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Blog Symposium: Climate Change and Public Administration

Public Administration Review (PAR) is pleased to announce the publication of a blog commentary symposium on "Climate Change and Public Administration." This symposium is published in PAR's "Speak Your Mind" initiative. The open-access Table of Contents can be found here. (https://publicadministrationreview.org/speak-your-mind-climate-change-symposium/)

This symposium showcases 20 blog commentaries, with word count ranges from 800-1,000 words (with embedded bibliographies, tables, and graphs). The power/beauty of this format is that it allows scholars to convey powerful ideas in an accessible way. The hope is the blog-commentary approach will allow scholars to engage with multiple audiences outside their subfields, and hopefully influence the public discourse on climate policy.

These commentaries examine exciting ideas such as:

·         the claim that cities can pick up the policy slack after the US withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Accord,

·         why cities focus on specific types of environmental issues over others,

·         how simple behavioral interventions can facilitate adaptation to heat waves,

·         pros and cons of emission trading and market-based mechanisms,

·         why environmental groups might oppose a carbon tax,

·         the challenges in relocating communities affected by sea level rise,

·         how inter-linkages among local governments influence climate policy adoption and efficacy.

PAR posted the Call for Submissions on multiple listservs and on PAR's website. We received 39 pitches: 21 had women as authors or co-authors; 11 were from scholars working in non-US institutions. Given the excellent quality of these pitches, we decided to publish 20 blog commentaries (14 of which have women as authors or co-authors; 5 of them are from scholars located in non-US institutions).

Thanks to Jim Perry, PAR's editor-in-chief, the "Speak Your Mind" initiative is hosting probably the first blog symposium of its kind in social sciences. We would also like to note the enormous effort Paige Settles, PAR's editorial assistant, has put into designing article layouts and facilitating the web-based production process.

This blog format can also serve as an excellent pedagogical tool. For example, professors could ask students to comment on specific blog-commentaries, or illustrate a specific idea introduced in a commentary with an empirical example. Students' comments could be posted on PAR's website to allow all PAR readers to engage with them.

Please feel free to post your own comments on the PAR website as well.

PAR hopes to undertake similar initiatives in the future. If you have suggestions on how we can do better, please email us at aseem@uw.edu or nives@uw.edu.