Frank Zerunyan, Chandrashekar Raju, Jack Knott, John Bedrosian, Judith Bedrosian, Shekar Narasimham, Raphael Bostic, Sachidananda Babu

Pilot program with mayors to commence in Los Angeles in August

Contact: Raphael Bostic, director of the USC Bedrosian Center, at (213) 740-1220 or Bostic@usc.edu; Merrill Balassone, USC Media Relations, at (213) 740-6156 or balasson@usc.edu

Los Angeles – May 14, 2013 – The USC Price School of Public Policy’s Judith and John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise on Tuesday created a new partnership with India’s Emergent Institute to launch an exchange program between government leaders in California and the Indian state of Karnataka.

The first exchange program is planned for August, with mayors from Karnataka visiting California for a weeklong program based in Los Angeles. California mayors will make a return visit to Bangalore in Karnataka in the fall. Other programs are being designed for state legislators and government officials.

The new initiative will build the working capacity of state and local government officials, promote best practices of good governance, and highlight innovative solutions and effective structural approaches to public policy challenges at the state and local level.

“India and the United States have a long history of partnership and collaboration, and this new program represents an important next step in strengthening our relationship,” said Shekar Narasimhan, co-founder of the Emergent Institute. “The newly-constituted State Government of Karnataka will be engaged to endorse the programs which have been put together following high-level interaction in December in Bangalore and site visits to Mysore and Chikaballapur districts.”

The exchange will help participants hone and strengthen their leadership and team-building skills and provide insights on how to solve persistent urban challenges, including economic development, transportation, and waste management. It will also help to facilitate stronger relationships that advance mutual interests.

“This program will capitalize on the strengths of both institutions. The USC Price School has a long history of cutting edge leadership and policy training, and Emergent has fast become an important player in promoting sustainable innovations that provide answers for needs and problems,” said Jack H. Knott, dean of the USC Price School.

The program has generated significant enthusiasm from key U.S. leaders.

“Programs that advance the strength of our state-level leadership are an innovative approach to building U.S.-India people-to-people ties,” said Robert O. Blake, Jr., assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs in the U.S. Department of State.

“The U.S. and India are important economic and strategic partners. These kinds of collaborations between the two countries should be developed and nurtured,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), the lone Indian-American representative in the Congress. “I’m excited about this partnership, and my office will work to help ensure its success.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, expressed his support as well.

“I am pleased that USC and Emergent have come together to establish this partnership for state-to-state exchanges,” Warner said. “This effort will help deepen the mutual ties between the U.S. and India at the state level, which will advance the relationship and identify new areas for cooperation.”

Joint outreach by USC and Emergent has garnered support from other national and state-level leaders in the United States.

“America shares with India something much deeper than just mutual economic empowerment. We share a strong-exchange of entrepreneurs, executives, students, professors, and scientists that is a model to the rest of the world,” said Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.). “This effort by the USC Price School of Public Policy, the Bedrosian Center on Governance, and India’s Emergent Institute is a continuation of this critical exchange and an important part of strengthening the United States-India relationship.”

State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and California Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) have also expressed support for the initiative.

About the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy is one of the nation’s leading schools of public affairs. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for people and their communities, in the United States and abroad. This mission is achieved through education and research that promote innovative solutions to the most critical issues facing society.

The USC Judith and John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise is an applied research center within the USC Price School. Its focus is on the implementation of policy, with the goal of promoting effective governance.

About the Emergent Institute, Banagalore, Karnataka, India

The fundamental premise driving the Emergent Institute is that the world is on an unsustainable path and that management education as currently taught and studied is unprepared to address this. India, for many reasons, represents the opportunity and challenge we face in the coming decades. The Emergent Institute aims to dramatically increase the rate and success of Green Leap Innovation, both through corporate initiatives and new ventures. To realize this vision, Emergent Institute is assembling a complete innovation ecosystem, including an education platform, incubator, investment fund, technology bank, cluster (social) network, learning laboratory, and field support system. We aim to create the disruptive changes necessary for a more sustainable world.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe is Senior Fellow, Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California and the political analyst for NBC Los Angeles.

