College of Liberal Arts
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Browsing College of Liberal Arts by Type "Paper"
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Item Ambidextrous Civil Military Relations: Integrating the Two Hands of Peace(2016-01-27) Shields, Patricia M.In January of 2016, Patricia M. Shields, the editor of Armed Forces & Society, addressed the Association of Civil Military Studies of Israel at their bi-annual conference at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee. The following is the text of her speech. The speech has been slightly modified to incorporate references.Item Applying Pragmatism to Public Budgeting and Financial Management(2008-10-25) Bartle, John R.; Shields, Patricia M.Pragmatism is a philosophy that emphasizes learning through action and building a knowledge base from experience and reflection. It is a potentially compelling approach for public budgeting and financial management. The largely normative theories of public finance, public financial management and public budgeting are examined and critiqued. We do not seek to abandon these valuable contributions to practice, however they often fail to describe and explain the practices of the field. In some cases, the norms prescribed may not be shared by government officials and citizens, and thus the management or policy prescription become unhelpful. We believe theory should guide practice, but theory must also be informed by practice. We seek to establish a better basis to understand the structure and evolution of government budgeting and finance, and to help practitioners face difficult situations that call for workable solutions. The classical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Jane Addams is presented and applied to the theories of public finance, budgeting and financial management. Pragmatism focuses on inquiry and the problematic situation. Theories are viewed as tools to resolve the problematic situation. And, just as there are often many tools used to approach a problematic situation, there are many theories that, like tools or maps, are judged by their usefulness. This orientation makes sense for financial management because like all managers, they are focused on solutions to problems and cannot be wedded to academic theories to guide their action when the elected officials and citizens they serve need a solution.Item Arctic Change and Possible Influence on Mid-Latitude Climate and Weather: A US CLIVAR White Paper(2018-03) Cohen, Judah; Zhang, Xiangdong; Francis, Jennifer; Jung, Thomas; Kwok, Ronald; Overland, James E.; Taylor, Patrick; Lee, Sukyoung; Coumou, Dim; Handorf, Doerthe; Semmler, Tido; Vihma, Timo; Smith, Doug; Ballinger, Thomas J.The Arctic has warmed more than twice as fast as the global average since the mid 20th century, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification (AA). These profound changes to the Arctic system have coincided with a period of ostensibly more frequent events of extreme weather across the Northern Hemisphere (NH) mid-latitudes, including extreme heat and rainfall events and recent severe winters. Though winter temperatures have generally warmed since 1960 over mid-to-high latitudes, the acceleration in the rate of warming at high-latitudes, relative to the rest of the NH, started approximately in 1990. Trends since 1990 show cooling over the NH continents, especially in Northern Eurasia. The possible link between Arctic change and mid-latitude climate and weather has spurred a rush of new observational and modeling studies. A number of workshops held during 2013-2014 have helped frame the problem and have called for continuing and enhancing efforts for improving our understanding of Arctic-mid-latitude linkages and its attribution to the occurrence of extreme climate and weather events. Although these workshops have outlined some of the major challenges and provided broad recommendations, further efforts are needed to synthesize the diversified research results to identify where community consensus and gaps exist. Building upon findings and recommendations of the previous workshops, the US CLIVAR Working Group on Arctic Change and Possible Influence on Mid-latitude Climate and Weather convened an international workshop at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on February 1-3, 2017. Experts in the fields of atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere sciences assembled to assess the rapidly evolving state of understanding, identify consensus on knowledge and gaps in research, and develop specific actions to accelerate progress within the research community. With more than 100 participants, the workshop was the largest and most comprehensive gathering of climate scientists to address the topic to date. In this white paper, we synthesize and discuss outcomes from this workshop and activities involving many of the working group members.Item Assessment and the Self-Study: The Roles of External Constituencies in Mission-Based Accreditation(2002-10) Shields, Patricia M.This document was prepared by Patricia M. Shields (MPA Director, Southwest Texas State University) for use as a handout at her October 2002 Accreditation Institution session at the NASPAA annual conference. The paper is intended to provide insight and suggestions for conducting employer assessments as part of the self study process. It is based on her personal experience and is not issued or endorsed by COPRA. COPRA's "Self Study Instructions" provide the specific instructions and directions for including employer (and other external constituency) assessments in the self study.Item Attitudes Toward Sunset Review in Texas(1990-03-29) Curry, Landon; Shields, Patricia M.No abstract prepared.Item Cutting Back by Charging More: What Public Administrators Should Know About the Demand for their Products(1984-04-08) Shields, Patricia M.This paper applies the economics "Law of Demand" to the problems of local