na-tional Endowment for Sci-ence, Technology and theArts), an innovation charitybased in the UK. During histenure at the Center, Mulgan will collaborate closelywith the Center’s Innovation Program to help develop an Innovation Workshop Series that will in-volve senior faculty at HKS and beyond. The work-shop will meet approximately three times a year andwill focus on identifying the organizational condi-tions and networks that allow innovations to evolvemore quickly when working to address importantpublic problems.

The Ash Center’s Project on Regulatory Reform forthe 21st Century City released a series of white pa-pers and case studies on regulatory reform thisspring. The papers touch on a number of regulatoryissues that have bedeviled cities across the countryincluding how best to loosen regulatory monopolieson taxis and how best to accommodate and mitigatethe explosion in popularity of food trucks in manyUS cities.

Maya Sen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy andAsh Center faculty affiliate, published a study on ju-dicial polarization that was featured in the New YorkTimes. Coauthored with Adam Bonica of StanfordUniversity, The Politics of Selecting the Bench fromthe Bar: The Legal Profession and Partisan Incentivesto Politicize the Judiciary scrutinized the campaign

contributions of the nearly 400,000 attorneys in theUS to examine politicization and polarization acrossvarious tiers of the judiciary. Sen and Bonica con-clude, “Judges as a whole are more conservativethan the population of attorneys. This is particularlythe case among judges who sit in higher, more po-litically important courts—such as state high courts

Tony Saich, director of the Ash Center and DaewooProfessor of International Affairs, has been namedto Foreign Policy's Pacific Power Index, a list of 50people shaping the future of the US-China relation-ship. David Wertime, a senior editor at Foreign Pol-icy, said in a statement, “Harvard, a name that manyChinese instantly recognize, has played a major rolein shaping Chinese perceptions of American highereducation. And the ability of the Ash Center, whichProfessor Saich directs, to communicate Americanconceptions of good governance directly to risingChinese leaders has surely had an impact on bilateralties, and perhaps even internal Chinese politics.”

Professors Tarek Masoud and Candelaria Garay areconvening a seminar series on comparative politicsthis year in which leading political scientists will present their research at the Ash Center. This year’s speakers include Kenneth M.Roberts (Cornell University),whose research focuses onLatin American political econ-omy and the politics of in-equality, and Anna Grzymala-Busse (University ofMichigan), a scholar of democratization in EasternEurope whose new book examines the ways inwhich churches and religious leaders insert them-selves into and influence the results of the policy-making process.

Ash Center Faculty Appointments

New Scholarship on Regulatory Reform

“As cities look for ways to cut red tape and spursmall business job growth, regulatory reform holdsthe key to stimulating local and regional economies,”observed Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director ofthe Innovations in American Government Program atthe Center. “By unlocking the power of data andtechnology, cities now have the ability to streamlineregulatory development, licensing and permitting,and compliance in a personalized way that will targetbad actors in a meaningful way. This work is beingled by some of the most innovative and creative citiesin the US, like New York City, Chicago, and Boston,and can be replicated by other cities attempting tocreate a positive environment for business.”

Maya Sen on JudicialReform

Comparative DemocracySeminars

and the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Conversely, thepaper also finds that lawyers are more liberal whencompared to the general US population. This corre-sponds to the nation’s lawyers being roughly center-left on the ideological spectrum while the nation’sfederal appeals courts are center-right. In one of themost significant conclusions drawn from these find-ings, the paper’s authors suggest that politicians notonly rely on ideology when appointing judges to thebench, but that “they do so where it benefits theirparty the most and when it concerns the most im-portant courts.”

Tony Saich Honored by Foreign Policy

HackingtheHill#Hack4Congress helps unlock the power of democratic participation

7www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

While the founders of the American republic may have conceived Congress asthe linchpin of our democracy—the branch of government closest and most re-sponsible to the people—few would argue that our contemporary Congressshares much in common with this early republican ideal.

The partisanship slowing the legislative process to a grind, doused withample helpings of nearly unlimited campaign contributions thanks to CitizensUnited, has soured much of the American public on Congress, with congressionalapproval ratings hovering in the low teens. Recent years have seen productivityin both houses of Congress—as measured by newly enacted laws—as among thelowest on record since World War II. “Our democracy is in trouble in part becauseof the distance between the American people and Congress and because Con-gress just can’t get business done,” remarked Archon Fung, Ford FoundationProfessor of Democracy and HKS Academic Dean.

Something has to give. Or, at least new solutions have to be found to makeCongress more responsive to the concerns of everyday Americans. That was thepremise of the Ash Center’s novel #Hack4Congress “not-just-for-technologists”event held over a blustery weekend in early February that drew hundreds ofpeople to the Kennedy School to learn, discuss, and propose a range of solutionsto strengthen Congress.

In partnership with the OpenGov Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofitdedicated to strengthening citizen participation in government, the Ash Centerconvened a group of technologists, academics, students, designers, and formerpublic servants to tackle a variety of challenges related to the lawmaking processincluding those focused on improving cross-partisan dialogue, modernizing con-gressional participation, rebuilding trust, and strengthening campaign financereform.

Conceived by Maggie McKinley, a Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center and Cli-menko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, #Hack4Congress wasan opportunity to not only address dysfunction in Congress, but to tackle the widerissue of political apathy and engagement, particularly among millennials. “We havea culture of apathy and resignation right now that we can’t solve all these prob-lems,” said McKinley, “but these types of events will bring folks together who mightnot have seen themselves as part of the solution and get them engaged.”

Tony Saich, director of the Ash Center, said, “We are committed to providingresources to our students and the broader policy community to help tackle some

“Our democracy is in trouble in part because of thedistance between the American people and Congress and because Congress just can’t get business done.” Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professorof Democracy and HKS Academic Dean

8 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

of the most intractable problems facing our democracy today, such as how toget Congress back on track as an institution representative of the Americanpolity as a whole.”

Unlike traditional hackathons, which tend to be tech-centric gatherings re-volving around computer programming, McKinley and the Ash Center envisioned#Hack4Congress as bridging the gap between technologists and public policy.“It was very important that #Hack4Congress encompass innovations beyond thetechnology sector,” said McKinley. “Academics, policy specialists, lawyers—theyall have tremendous insight into how to tackle congressional dysfunction.#Hack4Congress wasn’t solely a technological challenge, which is what made itsuch a compelling event.”

