Public Administration and International Affairs Department News, Media Commentary and Research

Jay S. Golden, Pontarelli Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Finance at the Maxwell School, has written “Dynamic Sustainability: Implications for Policy, Markets and National Security” (Cambridge University Press, 2023). 

"Drones have been a feature of war for several decades, but today’s conflicts such as the Israel-Hamas war and the Ukraine war show how the technology is changing modern combat. Ever more powerful drones have become cheaper and easier to fabricate and deploy," writes William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs.

"Ukrainian forces have continued to mount attacks on Russian ships and port facilities in waters adjacent to Ukraine, in Crimea and beyond," says Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs. Several damaging attacks on Russian Black Sea fleet bases in recent months have "provided strong incentive to Moscow to seek a safer harbor in the Abkhazia region," he says.

Nearly two years after the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukrainian students find refuge in a community of scholars with a long history of supporting those impacted by war.

Before attending the Maxwell School to pursue an MPA, Linh Nguyen supported Ukraine’s work to rebuild Mariupol following Russia’s 2014 attacks.

“There is a big thumb on the scale in favor of the president’s interpretation of whether the order is lawful,” says William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs. “You’d have a really big row to hoe and you would have a big fuss inside the military if you chose not to follow a presidential order.”

“What is the path to market for these technologies?” asks David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs. He attributes the collapse of startups in cleantech 1.0 largely to the lack of demand for green products in highly competitive commodity markets.

“Cutting off aid to Ukraine, as some in Congress propose, would undermine the immediate war effort in Europe and diminish the deterrent power of U.S. military force globally,” says Michael John Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs.

Participants in the organization’s leadership programs receive tuition discounts if admitted to one of several Maxwell programs.

"Assessment frequency and equity of the property tax: Latest evidence from Philadelphia," co-authored by Yilin Hou, professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

"It's a tough balancing act," says Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs. "The big issue is responding to attacks that are being done by Iranian surrogates in a measured way that has a deterrent effect but does not cause the tension that exists in the area in the conflict to expand to the next level."

California, the world’s fifth largest economy, “just leapfrogged over everyone” through legislation that became law last month that requires companies to start reporting carbon emissions from the energy used for operations and outputs beginning in 2026, says Jay Golden, Pontarelli Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Finance.

David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs, notes that while new factories will be needed to build electric vehicle batteries, the vehicles will require fewer suppliers producing parts. Many assembly workers will also need to be retrained. “We may also need fewer workers,” Popp says. But, he says, “there doesn’t seem to be a consensus yet on whether that is the case.”

"It is clear that, whatever Trump actually believed, he himself did not mean his pronouncements of election fraud to be taken as mere opinion. When Trump made such claims, he invariably portrayed them not only as true but proven conclusively, albeit by evidence he never produced," writes Dana Radcliffe, adjunct professor of public administration and international affairs.

"How Citizens Want to ‘See’ the State: Exploring the Relationship between Transparency and Public Values," co-authored by Professors Sabina Schnell and Tina Nabatchi, along with Ph.D. student Jiho Kim, was published in Public Administration Review.

"Extreme Weather Events and Local Fiscal Responses: Evidence from U.S. Counties," co-authored by Yilin Hou, professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in Economics of Disasters and Climate Change.

 “To Know Is To Act? Revisiting the Impact of Government Transparency on Corruption,” authored by Sabina Schnell, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in Public Administration and Development.

“Training future professors in public budgeting, finance, and financial management: The Inter-University Consortium for PhD courses,” co-authored by Yilin Hou, professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in the Journal of Public Affairs Education.

William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs, says that once the attack on the Capitol began, Trump had options he did not use. “He should respond to his constitutional responsibilities to protect the security of the United States when there’s an assault on our democratic process,” Banks says of Trump.

“What we wanted to do and what we found is what does it look like when these traditional management categories—planning, risk management, workforce, using data—when they get scaled into collaborative enterprises, that is they lose their agency-centric approach,” says Chris Mihm, adjunct professor of public administration and international affairs.