Browsing by Author "Curley, Cali"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Capturing Structural and Functional Diversity Through Institutional Analysis: The Mayor Position in City Charters
    (Springer, 2014-11) Feiock, Richard C.; Weible, Christopher M.; Carter, David P.; Curley, Cali; Deslatte, Aaron; Heikkila, Tanya; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    City charters affect the governance of municipal systems in complex ways. Current descriptions and typologies developed to study city charter structures simplify the diverse types and configurations of institutional rules underlying charter designs. This research note demonstrates a more detailed approach for studying the design of city charters using analytical methods based on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework. This approach is illustrated with a pilot study of institutional rules in municipal charters that define the roles and duties of mayors. The findings reveal that city charters exhibit great institutional diversity, particularly within strong mayor cities. We conclude with a research agenda that could generate a more precise and rigorous understanding of the relationship between the different configurations of institutions of city charters and the politics, governance, and performance of municipalities.
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    Comparing Motivations for Including Enforcement in US COVID-19 State Executive Orders
    (Taylor & Francis, 2021-04-21) Curley, Cali; Harrison, Nicky; Federman, Peter Stanley
    The United States’ response to COVID-19 has been predominantly led by state governments. To understand if, why, and how state governments include enforcement language in their executive order response, this article conducts an analysis based on 1,357 coded executive orders. It is found that decisions to include enforcement language are influenced by a governor’s political circumstances and perceived risks associated with the crisis. This paper offers insight into how these findings are important for future research and an explanation of the distinct ways that US state governments are choosing to address COVID-19.
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    Competition and Collaboration in the Nonprofit Sector: Identifying the Potential for Cognitive Dissonance
    (2021) Curley, Cali; Levine Daniel, Jamie; Walk, Marlene; Harrison, Nicky
    Nonprofits compete with collaborators and collaborate with competitors regularly. Collaboration, a long-standing normatively preferred strategy for nonprofits, is utilized as modus operandi without thought to the potential unintended consequences. While competition, long deemed a dirty, word for nonprofits is a necessary but undesirable reality, avoided without consideration to the potential benefits. Nonprofits leaders may not be willing to explicitly acknowledge the use of competition as an operational strategy, which makes room for cognitive dissonance to impact the study of nonprofits. This piece identifies impacts of cognitive dissonance offering direction for future research exploring the interactive nature of competing with collaborators.
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    Competition is on the rise: to what extent does traditional fundraising performance research apply in competitive environments?
    (2022-01-14) Walk, Marlene; Curley, Cali; Levine Daniel, Jamie
    Research on fundraising performance links organizational size, professional donor engagement, and legitimacy with fundraising outcomes. But can we assume the same factors will positively impact fundraising performance in light of increasing competition among nonprofits? This study explores whether and how traditional factors known to impact fundraising performance perform in the context of online fundraising tournaments, an environment that is explicitly competitive as those who lose drop out. Our analysis draws on data from 596 US nonprofits that participated in such tournaments. This inquiry addresses increasing competitive pressures placed on nonprofits as they likely cannot avoid competition in the future.
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    Dealing with Missing Data: A Comparative Exploration of Approaches Using the Integrated City Sustainability Database
    (Sage, 2017) Curley, Cali; Krause, Rachel M.; Feiock, Richard; Hawkins, Christopher V.; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Studies of governments and local organizations using survey data have played a critical role in the development of urban studies and related disciplines. However, missing data pose a daunting challenge for this research. This article seeks to raise awareness about the treatment of missing data in urban studies research by comparing and evaluating three commonly used approaches to deal with missing data—listwise deletion, single imputation, and multiple imputation. Comparative analyses illustrate the relative performance of these approaches using the second-generation Integrated City Sustainability Database (ICSD). The results demonstrate the benefit of using an approach to missing data based on multiple imputation, using a theoretically informed and statistically supported set of predictor variables to develop a more complete sample that is free of issues raised by nonresponse in survey data. The results confirm the usefulness of the ICSD in the study of environmental and sustainability and other policy in U.S. cities. We conclude with a discussion of results and provide a set of recommendations for urban researcher scholars.
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    Expanding the political market framework to explain executive decision-making during the COVID-19 crisis
    (ASPA, 2023-09) Curley, Cali; Federman, Peter Stanley; Shen, Ruowen; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    The traditional political market framework (PMF) argues that elected officials respond to policy demands by adopting policy that furthers their goal of reelection. However, an emerging crisis can make this approach to decision-making challenging as the immediacy of response, the needs of the public, and technical expertise may conflict with reelection goals. This conflict can encourage elected officials to engage in blame avoidance by delegating policy-making powers to the bureaucracy. Utilizing a mixed methods approach to analyze state-level governor responses to COVID-19, this paper expands the PMF by capturing the influence of bureaucratic demands on elected official decisions to delegate or transfer power to the bureaucracy. We find evidence that bureaucratic expertise, under the right set of circumstances, influences policymaker decisions to delegate policymaking power. Lastly, we advocate for a renewed focus on democratic principles and the consequences of delegation for transparency, accountability, and social equity. In understanding the specific dynamics at play when bureaucrats and executives work to develop policy in crisis, practitioners may gain a better understanding of how to navigate difficult decisions. The specific executive orders across states are not particularly well-known, and providing evidence of the steps other states took to combat the crisis may prove useful to practitioners in the emergency management space. If practitioners have a more complete understanding of why policy is made and by what mechanisms, they may apply a focus on implementation strategies that are effective and relevant.
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    Exploring Intra-State Tensions in Government Responses to COVID-19
    (Oxford Academic, 2022-05-13) Federman, Peter; Curley, Cali
    Research and attention to federalism has vastly increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While political polarization has largely been used as a scapegoat to explain the U.S. policy response to the pandemic, federalism has also been credited and blamed for the policy response and has played an important role in providing avenues for conflict. This article explores intra-state conflict stemming from COVID-19. We utilize ten exploratory cases to identify three distinct but interrelated patterns of conflict that emerged within U.S. states, focusing on tensions between the executive and legislative branches, between bureaucratic officials and the legislature, and between state and local governments. We then examine a series of questions regarding the implication of these conflicts, focusing on the issuance of executive orders, the responses undertaken by officials who disagreed with and sought to push back against these orders, and the ways that inter-branch and inter-governmental disagreements about these orders were resolved.
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    State Executive Orders: Nuance in restrictions, revealing suspensions, and decisions to enforce
    (Wiley, 2020-05-30) Curley, Cali; Federman, Peter; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    In the absence of a large-scale federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local elected officials have enacted executive orders that include both restrictions to public liberties as well as the suspension of rules and regulations. While these restrictive policy actions have received extensive media attention, the suspensions, including regulatory rollbacks, waivers, and extensions are lesser known. This viewpoint offers insight from a working database that captures the nuance and variation across restrictions, suspensions, and enforcement mechanisms being utilized, at the state level.