Seamus Kraft, the executive director of the OpenGov Foundation and a for-mer congressional staffer himself, worked closely with the Ash Center to helpmake #Hack4Congress a reality. “Most hackathons focus on straight coding—straight applications—they don’t focus on the softer human side,” said Kraft.“People who are attending #hack4Congress come from a vast array of interestsand backgrounds—designers, developers, political scientists, people who workor used to work in government—you name it.”

In fact, nearly half of the approximately 150 participants at #Hack4Congressdid not hail from traditional technology backgrounds. Brandon Andrews, a for-mer defense policy staffer for Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who now works for aWashington-based public relations firm, traveled up from the nation’s capital toparticipate in #Hack4Congress. Andrews’ team, the “Dear Colleagues,” one of13 competing in the event, concentrated their efforts on improving the function-ality and increasing the transparency of dear colleague letters, which are inessence interoffice memoranda on Capitol Hill and constitute the bulk of formalcorrespondence between members of Congress.

“While I was on the Hill, members of Congress would send dear colleagueletters soliciting congressional support or opposition to a variety of executivebranch activities—and even those of private corporations,” said Andrews. “Sincelegislation is increasingly difficult to pass, a lot of work is being done with theseletters.” With legislative output plummeting in recent years, letters from Con-gress have in many ways supplanted legislation as one of the primary vehiclesthrough which Capitol Hill expresses or tries to influence nearly every aspect ofgovernment operation.

The problem, Andrews explains, is that unlike actual bills and amendments,these sorts of letters rarely make it into the hands of the public; nor are thereany institutional methods for capturing or otherwise archiving what has becomean important part of the work of Congress. Team Dear Colleagues’ solution didn’temploy lines of code and slick graphics, but was as simple as creating a Googlegroup to store dear colleague records for the public.

The failure of Congress to better embrace technological innovation, nonethe-less, weighed on the mind of many at #Hack4Congress. Tomas Insua, a masterin public policy student and research assistant at the Ash Center, came to theKennedy School with a tech background having previously worked at Google.For Insua, this failure to embrace technology is exacerbating our democraticdeficit. “We’re living in the 21st century, but our democratic institutions functionexactly the same as they did 200 years ago. Technology has revolutionizedeverything—be it the economy, media, education—yet our democratic systemremains unchanged,” said Insua. “I think this explains the really low levels of trustin our political system. As a result constituents aren’t engaged and don’t feelrepresented by our political system.”

"We are committed to providing resources to our stu-dents and the broader policy community to helptackle some of the most intractable problems facingour democracy today." Tony Saich, Ash Center Director

9www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

Much of this breakdown, argues Kraft, can be attributed to time, trans-parency, and technology.

“Members of Congress, their staffs, and constituents—everyone are leadingvery busy lives,” said Kraft. “Even engaged citizens don’t have enough time.”

William Delahunt, a retired Democratic Congressman who represented muchof the South Shore of Massachusetts and the Cape in the House of Representa-tives for nearly a decade and a half before retiring in 2010, echoed Kraft’s sen-timents. “My life was scheduled in fifteen-minute increments,” said Delahunt.“There was no time to stop and think about the issues.”

Participating in a panel discussion to kick off #Hack4Congress, Delahunt triedto dispel the impression that members of Congress live the high life in Wash-ington, “I slept on a cot in a living room of a shared house.” While the thoughtof Congressmen sleeping on cots may be enough to combat notions of lavishand carefree congressional lifestyles for even the most hardened critic of thelegislative branch, the fact remains that constituents feel far removed from thedaily machinations of Capitol Hill.

Jessie Landerman, an HKS master in public policy student saw an opportu-nity to bridge this gap by helping to develop a new platform that allows con-stituents to better engage with congressional offices. “I wanted to participate inthe hackathon because I'm both interested and hopeful about the potential oftechnology to reinvigorate American democracy by recuperating citizen partic-ipation and citizen empowerment. I think real citizen power in our democracy islow, and technology presents a lot of opportunities to address that problem.”

Landerman’s #Hack4Congress team designed “Congress Connect” as a plat-form for strengthening the direct connection between constituents and Con-gress. She envisions Congress Connect as a resource to allow constituents tobetter schedule meetings with congressional offices as well as prepping thosesame constituents to ensure that their message is communicated effectively.

“By increasing the quality and quantity of in-person meetings between Con-gressional representatives and their constituents, we can increase citizen voiceand citizen power, and counterbalance the growing power of lobbyists who, attimes, represent private interests rather than public ones,” said Landerman.

For her efforts, Landerman and her teammates were named the overall win-ners of #Hack4Congress in Cambridge and were awarded with a trip to Congressto present their proposal. The team will be joined on Capitol Hill later this yearalong with the winners of separate #Hack4Congress events the Ash Center isholding in San Francisco and Washington. On the Hill, the Ash Center will beconvening a panel of members of Congress and senior congressional technologystaffers to review and give feedback to the winners of the Cambridge, San Fran-cisco, and Washington hackathons.

“After getting feedback from Congress about how best to design and imple-ment the tool, we hope to pull together seed money to pilot it either for selectCongressional offices or at the state or local level,” said Landerman.

For the Ash Center and the Kennedy School, “the longer term picture is tocreate many opportunities for all kinds of Americans from all walks of life to ac-tively contribute to this project of improving American democracy,” said Fung.

For more information, visit hack4congress.org.

“I wanted to participate in the hackathon because I'mboth interested and hopeful about the potential oftechnology to reinvigorate American democracy byrecuperating citizen participation and citizen empow-erment. I think real citizen power in our democracy is low, and technology presents a lot of opportunitiesto address that problem.” Jessie Landerman, MPP ’15

TOP

Team working on their solution at #Hack4Congress

ABOVE

Academic Dean Archon Fung, Senior Lecturer David King, Climenko

Fellow and HLS Lecturer Maggie McKinley, and Bill Delahunt, former US

Representative (D-MA) at the #Hack4Congress opening panel

BELOW

Members of the #Hack4Congress winning team, "HillHack": Taylor Woods

MPP '15, Chris Baily, Kat Kane MPP '15, and Jessie Landerman MPP '15

C

10 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

The Bright Ideas program, an initiative of the Innovations in American Govern-ment Awards, is designed to recognize, disseminate, and encourage the replica-tion of a wide range of innovations and promote promising practices ingovernment. This year’s Bright Ideas, selected by teams of expert evaluators, in-cludes 124 programs and initiatives across all areas of government in the US.