government decision making. As the title implies, fees can be tools to help local government administrators allocate resources more efficiently. Elementary economic concepts like elasticity, and non-price determinants of demand are applied to local government goods and services. These ideas should help local public administrators analyze and predict their service delivery patterns from an economic point of view. The paper ends with 9 implications for local government user fee policy. Equity issues are developed in detail.Item Enhancing the Quality of Student Papers(2001-10-21) Shields, Patricia M.This paper describes a new method for writing formal research papers. The organizing tool has been applied successfully for 15 years. The technique marks success in publications, award-winning student papers, graduate rates, and dollars. This method is particularly well suited for graduate students doing capstone projects or writing papers of 20 or more pages. Papers of this scale test a student's memory and organizational skills.Item “Es lässt sich nicht lesen”: Poe and the Inscrutable(American Literature Association, 2008-01) Tally, Robert T., Jr.Poe begins and ends his enigmatic study of the man of the crowd with the phrase, applied to a German book, “it does not permit itself to be read.” The same observation might apply to much of Poe’s own work, in which inscrutability becomes the very mode of reading. Poe’s work actively defies interpretation, at times subtly and at others overtly undermining the reader’s assumptions that the story’s meaning will reveal itself. Poe’s texts frustrate the desire for comprehension. In his first tale, “MS. Found in a Bottle,” the unnamed narrator’s thrill of “discovery” descends into the unknown and unknowable. In tales of terror, Poe deliberately puzzles his readers, leading them to imagine a stable meaning that then will not hold. The horror of Poe’s tales lies not in a particular fright, but in a general mood of uncertainty. Again and again, Poe presents the arcane, exotic, otherworldly, unique, but he refuses to play the anthropologist, explicating the unknown and bringing it into a safe and familiar intellectual archive. Rather than offer a puzzle where one finds pleasure in figuring it out, Poe insists on the insoluble puzzling. The tales’ inscrutability is at the very heart of the reading. We, like Poe’s narrator in “The Man of the Crowd,” can marvel at the enigma before us, but we cannot understand. It may be that this is for the best; as that narrator notes, “perhaps it is one of the great mercies of God that es lässt sich nicht lesen.”Item Evaluating Association Membership at the Local Level: Central Texas Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration(2009-03-19) Casillas, Cassandra; Shields, Patricia M.This paper explores the problem of meeting professional association member needs at the local level. Three functions of local affiliates of national professional associations are identified (networking, access to information, professional skills development). Then, the Central Texas Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration is evaluated in light of these functions. Chapter members were surveyed.Item Extending the Legacy of Morris Janowitz: Pragmatism, International Relations and Peacekeeping [Paper](2013-05-29) Soeters, Joseph; Shields, Patricia M.In the Professional Soldier, Morris Janowitz articulated a conception of international relations clearly grounded in the pragmatism of John Dewey. He developed his conception of pragmatism as a way to analyze officer behavior and the response of military institutions to the uncertainties of a nuclear age. He concluded by introducing the notion of a constabulary force, which was "grounded" in the "pragmatic doctrine." We hope to contribute to contemporary literature on pragmatism and the military studies by reviving and extending Janowitz's contribution. In addition, we extend Janowitz's early pragmatist thought to contemporary peace support operations by incorporating recent advances from pragmatists such as Jane Addams and David Brendel. Finally, the case of the peacekeeping mission in the Congo is used to illustrate how pragmatism provides a useful framework for analysis as well as a practical approach for improving peace support operations.Item Getting Organized: A Pragmatic Tool for Writing Papers(1998-04-19) Shields, Patricia M.This paper describes a method for writing formal research papers. The technique, known as the "Notebook Method" has been applied successfully by graduate students, faculty and students in continuing education programs. The Notebook Method's success is measured in publications, award winning student papers, graduation rates and dollars. For example, after The Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas, Graduate Management Institute, Sam Houston State University began applying this technique their paper completion rate went from 32 in 1995 to 88 in 1996. Before implementation of the Notebook Method, the institute spent approximately $250,000 a year on the research component of their program. After instituting this method, the cost dropped to about $45,000 per year. One key to the notebook's success is its focus on organization. The technique is also powerful because it is grounded in "Pragmatism" as a philosophy of inquiry. Much of this paper is devoted to developing the link to pragmatism.Item Hiding in Plain Sight: Positive Peace – A Missing, Critical Immeasurable in PA Theory(2016-05-22) Rissler, Grant; Shields, Patricia M.This paper explores the notion of positive peace as applied to many aspects of public administration. The easily measured concept of “negative peace” or the absence of war dominates research in the study of peace. Positive peace, which incorporates a vision of society where justice flourishes, diversity is encouraged and conflict is transformed is a richer, yet more difficult to measure concept. In support of this