W. Henry Lambright

Urban reactions to the global warming issue: Agenda setting in Toronto and Chicago

Little research has been done about what cities could or should do concerning potential global warming. A few cities have adopted programs to deal with impacts they perceive may occur, and a worldwide network of 100 cities involved with CO2 reduction has recently emerged. Global warming is a new issue for cities and most are only dimly aware of how it may affect them. Toronto, through the efforts of a few leaders, has become a pioneer in the development of an urban response program to global warming. It has charged a city agency to deal with global warming issues, in particular emissions reduction. Chicago is aware of the issue and is concerned about the negative impacts global warming could produce. While behind Toronto, Chicago is moving forward in a number of areas. These two cities illuminate the policy-making process for global warming at the urban level and the role ‘{atpolicy entrepreneurs}’ can play at this level. In comparing the two cities, a common model of policy development is utilized.

Terminating federal research and development programs

The barriers to terminating federal research and development vary with the type of program (manpower resource creation, basic or applied research, hardware development) and the functional sector in which it is lodged (defense or civilian). Each has a public/private constituency of sponsors and performers. Some constituencies are much more potent than others. Hence, to kill an R&D program, one must weaken the constituency behind it. Useful strategies for would-be terminators include decremental funding and the amalgamation of competing R&D programs within the same agency.

Downsizing Big Science: Strategic Choices

In good times, management mistakes can often be ignored. But in times of cutback, tough choices must be made over priorities and mistakes are more obvious. It is much more challenging to manage in cutback times because few decisions are win-win situations. Many are zero-sum, with one unit of the organization benefitting at the expense of another. Alternatively, across-the-board cuts that hurt everyone equally please no one in particular. It is hard for leaders to look good in cutback times, even though their skills are most crucial at these moments (Doig and Hargrove, 1987). Some theorists minimize leaderships capacity to make much difference, and suggest chance as determinative (Kaufman, 1985). Administrative theory suggests how various agencies cope (Daniels, 1997; Downs, 1967; Kaufman, 1976; Lambright and Sapolsky, 1976; Levine, 1978). Basic strategies seem to fall into three categories. One is resistance. It calls for the agency to stand up to adversaries, dig in its heels, mobilize the constituency, and fight. The second category is mitigation. Here, the leaders anticipate cutback, plan for it, and attempt to control damage through adaptation. This strategy attempts to keep one step ahead of cutback forces. Like the resistance strategy, it is proactive, but it is more subtle and recognizes a certain inevitability in cutbacks. The third is a combination of mitigation and resistance, a mixed strategy that is most viable only after mitigation has been demonstrated successfully through an adaptation of the agency to the cutback environment. The political power dimension of cutback management is often overriding. When resources are scarce, struggle takes place within an agency and among agencies to see what will prevail. Also, the forces behind cutbacks may not be only budgetary foes. They may be ideological adversaries, who target specific agencies or programs they view as harboring values they oppose. Cutback eras are opportunities to kill particular programs. The rhetoric may come in the language of administrative efficiency--streamlining, reinvention, and reorganizing. Behind the rhetoric are often political interests, with success and failure a function of the political skills of administrators. This article develops these concepts of strategic choice in downsizing through an in-depth discussion of one NASA case, followed by a brief examination of two other Big Science endeavors, one from NASA the other from the Department of Energy. As will be noted, strategic choices can evolve as administrative leaders deal with a shifting environment and learn. Outright resistance may be occasionally effective in normal times where the agency has unusual bureaucratic power; but cutback eras feature macropolicies of long-term constraint and agencies resist at their peril. Overt resistance can hurt an agency and program, whereas mitigation and a skillful mix of mitigation and resistance can lead to a measure of stability. NASAs Mission to Planet Earth In the 1980s a small band of bureaucratic advocates sold NASA on a major new program of earth observations called, until recently, Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE), the centerpiece of which was a set of large highly advanced satellites called the Earth Observation System (EOS) (Lambright, 1994). Mission to Planet Earth is now known as the Earth Science Enterprise, but this article uses the older, better known name. Anxious to strike an international leadership stance with respect to the emerging global warming issue, newly elected President George Bush decided in 1989 to sharply augment spending for global environmental research. The Earth Observation System, largest component of Mission to Planet Earth, was raised to the level of a presidential priority (Bromley, 1994). In July, marking the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, President Bush publicly gave his blessing to NASAs newest mission--Planet Earth--and its lead effort, the Earth Observation System (Sawyer, 1989). …