The Bright Ideas program not only enables the Ash Center to provide greaterrecognition to innovations in government but also provides an opportunity toidentify and examine current and emerging trends in governance in the UnitedStates. The 2015 Bright Ideas provide a rich collection of government initiativesfrom policy areas as varied as criminal justice, education, community develop-ment, transportation, and health care, and represent all levels of government,from school districts to the federal government. While there is significant varia-tion both across and within these policy areas, the following trends emergedamong this year’s Bright Ideas.

Improving Government through Data Analytics

Reflecting the recent increase in the collection and use of data in the public sec-tor, a number of Bright Ideas programs focus on using data analytics to solveproblems in areas such as homelessness, policing and criminal justice, and publicsafety. In New York City, the Risk Based Inspection System allows the city’s FireDepartment to prioritize building inspections based on risk, as quantifiedthrough past inspection information and incidents of fire, reducing the numberof injuries and deaths to the public and first responders. The DNA Hit IntegrationProgram from San Diego County, California, provides prosecutors with real-timeaccess to information on DNA hits related to their current caseload, making bothprosecution and exoneration more efficient and timely. In Wisconsin State, theWrong Way Driver Alert System gathers information on wrong-way driving andassists law enforcement with providing timely response while targeting problem

The Ash Center Honors 124 Bright Ideas in Government

Innovating for America’s Future

Bright Ideas seek to improve the experience of United States veterans as theyreturn home and to the workforce. The city of Newton, Massachusetts, estab-lished a one-stop, regional Veterans Service Center to address the pressing needfor a more integrated support system for veterans. The center offers assistancein securing benefits, health care, child care, housing, education, and employmentin an environment where veterans can socialize, network, dine, and listen to aspeaker. The Small Business Administration’s Veteran Women Igniting the Spiritof Entrepreneurship recognizes entrepreneurship as an essential, and sizable, el-ement of economic growth across the United States and empowers female vet-erans to develop the business skills necessary to turn their business-ownershipdreams into growth ventures. And, the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Ac-quisition Academy’s Warriors to Workforce Program trains post-9/11 veteranswith a service-connected disability and a high-school degree with little to nocollege education to serve in the mission-critical roles of contract specialists andprogram managers.

Public Participation and Civic EngagementIn celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Ash Center, the Center launched itsChallenges to Democracy public dialogue series. In conjunction with this series,the Center is offering a special award, the Roy and Lila Ash Award for Public En-gagement in Government, to recognize the most novel and effective approaches

11www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

areas and mitigating reoccurrence. Finally, the Homelessness Analytics Initia-tive—a collaboration between the US Department of Veterans Affairs and theUS Department of Housing and Urban Development—is intended to provideusers with access to national, state, and local information about homelessnessamong the general population and veterans, risk and protective factors forhomelessness, services, and resources.

Using Technology for Better GovernmentMany Bright Ideas use technology to increase efficiency and improve service forconstituents. I-Jury: Online Juror Impaneling from Travis County, Texas, allowssummonsed jurors to answer qualifying questions, screen for exemptions, andrequest deferrals using an online system, preventing unnecessary courtroom vis-its and reducing work absences and life disruptions. In Shawnee County, Kansas,residents planning visits to the Motor Vehicle office can register for a spot in lineusing their smartphone or computer, and receive alerts as their turn approachesto avoid long and frustrating lobby waits. The city of Chicago takes the relation-ship between citizens and technology one step further with its Civic User TestingGroup, a set of Chicago residents who test civic apps and help make softwarethat improves the quality of life for residents through beta testing and providingfeedback to developers.

Two notable technology programs, one state and one local, from Hawaii werenamed to this year’s cohort of Bright Ideas. The city and county of Honolulu’s2013 Neighborhood Board Digital Elections converted what has been a histori-cally paper- and postal-based election process to an all-digital one. The state’smy.hawaii.gov delivers 'Your Government—Your Way’ in a novel approach to thegamification of government, leveraging existing portal architecture and a singlesign-on system, engaging citizens through the use of badges, points, and aleaderboard and at the same time saving time, money, and paper.

Reaching Specific PopulationsSeveral Bright Ideas programs focus on expanding education and career devel-opment for populations traditionally left behind by the system, including peoplewith special needs and economically disadvantaged children and adults. TheMentoring Program and Youth Directors Council from the city of Miami Beach,Florida, provide a safe space for at-risk youth to spend their after-school andweekend hours, offering access to study resources and SAT-prep along with ca-reer-search training and community mentors. Also in Florida, the city of Hialeah’sSpecial Population Initiative uses community spaces to provide alternative edu-cation for individuals with disabilities, including children with severe autism, andhelps relieve families of some of the high cost of care for those with specialneeds. In Pearce County, Washington, the Block Play program uses libraries as aspace for at-risk children to develop early-learning skills through guided blockplay, and trains parents to guide this play at home, focusing on developing liter-acy and STEM skills.

Other programs focus on community development and cultural preservation.For example, the Tribal Best Practices program from the state of Oregon’s Ad-dictions and Mental Health Division Tribal Liaison helps adapt state-mandated,evidence-based practices to meet cultural and traditional standards of the NativeAmerican populations, developing best practices that address statewide goalswithout unnecessarily burdening these unique communities with distinct histories.

New Jersey’s Statewide Clinical Outreach Program for the Elderly providescrisis intervention and stabilization, consultation, and training for the manage-ment of mental health and behavioral issues in older adults (55+) residing innursing homes and other residential care facilities. It functions as a multidisci-plinary team consisting of geriatric specialists, including a pyschiatrist, advancednurse practitioners, a psychologist, and master’s level clinicians, whose membersare also available 24/7 in crisis settings to prevent unnecessary inpatient psy-chiatric hospitalization.

