Research Opportunities
During 2003-2003, CIPA fellows worked on research projects with a variety of Cornell professors. Here are descriptions of three such research endeavors:
Robert H. Frank, H.J. Louis Professor of Management and the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy
Theodore J. Lowi, John L. Senior Professor of American Insitutions
Kathryn March, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Robert Frank is the H.J.Louis Professor of Management at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in the College of Arts and Sciences. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal from 1965 to 1968, chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board for 1978 to 1980, and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1992-1993. Professor Frank’s books include Choosing the Right Pond, Passions Within Reason, Miocroeconomics and Behavior, and Luxury Fever. The Winner-Take-All Society, co-authored with Philip Cook, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was included in Business Week’s list of the ten best books for 1995.
Invited to participate in CIPA’s Distinguished Faculty Program, Professor Frank met CIPA fellow Bjornulf Ostvik-White (M.P.A. '03), who was interested in working with him on a project to measure how growing income and wealth at the top of the economic ladder affect spending patterns among the middle class.
According to Professor Frank, "The general idea is that as the rich earn and spend more, they change the frame of reference that determines what the near-rich feel they need, causing them to spend more, too, and so on in a cascade that may reach even those with the lowest incomes.
"The part of the project Bjornulf took on was to investigate whether increased spending levels among the middle class and the resulting increases in financial distress might have led middle income voters to become more reluctant to fund basic public services. He found an exciting new data set in which the Census Bureau made its usual income and other economic data, which are usually available only at the state level, also available for a large sample of school districts. Using these data, he
found that local voters had indeed retrenched significantly more in high-inequality districts (as measured by the decline in the share of the district budget financed by local taxes).
As an outgrowth of the same study, he also strikingly confirmed the most important hypothesis from my original study--namely, that the price of the median house is dramatically higher in high-inequality cities than in low-inequality cities, even after controlling for differences in average incomes."
The research interests of Professor Lowi, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, span political theory, public policy analysis, and American political institutions. He has written or edited a dozen books, among them The Pursuit of Justice (with Robert F. Kennedy, 1964), The End of Liberalism, and is co-author of one of the leading American government texts, American Government-Freedom and Power. His book The Personal President-Power Invested, Promise Unfulfilled won the 1986 Neustadt prize for the best book published on the presidency. His most recent books are The End of the Republican Era, and, as co-author, We the People. Professor Lowi has served as president of the Policy Studies Organization, president of the American Political Science Association, and, most recently, as president of the International Political Science Association.
CIPA fellow Tom O’Toole (M.P.A.'03) gained dual benefits from Professor Lowi’s course, Politics, the Economy, and Public Policy. It provided opportunity for the research that has formed the backbone of his Master’s thesis; a subsequent teaching assistantship in that course helped put him through his M.P.A. program.
"My work explores issues surrounding Cyberspace surveillance and the First Amendment. Specifically, I am interested in how public law and law enforcement have reacted to the compression of time and expansion of space through which criminality is facilitated on the Internet. Although a good deal of public policy research focuses on electronic identity fraud, data theft, and so forth, I chose to examine the impact of Cyberspace on regulated speech--in terms of incitement and obscenity, because these areas have historically offered some of the most chaotic and ambiguous elaborations of constitutional law. For example, determinations of what is meant by "obscenity," which I treat as a First Amendment issue, but which others might view differently, are governed by the laws of the States. This means that what is obscene in conservative states might not be so in more liberal jurisdictions. If it sounds odd, that's because it is--there is no national standard for what constitutes obscenity. In Cyberspace, however, we don't have the luxury of clearly delineated geographic boundaries, and what has resulted is a much more powerful and discretionary federal enforcement regime than that of the past. With these new types of criminality and enforcement have evolved new institutional mechanisms of surveillance, which, like Cyberspace itself, are defined by their increasingly penetrative qualities. The great thing about this thesis is that it exemplifies interdisciplinarity--it touches on issues in public law, administration, ideology, criminology, and technology policy.
