Communiqué

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

Letter from the Director
Communiqué
Spring 2015, Volume 16
Welcome to the 16th issue of the Ash Center’s Communiqué magazine, in
which we highlight the important work of those engaged with the Center. For
example, the #Hack4Congress event (p.6) we cohosted with the OpenGov
Foundation provided a dynamic and unique forum for teams comprised of
students, 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 diverse
cohort of 124 Bright Ideas (p.10), which is an initiative of the Innovations
in American Government Awards designed to recognize, disseminate, and
encourage the replication of a wide range of innovations across all areas
of government and within all jurisdictional levels. Finally, as part of our
Challenges to Democracy public dialogue series, we cosponsored two JFK Jr.
Forum events (p.17) this semester, one on “The Future of Policing” and the
other on the state of the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary, both of
which are issues very much at the forefront of the American conversation at
this time. There is much more to be found in this issue and I hope you will
enjoy reading about the efforts of our students, alumni, and scholars as they
work to make the world a better place.
As always, you can find more information about the work of the Ash Center
on our website at ash.harvard.edu.
Ash Center for Democratic Governance
and Innovation
Harvard Kennedy School
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
617-495-0557
www.ash.harvard.edu
Director
Tony Saich
Associate Director for Communications
Daniel Harsha
Editor
Jessica Engelman
Design
forminform
Photography
Ben Danner
bpperry / iStock
FDNY Photo Unit
Chones / iStock
Cribb Visuals / iStock
Mai Jiadi
Stephanie Mitchell / Harvard Gazette
Zaineb Mohammed
Maisie O’Brien
Gail Oskin
Engr. Restituto Polillo
Kinan Al Shaghouri
Martha Stewart
Cover illustration:
Sophie Chou
sophiechou1229@gmail.com
Tony Saich
Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Daewoo Professor of International Affairs
Harvard Kennedy School

4
5 6
13 14
15
10
17
In this Issue
IN THE NEWS
FEATURES
IN THE FIELD
RESEARCH BRIEF
4
Q+A with Ed Cunningham
5
Ash Center News and
Announcements
17
Event Snapshots
6
Hacking the Hill:
#Hack4Congress Helps Unlock
the Power of Democratic
Participation
10
Innovating for America’s Future:
The Ash Center Honors 124
Bright Ideas in Government
13
Alumni in the Field
Humayun Sarabi
14
Student Focus
Travel Grants Support Student
Research
15
Student Focus
Marshall Ganz’s Students Spread
the Power of Community
Organizing Across the Globe
16
Fellows Focus
Meet Our New Fellows
19
On the Bookshelf

IN THE NEWS
Q+A with Edward Cunningham
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.
With China now the largest global economy as
measured by purchasing-power parity, how has
its dramatic growth affected international energy
markets and the development of alternative
sources of energy?
China’s rise onto the world economic stage has had a
fascinating set of conflicting effects in energy markets,
but its rise onto the energy governance stage is
perhaps even more interesting and important in the
medium to long term. Most broadly, China’s post WTO
accession boom since late 2001 provided in part a significant
shift to higher energy demand at a global
scale, which supported the expectation of ever-higher
prices in a range of commodities, from coal to oil to
natural gas. Higher fossil fuel prices in turn lead to interesting
outcomes. For example, fossil producers are
able to produce more fossil fuel because the higher
prices merit exploration deeper and in higher
risk/higher reward areas of the earth, as well as enable
investment into unconventional fossils such as
the tar sands of Canada. Such effects of a high-price
world work their way through the economic system
indirectly. In more direct terms, China’s active industrial
policy in the form of high feed-in tariffs (FITs) for
wind initially, and then solar, have also dramatically
reduced the installed cost of renewable power. While
investors of Solyndra and other US solar panel manufacturers
that went bankrupt from such a shift in cost
ended up bearing the brunt of this swing, US consumers,
US solar installation workers, and the climate
benefited from a revolution in the economics of wind
and solar components.
This energy “demand shock” of rapid economic
growth in China is quite interesting because the
world’s energy governance system has been dominated
by the need to moderate and respond to energy
supply shocks—the vestige of major oil supply
crises 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 major
consumers and producers to adjust to. The ways in
which China’s growing strategic oil reserves are operated—either
to smooth markets in a more active
manner or respond to supply crises—increasingly
matter and require transparency. As a result, China’s
economic weight and impact on energy input and
output prices are creating significant strains on
China’s historical unwillingness to engage in the sovereignty
of other nations, and require degrees of
transparency and cooperation in an area historically
linked tightly to national security.
What was President Xi’s motivation to agree to the
US-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change
and Clean Energy Cooperation and will China meet
its targets?
I believe the US-China Joint Announcement is important
as a bellwether of change in how the world’s
major emitters will treat climate change negotiations
moving forward, but its realistic targets do not represent
a radical departure from the policies already
in place by the US and China. It will also be insufficient.
Of course, it is difficult to reach any meaningfully
sophisticated level of policy engagement on
climate change mitigation without the active participation
of the world’s largest emitter—China. China
burns nearly as much coal as the rest of the world
combined, and has rapidly built a power system
that now surpasses that of the US, as well as a fragmented
and inefficient industrial heating system that
has little emissions policy regulating it. Precisely because
the US and China together emit over 40 percent
of global C0 2 gasses, this “G-2” of climate action
is the necessary but not sufficient foundation of real
policy change at the global level. With the United Nations
Climate Change Conference, or COP21, in Paris
nearing in late November, this bilateral agreement
will provide much-needed momentum and credibility
to a multilateral UN process that seemed to be grinding
to a halt. I think it will make it harder for India,
South Africa, and other key emitters to skate through
the process without real commitments. As with most
policy pronouncements in China, this perceived pivot
was largely the result of internal decisions that had
been made well over a year ago, combined with useful
and consistent diplomacy from the US for some
time. Domestic pressures to restructure both a highly
energy-inefficient industrial sector and China’s coal
dependency towards increased natural gas and renewables
are more about diversifying and improving
a national fuel supply and local environmental concerns
than global environmental concerns; but this is
an example of where global and local interests coincide
fairly well in the long term. Because of reforms
in coal pricing, plant closings, and economic restructuring,
China was well along on this reform path. Similarly
in the US, non-policy drivers that were really
about economic changes—i.e., fuel switching to a
cheaper natural gas alternative to coal in the power
sector, slowing economic growth post-2008—combined
with some legislative changes that also put the
US on its emissions target course well before the
agreement. The key will now be for the US and China
to widen the national participants in this negotiation
and to deepen the integration to include financial
mechanisms, legal mechanisms, clear metrics, and
some aspects of common vocabulary when it comes
to the inevitable—mutual adaptation to climate
change and the externalities that will entail. C
4 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