In addition to the Homelessness Analytics Initiative described earlier, several

LEFT The Risk Based Inspection

System allows New York City

firefighters to prioritize building

inspections based on risk using

data analytics

BELOW North Carolina Innovation

Lab: An intern from a STEM high

school in North Carolina demon-

strates visual analytics he worked

on as a project to the state CIO and

Governor Pat McCrory

12 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

for increasing public participation and engagement. Accordingly, many of thisyear’s Bright Ideas focus on engaging citizens in government processes that af-fect their lives, seeking their input and ideas to ensure that government is meet-ing the needs of those it serves. For example, faced with a growing populationof residents of Asian origin with low levels of participation in local government,the Increase Asian Residents’ Civic Participation program from Lexington, Mas-sachusetts, focuses on identifying barriers to participation and reaching out toAsian residents to encourage greater involvement in government, including seek-ing candidates from those populations to run for local office. The Citizen SurveyData for Performance program from Kansas City, Missouri, uses survey data ofcommunity feedback on city departments and their operations at their monthlyKCStat meetings, where departments share their progress with the mayor andanswer questions from the public who interact via livestream, social media, andin-person attendance. The Oregon Solution’s Network fosters communicationsbetween government and citizens groups while encouraging collaboration be-tween state agencies to ensure the public’s priorities and those of not-for-profitand business-sector partners to address regional and community concerns. Fi-nally, the LinkNYC/Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge in New York Citythrough a wide engagement effort invited the public to create prototypes thatimagine the future of city payphones in planning what will replace them. Over125 submissions helped to inform the city’s RFP to transform payphones intoWi-Fi hotspots and communication hubs, eventually leading to the creation andpassage of the LinkNYC program, a first-of-its-kind network that will bring thefastest available municipal Wi-Fi to millions of New Yorkers, small businesses,and visitors.

Cultivating InnovationIn the spirit of the Bright Ideas program, several initiatives selected for recogni-tion are themselves fostering innovation in government, such as the EmployeeInnovation Challenge of the city of Hamilton in Ohio, a contest that encouragescity employees to submit ideas and work across departments to improveprocesses and address local challenges, increasing employee engagement. Atthe North Carolina Innovation Lab, state employees, students, and private part-ners collaborate to test new technology systems before making substantial in-vestments. In Washington State, the Innovation Exemption policies removeprocurement rules for purchases intended to introduce new technologies andideas to state government. The 2014 Multi-City Innovation Campaign is a part-

nership of the cities of Boston,Nashville, Palo Alto, and Raleigh witha vision to create a process and envi-ronment where developers can buildscalable and sustainable civic appsthat address shared challenges acrosscommunities through a unique low-dollar procurement approach. IdeaBoxis an initiative developed by the Con-sumer Financial Protection Bureau totransform great ideas from employeesinto impactful projects that are suc-cessfully implemented at the agency.To facilitate replication at other gov-ernment agencies, the IdeaBox teamhas shared online its operating planand technology source code. The USDepartment of State and the crowd-funding site RocketHub have part-nered to support innovative solutionsto some of the world's toughest challenges by accelerating projectsawarded by the Department’s AlumniEngagement and Innovation Fund,creating investment options beyondgovernment support, providing visibil-ity, supporting sustainability, and ac-celerating social innovations.

The full list of all 124 Bright Ideas canbe found online at the Ash Center’swebsite and on the Government Inno-vators Network.

A number of this year’s BrightIdeas programs seek to create efficiency through the use oftechnological applications.

International Space Apps ChallengeNational Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration

VA Mobile HealthUnited States Veterans Administration

How’s My Waterway?Environmental Protection Agency

My Resource ConnectionJohnson County, Kansas

LEFT The Tribal Best Prac-

tices program from the state

of Oregon’s Addictions and

Mental Health Division Tribal

Liaison helps adapt practices

to meet cultural and tradi-

tional standards of Native

American populations

RIGHT A rendering of New

York City's LinkNYC, a first-

of-its-kind communications

network that will bring the

fastest available municipal

Wi-Fi to millions of New

Yorkers, small businesses,

and visitors

C

13www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

IN THE FIELD

After years of war and a long history of tribal rule,living conditions in Afghanistan are hard and can beespecially brutal for women. Arranged marriagesand child marriages are not uncommon and manywomen’s lives are marked by repressive customs anddomestic violence. A 2013 UNICEF survey found that78 percent of girls drop out of school by the fifthgrade and a 2012 Human Rights Watch report esti-mated that 87 percent of Afghan women experienceat least one form of physical, sexual, or psychologicalviolence and/or forced marriage in their lifetime.

“The story of women in Afghanistan is often oftragedy—of a systematic and widespread violationof their rights,” says HKS Alumnus and Roy and LilaAsh Fellow Humayun Sarabi. “It is largely due to alack of education that many people do not see theirloved ones’ humanity and these crimes continue.”

Following his graduation from the KennedySchool in 2011, Sarabi founded Women EmpoweredAfghanistan (WE-Afghanistan) with like-minded col-leagues to confront the oppression and violenceagainst women he had seen throughout his careeras a humanitarian worker in the region.

“We were interested in starting a nonprofit towork towards women’s rights in that part of theworld, but in a different way,” remarks Sarabi. “Be-cause most other NGOs in the area help women, butin a temporary or materialistic sense—they buildshelters or provide clothing, which at some pointends and the women are back in the same situation.We’re trying to change how women are seen acrossthe culture.”

In October 2014, WE-Afghanistan launched itsfirst major initiative, the Human Rights JournalismTraining Program in Kabul. Funded by the Journalistsand Writers Foundation, the program is training 15young and new journalists to use the media specifi-cally to advance women’s rights in Afghanistan. Forexample, as part of their training, the journalists areinstructed to write a profile describing an instanceof domestic abuse and must include a list of re-sources for women in the article. Participants aredrawn from across the country and have back-grounds in law, human rights, and journalism.

