O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Works
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Size Matters: Towards a Contingency Theory of Diversity Effects on Performance(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Park, SangheeThis study examines the diversity-performance link by focusing on two types of diversity—gender and functional—in the context of governing boards of 24 quasi-government agencies in Korea over 16 years (2000-2015). Although public management scholarship contains evidence regarding the importance of diversity in public organizations, there is little consensus on what constitutes diversity and how it affects public sector performance. This study expands the scope of dialogues by highlighting multi-dimensional characteristics of diversity and the contingent nature of diversity effects. Multiplicative interaction models confirm that there are distinctive effects of different types of diversity on performance, and the relationship is moderated by the size of the group to which minorities belong. While the effect of board gender diversity is limited in our data, the effect of having a female chief executive is positively significant with decreasing marginal effect as the number of board members increases. On the other hand, the relationship of functional diversity in the boardroom to agency performance is negative, while the negative marginal effect decreases and becomes positive when board size rises above a critical number.Item Quota Effects Moderated by Descriptive Gender Representation within Legislatures: A Cross-National Analysis(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Park, SangheeThis study revisits the links between gender quotas and gender egalitarian outcomes by focusing on the role of gender representative legislatures. Specifically, it investigates whether gender quotas have a substantive and symbolic effect on societal outcomes, and whether the link is moderated by women’s descriptive representation changing over time. This study sheds empirical light on both outputs (or process) and outcomes (or impact) of a quota policy and offers insights into pathways by which increased women’s representation within legislatures reinforces or weakens the effect of the quota policies. The panel data analysis drawn from 169 countries over the recent three decades (1990-2017) reveals a significant interactive effect of quotas and women’s representation in legislatures, suggesting that quotas’ societal impact increases as women’s representation increases, but with diminishing returns to a certain point. The findings corroborate the 30% level to which gender quotas as a policy tool significantly impact women’s political empowerment and raise questions on the validity of the critical mass argument in the political setting.Item A Comparative Study on Gender Representation and Social Outcomes: The Effect of Political and Bureaucratic Representation(Wiley, 2021) Park, Sanghee; Liang, JiaqiThis study examines whether gender representation of government leadership in both legislative and executive branches improves social equity related to women’s social outcomes, and how this effect is moderated by the status of democracy. With a panel dataset on 135 OECD and non-OECD countries from 2005 to 2015, the analysis shows that in non-OECD countries, political gender representation has a significant, positive impact on female educational attainment and the overall gender equality, while bureaucratic gender representation is significant for educational attainment only. For OECD countries, political representation has a consistent effect on educational attainment, labor force participation, and the overall gender equality, but there is no evidence of bureaucratic representation. Democratization plays a more critical role in shaping the relationship between institutional representation and women’s social outcomes in non-OECD countries than their OECD counterparts, where gender equality is more attributable to broader social, economic, and cultural factors.Item Critical Issues in Quasi-government Agencies in Korea(Routledge, 2020) Park, SangheSanghee Park addresses the politics and governance of public sector organizations including state-owned enterprises and quasi-government agencies in terms of organizational changes, personnel management, performance, and financial management. After presenting a broad overview of public-sector organizations in Korea, Park explores structural changes and continuities focused on the political costs of termination, the politics of political appointment of different types of executives, and the impact of politicization of boards on organizational performance. Finally, Park discusses public sector debt as an outcome of the financial vicious circle created by the soft budget constraint.Item Seeking changes in ivory towers: The impact of gender quotas on female academics in higher education(Elsevier, 2020) Park, SangheeThis study examines whether and how gender quotas achieve their primary objective to increase female representation in university faculty positions. Using a longitudinal dataset from South Korea (2001–2017), this study highlights vertical and horizontal segregation in academia and the differential impact of quotas on faculty composition across academic ranks and disciplines. The data shows that gender quotas have a positive effect on female faculty representation at all levels of tenured and tenure-track professorship but not for leadership and higher administrative positions such as Dean, Provost, and President. The findings suggest that uniformly implemented gender quotas focusing on entry-level faculty may not be sufficient to improve gender inequality in higher levels of the academic hierarchy. The mixed evidence as to whether gender quotas are effective at closing the gap across and within academic disciplines implies that the effect of these quotas can be limited and slow-acting in the areas where women are severely underrepresented.Item The Politics of Redistribution in the Local Governments: The Effect of Gender Representation on Welfare Spending in California Counties(Cambridge University Press, 2014) Park, SangheeThis research explores the impact of gender representation at the state and local levels on redistributive choices. This research also examines whether female officeholders moderate the impact of the local economy and institution on welfare spending. Hypotheses are tested across 58 counties in California over ten years, between 2001 and 2010. According to the fixed effect models, women in state legislature had a positive effect on local welfare spending, while women on county boards had no significant effect. However, a positive moderating effect of women on county boards during economic hardship was found. Three categories of control variables include institutional factors, such as the introduction of Proposition 1A and county home rule; political factors, such as the political preference of each county’s residents and strength of non-profit organisations; and socio-economic factors, such as intergovernmental revenue, unemployment