IN THE NEWS
Ash Center Faculty
Appointments
Christopher Winship, the Diker-Tishman Professor of
Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and
a member of the senior faculty
at the Harvard Kennedy
School, recently joined the
Ash Center as a faculty affiliate.
Professor Winship’s research
focuses on changes in
the social and economic status
of African-Americans during the 20th century,
particularly changes in youth unemployment, marital
behavior, and prison incarceration. Since 1994, he has
been working with and studying a group of black
inner-city ministers known as The Ten Point Coalition
and their efforts with the Boston Police Department
to deal with youth violence. In 2007, he coauthored
Counterfactuals and Causal Inference (Cambridge
University Press) with Stephen L. Morgan.
The Ash Center welcomed Geoff Mulgan as a
senior visiting scholar on January 1 for a three-year
appointment. Between 1997 and 2004, Mulgan had
various roles in the UK government including director
of the government's Strategy Unit and head of
Policy in the prime minister's
office. Currently, Mulgan is
chief executive of Nesta (National
Endowment for Science,
Technology and the
Arts), an innovation charity
based in the UK. During his
tenure at the Center, Mulgan will collaborate closely
with the Center’s Innovation Program to help
develop an Innovation Workshop Series that will involve
senior faculty at HKS and beyond. The workshop
will meet approximately three times a year and
will focus on identifying the organizational conditions
and networks that allow innovations to evolve
more quickly when working to address important
public problems.
New Scholarship on
Regulatory Reform
The Ash Center’s Project on Regulatory Reform for
the 21st Century City released a series of white papers
and case studies on regulatory reform this
spring. The papers touch on a number of regulatory
issues that have bedeviled cities across the country
including how best to loosen regulatory monopolies
on taxis and how best to accommodate and mitigate
the explosion in popularity of food trucks in many
US cities.
“As cities look for ways to cut red tape and spur
small business job growth, regulatory reform holds
the key to stimulating local and regional economies,”
observed Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director of
the Innovations in American Government Program at
the Center. “By unlocking the power of data and
technology, cities now have the ability to streamline
regulatory development, licensing and permitting,
and compliance in a personalized way that will target
bad actors in a meaningful way. This work is being
led by some of the most innovative and creative cities
in the US, like New York City, Chicago, and Boston,
and can be replicated by other cities attempting to
create a positive environment for business.”
Maya Sen on Judicial
Reform
Maya Sen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and
Ash Center faculty affiliate, published a study on judicial
polarization that was featured in the New York
Times. Coauthored with Adam Bonica of Stanford
University, The Politics of Selecting the Bench from
the Bar: The Legal Profession and Partisan Incentives
to Politicize the Judiciary scrutinized the campaign
contributions of the nearly 400,000 attorneys in the
US to examine politicization and polarization across
various tiers of the judiciary. Sen and Bonica conclude,
“Judges as a whole are more conservative
than the population of attorneys. This is particularly
the case among judges who sit in higher, more politically
important courts—such as state high courts
and the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” Conversely, the
paper also finds that lawyers are more liberal when
compared to the general US population. This corresponds
to the nation’s lawyers being roughly centerleft
on the ideological spectrum while the nation’s
federal appeals courts are center-right. In one of the
most significant conclusions drawn from these findings,
the paper’s authors suggest that politicians not
only rely on ideology when appointing judges to the
bench, but that “they do so where it benefits their
party the most and when it concerns the most important
courts.”
Tony Saich Honored by
Foreign Policy
Tony Saich, director of the Ash Center and Daewoo
Professor of International Affairs, has been named
to Foreign Policy's Pacific Power Index, a list of 50
people shaping the future of the US-China relationship.
David Wertime, a senior editor at Foreign Policy,
said in a statement, “Harvard, a name that many
Chinese instantly recognize, has played a major role
in shaping Chinese perceptions of American higher
education. And the ability of the Ash Center, which
Professor Saich directs, to communicate American
conceptions of good governance directly to rising
Chinese leaders has surely had an impact on bilateral
ties, and perhaps even internal Chinese politics.”
Comparative Democracy
Seminars
Professors Tarek Masoud and Candelaria Garay are
convening a seminar series on comparative politics
this 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 on
Latin American political economy
and the politics of inequality,
and Anna Grzymala-Busse (University of
Michigan), a scholar of democratization in Eastern
Europe whose new book examines the ways in
which churches and religious leaders insert themselves
into and influence the results of the policymaking
process.
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
5

HackingtheHill
#Hack4Congress helps unlock the power
of democratic participation

While the founders of the American republic may have conceived Congress as
the linchpin of our democracy—the branch of government closest and most responsible
to the people—few would argue that our contemporary Congress
shares much in common with this early republican ideal.
The partisanship slowing the legislative process to a grind, doused with
ample helpings of nearly unlimited campaign contributions thanks to Citizens
United, has soured much of the American public on Congress, with congressional
approval ratings hovering in the low teens. Recent years have seen productivity
in both houses of Congress—as measured by newly enacted laws—as among the
lowest on record since World War II. “Our democracy is in trouble in part because
of the distance between the American people and Congress and because Congress
just can’t get business done,” remarked Archon Fung, Ford Foundation
Professor of Democracy and HKS Academic Dean.
“Our democracy is in trouble in part because of the
distance between the American people and
Congress and because Congress just can’t get
business done.” Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professor
of Democracy and HKS Academic Dean
Something has to give. Or, at least new solutions have to be found to make
Congress more responsive to the concerns of everyday Americans. That was the
premise of the Ash Center’s novel #Hack4Congress “not-just-for-technologists”
event held over a blustery weekend in early February that drew hundreds of
people to the Kennedy School to learn, discuss, and propose a range of solutions
to strengthen Congress.
In partnership with the OpenGov Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit
dedicated to strengthening citizen participation in government, the Ash Center
convened a group of technologists, academics, students, designers, and former
public servants to tackle a variety of challenges related to the lawmaking process
including those focused on improving cross-partisan dialogue, modernizing congressional
participation, rebuilding trust, and strengthening campaign finance
reform.
Conceived by Maggie McKinley, a Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center and Climenko
Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, #Hack4Congress was
an opportunity to not only address dysfunction in Congress, but to tackle the wider
issue of political apathy and engagement, particularly among millennials. “We have
a culture of apathy and resignation right now that we can’t solve all these problems,”
said McKinley, “but these types of events will bring folks together who might
not have seen themselves as part of the solution and get them engaged.”
Tony Saich, director of the Ash Center, said, “We are committed to providing
resources to our students and the broader policy community to help tackle some
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
7