The program spans six months with the first twomonths devoted to training on journalistic principles,safety, human rights, and democracy. It culminateswith an internship at different media organizations,including print, television, and radio outlets, wherethe journalists submit independent reports for pub-lication. Reports will be drawn from the journalists’investigative research on human rights abuses, es-pecially those occurring in rural and remote areas.

Their stories will be translated into English andpublished on the WE-Afghanistan website and other venues, raising consciousness in the West of

women’s rights violations in the country. On a locallevel, the reports will serve to humanize Afghanwomen and make women aware of their rights.

“Many Afghan women don’t know how to accessjustice or even whether their rights are being vio-lated in the first place,” says Sarabi. “Often the onlything they know is that they’re being beaten up, andmany women believe that it is their husband’s rightto hurt them. We’re using journalism to advocatethat domestic violence is a crime under the laws ofAfghanistan and there are places they can go to re-ceive help.”

Sarabi hopes that WE-Afghanistan will soon havethe resources to build schools in Afghanistan,though its current focus is on empowering womenthrough its journalism training program.

“Many of the problems in Afghanistan can betraced back to the lack of education,” says Sarabi.

“It is easy for the Taliban to convince an illiterate per-son that women should be confined inside theirhomes based on religious principles, but is harder toconvince an educated person of that. I believe thatif we had more educated Afghans, then we wouldhave a stronger, safer democratic society.”

Sarabi credits his time at the Harvard KennedySchool and his fellowship through the Ash Center forhis views on the intersection of women’s rights, ed-ucation, and democracy. Sarabi reflects, “The semi-nars I attended and the research I conducted at theAsh Center expanded my knowledge of how democ-racy should function.” Sarabi continues, “I see edu-cation as the biggest pillar of democracy andalthough there isn’t one idea or initiative that cansolve all of Afghanistan’s problems, I believe that in-creasing access to education, and informing womenof their rights, are good first steps.”

Alumni in the Field Humayun Sarabi Is Working for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

“Many Afghan womendon’t know how to accessjustice or even whethertheir rights are being violated in the first place,”says Sarabi.

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14 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

IN THE FIELD

Student FocusTravel Grants Support Student Research

Brendan BradyThe Role of Decentralization in a PeaceSettlement in MyanmarIris BraunInnovation in Delivering Social SafetyNets and Financial Inclusion: ShouldIndia's Administration Leapfrog to Mo-bile Payments?Charles Data AlemiImproving Customs Revenue Collec-tion in South SudanClio Dintilhac and Amri IlmmaInforming or Reminding? PotentialStrategies to Increase Compliance Ratefor CCT Program in IndonesiaPhilip Dy and Tori StephensBridging the Humanitarian Divide: Im-proving Coordination between LocalGovernments and International ActorsMabel Josune Gabriel FernandezRaskin (Rice for the Poor) Program Re-formRuixi Hao*Effective Philanthropy: What PrivateFoundations in China Can Learn fromtheir Western Counterparts?Jessica Huey and Rohan MascarenhasFederal Highway Administration: StateUse of GARVEE Bonds and Other Inno-vative Finance Delivery ToolsVictoria Kabak and Christine KiddThe Right Youth, in the Right Place, forthe Right Reasons: Improving JuvenileProbation in MassachusettsStephen Leonelli*Universal Periodic Review: A New Toolfor China’s LGBT Movement?Luhang Li*Electric Vehicle — Solving Beijing's En-demic Pollution ProblemXi Liu*Girls' Dream ProjectMary Rose MazzolaCertified Batterer Programs' Effect onDomestic Violence Recidivism

Reetu ModyCommunity Reinvestment for ThoseMost Impacted by IncarcerationLiliana OlarteCreating Good Jobs in Indonesia Joanna PennStructuring Public Opinion: Lessonsfrom Scotland's Independence Refer-endum for Britain's Membership of theEUReshma Ramachandran*China Policy Tools for Increasing Ac-cess to Affordable Biologic MedicinesRivan RoyondoDiagnosing Factors Impeding Learningin Indonesia’s Remote Rural AreasYunjung SongTax Privacy: Taxpayers’ Big Data Dis-closure for Public Use in KoreaHe Tian*Industrial Upgrades in Coastal ChinaYuman Wang*The China Development Bank's Strate-gic Options in AfricaZou Xun*Communicable Diseases and Repro-ductive Health among Migrant Work-ers in Factories and PlantsJingyi Zhang*Consumer City: The Impact of Ameni-ties and Mixed Land Use on HousingPrice in ShanghaiYinan Zheng*Accelerating the Implementation ofthe Upcoming Waste Charging Policyin Hong KongNada ZohdyAdvising External Actors on Support-ing Civic Participation in the ArabWorld

* Travel grant provided by the AshCenter’s China Programs

Each year, the Ash Center provides travel grants to HKS students conductingfield research for their Policy Analysis Exercises or Second Year Policy Analyses.This winter, the Center supported 19 students on projects that are advised byAsh-affiliated faculty or that explore topics aligned with the Center’s researchand programmatic agendas. Through the Program on China and GlobalizationFund and the Hui Fund for Generating Powerful Ideas, the Center’s China Pro-grams also provided travel funding for 12 Harvard students travelling to Chinafor research projects over the winter break.

TOP Reetu Mody at the Ella

Baker Center for Human

Rights in Oakland, California

ABOVE LEFT Philip Dy and

Tori Stephens with Mayor

Manuel Que of the Munici-

pality of Dulag in the

Philippines

ABOVE RIGHT Lance Li at

the Suzhou Automotive

Research Center at Tsinghua

University in China

RIGHT Iris Braun with the

JPAL Gwalior Field Team in

India

BOTTOM Brendan Brady

meets with U Htay Oo, Vice-

Chairman of the Union

Solidarity and Development

Party, in the capital of

Myanmar

15www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

IN THE FIELD

Student FocusMarshall Ganz’s Students Spread the Power of Community Organizing Across the Globe

Fifty nonprofit leaders, social movement activists,and public-sector officials from across Japan con-vened in Tokyo in December 2014 to learn some ofthe leadership strategies and organizing techniquesemployed successfully in the US and elsewhere.

