Public administration

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/34954

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

Ticket to Profile: the Border Patrol's Transportation Checks at the Spokane, WA Intermodal Center
(2023-08-14) Houston, Nancyrose; Snodgrass Godoy, Angelina
This thesis examines transportation checks, one of the United States Border Patrol’s operational strategies in the 100-mile border zone. Transportation checks have been criticized as “show-me-your-papers” operations that rely on racial and ethnic profiling and violate constitutional rights. There has been little research on transportation checks, and none covering their increased frequency during the Trump administration. I use U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) own I-213 arrest data from 2013 to 2020 to examine transportation check arrests in the Northwest, most at the Spokane, Washington Intermodal Center. I also examine Supreme Court precedent and policy around transportation checks and racial profiling at the border. The transportation check data from Spokane strengthens the case for constitutional violations and disproportionate targeting of people of color, particularly individuals of Latin American origin. It also demonstrates that transportation checks in Spokane overwhelmingly arrested long-term U.S. residents and people without criminal history, despite CBP’s literature characterizing them as targeting recent border crossers and security threats. Transportation checks have a high “miss rate” of people questioned versus arrested and operate with a dragnet approach that sweeps up many U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and others with legal status. This research concludes with policy recommendations to definitively end transportation checks, which have decreased after advocacy and legal challenges culminated in Greyhound’s 2020 decision to refuse Border Patrol agents access to their buses.
Drug Decriminalization and Harm Reduction in Portugal: Can policy innovation overcome stigma?
(2023-08-14) Gilroy, Emily Kassandra; Meyers, Stephen
This study compares the attitudes of Portuguese residents with three other European countries and the Europe-wide trend to ask if the Portuguese model of drug decriminalization policy of de jure decriminalization in 2000 and critical harm reduction measures has had an impact on stigma against drug users and drug use. This study uses the responses to two sets of questions from the European Values Survey (EVS): "On this list are various groups of people. Could you please sort out any that you would not like to have as neighbours?" and "Please tell me for each of the following whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between, using this card." For "Neighbours," seven responses were selected: drug addicts, heavy drinkers, those with a criminal record, people with AIDS, emotionally unstable people, people of a different race, and homosexuals. For "Justified," five responses were selected: soft drugs (marijuana or hashish), homosexuality, prostitution, abortion, and divorce. While Portugal had the lowest negative response rate for "Neighbor: Drug Addict," it had the highest negative response rate for "Justifiable: Soft Drugs," higher than the Europe-wide percentage. These seemingly contradictory results could be interpreted as Portuguese respondents believing that drug use is not acceptable, but that drug addiction does not make someone an undesirable member of the community. This is consistent with the current understanding of Portugal's shift in perception of drug use, and suggests a shift in type of stigma rather than an elimination of it entirely.
Nonprofit Sector Rationalization: Measurement and implications for nonprofit finance and evaluation
(2023-08-14) Santamarina, Francisco Javier; Gugerty, Mary Kay
This dissertation explores the relationship between process formalization or rationalization and resources among U.S. nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in international contexts. The first paper defines rationalization and explores the rationalization of rationalization itself, or meta-rationalization, by analyzing global standard-setting documents. I use structural topic modeling to identify six expressions of meta-rationalization and analyze distinctions across four domains of focus. The findings suggest that competing accountabilities would impose resource constraints when NGOs comply with multiple standards. The second paper proposes a rationalized approach to classifying in-kind donations of goods and services, This taxonomy is designed to provide data that enhances understanding of what resources are necessary to deliver programs, improve program replication and scaling, compare subjective valuations, and improve organizational measures and theory building. In the third paper, I present a flexible method of measuring rationalization using publicly available data. I apply this method to a set of health nonprofits to identify what contributed service resources would most benefit performance.
Delivering Participatory Development through Foreign Aid Contracts
(2020-10-26) Harris, Amy Beck; Gugerty, Mary Kay
Foreign aid donors deliver project assistance through top-down, highly controlled, bureaucratic systems. Yet, they discuss their work as employing participatory approaches in which the beneficiaries of aid projects are delegated decision-making power over project activity selection and design. This dissertation explores whether and how donors delegate decision-making power to project beneficiaries using contract specifications, including the extent to which this delegation occurs, the variation in specifications for beneficiary decision-making, the conditions under which the delegation occurs, and how contractors respond to the specifications during project implementation. I find that 72% of foreign aid contracts implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) delegate decision-making power, though they never delegate full control over goal setting. Most often, contracts delegate more moderate degrees of decision-making power such as consultation and solicitations of activity ideas within a set of parameters. I find that there are two types of delegated decision-making power: one that specifies decision-making power for recipient government beneficiaries at moderate levels, using collaborative tools that provide the beneficiary decision-maker with leverage over the final activities chosen. The second kind of decision-making power specifies decision-making power for both non-government and government actors at higher levels of decision-making scope, but using less collaborative tools that provide less leverage over final project activity decisions made. This delegated decision-making occurs when the problems that projects address are more complex, and when the recipient country government is less democratic. Local level decision-making is likely used in the face of complexity to identify locally appropriate solutions that can be applied as project interventions. USAID has an explicit goal to strengthen democratic processes and democratic institutions around the world, which likely explains