of the most intractable problems facing our democracy today, such as how to
get Congress back on track as an institution representative of the American
polity as a whole.”
Unlike traditional hackathons, which tend to be tech-centric gatherings revolving
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 the
technology sector,” said McKinley. “Academics, policy specialists, lawyers—they
all have tremendous insight into how to tackle congressional dysfunction.
#Hack4Congress wasn’t solely a technological challenge, which is what made it
such a compelling event.”
Seamus Kraft, the executive director of the OpenGov Foundation and a former
congressional staffer himself, worked closely with the Ash Center to help
make #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 interests
and backgrounds—designers, developers, political scientists, people who work
or used to work in government—you name it.”
In fact, nearly half of the approximately 150 participants at #Hack4Congress
did not hail from traditional technology backgrounds. Brandon Andrews, a former
defense policy staffer for Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who now works for a
Washington-based public relations firm, traveled up from the nation’s capital to
participate in #Hack4Congress. Andrews’ team, the “Dear Colleagues,” one of
13 competing in the event, concentrated their efforts on improving the functionality
and increasing the transparency of dear colleague letters, which are in
essence interoffice memoranda on Capitol Hill and constitute the bulk of formal
correspondence between members of Congress.
“While I was on the Hill, members of Congress would send dear colleague
letters soliciting congressional support or opposition to a variety of executive
branch activities—and even those of private corporations,” said Andrews. “Since
legislation is increasingly difficult to pass, a lot of work is being done with these
letters.” With legislative output plummeting in recent years, letters from Congress
have in many ways supplanted legislation as one of the primary vehicles
through which Capitol Hill expresses or tries to influence nearly every aspect of
government operation.
"We are committed to providing resources to our students
and the broader policy community to help
tackle some of the most intractable problems facing
our democracy today." Tony Saich, Ash Center Director
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 there
any institutional methods for capturing or otherwise archiving what has become
an important part of the work of Congress. Team Dear Colleagues’ solution didn’t
employ lines of code and slick graphics, but was as simple as creating a Google
group to store dear colleague records for the public.
The failure of Congress to better embrace technological innovation, nonetheless,
weighed on the mind of many at #Hack4Congress. Tomas Insua, a master
in public policy student and research assistant at the Ash Center, came to the
Kennedy School with a tech background having previously worked at Google.
For Insua, this failure to embrace technology is exacerbating our democratic
deficit. “We’re living in the 21st century, but our democratic institutions function
exactly the same as they did 200 years ago. Technology has revolutionized
everything—be it the economy, media, education—yet our democratic system
remains unchanged,” said Insua. “I think this explains the really low levels of trust
in our political system. As a result constituents aren’t engaged and don’t feel
represented by our political system.”
8 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

Much of this breakdown, argues Kraft, can be attributed to time, transparency,
and technology.
“Members of Congress, their staffs, and constituents—everyone are leading
very busy lives,” said Kraft. “Even engaged citizens don’t have enough time.”
William Delahunt, a retired Democratic Congressman who represented much
of the South Shore of Massachusetts and the Cape in the House of Representatives
for nearly a decade and a half before retiring in 2010, echoed Kraft’s sentiments.
“My life was scheduled in fifteen-minute increments,” said Delahunt.
“There was no time to stop and think about the issues.”
“I wanted to participate in the hackathon because I'm
both interested and hopeful about the potential of
technology to reinvigorate American democracy by
recuperating citizen participation and citizen empowerment.
I think real citizen power in our democracy
is low, and technology presents a lot of opportunities
to 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
Participating in a panel discussion to kick off #Hack4Congress, Delahunt tried
to dispel the impression that members of Congress live the high life in Washington,
“I slept on a cot in a living room of a shared house.” While the thought
of Congressmen sleeping on cots may be enough to combat notions of lavish
and carefree congressional lifestyles for even the most hardened critic of the
legislative branch, the fact remains that constituents feel far removed from the
daily machinations of Capitol Hill.
Jessie Landerman, an HKS master in public policy student saw an opportunity
to bridge this gap by helping to develop a new platform that allows constituents
to better engage with congressional offices. “I wanted to participate in
the hackathon because I'm both interested and hopeful about the potential of
technology to reinvigorate American democracy by recuperating citizen participation
and citizen empowerment. I think real citizen power in our democracy is
low, and technology presents a lot of opportunities to address that problem.”
Landerman’s #Hack4Congress team designed “Congress Connect” as a platform
for strengthening the direct connection between constituents and Congress.
She envisions Congress Connect as a resource to allow constituents to
better schedule meetings with congressional offices as well as prepping those
same constituents to ensure that their message is communicated effectively.
“By increasing the quality and quantity of in-person meetings between Congressional
representatives and their constituents, we can increase citizen voice
and citizen power, and counterbalance the growing power of lobbyists who, at
times, represent private interests rather than public ones,” said Landerman.
For her efforts, Landerman and her teammates were named the overall winners
of #Hack4Congress in Cambridge and were awarded with a trip to Congress
to present their proposal. The team will be joined on Capitol Hill later this year
along with the winners of separate #Hack4Congress events the Ash Center is
holding in San Francisco and Washington. On the Hill, the Ash Center will be
convening a panel of members of Congress and senior congressional technology
staffers to review and give feedback to the winners of the Cambridge, San Francisco,
and Washington hackathons.
“After getting feedback from Congress about how best to design and implement
the tool, we hope to pull together seed money to pilot it either for select
Congressional offices or at the state or local level,” said Landerman.
For the Ash Center and the Kennedy School, “the longer term picture is to
create many opportunities for all kinds of Americans from all walks of life to actively
contribute to this project of improving American democracy,” said Fung.
For more information, visit hack4congress.org.
C
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
9