"I feel that the CIPA M.P.A. was a good decision for me because it allowed me the freedom to pursue my research interests and prepare for PhD Studies while also providing me with the professional tools necessary for a successful career in public service. I elected to pursue the CIPA M.P.A. as opposed to an M.A. or M.A./Ph.D. Program because of the volatile nature of the academic job market. If my career goal of teaching and scholarship at the university level becomes difficult to achieve, then I am confident that I have the practical skills that will make me a viable job candidate. I think today's employment market requires that kind of flexibility."
"I really needed an advisor who understood the interdisciplinary nature of this project and had a good facility with all aspects of politics and public administration. I also needed someone who was very creative and bold in their thinking, because what I am arguing essentially undermines the theoretical tentpoles of conventional administrative and constitutional law. Professor Lowi has proven an exceptional advisor, and it has been an honor for me to work with such an established and remarkable scholar."
Kathryn March, a CIPA Core Faculty member and assocaite profesor of anthropology oversees Cornell’s Nepali language program. Her interests include sociocultural anthropology, gender, narrative, social change, and ethnohistory, focusing on the Himalayas, especially Nepal and Tibet where, for nearly 30 years she has studied social change in Himalayan Asia from an anthropologist’s perspective. She is also a CIPA Distinguished Faculty member.
"Most of my evidence is drawn from interviews, life histories, and personal stories to explore how people talk about what concerns them. I have done research across much of north central Nepal, among Sherpa and, especially, Tamang communities there. My present interests are in the political and economic pressures on local ethnic communities, with particular reference to gender, women’s lives, and social justice."
In 2003 two CIPA students, Sharon Cleary and Emily Palma, were chosen as CIPA Honors Research fellows, and elected to work with March.upadting research protocols for March’s 30-year study. Emilty Palma then traveled to Nepalto interview individuals, studyed in Nepal's Tribhuvan University, and conduct research of her own.
Research Assistant: Emily Palma ('04)
Before coming to Cornell, CIPA fellow Emily Palma worked as a social worker in the Phillipines, where she also did undergraduate and graduate work in psychology and social mechanisms within the community. In Manila she conducted research on children and juvenile justice, and coordinated national and regional workshops on the juvenile justice system in the Philippines.
At Cornell she discovered Professor March through the Distinguished Faculty Program, and became interested in her work on the effects of globalization on the labor market, especially in aspects of labor migration and trafficking in women. As an Honors fellow Palma has studied research design and methodology, and worked with March to design a new survey for her longitudinal study. Palma will work with Professor March on her study in Nepal, will study and live at Tribhuvan University, and also plans to work with children in Nepal, conducting research of her own.
Research Assistant: Sharon Cleary ('04)
Before leaving her job as a Wall Street Journal reporter to return to graduate school at CIPA, Sharon Cleary visited Nepal and Bhutan to immerse herself in a different culture. At Cornell, Nepal caught up with her again.
"Since I came to grad school to try new things, I applied for a CIPA Honors Fellowship with Professor Kathryn March; she’s been surveying a Tamang village for the past thirty years, asking questions about family members, family relations, possessions, and life in the village. Labor migration is one of the changes she’s studying — young men going off to Saudi Arabia and Dubai to take jobs as laborers and send money home to their families. My background is as a journalist, but the skills required for reporting and for anthropological research are similar.
"Labor contractors come to the villages and offer to send people to the Middle East to work. I’m interested in the labor issues, in the remittance economy, in how valid the contracts are, how honest the contractors are, whether the villagers know what they’re getting into, and what the influx of money does to a village society.
"I’m looking forward to working with Professor March. She’s funny, warm, encouraging, and full of amazing stories. She’s inclusive, and really wants to make sure you get something out of the experience. And she has such a deep respect for the people she works with and treats them with such dignity. I respect that."
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