In the 2000 election cycle she also served as political analyst for NBC4 in Washington, D.C. and for BBC Scotland and BBC Wales. She continues to serve as American politics analyst for BBC Scotland, BBC Wales, BBC London and BBC World Service programs, as well as for Al Jazeera English and on NBC and MSNBC.

During the 2003 California recall election Dr. Jeffe served as recall analyst for NBC’s “Today” show.

Prior to her affiliation with NBC, she served as political analyst for KCAL-TV in Los Angeles.

Dr. Jeffe regularly writes and comments on American and California government and politics in the state, national and international media.

In 2006, she was a nominee for the Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for news feature, “Decision 2005: A Voter’s Guide,” NBC4.

Prior to her affiliation with USC, Dr. Jeffe taught political science at Claremont Graduate University, Loyola Marymount University, and Pitzer College.

She holds a Ph. D. in government from Claremont Graduate University, and a master’s degree in political science from Rutgers University, where she was a Fellow at the Eagleton Institute of Politics; her B.A. in political science is from Goucher College.

Selected Publications:

PROP ZERO  (http://www.nbclosangeles.com/blogs/prop-zero/)

REUTERS.COM (co-author with Doug Jeffe) (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/)

KNBC.COM:  Sherry on KNBC

“Jerry Brown: Moonbeam to Mainstream,” POLITICO.com, January 31, 2011

“Biting the Feds’ Hand Won’t Bring Money to California,” foxandhoundsdaily.com, January 21, 2010 : Sherry on Fox and Hounds

Full Publications List

Yesterday, the Center staff visited the state capital. We toured the capitol building (it really is a gorgeous building) and learned a bit about California history. Did you know the original capital was in San Jose? We also stopped by some assembly and legislative offices to promote our Leading from the West series, we’ve got some great plans for the next few talks beginning in the Fall 2013 semester.

While the staff was touring the capitol our Director, Raphael Bostic had an interesting lunch with some folks from the California Department of Housing and Human Development.

While in Sacramento, we also met with our faculty affiliates in the USC Sacramento Center to discuss new research goals and some of our upcoming plans for Executive Education.

We’re also pleased to announce that videos of all our events for the year on available on our YouTube playlist. Here is our most recent conversation with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:

Our final event of the semester is this Wednesday, May 1st.

The Bedrosian Center along with METRANS welcomes Los Angeles, Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa as part of our Leading from the West series to disucuss challenges and opportunities for transportation in the city. This is a special, invitation only event. If you have questions, please contact Donnajean Ward at 213.740.0155 or donnajw@usc.edu.

Professor in the Price School
Check out his blog

Alan Blinder, When the Music Stopped
Richard Haass, Wars of Necessity, Wars of Choice

How did we end up in the meltdown of 2008? How did we end up fighting in Iraq in 2003? These are for me the big questions of the first decade of the 21st century. Blinder gives the story step by step, without seeking any single cause, with a keen sense of the dilemmas and situation of the public policy actors. Surely he tells us his own judgments, but as far as I can tell he is a straight-talker. We learn almost nothing about personalities, but I am told this often played an important role. X would not play with Y, having been at odds for years before.

As for Iraq, what I want to know is what did they know, what was in their minds, and why now? Haass compared the 1991 war with the 2003 war (necessity and choice) and gives us the nitty gritty bureaucratic interactions in detail. Feith and others have provided alternative accounts. There is not Blinder yet in this story, no account that is less interested in blame than in giving an account. As I have indicated in earlier reviews, we need to assume good will and decent intentions on the parts of the policy actors.

MK

We’ve got some Earth Day events on board for today as well as  a Lunch with a Leader featuring Secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs, Peter Gravett.

Then we’ll focus on some end of the semester research projects as well as our last Leading from the West event, which will be held in conjunction with METRANS on May 1st. This invitation only event will feature Mayor Villaraigosa and a discussion on transportation in the City of Angels.

What was in Donald Rumsfeld’s mind when he demanded that the Iraq war would be launched with a much smaller number of troops than recommended by General Shinsheki? And, a propos of sufficient IED protection, “You go to war with the army you have.”