Innovating
for America’s Future
The Ash Center Honors 124 Bright Ideas in Government
The Bright Ideas program, an initiative of the Innovations in American Government
Awards, is designed to recognize, disseminate, and encourage the replication
of a wide range of innovations and promote promising practices in
government. This year’s Bright Ideas, selected by teams of expert evaluators, includes
124 programs and initiatives across all areas of government in the US.
The Bright Ideas program not only enables the Ash Center to provide greater
recognition to innovations in government but also provides an opportunity to
identify and examine current and emerging trends in governance in the United
States. The 2015 Bright Ideas provide a rich collection of government initiatives
from policy areas as varied as criminal justice, education, community development,
transportation, and health care, and represent all levels of government,
from school districts to the federal government. While there is significant variation
both across and within these policy areas, the following trends emerged
among this year’s Bright Ideas.
Improving Government through Data Analytics
Reflecting the recent increase in the collection and use of data in the public sector,
a number of Bright Ideas programs focus on using data analytics to solve
problems in areas such as homelessness, policing and criminal justice, and public
safety. In New York City, the Risk Based Inspection System allows the city’s Fire
Department to prioritize building inspections based on risk, as quantified
through past inspection information and incidents of fire, reducing the number
of injuries and deaths to the public and first responders. The DNA Hit Integration
Program from San Diego County, California, provides prosecutors with real-time
access to information on DNA hits related to their current caseload, making both
prosecution and exoneration more efficient and timely. In Wisconsin State, the
Wrong Way Driver Alert System gathers information on wrong-way driving and
assists law enforcement with providing timely response while targeting problem
10 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

areas and mitigating reoccurrence. Finally, the Homelessness Analytics Initiative—a
collaboration between the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the
US Department of Housing and Urban Development—is intended to provide
users with access to national, state, and local information about homelessness
among the general population and veterans, risk and protective factors for
homelessness, services, and resources.
Using Technology for Better Government
Many Bright Ideas use technology to increase efficiency and improve service for
constituents. I-Jury: Online Juror Impaneling from Travis County, Texas, allows
summonsed jurors to answer qualifying questions, screen for exemptions, and
request deferrals using an online system, preventing unnecessary courtroom visits
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 line
using their smartphone or computer, and receive alerts as their turn approaches
to avoid long and frustrating lobby waits. The city of Chicago takes the relationship
between citizens and technology one step further with its Civic User Testing
Group, a set of Chicago residents who test civic apps and help make software
that improves the quality of life for residents through beta testing and providing
feedback to developers.
Two notable technology programs, one state and one local, from Hawaii were
named to this year’s cohort of Bright Ideas. The city and county of Honolulu’s
2013 Neighborhood Board Digital Elections converted what has been a historically
paper- and postal-based election process to an all-digital one. The state’s
my.hawaii.gov delivers 'Your Government—Your Way’ in a novel approach to the
gamification of government, leveraging existing portal architecture and a single
sign-on system, engaging citizens through the use of badges, points, and a
leaderboard and at the same time saving time, money, and paper.
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 demonstrates
visual analytics he worked
on as a project to the state CIO and
Governor Pat McCrory
Reaching Specific Populations
Several Bright Ideas programs focus on expanding education and career development
for populations traditionally left behind by the system, including people
with special needs and economically disadvantaged children and adults. The
Mentoring 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 and
weekend hours, offering access to study resources and SAT-prep along with career-search
training and community mentors. Also in Florida, the city of Hialeah’s
Special Population Initiative uses community spaces to provide alternative education
for individuals with disabilities, including children with severe autism, and
helps relieve families of some of the high cost of care for those with special
needs. In Pearce County, Washington, the Block Play program uses libraries as a
space for at-risk children to develop early-learning skills through guided block
play, and trains parents to guide this play at home, focusing on developing literacy
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 Addictions
and Mental Health Division Tribal Liaison helps adapt state-mandated,
evidence-based practices to meet cultural and traditional standards of the Native
American populations, developing best practices that address statewide goals
without unnecessarily burdening these unique communities with distinct histories.
New Jersey’s Statewide Clinical Outreach Program for the Elderly provides
crisis intervention and stabilization, consultation, and training for the management
of mental health and behavioral issues in older adults (55+) residing in
nursing homes and other residential care facilities. It functions as a multidisciplinary
team consisting of geriatric specialists, including a pyschiatrist, advanced
nurse practitioners, a psychologist, and master’s level clinicians, whose members
are also available 24/7 in crisis settings to prevent unnecessary inpatient psychiatric
hospitalization.
In addition to the Homelessness Analytics Initiative described earlier, several
Bright Ideas seek to improve the experience of United States veterans as they
return home and to the workforce. The city of Newton, Massachusetts, established
a one-stop, regional Veterans Service Center to address the pressing need
for a more integrated support system for veterans. The center offers assistance
in securing benefits, health care, child care, housing, education, and employment
in an environment where veterans can socialize, network, dine, and listen to a
speaker. The Small Business Administration’s Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit
of Entrepreneurship recognizes entrepreneurship as an essential, and sizable, element
of economic growth across the United States and empowers female veterans
to develop the business skills necessary to turn their business-ownership
dreams into growth ventures. And, the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ Acquisition
Academy’s Warriors to Workforce Program trains post-9/11 veterans
with a service-connected disability and a high-school degree with little to no
college education to serve in the mission-critical roles of contract specialists and
program managers.
Public Participation and Civic Engagement
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Ash Center, the Center launched its
Challenges 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 Engagement
in Government, to recognize the most novel and effective approaches
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
11

