Search results for ""Author Karen Mossberger""
Georgetown University Press The Politics of Ideas and the Spread of Enterprise Zones
This book explores how policy ideas are spread - or diffused - in an age in which policymaking has become increasingly complex and specialized. Using the concept of enterprise zones as a case study in policy diffusion, Karen Mossberger compares the process of their adoption in Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts over a twelve-year period. Enterprise zones were first proposed by the Reagan administration as a supply-side effort to reenergize inner cities, and they were eventually embraced by liberals and conservatives alike. They are a compelling example of a policy idea that spread and evolved rapidly. Mossberger describes the information networks and decision-making processes in the five states, assessing whether enterprise zones spread opportunistically, as a mere fad, or whether well-informed deliberation preceded their adoption.
£48.00
Oxford University Press Inc Transforming Everything?: Evaluating Broadband's Impacts Across Policy Areas
Broadband, or high-speed internet, has been called the most important infrastructure challenge of the century. It has the potential to connect remote communities, streamline health care services, and support innovation across education, economics, and numerous other fields. Given the growing and widespread investments in broadband, how can citizens and policymakers determine whether the promise of broadband is being fulfilled? Transforming Everything? offers a comprehensive guide to the complexities and possibilities of broadband as a social technology. It addresses challenges for evaluating broadband initiatives across diverse contexts and proposes guidance and methods for evaluation for policymakers and researchers. Contributors draw on pioneering research in program evaluation and information technology to explore broadband applications in health, education, and civic engagement. They also address key measurement and evaluation challenges in the field today, including issues in privacy and security and inadequate research methods for target populations. Collectively, the chapters in this volume raise important questions for improving research and evaluation in broadband use and producing actionable evidence in a highly dynamic environment. Transforming Everything? prepares readers with a critical understanding of broadband technology and the necessary evidence to assess whether broadband programs and policy are truly empowering the communities they serve.
£34.94
Georgetown University Press Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide
That there is a "digital divide" - which falls between those who have and can afford the latest in technological tools and those who have neither in our society - is indisputable. "Virtual Inequality" redefines the issue as it explores the cascades of that divide, which involve access, skill, political participation, as well as the obvious economics. Computer and Internet access are insufficient without the skill to use the technology, and economic opportunity and political participation provide primary justification for realizing that this inequality is a public problem and not simply a matter of private misfortune. Defying those who say the divide is growing smaller, this volume, based on a unique national survey that includes data from over 1800 respondents in low-income communities, shows otherwise. In addition to demonstrating why disparities persist in such areas as technological abilities, the survey also shows that the digitally disadvantaged often share many of the same beliefs as their more privileged counterparts. African-Americans, for instance, are even more positive in their attitudes toward technology than whites are in many respects, contrary to conventional wisdom. The rigorous research on which the conclusions are based is presented accessibly and in an easy-to-follow manner. Not content with analysis alone, nor the untangling of the complexities of policymaking, Virtual Inequality views the digital divide compassionately in its human dimensions and recommends a set of practical and common-sense policy strategies. Inequality, even in a virtual form this book reminds us, is unacceptable and a situation that society is compelled to address.
£48.00