I have assumed that Rumsfeld was honest and decent, and was doing his best. While he had been bucking the Pentagon with his move for “transformation,” the ideas had been in the air for at least 15 years, and surely there were moves in that direction before he arrived. And while he might be thought to be arrogant, I suspect that a better characterization would be that he had been a leader of various organizations and had forced them to transform and thrive. So he warrantedly felt that what was need was to shake things up.

I do not find much help in Rumsfeld memoir. Douglas Feith, in effect Rumsfeld’s brain (as head of Policy in the Pentagon), provides an account which is detailed and documented. He counters all the usual complaints (although that does not mean that the account he provides will be probative), and in the end suggests that the information provided by the CIA and other sources was misleading. And so he ends his book with recommendations about intelligence. Pillar, part of the intelligence community for many years, argues that the Bush administration pushed for intelligence that confirmed its commitments, and in effect politicized it by subtle but real pressure to get what they wanted. Feith argues for structural reform. Pillar argues that organizational reform is not the problem.

Feith is notably straightforward for most of the book, with accounts of meetings (Principals, Deputies, Rumsfeld’s Roundtable) and proposals. He left the Pentagon in 2005, so there is nothing post then that is memorialized. He gives an account of how Rumsfeld became disenchanted with Bremer (heading the Coalition Provisional Authority) and he credits Bremer, State/Powell/Armitage with being unwilling to have an early Iraqi government and that being a source of much subsequent trouble. Toward the end of the book he is much more sharp about issues of intelligence and the Bremer’s failure to get a government going much sooner. At issue is what people thought of the “externals” ala Chalabi.

What is striking is the claim that most big decisions of this sort are in effect independent of intelligence. The principals (president on down) “know what they are doing”, in that whatever information they need, whatever judgments they require, are in the room. Little of the intelligence product is of influence, so it does not matter if it is correct or if it is politicized. Gut instinct, past experience, the president’s capacity to judge people and situations, etc are what matter at these times. And this goes back to Roosevelt and successors.

We went to war in Iraq for reasons, but those reasons had little to do with WMD, with AQ, with terrorists or oil. Those reasons might have been incorrect, but they were clear to the principals, and to Bush especially.

We did not appreciate Saddam’s game, largely one of bluffing.

Bush had a definite idea of what he was up to, to avoid future terrorist attacks. He was not controlled by Cheney or anyone else. Rumsfeld had a definite idea of what he was up to. He was not controlled by Wolfowitz or Feith or … Now, those definite ideas might well have been wrong, and what is notable is how little backup or Plan B was in their quiver. Yet what we know about successful leaders is their capacity to take on the mess as a consequence of their leadership and to manage their way to a better situation. There is a delicate balance between determined leadership and learning from dissenters and experience, between perseverance and humility. It took the loss of several thousand lives and expenditure of several trillion dollars for Gates and Petraeus to be allowed to begin to clean up the mess. But keep in mind that Feith would not agree with me, and I am not sure where Pillar would stand.

Feith’s is often a story of bureaucratic politics, of the bureaucracy not carrying out what he took to be Bush’s directives

updated May 8, 2013

University Park Campus
Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC)
450

Cost: Free RSVP required http://bit.ly/YpegPx

Bedrosian Center Research Presentations:
Hilda Blanco and Anthony Bertelli
Thursday, April 18, 2013
12:00pm to 2:00pm

University Park Campus
Ralph and Goldy Lewis Hall (RGL)
308

The Bedrosian Center funds several grants for USC Price faculty research on governance issues. Preference for the awards is given to research focused on collaborative governance, relationships between governance and planning, and government accountability issues. As a condition of the grant, each principal investigator was asked to give a presentation of his or her findings. This Thursday, Hilda Blanco and Anthony Bertelli will present findings on their projects.

RSVP

Institutional Constraints and Options for California’s Adaptation to Sea Level Rise (Noon)

Hilda Blanco, Research Professor

California faces significant coastal impacts from climate change. With three-quarters of California’s population living in coastal localities, current risks associated with coastal flooding are already high. Presently, institutions at the state and the local level lack the capacity to analyze the uncertainty of climate risks. Strategies being put in place are directed at providing more protection but involve property right issues, which could be subject to legal challenges. Neither state institutions nor local governments have a clear sense of the institutional constraints and options they confront as planning for coastal impacts of climate change becomes more urgent. This project examines the institutional constraints and options that coastal agencies face as they try to meet the new challenges of coastal climate change planning. The purpose of the study is to identify feasible changes to improve the effectiveness of existing coastal institutions to confront sea level rise.