LEFT The Tribal Best Practices
program from the state
of Oregon’s Addictions and
Mental Health Division Tribal
Liaison helps adapt practices
to meet cultural and traditional
standards of Native
American populations
RIGHT A rendering of New
York City's LinkNYC, a firstof-its-kind
communications
network that will bring the
fastest available municipal
Wi-Fi to millions of New
Yorkers, small businesses,
and visitors
for increasing public participation and engagement. Accordingly, many of this
year’s Bright Ideas focus on engaging citizens in government processes that affect
their lives, seeking their input and ideas to ensure that government is meeting
the needs of those it serves. For example, faced with a growing population
of residents of Asian origin with low levels of participation in local government,
the Increase Asian Residents’ Civic Participation program from Lexington, Massachusetts,
focuses on identifying barriers to participation and reaching out to
Asian residents to encourage greater involvement in government, including seeking
candidates from those populations to run for local office. The Citizen Survey
Data for Performance program from Kansas City, Missouri, uses survey data of
community feedback on city departments and their operations at their monthly
KCStat meetings, where departments share their progress with the mayor and
answer questions from the public who interact via livestream, social media, and
in-person attendance. The Oregon Solution’s Network fosters communications
between government and citizens groups while encouraging collaboration between
state agencies to ensure the public’s priorities and those of not-for-profit
and business-sector partners to address regional and community concerns. Finally,
the LinkNYC/Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge in New York City
through a wide engagement effort invited the public to create prototypes that
imagine the future of city payphones in planning what will replace them. Over
125 submissions helped to inform the city’s RFP to transform payphones into
Wi-Fi hotspots and communication hubs, eventually leading to the creation and
passage of the LinkNYC program, a first-of-its-kind network that will bring the
fastest available municipal Wi-Fi to millions of New Yorkers, small businesses,
and visitors.
Cultivating Innovation
A number of this year’s Bright
Ideas programs seek to create
efficiency through the use of
technological applications.
International Space Apps
Challenge
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration
VA Mobile Health
United States Veterans
Administration
How’s My Waterway?
Environmental Protection Agency
My Resource Connection
Johnson County, Kansas
In the spirit of the Bright Ideas program, several initiatives selected for recognition
are themselves fostering innovation in government, such as the Employee
Innovation Challenge of the city of Hamilton in Ohio, a contest that encourages
city employees to submit ideas and work across departments to improve
processes and address local challenges, increasing employee engagement. At
the North Carolina Innovation Lab, state employees, students, and private partners
collaborate to test new technology systems before making substantial investments.
In Washington State, the Innovation Exemption policies remove
procurement rules for purchases intended to introduce new technologies and
ideas to state government. The 2014 Multi-City Innovation Campaign is a partnership
of the cities of Boston,
Nashville, Palo Alto, and Raleigh with
a vision to create a process and environment
where developers can build
scalable and sustainable civic apps
that address shared challenges across
communities through a unique lowdollar
procurement approach. IdeaBox
is an initiative developed by the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau to
transform great ideas from employees
into impactful projects that are successfully
implemented at the agency.
To facilitate replication at other government
agencies, the IdeaBox team
has shared online its operating plan
and technology source code. The US
Department of State and the crowdfunding
site RocketHub have partnered
to support innovative solutions
to some of the world's toughest
challenges by accelerating projects
awarded by the Department’s Alumni
Engagement and Innovation Fund,
creating investment options beyond
government support, providing visibility,
supporting sustainability, and accelerating
social innovations.
The full list of all 124 Bright Ideas can
be found online at the Ash Center’s
website and on the Government Innovators
Network. C
12 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

IN THE FIELD
Alumni in the Field
Humayun Sarabi Is Working for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
After years of war and a long history of tribal rule,
living conditions in Afghanistan are hard and can be
especially brutal for women. Arranged marriages
and child marriages are not uncommon and many
women’s lives are marked by repressive customs and
domestic violence. A 2013 UNICEF survey found that
78 percent of girls drop out of school by the fifth
grade and a 2012 Human Rights Watch report estimated
that 87 percent of Afghan women experience
at least one form of physical, sexual, or psychological
violence and/or forced marriage in their lifetime.
“The story of women in Afghanistan is often of
tragedy—of a systematic and widespread violation
of their rights,” says HKS Alumnus and Roy and Lila
Ash Fellow Humayun Sarabi. “It is largely due to a
lack of education that many people do not see their
loved ones’ humanity and these crimes continue.”
Following his graduation from the Kennedy
School in 2011, Sarabi founded Women Empowered
Afghanistan (WE-Afghanistan) with like-minded colleagues
to confront the oppression and violence
against women he had seen throughout his career
as a humanitarian worker in the region.
“We were interested in starting a nonprofit to
work towards women’s rights in that part of the
world, but in a different way,” remarks Sarabi. “Because
most other NGOs in the area help women, but
in a temporary or materialistic sense—they build
shelters or provide clothing, which at some point
ends and the women are back in the same situation.
We’re trying to change how women are seen across
the culture.”
In October 2014, WE-Afghanistan launched its
first major initiative, the Human Rights Journalism
Training Program in Kabul. Funded by the Journalists
and Writers Foundation, the program is training 15
young and new journalists to use the media specifically
to advance women’s rights in Afghanistan. For
example, as part of their training, the journalists are
instructed to write a profile describing an instance
of domestic abuse and must include a list of resources
for women in the article. Participants are
drawn from across the country and have backgrounds
in law, human rights, and journalism.
The program spans six months with the first two
months devoted to training on journalistic principles,
safety, human rights, and democracy. It culminates
with an internship at different media organizations,
including print, television, and radio outlets, where
the journalists submit independent reports for publication.
Reports will be drawn from the journalists’
investigative research on human rights abuses, especially
those occurring in rural and remote areas.
Their stories will be translated into English and
published on the WE-Afghanistan website and
other venues, raising consciousness in the West of
women’s rights violations in the country. On a local
level, the reports will serve to humanize Afghan
women and make women aware of their rights.
“Many Afghan women don’t know how to access
justice or even whether their rights are being violated
in the first place,” says Sarabi. “Often the only
thing they know is that they’re being beaten up, and
many women believe that it is their husband’s right
to hurt them. We’re using journalism to advocate
that domestic violence is a crime under the laws of
Afghanistan and there are places they can go to receive
help.”
Sarabi hopes that WE-Afghanistan will soon have
the resources to build schools in Afghanistan,
though its current focus is on empowering women
through its journalism training program.
“Many of the problems in Afghanistan can be
traced back to the lack of education,” says Sarabi.
“Many Afghan women
don’t know how to access
justice or even whether
their rights are being
violated in the first place,”
says Sarabi.
“It is easy for the Taliban to convince an illiterate person
that women should be confined inside their
homes based on religious principles, but is harder to
convince an educated person of that. I believe that
if we had more educated Afghans, then we would
have a stronger, safer democratic society.”
Sarabi credits his time at the Harvard Kennedy
School and his fellowship through the Ash Center for
his views on the intersection of women’s rights, education,
and democracy. Sarabi reflects, “The seminars
I attended and the research I conducted at the
Ash Center expanded my knowledge of how democracy
should function.” Sarabi continues, “I see education
as the biggest pillar of democracy and
although there isn’t one idea or initiative that can
solve all of Afghanistan’s problems, I believe that increasing
access to education, and informing women
of their rights, are good first steps.” C
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
13

