Books by "Karen E. Peterson"
6 books found
Rhetoric vs. Reality
by Michael Timpane, Dominic Brewer, Brian Gill, Karen Ross
2001 · Rand Corporation
How can the education of our nation's children be improved? Vouchers and charter schools aim to improve education by providing families with more choice in the schooling of their children and by decentralizing the provision of educational services. While supporters argue that school choice is essential to rescue children from failing schools, opponents claim that it may destroy America's public education system. The authors undertake an exhaustive and critical view of the evidence on vouchers and charter schools. The book is a useful, unbiased primer for all those interested in this controversial topic.
Since the expansion of public programs in the 1960s, charges of bureaucratic inefficiency, unresponsiveness, and "red tape" have been rampant. The response has often been extensive reorganization in an effort to change the source of control, carry out specific missions, and to achieve greater inter-agency cooperation. Karen M. Hult examines why these restructurings often fail, through three case studies: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Design (HUD); the Minnesota Department of Energy, Planning, and Development; and the Minneapolis Community Development Agency. Hult's study assesses the usefulness of mergers and reorganizations as a policy tool, and offers a valuable contribution to the study of public management and organization design.
Karen Kaufmann's groundbreaking study shows that perceptions of interracial conflict can cause voters in local elections to focus on race, rather than party attachments or political ideologies. Using public opinion data to examine mayoral elections in New York and Los Angeles over the past 35 years, Kaufmann develops a contextual theory of local voting behavior that accounts for the Republican victories of the 1990s in these overwhelmingly Democratic cities and the "liberal revivals" that followed. Her conclusions cast new light on the interactions between government institutions, local economies, and social diversity. The Urban Voter offers a critical analysis of urban America's changing demographics and the ramifications of these changes for the future of American politics. This book will interest scholars and students of urban politics, racial politics, and voting behavior; the author's interdisciplinary approach also incorporates theoretical insights from sociology and social psychology. The Urban Voter is appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate level courses. Karen Kaufmann is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Charles Walcott and Karen Hult maintain that the organization of the White House influences presidential performance much more than commonly thought and that organization theory is an essential tool for understanding that influence. Their book offers the first systematic application of organizational governance theory to the structures and operations of the White House Office. Using organizational theory to analyze what at times has been a rather ad hoc and disorganized office might seem quixotic. After all, the White House Office exists within a turbulent political environment that encourages expedient decision-making. And every four to eight years it must be "reinvented" by presidents who have their own theories and preferences about how to organize a staff to serve their policy needs. But Walcott and Hult argue that White House staffs are not simply puppets of presidential preference and style. Yes, staff structures evolve primarily from presidents' strategic responses to external demands. But those structures in turn significantly influence how the executive branch perceives and responds to further demands. The first part of their book lays out the theoretical argument. The second examines White House "outreach": congressional liaison, press relations, personnel selection, executive branch oversight, and interest group and intergovernmental liaison. The third focuses on White House handling of policy development and implementation. The fourth analyzes staff structures that facilitate the operation of the presidency itself: presidential writing and scheduling, staff management, and cabinet coordination. The book concludes by identifying general patterns in the emergency, nature, and stability of governance structures in the White House. Original and instructive, Governing the White House provides a much-needed primer on the inner workings of the White House staff and will be an essential volume for anyone studying the presidency.
Incorporating the most up-to-date literature in sociology, psychoanalysis, psychology, and communication, this book provides an exhaustive synthesis of theoretical, empirical, and clinical research on personal relationships. Prager explores the complex interconnections between intimacy and individual development, examining relationships from intimacy to old age in their social, cultural, and gender contexts, and constructing an innovative, multi-tiered model of intimate relating. The book also delves into the thoughts and emotions people experience when they behave intimately with each other, and asks how intimate relationships come to be satisfying, stable and harmonious for the people involved. This book will be of interest to researchers, educators, students and practitioners who study or treat close relationships. It will also serve as an invaluable text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on personal relationships, intimacy, and family relations.
The most thoroughly updated edition yet, this book offers students perspectives of changes in marriage and family over time, including the impact of the Great Recession and of new media technologies. A hallmark of Families in Context remains the well-researched, data-driven quality of the text. Beyond presenting thoroughly updated statistics and literature, each chapter examines new trends and assesses their implications for students' lives. The underlying presentation remains balanced, theoretically grounded, and accessible to a wide variety of classes, allowing students of all ages and family backgrounds to draw their own conclusions about controversial topics. Features of the new edition include coverage of the Affordable Care Act; new social media and families; the latest trends in poverty, education, social mobility, gender, identities and healthcare; updated 'In the News' features and author-created PowerPoint slides.