rate and demographics. Counties with more intergovernmental revenue and supporters of Democratic presidential candidates are likely to spend more on welfare services.Item Correlates of suicide risk among Black and White adults with behavioral health disorders in criminal-legal systems(Springer Nature, 2022-03-04) Lawson, Spencer G.; Lowder, Evan M.; Ray, Bradley; School of Public and Environmental AffairsBackground: Adults with behavioral health disorders in criminal-legal systems are at heightened risk of suicide relative to the general population. Despite documented racial disparities in criminal processing and behavioral health treatment, few studies have examined racial differences in suicide risk in this already high-risk population. This study examined 1) the correlates of suicide risk in this population overall and by race and 2) the moderating role of race in these associations. Methods: We investigated correlates of clinician-rated suicide risk at baseline in a statewide sample of 2,827 Black and 14,022 White adults with criminal-legal involvement who engaged in community-based behavioral health treatment. Regression-based approaches were used to model suicide risk and test for evidence of interaction effects. Results: Findings showed the strongest correlates of suicide risk were greater behavioral health needs, evidence of self-harm, and a primary mental health diagnosis or co-occurring diagnosis. In race-specific analyses, correlates of suicide risk were mostly similar for both Black and White clients, with a couple exceptions. Interaction terms testing between-group effects on correlates of suicide risk were non-significant. Conclusions: Adults with behavioral health disorders in criminal-legal systems experience similar risk factors for suicide as the general population. Similar to prior research, we found that Black adults, in particular, are at lower risk for suicide overall. Contrary to expectations, we found similarities in correlates of suicide risk across race in our sample of felony-level adults with behavioral health disorders in the criminal-legal system. Prior research shows that behavioral health professionals should be cognizant of cultural factors when developing a comprehensive approach to suicide care and treatment. Our findings show correlates of suicide risk are largely stable in Black and White adults involved in criminal-legal systems, suggesting culturally responsive treatment for suicide risk should target shared risk factors.Item Vehicle electrification and fuel economy policies: Impacts on agricultural land-use in the United States(Elsevier, 2024-06) Dumortier, Jerome; School of Public and Environmental AffairsIn the United States (U.S.), decarbonization of the transportation sector has important implications for agriculture because approximately one-third of maize production is used for ethanol. For six major U.S. crops, the effects on commodity prices, county-level land allocation, and farm net returns of an increased battery electric vehicles (BEV) market share (including a phaseout of gasoline vehicles by 2035 in a subset of states) and higher fuel efficiency standards for light-duty vehicles (LDV) are quantified. Scenarios are centered around different energy prices, economic growth trajectories, and ethanol blending limits. The results show a decline of maize prices by up to 17.3% if a BEV sales market share in the LDV sector of 100% is achieved in 2050. For the same electrification scenario, total cropland declines by 1.2%–2.2% (depending on the macroeconomic environment) compared to the baseline. There are important farm welfare implications due to spatial differences in land productivity and crops harvested. The potential long-term decline in maize ethanol use is mostly triggered by vehicle electrification and less by fuel efficiency standards. Although bioenergy plays an important role in achieving future energy and climate goals, the role of maize as a liquid fuel is potentially limited.Item Politics or Bureaucratic Failures? Understanding the Dynamics of Policy Failures in Democratic Governance(Wiley, 2021) Park, SangheeThis study seeks to advance our understanding of policy failures as the nexus of politics and bureaucratic failure. In doing so, it presents a typology to illustrate different types of policy failures by the degree of bureaucratic capacities and politics/political incentives involved in a policy problem, and explores two cases of such failures in South Korea. This study claims that policy failures are joint products of political and bureaucratic failures to varying degrees and that the discussion of both sides helps to enhance accountability and avoid political blame games and bureau-bashing. This study reflects on two Korean cases to demonstrate politically-driven and administratively-driven failures in the high- and low-capacity bureaucracy and their consequences. These cases also reveal the dynamic nature of policy failures moving from one category to another during the policy processes. The first case concerns the failure in emergency response of the Korea Coast Guard (KCG) during and after the sinking of the ferry MV Sewol. A low bureaucratic capacity and lack of motivation to fulfill their function may be the direct cause of the failure, which will be the focus of the discussion of bureaucratic failure. Yet, it also reveals aspects of political failures before and after the accident, where politicians have failed to provide a bureaucratic agency with autonomy and stacked the deck against a less salient agency for political or electoral gains. The second case discusses the politics of preliminary feasibility studies (PFS) required for major public projects. This case explores policy failures uniquely manifested in a highly capable bureaucracy, which shows how politics-laden issues plant the seeds of policy failures driven by the prompt implementation of flawed decisions. The discussion section further discusses key arguments and implications drawn from the case studies. The final section offers concluding thoughts and avenues for future research.Item When Push Comes to Shove: The Effect of Economic Crisis on the Spending of Government Savings(Taylor & Francis, 2022) Kim, Cheong; Park, SangheeThis study explores whether and how an economic crisis affects the spending of government savings by focusing on its political-economic benefit. Despite a great deal of discussion about the government’s tendency toward more spending, relatively few studies have attempted to identify the conditions that can reverse the tendency. Using data from 254 California cities during 1996–2009, this study finds a regular U-shape relationship between unemployment rates and government savings. Savings decrease until the unemployment rate reaches almost double digits (9.9%) and begin to recover after this point. The results suggest that an economic crisis curbs the spending tendency by modifying the incentives of legislators. This study contributes to public administration research by explaining local government savings and its delayed responses to a crisis from a political-economic perspective.