IN THE FIELD
Student Focus
Travel Grants Support Student Research
Each year, the Ash Center provides travel grants to HKS students conducting
field research for their Policy Analysis Exercises or Second Year Policy Analyses.
This winter, the Center supported 19 students on projects that are advised by
Ash-affiliated faculty or that explore topics aligned with the Center’s research
and programmatic agendas. Through the Program on China and Globalization
Fund and the Hui Fund for Generating Powerful Ideas, the Center’s China Programs
also provided travel funding for 12 Harvard students travelling to China
for research projects over the winter break.
Brendan Brady
The Role of Decentralization in a Peace
Settlement in Myanmar
Iris Braun
Innovation in Delivering Social Safety
Nets and Financial Inclusion: Should
India's Administration Leapfrog to Mobile
Payments?
Charles Data Alemi
Improving Customs Revenue Collection
in South Sudan
Clio Dintilhac and Amri Ilmma
Informing or Reminding? Potential
Strategies to Increase Compliance Rate
for CCT Program in Indonesia
Philip Dy and Tori Stephens
Bridging the Humanitarian Divide: Improving
Coordination between Local
Governments and International Actors
Mabel Josune Gabriel Fernandez
Raskin (Rice for the Poor) Program Reform
Ruixi Hao*
Effective Philanthropy: What Private
Foundations in China Can Learn from
their Western Counterparts?
Jessica Huey and Rohan Mascarenhas
Federal Highway Administration: State
Use of GARVEE Bonds and Other Innovative
Finance Delivery Tools
Victoria Kabak and Christine Kidd
The Right Youth, in the Right Place, for
the Right Reasons: Improving Juvenile
Probation in Massachusetts
Stephen Leonelli*
Universal Periodic Review: A New Tool
for China’s LGBT Movement?
Luhang Li*
Electric Vehicle — Solving Beijing's Endemic
Pollution Problem
Xi Liu*
Girls' Dream Project
Mary Rose Mazzola
Certified Batterer Programs' Effect on
Domestic Violence Recidivism
Reetu Mody
Community Reinvestment for Those
Most Impacted by Incarceration
Liliana Olarte
Creating Good Jobs in Indonesia
Joanna Penn
Structuring Public Opinion: Lessons
from Scotland's Independence Referendum
for Britain's Membership of the
EU
Reshma Ramachandran*
China Policy Tools for Increasing Access
to Affordable Biologic Medicines
Rivan Royondo
Diagnosing Factors Impeding Learning
in Indonesia’s Remote Rural Areas
Yunjung Song
Tax Privacy: Taxpayers’ Big Data Disclosure
for Public Use in Korea
He Tian*
Industrial Upgrades in Coastal China
Yuman Wang*
The China Development Bank's Strategic
Options in Africa
Zou Xun*
Communicable Diseases and Reproductive
Health among Migrant Workers
in Factories and Plants
Jingyi Zhang*
Consumer City: The Impact of Amenities
and Mixed Land Use on Housing
Price in Shanghai
Yinan Zheng*
Accelerating the Implementation of
the Upcoming Waste Charging Policy
in Hong Kong
Nada Zohdy
Advising External Actors on Supporting
Civic Participation in the Arab
World
* Travel grant provided by the Ash
Center’s China Programs
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 Municipality
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
14 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

IN THE FIELD
Student Focus
Marshall Ganz’s Students Spread the Power of Community Organizing Across the Globe
Kanoko Kamata, former
Roy and Lila Ash Fellow and
MPA ‘12
Fifty nonprofit leaders, social movement activists,
and public-sector officials from across Japan convened
in Tokyo in December 2014 to learn some of
the leadership strategies and organizing techniques
employed successfully in the US and elsewhere.
Hosted by Community Organizing Japan (COJ),
the event was something of a novelty in a nation reputed
to have little tradition of civic engagement.
Participants were encouraged to step outside their
comfort zones, engaging in the dynamic storytelling,
strategizing, and team-building exercises fundamental
to the practice of community organizing.
Kanoko Kamata, an HKS alumna and former Roy
and Lila Ash Fellow at the Ash Center, founded COJ
in 2013 and invited HKS Senior Lecturer in Public
Policy and Ash Center affiliate Marshall Ganz to collaborate
with her and her team of local coaches in
leading a series of community organizing workshops
over the past year.
Kamata first encountered community organizing
while a student in Ganz’s course on Organizing: People,
Power, and Change at the Kennedy School. “I
was very new to the idea and I was skeptical about
its usefulness in other countries besides the US,”
says Kamata. “But the more I learned about community
organizing, the more I understood that it’s fundamental
to human society for people to come
together and solve problems.”
In Ganz’s semester-long class, students learn not
only the theoretical and historical significance of collective
action, but are required to create their own
organizing campaign by mobilizing a constituency
to achieve a shared purpose and clear outcome.
The multiday workshops that Ganz works with
local leadership to conduct in Japan and elsewhere
around the world including Jordan, China, Colombia,
and Canada, offer participants an introduction to
leadership, organizing, and public narrative. Based
on Ganz’s teaching, a research project with the
Sierra Club, and development at scale in the 2007–
2008 Obama for President Campaign, the workshops
provide participants with an opportunity to
experience fundamental organizing practices and
explore their utility in meeting challenges they face
in their own communities.
Five practices are central to Ganz’s coursework
on community organizing. The first involves what
Ganz calls “public narrative”: a “story of self,” a “story
of us,” and a “story of now.” The story of self explains
why the organizer is called to leadership and it can
be a challenge for those unaccustomed to sharing
their personal histories in a public setting.
“The story of self was a particularly interesting
concept for the COJ attendees,” says Kamata. “Some
people were hesitant at first because people in
Japan don’t expect to tell their story, but it was exciting
for them to see how this practice can build relationships
quickly and deeply.”
The story of us is an answer to the question: what
values as a community call us to action? The story
of now is the challenge to our communal values that
demands present action.
“Say you are sick due to environmental hazards
in your neighborhood,” says Kamata. “That’s the
story of self—it’s what motivated you to care about
the environment. The story of us is that the environment
is important to everyone in the surrounding
community and the story of now is that we need to
act immediately to protect the environment.”
The four other practices developed by Ganz include
building relationships, structuring collaborative
leadership, strategizing how to turn available
resources into power to accomplish clear goals, and
achieving measurable outcomes “on the ground.”
Students in his organizing class at HKS learn organizing
and leadership skills with which to replicate the
training and share effective organizing practices
with a wider audience.
“Learning to be a leader and an organizer is a
skill,” says Ganz. “It’s a lot like riding a bike. You can
read 10 books on the topic, but how do you really
learn to ride a bike? You get on it. You fall. And, then
you find the courage to learn from your failures and
try again. That’s how you master any skill and that’s
how you learn organizing.”
Many of Ganz’s former students put these skills
to work after they graduate, including those who
have gone on to become organizers themselves,
such as Nisreen Haj Ahmed, co-founder of Ahel in
Jordan; Predrag Stojicic, co-founder of Serbia on the
Move in Serbia; and Cecilia Barja, who represents
Colombia for Fundacion Avina and is a leader of
Narrativa Publica in the Amazon. Ganz remains connected
to them as well as other Harvard alumni
through the Leading Change Network, a community
of educators, researchers, and practitioners committed
to developing organizing leadership and empowering
people to act on their values.
For his students that opt not to pursue a career
in organizing, they leave his class with a valuable understanding
of leadership, group dynamics, and the
role of collective action in strengthening democracy.
Mick Power, a current HKS master’s in public policy
student, says of his experience in Marshall’s class:
“Students in Marshall's class are required not just to
learn, but to organize, so being part of a group of
student leaders working to end racism, homelessness,
religious intolerance, violence, and inequality
in their communities was a weekly inspiration. I think
the fact that so many of his students are still working
in the teams and communities that they discovered
through his class is a testament to Marshall's genuine
passion for teaching, and to how much of himself he
gives to his work and his students.” C
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
15