Hosted by Community Organizing Japan (COJ),the event was something of a novelty in a nation re-puted to have little tradition of civic engagement.Participants were encouraged to step outside theircomfort zones, engaging in the dynamic storytelling,strategizing, and team-building exercises fundamen-tal to the practice of community organizing.

Kanoko Kamata, an HKS alumna and former Royand Lila Ash Fellow at the Ash Center, founded COJin 2013 and invited HKS Senior Lecturer in PublicPolicy and Ash Center affiliate Marshall Ganz to col-laborate with her and her team of local coaches inleading a series of community organizing workshopsover the past year.

Kamata first encountered community organizingwhile a student in Ganz’s course on Organizing: Peo-ple, Power, and Change at the Kennedy School. “Iwas very new to the idea and I was skeptical aboutits usefulness in other countries besides the US,”says Kamata. “But the more I learned about commu-nity organizing, the more I understood that it’s fun-damental to human society for people to cometogether and solve problems.”

In Ganz’s semester-long class, students learn notonly the theoretical and historical significance of col-lective action, but are required to create their ownorganizing campaign by mobilizing a constituencyto achieve a shared purpose and clear outcome.

The multiday workshops that Ganz works withlocal leadership to conduct in Japan and elsewherearound the world including Jordan, China, Colombia,and Canada, offer participants an introduction toleadership, organizing, and public narrative. Basedon Ganz’s teaching, a research project with theSierra Club, and development at scale in the 2007–2008 Obama for President Campaign, the work-shops provide participants with an opportunity toexperience fundamental organizing practices andexplore their utility in meeting challenges they facein their own communities.

Five practices are central to Ganz’s courseworkon community organizing. The first involves whatGanz calls “public narrative”: a “story of self,” a “storyof us,” and a “story of now.” The story of self explainswhy the organizer is called to leadership and it canbe a challenge for those unaccustomed to sharingtheir personal histories in a public setting.

“The story of self was a particularly interestingconcept for the COJ attendees,” says Kamata. “Somepeople were hesitant at first because people inJapan don’t expect to tell their story, but it was ex-citing for them to see how this practice can build re-lationships quickly and deeply.”

The story of us is an answer to the question: whatvalues as a community call us to action? The storyof now is the challenge to our communal values thatdemands present action.

“Say you are sick due to environmental hazardsin your neighborhood,” says Kamata. “That’s thestory of self—it’s what motivated you to care aboutthe environment. The story of us is that the environ-

ment is important to everyone in the surroundingcommunity and the story of now is that we need toact immediately to protect the environment.”

The four other practices developed by Ganz in-clude building relationships, structuring collabora-tive leadership, strategizing how to turn availableresources into power to accomplish clear goals, andachieving measurable outcomes “on the ground.”Students in his organizing class at HKS learn organ-izing and leadership skills with which to replicate thetraining and share effective organizing practiceswith a wider audience.

“Learning to be a leader and an organizer is askill,” says Ganz. “It’s a lot like riding a bike. You canread 10 books on the topic, but how do you reallylearn to ride a bike? You get on it. You fall. And, thenyou find the courage to learn from your failures andtry again. That’s how you master any skill and that’show you learn organizing.”

Many of Ganz’s former students put these skillsto work after they graduate, including those whohave gone on to become organizers themselves,such as Nisreen Haj Ahmed, co-founder of Ahel inJordan; Predrag Stojicic, co-founder of Serbia on theMove in Serbia; and Cecilia Barja, who representsColombia for Fundacion Avina and is a leader of Narrativa Publica in the Amazon. Ganz remains con-nected to them as well as other Harvard alumnithrough the Leading Change Network, a communityof educators, researchers, and practitioners commit-ted to developing organizing leadership and em-powering people to act on their values.

For his students that opt not to pursue a careerin organizing, they leave his class with a valuable un-derstanding of leadership, group dynamics, and therole of collective action in strengthening democracy.

Mick Power, a current HKS master’s in public pol-icy student, says of his experience in Marshall’s class:“Students in Marshall's class are required not just tolearn, but to organize, so being part of a group ofstudent leaders working to end racism, homeless-ness, religious intolerance, violence, and inequalityin their communities was a weekly inspiration. I thinkthe fact that so many of his students are still workingin the teams and communities that they discoveredthrough his class is a testament to Marshall's genuinepassion for teaching, and to how much of himself hegives to his work and his students.”

Kanoko Kamata, former

Roy and Lila Ash Fellow and

MPA ‘12

C

16 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

RESEARCH BRIEF

This semester we welcomed 11 new fel-lows to the Ash Center.

Carnegie FellowshipThrough a grant from the CarnegieCorporation of New York, the Centerbegan supporting promising Arab so-cial scientists in the fall of 2014. TheCarnegie scholars explore possible op-tions for effective governance acrossa range of policy domains in this dan-gerously troubled part of the world.The Center's spring semester CarnegieFellow is Omayma Elsheniti, who re-ceived her PhD in Economics at Rut-gers University. Her research focuseson labor economics, economics of ed-ucation, and economic developmentin the Middle East.

Democracy ProgramThe Ash Center’s Democracy Fellow-ships support predoctoral and postdoc-toral scholars as well as practitioners inresearch areas related to democraticgovernance. This semester, Rikki Deanjoined the Center. She is a PhD candi-date in Social Policy at the LondonSchool of Economics. This semesterwe also welcomed Emer Mulligan tothe Center as a Visiting Scholar. She isthe Head of School at the J.E. CairnesSchool of Business & Economics, Na-tional University of Ireland Galway,

and her research focuses on taxationin Europe.

HKS Indonesia ProgramThis semester, the HKS Indonesia Pro-gram welcomed Budy Resosudarmoas a Senior Practitioner Fellow. His re-search topic is “Rural Developmentand the Impact of the Strategic VillageDevelopment Plan (RESPEK) Programin Papua, Indonesia.”

Innovations in Government ProgramFaculty, doctoral, and postdoctoralstudents serve as Innovation Fellowsfor varying tenures throughout the ac-ademic year at the Ash Center. TheCenter supports academic scholarshipfocused on its core research areas, in-cluding innovations in public partici-pation and political participation innon-democracies. In January, we wel-comed Geoff Mulgan as a Senior Vis-iting Scholar. Currently, Mulgan is chiefexecutive of Nesta (National Endow-ment for Science, Technology and theArts), an innovations charity in the UK.This semester we also welcomed PepeStrathoff as a Visiting Scholar. He is aPhD Candidate in Business Adminis-tration at the University of St. Gallenin Switzerland, where his research fo-cuses on public value management.

