Gordon Center for American Public Policy
The Gordon Public Policy Center, established in 1987, supports research; campus-based lectures, workshops, and conferences; and publications focused on various aspects of public policymaking in the United States and other developed democracies. The Gordon Foundation also provides support for fellowships in the Department of Politics for doctoral students working in the field of American politics and public policy. Gordon Fellows for 2006-07
are Melissa Prosky and Sarah Staszak, PhD candidates in the Department of Politics. The Center and its activities is supported by a continuing program of gifts from the James Gordon Foundation in Chicago, Illinois.
Currently the Gordon Center sponsors four intellectual initiatives:
The Politics and Economics of American Markets
This ongoing research initiative led by Professor Martin Levin has resulted in three edited volumes, with two more in process.
- The New Politics of Public Policy, Mark Landy, et. al, eds., Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995
- Seeking the Center, Martin A. Levin, et. al, eds., Georgetown University Press, 2001
- Transatlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity, Martin A. Levin and Martin Shapiro, eds., Georgetown University Press, 2004
- Creating Competitive Markets: The Politics of Regulatory Reform Brookings Institute, forthcoming
This project resulted in a conference held on campus February 4-5, 2005, which included the following contributors:
- Steven Vogel (UC, Berkeley) Why Freer Markets Need More Rules
- Eric Patashnik (University of Virginia) The Day After Market-Oriented Reform; or What Happens When Economists? Reform Ideas Meet Politics
- Jacob Hacker (Yale University) Policy Drift: The Hidden Politics of US Welfare State Retrenchment
- Andrew Rich (City College of New York) Reaching Competition Despite Deregulation: The Case of Telecommunications Reform
- Darius Gaskins (Norbridge, Inc.) The Success and Limits of Deregulation in Network Industries: Freight Railroad and Electricity
- Richard O'Neill and Udi Helman (FERC) Electricity De-Regulation: California, New Jersey, and the Feds
- Jonathan Macey (Yale University) The Myths and Realities of Banking Deregulation
- John Cioffi (UC, Riverside) Be Careful What You Wish For: Securities Regulation, Tort-Reform, and Re-Regulation in the United States, 1992-2002
- Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) The Dilemmas of School Choice: Markets Work When They Hurt
- Graham Wilson (University of Wisconsin) Deregulation of Agriculture: The Successes and Failures of the 1996 Farm Reform Act
- Alan Jacobs (University of British Columbia) and Steve Teles (Brandeis University) Privatization of Pensions, Regulation, and the Scope of Government Intervention: The British Experience, 1979- 2004
Off-Center and Center:
The Bush Administration's Faces of Policymaking
In 2005-2006, the Gordon Center will hold several seminars of work to be published in this fifth volume.
- November 1
Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) No Child Left Behind: Bush's Centrist Policymaking
- December 12
Paul Pierson (UC Berkeley) Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Bush Administrations Tax Cuts
- April 20
Tom Burke (Wellesley College) The Bush Administration and the Uses of Judicial Politics
- October 23
Robert Kagan (UC Berkeley ) The Political Evolution of Environmental Regulation
- November 15
Dan DiSalvo (Amherst College) The Paradoxes of Partisanship and Policymaking in the New Century
Policing the Multiethnic Nation-State
A research project led by Professor Daniel Kryder.
This initiative sponsors research and seminars within the department on the politics of policing.
Working Papers
Daniel Kryder, "Organizing for Disorder: Civil Unrest, Police Control, and the Invention of Washington, D.C." analyzes the effects on local policing of Thomas Jefferson's decision to invent a new capital city in rural Maryland, and the effects of D.C.'s metropolitan police on the outcomes of mass demonstrations in the twentieth century. It will appear in Formative Acts: American Politics in the Making, Stephen Skowronek, ed., (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming).
Daniel Kryder, "Black and White Police in the 20th Century: Democratization and Policing in American Political Development" reveals the reasons why local white authorities tended to appoint black policemen during and after wars. This will appear in Democratization in America, Desmond King, ed., (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming).
Conferences
On April 15, 2005 the Gordon Program sponsored a conference on the theme of The American Police Model in Transnational Perspective: Policing, Social Conflict, and Democratization in the U.S. and Abroad, which included the following participants:
- Deborah Wilson (University of Louisville) Police Reform in a Multicultural State in Transition: the case of Romania
- Matthew Deflem (University of South Carolina) Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation
- Maria Haberfeld (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) Community Oriented Policing in Poland
- Archon Fung (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Chicago Police-Community Relations as a Case of Empowered Participation
- Christopher Winship (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Police-Church Partnerships in Boston
- Tim Ross (Vera Institute of Justice) Improving Cooperation between Law Enforcement and Arab-American Communitites
There will be a second conference on this theme in Spring '06, with participants and schedule to be announced.
The President at War
Daniel Kryder is currently writing a book on the domestic political costs of major American wars. On November 16, 2006, he presented a talk to the Gordon Center titled "Out for Blood: How to Defeat a Wartime President the Republican Way."
Occasional Gordon Seminars 2005-06
September 29
Hurricane Katrina: Breaking Down Federal-State Relations in Disaster Planning
The Gordon Center and Prof. Mingus Mapps organized this seminar to assess federal and state and local government responses to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Participants included:
- Kristina Ford, Professor of Environmental Studies at Bowdoin College, and former Director of City Planning for New Orleans (1992-2000)
- Kerry Fosher, a research associate at the Dartmouth Medical School, who is researching emergency management planning in New England
- Lt. Bernard Mullin of the Waltham Fire Department, who is Emergency Management Director for the City of Waltham.