RESEARCH BRIEF
Fellows Focus
Meet Our New Fellows
This semester we welcomed 11 new fellows
to the Ash Center.
Carnegie Fellowship
Through a grant from the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, the Center
began supporting promising Arab social
scientists in the fall of 2014. The
Carnegie scholars explore possible options
for effective governance across
a range of policy domains in this dangerously
troubled part of the world.
The Center's spring semester Carnegie
Fellow is Omayma Elsheniti, who received
her PhD in Economics at Rutgers
University. Her research focuses
on labor economics, economics of education,
and economic development
in the Middle East.
Democracy Program
The Ash Center’s Democracy Fellowships
support predoctoral and postdoctoral
scholars as well as practitioners in
research areas related to democratic
governance. This semester, Rikki Dean
joined the Center. She is a PhD candidate
in Social Policy at the London
School of Economics. This semester
we also welcomed Emer Mulligan to
the Center as a Visiting Scholar. She is
the Head of School at the J.E. Cairnes
School of Business & Economics, National
University of Ireland Galway,
and her research focuses on taxation
in Europe.
HKS Indonesia Program
This semester, the HKS Indonesia Program
welcomed Budy Resosudarmo
as a Senior Practitioner Fellow. His research
topic is “Rural Development
and the Impact of the Strategic Village
Development Plan (RESPEK) Program
in Papua, Indonesia.”
Innovations in Government
Program
Faculty, doctoral, and postdoctoral
students serve as Innovation Fellows
for varying tenures throughout the academic
year at the Ash Center. The
Center supports academic scholarship
focused on its core research areas, including
innovations in public participation
and political participation in
non-democracies. In January, we welcomed
Geoff Mulgan as a Senior Visiting
Scholar. Currently, Mulgan is chief
executive of Nesta (National Endowment
for Science, Technology and the
Arts), an innovations charity in the UK.
This semester we also welcomed Pepe
Strathoff as a Visiting Scholar. He is a
PhD Candidate in Business Administration
at the University of St. Gallen
in Switzerland, where his research focuses
on public value management.
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
Rajawali Foundation Institute
for Asia
The Rajawali Fellows Program allows
predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars
as well as practitioners the freedom to
pursue independent research projects
on public policy issues related to Asia,
with the help of the Ash Center’s Rajawali
Foundation Institute for Asia
and other Harvard resources. The Center
welcomed five new Rajawali Fellows
this semester:
CHEN Wen, PhD, Associate Professor,
Shenzhen University
FAN Zhihua, General Manager,
Baoshang Bank
MA Mingjie, PhD, Deputy Director for
Technical & Economics Research, Development
Research Center, PRC
State Council
WANG Kaiyuan, Chairman, HEDA
Group
ZHANG Qi, Deputy Director for International
Economics Research, Development
Research Center, PRC State
Council
16 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

IN THE NEWS
Event Snapshots
Challenges to Democracy: The Future of Policing
February 5, 2015
In February, the Ash Center cosponsored a JFK Jr. Forum event on “Challenges to
Democracy: The Future of Policing,” which explored how recent episodes of police
violence and subsequent demonstrations have laid bare the corrosive distrust that
defines relations between citizens and police in many communities across the
country. The speakers included Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey of the Philadelphia
Police Department; Atiba Goff, who is an associate professor of Social Psychology
at UCLA and a visiting scholar of the Malcolm Weiner Center for Social
Policy this year; and Houston Mayor Annise Parker. HKS Dean David Ellwood moderated
the discussion, which focused on how citizens’ perceptions of police and
the criminal justice system are often shaped by race, and how communities can
work 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 responsibilities
of police officers; and encouraging community involvement in shaping
local police forces. While the speakers acknowledged that reforms are necessary
within law enforcement agencies across the country, they stressed that recent
events in Ferguson and New York City are part of a larger system of inequality, including
racial disparities in education funding and a punitive criminal justice system
that makes it very difficult for ex-offenders to participate fully in society.
50 Years after the Voting Rights Act: Strategies for Moving
Forward
February 18, 2015
To mark the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of
1965, the Ash Center and the Harvard Institute of Politics convened a panel discussion
in the JFK Jr. Forum in February. Alex Keyssar, the Matthew W. Stirling
Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy and an Ash Center affiliate, moderated
the conversation with Congressman Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA), a senior
House Democrat active on civil rights issues who was the first African-American
elected to Congress from Virginia since Reconstruction. Joining Professor
Keyssar and Congressman Scott was Penda Hair, a civil-rights advocate and cofounder
and co-director of the Advancement Project, a racial justice organization
spearheading litigation that challenges voter restrictions, discriminatory electoral
provisions, and other civil rights violations across the nation.
The panelists discussed strategies for responding to the wave of legislation
at the state level seeking to impose additional burdens on voting, spurred on by
the US Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder that struck down a
key section of the VRA. During the discussion, Hair recounted her legal work
fighting against a variety of restrictive voting provisions in court. Congressman
Scott described his surprise to opposition to rewriting the VRA to conform with
the Shelby case, “We didn’t expect this kind of resistance to such a minor voting
rights bill.” A strong supporter of the VRA’s requirement that certain jurisdictions
receive federal approval known as “preclearance” prior to implementing changes
to local voting laws, Congressman Scott said the provision worked as intended
because prior to its enactment, states were “essentially rewarded for cheating”
by discriminating against African-American voters. Those states, he said, “earned
preclearance” through the poll taxes, literacy taxes, and voter intimidation.
Project on Municipal Innovation Advisory Group
March 26–28, 2015
The Project on Municipal Innovation Advisory Group (PMI-AG) met for the 13th
time 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 creative
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 Goff
discuss 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 and
then supporting the replication and implementation of those ideas. In partnership
with Living Cities, the Ash Center convenes two PMI-AG member in-person
meetings per year. The theme of the March meeting was Civic and Community
Engagement in Government Decision Making, from a City Hall Perspective. The
PMI-AG members discussed civic and community engagement in relation to Collective
Impact, an approach that represents the commitment of a group of actors
from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a complex social problem;
the policing crisis; and open data, performance management, and application
development.
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
17

