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Thomas E. Patterson AS THE UNITED STATES stands at the beginning of a
new century, its citizens are voting in fewer numbers than ever
before. In the 2000 presidential election, only 51 percent of adults
voted, a sharp contrast to the 63 percent who voted in the 1960
Nixon-Kennedy race. Since 1960, the United States has experienced
the longest decline in voting ever. Moreover, the future looks even
bleaker. Thirty years ago, more than 50 percent of Americans under
30 voted in the presidential race. In 2000, barely 30 percent turned
out to vote. In The Vanishing Voter, Public Involvement in an
Age of Uncertainty, Kennedy School Professor Thomas Patterson
offers a detailed analysis of why so many American voters are so
turned off. Drawing upon the results of the Vanishing Voter project
— a weekly survey, conducted between September 2000 and December
2001 by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on the Press,
Politics and Public Policy — Patterson was able to find out
how citizens were reacting to the events surrounding the more-than-year-long
2000 campaign. What he found was a disgruntled electorate less engaged
than ever before in election activities of all types — from
voting, to working at the polls, to following the campaign in the
primaries and at the conventions. Patterson cites numerous factors
for the current state of affairs, among them election rules that
thwart voting, a drawn-out and front-loaded primary campaign that
favors a handful of states, and an antiquated electoral college
system that distorts the voters wishes. Today’s elections also fail to capture the hearts
of Americans. Once a “battleground between parties over large
ideas that stemmed from citizens’ deepest hopes and fears,”
writes Patterson, today’s elections are fought between parties
pandering to special interest groups around a diffuse set of issues.
The result is an electorate that is often confused and disengaged.
How elections are covered has also changed dramatically, says Patterson.
In 1992, nightly newscasts carried 728 campaign stories during the
general elections as compared to 462 by 2000. Patterson recommends a number of changes including easier access to the polls through same-day registration and later poll closings, shorter and more equal distribution of the campaign process so all Americans can participate, and extended and responsible campaign media coverage. Concludes Patterson: “No stone should be left unturned in the effort to bring Americans back to the polls. For if they cannot be encouraged to participate more fully, the nation will face the far greater challenge of how to maintain self-government when citizens don’t vote.” ****
Ideally, he wants his findings to become part of the public discourse. “We’d like to get the book into the hands of state committee members who make the decisions about how elections are run,” he says, in order to help them rethink such issues as same-day elections, poll closings, and the number of primaries. He also wants to see the restoration of election and convention coverage by the major networks. “In the last election, not one of the 22 primaries were carried in prime time,” he says. “They have to live up to their public service responsibility.”
Securing Our Children’s Future Gary Katzman, Editor After taking time off to spend a year at the Kennedy
School’s Hauser Center directing the Saving Our Children’s
Future project, federal prosecutor Gary Katzman published the results
of some of his work in Securing Our Children’s Future.
In the complex culture of juvenile criminal prevention, a myriad
of professionals and groups are involved, including government agencies,
nonprofits, and private agencies. In Securing Our Children’s
Future, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and experts on the courts,
correction and probation departments, faith-based organizations,
schools, the media, nonprofits, and private sector offer suggestions
for working together more effectively. Securing Our Children,
Katzman writes, is just the start of a “new collaborative framework
distilled from the lessons over the past decade to guide institutions
and strategies in dealing with the problems of juvenile justice
and youth violence.”
Building the Virtual State Jane Fountain The Internet, writes Kennedy School Professor Jane Fountain in Building the Virtual State, promises to have significant impact on how government carries out its business. At both the state and federal level, government can cut costs substantially by the way in which it provides services to citizens and in its methods of procuring services from the business community. But the Internet’s greatest potential, Fountain believes, lies in its possibilities for restructuring the institution itself. “The major challenge for government is not the development of Web-based government to citizen transactions, but reorganizing and restructuring the institutional arrangements in which those transactions are embedded,” she writes. Such reform challenges, however, demand scholarly inquiry, asserts Fountain, who believes that technology and organization have thus far been widely overlooked by social and policy scientists. In Building the Virtual State, Fountain takes on this challenge, noting that “the reorganization of government as a consequence of the Internet signals an institutional transformation of the American state.”
Borders And Brethren Brenda Shaffer In Borders and Brethren, author Brenda Shaffer,
research director of the Caspian Studies Program at the Kennedy
School, challenges the mainstream view of Iran as a homogeneously
ethnic state by examining trends in Azerbaijani collective identity. In 1828, the Russian Empire and Iran divided the Azerbaijani
people between them, yet an independent Azerbaijani ethnic identity
has continued to exist to the present day.The independence of the
former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan has further reinforced their
collective identity. Most Azerbaijanis live in Iran, where they are the largest ethnic group. Shaffer analyzes how they have maintained their ethnic identity in both the former Soviet Union and Iran and reveals the dilemmas of ethnic politics in multi-ethnic Iran which have implications for both regime stability and foreign policy.
On Being Nonprofit Peter Frumkin Author Peter Frumkin provides a comprehensive look at the issues currently facing nonprofits in On Being Nonprofit. Frumkin, who teaches strategic management at the Kennedy School, examines some of the most “contentious ideas about the nonprofit and voluntary sector” and attempts to integrate into the discussion some of the elements of the competing disciplinary perspectives that have emerged. Frumpkin divides the nonprofit function into four broad categories: those that “promote civic and political engagement, deliver critical services within communities, provide an institutional vehicle for social entrepreneurship, and allow the expression of values and faith.” Frumkin examines the tensions and problems that have arisen in each of these realms, looking at the boundary disputes that have arisen as nonprofit organizations have been drawn into competition and collaboration with government.
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