argument, we begin by exploring “what is positive peace?" After exploring the concept of positive peace, we examine where we find the concept hidden in existing Public Administration theory: in the writings of Jane Addams, traditional PA rubrics like POSDCORB, and in Harmon and McSwite's proposed ethic of relationship. Third, we explore how the concepts and skills of peacebuilding could help along the public administration frontiers of social equity (Frederickson, 2005; Gooden, 2014) and complex collaboration (O'Leary et al., 2010). Finally, we briefly review several ways that public administration concepts and skills could help peacebuilding as a field.Item It is a Working Hypothesis: Searching for Truth in a Post-Truth World(2019-05) Shields, Patricia M.; Rangarajan, Nandhini; Casula, MattiaPublic administration research methodology should be flexible and comprehensive enough to include many methodologies and approaches to inquiry. In this paper we show how certain kinds of qualitative and mixed method studies often lack of a clear theoretical structure and as a result are poorly aligned across the stages of the research process. This paper introduces Working Hypotheses as a useful micro-conceptual framework with the capacity to address the alignment issue. It is particularly applicable to deductive case studies, which use qualitative or mixed methods. We show how positivism, postmodern and pragmatist philosophies shape quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research. We also examine how types of reasoning (inductive, deductive and abductive) underlie approaches to research. The working hypothesis conceptual framework is introduced, placed in a philosophical context, defined, and applied to public administration and policy.Item Law as Acts of Citizens(2002-01) Luizzi, Vincent L.This paper shifts the focus of traditional conceptions of law from norms to norm-guided conduct of citizens and explores the viability of re-thinking law in this fashion. The project may be seen as an extension of the approach of the American Legal Realists who conceived law's essence as the activity of judges.Item Literary Cartography: Space, Representation, and Narrative(2008-05) Tally, Robert T., Jr.No abstract prepared.Item Looking Back: How Jane Addams Challenged the Frontiers of Public Administration, Sociology, Social Work, Peace Studies and Philosophy - and why it matters today(2017-06) Shields, Patricia M.This paper examines Jane Addams pioneering contributions to five fields. The late 19th and early 20th Century was a time when many academic and professional fields were becoming self-aware. Chicago transitioned from a physical frontier town to an intellectual frontier. Jane Addams, founder of Hull House and daughter of Chicago was a pioneer helping to build these fields. Public Administration has clear connections to social work, philosophy and sociology not so with Peace Studies. Yet public administration should be fully engaged in building the fabric of a peace-full society. Addams transforming notion of positive peace and her application of these Newer Ideals of Peace to local governance is a 21st Century PA frontier. This paper examines Addams pioneering role in philosophy, social work, sociology, peace studies and public administration. In addition, it explores the frontier of positive peace as a place of transition and transformation for public administration.Item MCA and Logit: A Comparison(1981-03-05) Shields, Patricia M.In this paper a technique is developed which shows how both logit and MCA can be adapted for comparison purposes. The technique is developed for the special case of dichotomous dependent variables. The method was empirically tested and the data reveal that the logit probabilities, with few exceptions, were consistent with those generated by the MCA technique. The author advocates the use of this technique to confirm the MCA coefficients. Furthermore, when MCA and logit yield consistent results MCA coefficients should be used for presentation and discussion purposes.Item Military Privatization: The Normative/Affective Context(1990-03) Shields, Patricia M.What does it mean to be ready for war? Readiness is more than superior weapons. It is also a cultural milieu that supports warrior values and norms. Privatization policies are implemented within the organizational culture of the warrior. This paper deals with the impact of privatization policies on the culture of an institution.Item Peace in the Neighborhood: A Challenge to Policing - Defining Peace(2018-03) Gonzalez, David; Shields, Patricia M.The policing literature has not critically examined a core concept – peace. This paper is an initial step to address this omission. We borrow from recent scholarship in security studies, which is currently re-evaluating its working concept of peace. Negative peace or the absence of war (or violence) dominates military studies and policing. This concept focuses on the short run and fails to take into account the relational nature of peace. We argue that the limits of negative peace can be addressed with a robust notion of positive peace (which focuses on relationships, social justice, and emphasizes the long run). We introduce the notion of organiational ambidexterity, a concept borrowed from business and military studies, to explore how policing can incorporate notions of positive and negative peace into its discourse and practice.Item Pragmatism and Public Administration Theory: On Christopher Ansell's Pragmatist Democracy(2018-06) Shields, Patricia M.This paper is part of a panel discussion of Christopher Ansell’s 2011 book Pragmatist Democracy at the Public Administration Theory Network annual conference. It presents Pat Shields’s reflections on the book, a short history (why she was attracted to pragmatism in the first place), some tidbits on the founders of pragmatism and the significance of Ansell’s Pragmatist Democracy for contemporary PA theory and practice.