RESEARCH BRIEF
On the Bookshelf
Ethics in Public Life: Good
Practitioners in a Rising Asia
Kenneth Winston
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
The topic of moral competence is generally neglected
in the study of public management and policy,
yet it is critical to any hope we might have for
strengthening the quality of governance and professional
practice. What does moral competence consist
of? How is it developed and sustained? Kenneth
Winston addresses these questions through close
examination of selected practitioners in Asian countries
making life-defining decisions in their work. The
protagonists include a doctor in Singapore, a political
activist in India, a mid-level bureaucrat in central
Asia, a religious missionary in China, and a journalist
in Cambodia—each struggling with ethical challenges
that shed light on what it takes to act effectively
and well in public life. Together they bear
witness to the ideal of public service, exercising their
personal gifts for the well-being of others and
demonstrating that, even in difficult circumstances,
the reflective practitioner can be a force for good.
Natural Disaster Management in the
Asia-Pacific
Caroline Brassard, David W. Giles, Arnold M.
Howitt, Eds.
Springer, 2015
The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable
to a variety of natural and manmade hazards. This
edited book brings together scholars and senior
public officials having direct experience in dealing
with or researching recent major natural disasters in
the region. The chapters focus on disaster preparedness
and management, including pre-event planning
and mitigation; crisis leadership and emergency response;
and disaster recovery. Specific events discussed
in this book include a broad spectrum of
disasters such as tropical storms and typhoons in the
Philippines; earthquakes in China; tsunamis in Indonesia,
Japan, and Maldives; and bushfires in Australia.
The book aims to generate discussions about
improved risk reduction strategies throughout the
region and seeks to provide a comparative perspective
across countries in order to draw lessons from
three perspectives: public policy, humanitarian systems,
and community engagement.
Economics of the Public Sector
Jay K. Rosengard and Joseph E. Stiglitz
W. W. Norton & Company, Fourth Edition, 2015
This revision of a classic text by an expert author team
addresses such questions as what should be the role
of government in society? How should it design its
programs? How should tax systems be designed to
promote both efficiency and fairness? Nobel laureate
Joseph Stiglitz and new coauthor Jay Rosengard use
their firsthand policy-advising experience to address
these key issues of public-sector economics in this
modern and accessible fourth edition.
The updated edition of Economics of the Public
Sector focuses on the heavily changed, post-global
recession world. This approach includes a discussion
on global public goods in Chapter 5, which addresses
the difficulty of coping with public health
and security threats when they transcend government
coping mechanisms, while Chapter 8 examines
corporatization and the transition from government
enterprise to private enterprise.
18 Communiqué Spring 2015 www.ash.harvard.edu

RESEARCH BRIEF
Governance and Politics of China,
Fourth Edition
Tony Saich
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
Tony Saich, Ash Center director and Daewoo Professor
of International Affairs, has published the fourth
edition of his seminal textbook, Governance and Politics
of China. The revised text seeks to understand
better how China is ruled and what the policy priorities
are of the new leadership. Can China move to a
more market-based economy while controlling environmental
degradation? Can it integrate hundreds
of millions of new migrants into the urban landscape?
The tensions between communist and capitalist
identities continue to divide society as China
searches for a path to modernization. The People’s
Republic is now over 65 years old—an appropriate
juncture at which to reassess the state of contemporary
Chinese politics. Governance and Politics of
China delivers a thorough introduction to all aspects
of politics and governance in post-Mao China, taking
full account of the changes of the Eighteenth Party
Congress and the Twelfth National People’s Congress.
The rise of Xi Jinping to power and his policies
are examined, as are important policy areas such as
urbanization and the fight against corruption.
Political Governance in China
Tony Saich, Ed.
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015
Including key research articles from specialists in the
field, Political Governance in China provides an introduction
and critical insights into the most important
debates surrounding the governance of contemporary
China. The volume, edited by Tony Saich, Ash
Center director and Daewoo Professor of International
Affairs, will enable readers to understand how
China is ruled, how participation and protest are regulated
by the authorities, and the relationship between
the Central state and its local agencies.
Spanning the most important areas of the subject,
the chosen articles explore the study of Chinese politics,
the nature of the Chinese political system, the
policymaking process, the nature of the local state,
participation and protest, and authoritarian resilience
or democratization. For example, Elizabeth Perry
writes on “Chinese Conceptions of “Rights””; Andrew
Nathan examines “Authoritarian Resilience”; Barry
Naughton asks “China’s Distinctive System: Can It Be
a Model for Others?”; and Victor Shih, Christopher
Adolph, and Mingxing Liu write “Getting Ahead in the
Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of
Central Committee Members in China.”
The Arab Spring: Pathways of
Repression and Reform
Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew
Reynolds
Oxford University Press, 2015
Several years after the Arab Spring began, democracy
remains elusive in the Middle East. The Arab
Spring that resides in the popular imagination is one
in which a wave of mass mobilization swept the
broader Middle East, toppled dictators, and cleared
the way for democracy. The reality is that few Arab
countries have experienced anything of the sort.
While Tunisia made progress towards some type of
constitutionally entrenched participatory rule, the
other countries that overthrew their rulers—Egypt,
Yemen, and Libya—remain mired in authoritarianism
and instability. Elsewhere in the Arab world, uprisings
were suppressed, subsided, or never materialized.
The Arab Spring's modest harvest cries out for
explanation. Why did regime change take place in
only four Arab countries and why has democratic
change proved so elusive in the countries that made
attempts? This book attempts to answer those questions.
First, by accounting for the full range of variance:
from the absence or failure of uprisings in such
places as Algeria and Saudi Arabia at one end to
Tunisia's rocky but hopeful transition at the other.
Second, by examining the deep historical and structure
variables that determined the balance of power
between incumbents and opposition.
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
19

Ash Center
for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Harvard Kennedy School
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The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and
Innovation strives to make the world a better
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education, and public discussion. By training the
very best leaders, developing powerful new ideas,
and disseminating innovative solutions and institutional
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profound challenges facing the world’s citizens.