Decision-making for Urban Technology

This article describes the decision-making process that is involved in introducing innovations to local public organizations. It defines six stages of the process of innovating in the public sector, as well as the four sets of actors involved in the process. The article is based on the findings of a study conducted for the National Science Foundation, entitled Adoption and Utilization of Urban Technology: A Decision-Making Process (1976). In this study, twenty case histories of urban innovation in Syracuse and Rochester, New York, provided an in-depth data base on decision-making with respect to new technology in the local public sector. The findings in these twenty cases are cited, together with an analysis of the factors that lead to success or failure. The role of urban entrepreneurship and coalition-building and its vital impact on the introduction of new technology is also examined. Some previous misconceptions regarding innovation in urban government are revealed in the conclusions. Also, the skills of key actors, especially bureaucratic entrepreneurs, that are necessary for succesful local innovation are depicted.

Policymaking for emerging technology: the case of earthquake prediction

How does a nation formulate policy for a technology not yet quite “ready” but which may nevertheless have to be used? Earthquake prediction illustrates some of the policy issues relevant to this question. Earthquake prediction is a technology that is still in the research and development (R & D) stage. Yet predictions have been made and can be expected in the future. The question for policymakers is, are the predictions “ready enough” to use - do the risks of doing nothing in response to a scientific prediction exceed those of a false alarm? As earthquake prediction represents an emerging technology, it calls for a developing policy framework. What is the nature of “present” developing policy? How did this policy come to be? How adequate is it? What needs to be done? This article attempts to answer such questions, dealing primarily with U.S. policy, but also drawing on the experience of other nations, particularly Japan.

Science, technology, and public administration: the government-university nexus

The relations between governments and universities, particularly with respect to science and technology, is traced from the agricultural period and the land-grant era to the research and development era involving particularly the fields of medicine and defense, to the modern era which is lacking a coherent national policy. Among the institutional relations that are critical to science, technology, and public administration, those involving government-university linkages stand out. In the past, there have been two major eras of government/university relations: the land-grant era and the federal mission agency era. More recently, a third era has emerged—what we call the new federalist era. The first period featured a decentralized institutional model focused on a single economic sector: agriculture. The second was characterized by a more centralized federally dominated approach. This third era is still evolving. Its primary ingredients include university ties with many segments of industry. And government i...

NASA, Industry, and the Commercial Crew Development Program: The Politics of Partnership

On May 22, 2012, a Falcon 9 rocket owned by an upstart new aerospace company, named SpaceX, blasted off from Cape Canaveral. It carried an unmanned spacecraft known as Dragon. This event marked the successful launch of the world’s first privately developed space-cargo delivery vehicle. Thus began a new chapter in history, nurtured by NASA’s public/private Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. This chapter traces the policy evolution of COTS and its successor, the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. With the expected retirement of the space shuttle (initially 2010, later 2011), NASA had to find a way to get cargo and crew to the International Space Station. Going the “private” route eventually became the chosen strategy. The COTS and CCDev programs illuminate not only public/private relations, but also the politics of innovation in public policy. (W. Henry Lambright)

Preparing Public Managers for the Technological Issues of the 1980s

Public managers at all levels of government will be faced increasingly with the tasks of identifying, assessing, introducing, institutionalizing, and possibly arresting technology-based innovations during the 1980s. Consequently, the public administration community should focus on new ways of dealing with the requirements such innovations will bring. On the academic front, new curricula should be prepared and courses should be developed to better reflect the scientific and technological changes forthcoming. On the practical level of public administration, government officials must try to better anticipate the technological problems and opportunities pending. How the various institutions within the public administration community should accomplish this task will no doubt differ. Nevertheless, there would seem to be a general obligation on the part of us all to identify a coherent and coordinated approach for coping with the technological issues of the 1980s.