Rajawali Foundation Institutefor AsiaThe Rajawali Fellows Program allowspredoctoral and postdoctoral scholarsas well as practitioners the freedom topursue independent research projectson public policy issues related to Asia,with the help of the Ash Center’s Ra-jawali Foundation Institute for Asiaand other Harvard resources. The Cen-ter welcomed five new Rajawali Fel-lows this semester:

CHEN Wen, PhD, Associate Professor,Shenzhen UniversityFAN Zhihua, General Manager,Baoshang BankMA Mingjie, PhD, Deputy Director forTechnical & Economics Research, De-velopment Research Center, PRCState CouncilWANG Kaiyuan, Chairman, HEDAGroupZHANG Qi, Deputy Director for Inter-national Economics Research, Devel-opment Research Center, PRC StateCouncil

Fellows FocusMeet Our New Fellows

ABOVE (left to right)

Some of our fellows this

semester: FAN Zhihua,

WANG Kaiyuan, ZHANG Qi,

Pepe Strathoff, Omayma

Elsheniti, Budy Resosudarmo,

and MA Mingjie

17www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

IN THE NEWS

Event Snapshots

Challenges to Democracy: The Future of PolicingFebruary 5, 2015In February, the Ash Center cosponsored a JFK Jr. Forum event on “Challenges toDemocracy: The Future of Policing,” which explored how recent episodes of policeviolence and subsequent demonstrations have laid bare the corrosive distrust thatdefines relations between citizens and police in many communities across thecountry. The speakers included Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey of the Philadel-phia Police Department; Atiba Goff, who is an associate professor of Social Psy-chology at UCLA and a visiting scholar of the Malcolm Weiner Center for SocialPolicy this year; and Houston Mayor Annise Parker. HKS Dean David Ellwood mod-erated the discussion, which focused on how citizens’ perceptions of police andthe criminal justice system are often shaped by race, and how communities canwork to develop more effective and democratic law enforcement agencies.

The speakers outlined several solutions to improve community-police relations,including: increasing training programs for officers in the areas of race, poverty,substance abuse, and mental health; educating the public on the roles and respon-sibilities of police officers; and encouraging community involvement in shapinglocal police forces. While the speakers acknowledged that reforms are necessarywithin law enforcement agencies across the country, they stressed that recentevents in Ferguson and New York City are part of a larger system of inequality, in-cluding racial disparities in education funding and a punitive criminal justice systemthat makes it very difficult for ex-offenders to participate fully in society.

50 Years after the Voting Rights Act: Strategies for MovingForwardFebruary 18, 2015To mark the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of1965, the Ash Center and the Harvard Institute of Politics convened a panel dis-cussion in the JFK Jr. Forum in February. Alex Keyssar, the Matthew W. StirlingJr. Professor of History and Social Policy and an Ash Center affiliate, moderatedthe conversation with Congressman Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA), a seniorHouse Democrat active on civil rights issues who was the first African-Americanelected to Congress from Virginia since Reconstruction. Joining ProfessorKeyssar and Congressman Scott was Penda Hair, a civil-rights advocate and co-founder and co-director of the Advancement Project, a racial justice organizationspearheading litigation that challenges voter restrictions, discriminatory electoralprovisions, and other civil rights violations across the nation.

The panelists discussed strategies for responding to the wave of legislationat the state level seeking to impose additional burdens on voting, spurred on bythe US Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder that struck down akey section of the VRA. During the discussion, Hair recounted her legal workfighting against a variety of restrictive voting provisions in court. CongressmanScott described his surprise to opposition to rewriting the VRA to conform withthe Shelby case, “We didn’t expect this kind of resistance to such a minor votingrights bill.” A strong supporter of the VRA’s requirement that certain jurisdictionsreceive federal approval known as “preclearance” prior to implementing changesto local voting laws, Congressman Scott said the provision worked as intendedbecause prior to its enactment, states were “essentially rewarded for cheating”by discriminating against African-American voters. Those states, he said, “earnedpreclearance” through the poll taxes, literacy taxes, and voter intimidation.

Project on Municipal Innovation Advisory GroupMarch 26–28, 2015The Project on Municipal Innovation Advisory Group (PMI-AG) met for the 13thtime at Harvard Kennedy School in March. PMI-AG is comprised of chiefs of staff,deputy mayors, and policy directors from the country’s 35 largest and most cre-ative cities. Funded through Living Cities, the goal of this network is to enhance

Dean David Ellwood, Houston Mayor Annise Parker, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, and UCLA Professor Phillip Goffdiscuss The Future of Policing

HKS Professor Alex Keyssar, Penda Hair of the Advancement Project, and Congressman Robert "Bobby" Scott (D-VA) assess the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary

Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in Government program, makes remarks at the March meeting of the Project on Municipal Innovation Advisory Group

the quality of urban life by connecting city hall leaders to innovative ideas andthen supporting the replication and implementation of those ideas. In partner-ship with Living Cities, the Ash Center convenes two PMI-AG member in-personmeetings per year. The theme of the March meeting was Civic and CommunityEngagement in Government Decision Making, from a City Hall Perspective. ThePMI-AG members discussed civic and community engagement in relation to Col-lective Impact, an approach that represents the commitment of a group of actorsfrom different sectors to a common agenda for solving a complex social prob-lem; the policing crisis; and open data, performance management, and applica-tion development.

18 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

RESEARCH BRIEF

On the Bookshelf

Ethics in Public Life: Good Practitioners in a Rising Asia Kenneth WinstonPalgrave Macmillan, 2015

The topic of moral competence is generally neg-lected in the study of public management and pol-icy, yet it is critical to any hope we might have forstrengthening the quality of governance and profes-sional practice. What does moral competence con-sist of? How is it developed and sustained? KennethWinston addresses these questions through closeexamination of selected practitioners in Asian coun-tries making life-defining decisions in their work. Theprotagonists include a doctor in Singapore, a politi-cal activist in India, a mid-level bureaucrat in centralAsia, a religious missionary in China, and a journalistin Cambodia—each struggling with ethical chal-lenges that shed light on what it takes to act effec-tively and well in public life. Together they bearwitness to the ideal of public service, exercising theirpersonal gifts for the well-being of others anddemonstrating that, even in difficult circumstances,the reflective practitioner can be a force for good.