why collaborative decision-making processes that are jointly implemented occur more often with recipient governments that are less democratic. Once decision-making power delegation is specified in the contract, I find that it acts as a floor for decision-making power delegation during implementation in 91% of cases: contractors delegate decision-making power as specified, or more often, than specified. Once beneficiaries provide their decisions about which project activities should be selected and how they should be designed to the contractor, they often influence the project activities selected, though with varying degrees of leverage over decisions based on their ability to block successful project completion. When beneficiaries provide decisions but do not influence project activities, it is typically because there are too many beneficiary decisions to simultaneously accommodate, or due to contract and institutional constraints such as project scope requirements or limited funding. When beneficiaries are not delegated decision-making power, but initiate the sharing of their preferences for project activities directly, they have influence over project activities to the degree that they hold blocking power to prevent contract success. Beneficiary participation in decision-making on aid project activities is occurring, but is conditioned by the aid delivery structure and local powerholders. Contract specifications influence beneficiary engagement in decision-making during project implementation, and often serve as a floor for this engagement.
Improving REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) Programs
(2018-01-20) Kelly, Allison Constance; Cullen, Alison
Through an interdisciplinary set of studies, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the understanding of how REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programs can better contribute to the improved human well-being, increased forest conservation, and reduced carbon emissions they seek to affect. To this end, I present three distinct papers that analyze elements of REDD+ programs. In Chapter 2, I use primary data collected through a survey of national REDD+ experts in 30 countries and secondary data aggregated from REDD+ forum websites, to study the patterns of national REDD+ policy diffusion. It is important to discern the mechanism of diffusion because if policies are being adopted after careful consideration of their successes in other locations and of how they might affect local contexts (learning), they are more likely to be successful in the long-term than if they are adopted purely to remain competitive for funding or to maintain a similar policy to peer-countries. I find evidence that the mechanism of diffusion at work is learning. In Chapter 3, I develop a unique index of the governance context for land tenure security (GC-LTS) at the national scale and use geographic information systems to map this data globally. The GC-LTS index allows policy- and decision-makers to explicitly, quantitatively and spatially incorporate land tenure security considerations into evidence-based planning and analyses that previously could not account for elements of land tenure security. In Chapter 4, working at the local scale in central Mexico, I develop novel qualitative findings regarding local forest resource institutions as they relate to payments for ecosystem services (PES) projects and the project intermediaries who support their adoption. Using grounded-theory and a series of in-depth interviews, I work to develop testable hypotheses about the role of intermediaries in project implementation. This paper highlights the dynamic role that project intermediaries are playing in bolstering forest-resource institutions and providing accessible information to potential PES-project participants, as well as the potential for participants to learn through projects about the breadth of ecosystem services their forests provide.
The Influence of Timber Legality Regulations on Chinese and Vietnamese Wood Products Manufacturers
(2015-09-29) Roe, Benjamin Edward; Eastin, Ivan
Reports that a substantial proportion of the wood raw materials used by Chinese and Vietnamese manufacturers are from illegal sources have drawn significant criticism from major consumer countries who have recently implemented timber legality regulations. These regulations, which include the Japanese ‘Goho-wood’ policy, the U.S. Lacey Act, the EU Timber Regulation and the Australian Illegal Logging Prohibition Act restrict the import of illegally harvested wood and are expected to have a direct impact on major wood processing countries such as China and Vietnam. Surveys were conducted at trade shows in Ho Chi Minh, Shanghai and Guangzhou in 2013 and 2014 to assess how these regulations influence attitudes and perceptions regarding regulations, firms’ use of chain of custody certification, and impacts on the material sourcing and export market decisions of industry managers. Survey responses were evaluated using descriptive statistics, regression analyses, cluster analysis, non-metric multidimensional scaling and analysis of similarity. The analysis showed that as firms increase in size they reduce domestic sales and show increased awareness and support for regulation, and that firms’ awareness of timber legality regulations plays a significant role in whether a firm decides to obtain certification. Analyses showed that Vietnamese firms have lower awareness of regulations while being more supportive of regulations. Chinese firms have higher awareness while having a more negative attitude towards regulations. The findings also highlighted a split between firms with a domestic focus and firms which export to foreign markets suggesting a split in the market which may reduce the impact of regulations. This segmenting of the Chinese market and to a lesser extent the Vietnamese market supports the idea that regulatory leakage is taking place, wherein sales of wood products from suspicious sources are shifting away from regulated markets and towards unregulated markets which are experiencing rapid increases in demand for wood products.
Liberalization of Labor Relations in Germany and the United States: A firm-centered comparison of cross-national labor organizing at Amazon and Volkswagen
(2015-09-29) Blado, Christopher; Curran, Sara
This paper examines the ongoing (as of 2015) cases of labor organizing at Amazon fulfillment centers throughout Germany and at Volkswagen's manufacturing facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Drawing on the literature of comparative capitalism, the paper focuses on the labor relations choices of firms in cross-national contexts. First, the paper argues that the two cases demonstrate the essential differences in German and American models of labor relations. Second, the paper argues that the cases demonstrate the processes of liberalization in labor relations that are occurring in both the US and German economies. Finally, the paper examines the implications of these cases for workforces in the US and Germany, as well as for the study of comparative labor relations.

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