Public Policy Investment: A New Approach to Studying Policy Priorities (1pm)

Anthony Bertelli, Professor

This research seeks an international collaboration around a new theory and method for analyzing attention to public policy topics by governments. The project will address some of the enduring questions of democratic government: why do governments choose some public policies and not others? Why do they prioritize one issue over another, and what causes them to change their priorities? Despite a robust literature, these questions have proven surprisingly hard to answer. The challenges escalate because political officeholders have to balance competing considerations: they must respond to public concerns so government can get reelected, but also must maintain a reputation for competent government even if it entails pursuing policies that are temporally unpopular. A novel approach which we call “public policy investment,” will provide a theory of how governments incorporate both these requirements to produce a form of statecraft that assists in their reelection.

Cost: free with RSVP
lunch served to those who RSVP

Professor in the Price School
Check out his blog

John Rawls. Political Liberalism Columbia University Press, 2005.

I recall when Rawls’s Theory of Justice appeared. It was a thick book, and I was not philosophically sophisticated. But its main model, the original position, was appealing if not realistic. It was Kantian but with a modern game-theoretic twist. The idea that justice was a matter of fairness, where of course one had to understand what one meant by fairness, seemed sensible. I could not appreciate just what would be controversial philosophically, since I was not in that business.

On the other hand, it was clear to many reviewers that it is demanding too much for us to be in the original position. We differ too much in our deepest commitments, often religious or political, for us to reliably place ourselves in a position where our most fundamental constitutive beliefs are put aside.

In Political Liberalism, Rawls has tried to complement Theory, giving an account how we might have a society where fairness is just one of the conceptions of fairness. Toleration plays a large role, as does our willingness to be bound together for the sake of pursuing our differences. The work is not easy reading, and I did not read it beginning to end. Rawls makes clear the difficulties and criticisms he is trying to respond to, responding as does a philosopher with attention to consistency and coherence. I would suggest that the reader start with the fourth part of this Expanded Paperback edition, an article entitled “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” Rawls believes this article represents the clearest statement of his position. Along the way earlier, he responds to H. L. A. Hart, and to J. Habermas, in great detail.

The basic point is that in this volume a political conception of justice encloses a nice philosophical one of the earlier volume and other conceptions as well. In effect, thinking your way to justice has to yield to dealing with others in your community or nation, a political dealing, where you have to make room for each other. I am struck by the shift from moral philosophy to political theory.

So, how to recommend a book I don’t expect you to read? Do read the introductions at the beginning. Do read the last part. Both are not too long. And do read what you can take of the responses to Hart and to Habermas, for they will help you see the work in a larger context of thinking. I dip in almost randomly, since the only way I will understand this book is by seeing its many facets rather than appreciating its coherent logic. It’s embarrassing for a professor to admit this. (Maybe I should read the Wikipedia article about the book—although all that has done is remind me that pluralism, overlapping consensuses, and public reason are central notions. That is more or less what I have said above.)

Wednesday, April 10th

Smart Justice: Rethinking Public Safety in California
Part II: The Conditions, Costs and Impact of LA County’s Jail System

Join us for a discussion on addressing issues of violence and oversight in the nation’s largest jail system. This panel is part of a special 3-part series focusing on criminal justice issues.

RSVP required – for more information, click here.

Wednesday, April 10th

Leading from the West: A Conversation with City Managers

We have just a few spaces left for this discussion. We’re featuring three city managers (Tom Bakaly, Betsy Fretwell, and Ted Gaebler) and we’ll be discussing leadership, managing through a crisis, and lessons about making cities more effective.

Reserve your spot now!

Thursday, April 11th

Bedrosian Center Research Presentation

USC Price professor Terry Cooper and USC Price doctoral students Weijie Wang and Hui Li will present results from their project: From subjects to citizens: How homeowners and local officials perceive homeowner’s roles in local governance in China.

RSVP