Natural Disaster Management in theAsia-Pacific Caroline Brassard, David W. Giles, Arnold M.Howitt, Eds.Springer, 2015

The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerableto a variety of natural and manmade hazards. Thisedited book brings together scholars and seniorpublic officials having direct experience in dealingwith or researching recent major natural disasters inthe region. The chapters focus on disaster prepared-ness and management, including pre-event planningand mitigation; crisis leadership and emergency re-sponse; and disaster recovery. Specific events dis-cussed in this book include a broad spectrum ofdisasters such as tropical storms and typhoons in thePhilippines; earthquakes in China; tsunamis in In-donesia, Japan, and Maldives; and bushfires in Aus-tralia. The book aims to generate discussions aboutimproved risk reduction strategies throughout theregion and seeks to provide a comparative perspec-tive across countries in order to draw lessons fromthree perspectives: public policy, humanitarian sys-tems, and community engagement.

Economics of the Public SectorJay K. Rosengard and Joseph E. StiglitzW. W. Norton & Company, Fourth Edition, 2015

This revision of a classic text by an expert author teamaddresses such questions as what should be the roleof government in society? How should it design itsprograms? How should tax systems be designed topromote both efficiency and fairness? Nobel laureateJoseph Stiglitz and new coauthor Jay Rosengard usetheir firsthand policy-advising experience to addressthese key issues of public-sector economics in thismodern and accessible fourth edition.

The updated edition of Economics of the PublicSector focuses on the heavily changed, post-globalrecession world. This approach includes a discussionon global public goods in Chapter 5, which ad-dresses the difficulty of coping with public healthand security threats when they transcend govern-ment coping mechanisms, while Chapter 8 examinescorporatization and the transition from governmententerprise to private enterprise.

19www.ash.harvard.edu Spring 2015 Communiqué

RESEARCH BRIEF

Political Governance in China Tony Saich, Ed.Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015

Including key research articles from specialists in thefield, Political Governance in China provides an intro-duction and critical insights into the most importantdebates surrounding the governance of contempo-rary China. The volume, edited by Tony Saich, AshCenter director and Daewoo Professor of Interna-tional Affairs, will enable readers to understand howChina is ruled, how participation and protest are reg-ulated by the authorities, and the relationship be-tween the Central state and its local agencies.Spanning the most important areas of the subject,the chosen articles explore the study of Chinese pol-itics, the nature of the Chinese political system, thepolicymaking process, the nature of the local state,participation and protest, and authoritarian resilienceor democratization. For example, Elizabeth Perrywrites on “Chinese Conceptions of “Rights””; AndrewNathan examines “Authoritarian Resilience”; BarryNaughton asks “China’s Distinctive System: Can It Bea Model for Others?”; and Victor Shih, ChristopherAdolph, and Mingxing Liu write “Getting Ahead in theCommunist Party: Explaining the Advancement ofCentral Committee Members in China.”

Governance and Politics of China,Fourth EditionTony SaichPalgrave Macmillan, 2015

Tony Saich, Ash Center director and Daewoo Profes-sor of International Affairs, has published the fourthedition of his seminal textbook, Governance and Pol-itics of China. The revised text seeks to understandbetter how China is ruled and what the policy prior-ities are of the new leadership. Can China move to amore market-based economy while controlling en-vironmental degradation? Can it integrate hundredsof millions of new migrants into the urban land-scape? The tensions between communist and capi-talist identities continue to divide society as Chinasearches for a path to modernization. The People’sRepublic is now over 65 years old—an appropriatejuncture at which to reassess the state of contem-porary Chinese politics. Governance and Politics ofChina delivers a thorough introduction to all aspectsof politics and governance in post-Mao China, takingfull account of the changes of the Eighteenth PartyCongress and the Twelfth National People’s Con-gress. The rise of Xi Jinping to power and his policiesare examined, as are important policy areas such asurbanization and the fight against corruption.

The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and ReformJason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud, and AndrewReynoldsOxford University Press, 2015

Several years after the Arab Spring began, democ-racy remains elusive in the Middle East. The ArabSpring that resides in the popular imagination is onein which a wave of mass mobilization swept thebroader Middle East, toppled dictators, and clearedthe way for democracy. The reality is that few Arabcountries have experienced anything of the sort.While Tunisia made progress towards some type ofconstitutionally entrenched participatory rule, theother countries that overthrew their rulers—Egypt,Yemen, and Libya—remain mired in authoritarianismand instability. Elsewhere in the Arab world, uprisingswere suppressed, subsided, or never materialized.

The Arab Spring's modest harvest cries out forexplanation. Why did regime change take place inonly four Arab countries and why has democraticchange proved so elusive in the countries that madeattempts? This book attempts to answer those ques-tions. First, by accounting for the full range of vari-ance: from the absence or failure of uprisings in suchplaces as Algeria and Saudi Arabia at one end toTunisia's rocky but hopeful transition at the other.Second, by examining the deep historical and struc-ture variables that determined the balance of powerbetween incumbents and opposition.

Ash Center

for Democratic Governance and Innovation

Harvard Kennedy School

79 John F. Kennedy Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance andInnovation strives to make the world a betterplace by advancing excellence and innovation ingovernance and public policy through research,education, and public discussion. By training thevery best leaders, developing powerful new ideas,and disseminating innovative solutions and insti-tutional reforms, the Center’s goal is to meet theprofound challenges facing the world’s citizens.

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance andInnovation strives to make the world a betterplace by advancing excellence and innovation ingovernance and public policy through research,education, and public discussion. By training thevery best leaders, developing powerful new ideas,and disseminating innovative solutions and insti-tutional reforms, the Center’s goal is to meet theprofound challenges facing the world’s citizens.