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Belief Change in an Evolving Environmental Policy Network

Published by Aubrey Hicks on

Consortium on Collaborative Governance

Adam Douglas Henry

March 12, 2015
12:00 pm to 1:30 pm

Statewide Regional Planning NetworkThe Consortium on Collaborative Governance is a three university partnership that studies how public problems are being solved by sectors working together.

This event brings Adam Douglas Henry from the University of Arizona his talk is titled:

Belief Change in an Evolving Environmental Policy Network

Networks are an important part of the policy process, and in many realms of environmental policy, networks exercise an important influence on the ability of actors to synthesize information and learn to manage complex risks. According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the dynamics of policy network formation lead to structures exhibiting belief-oriented segregation—that is, a high correspondence between shared policy beliefs and voluntary collaborative relationships.  This paper examines these dynamics using a reanalysis of data on policy beliefs and networking in U.S. environmental risk policy.

The Consortium on Collaborative Governance (CCG) is a partnership between USC Price, the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy and the University of Washington Evans School of Public Affairs. The CCG sponsors faculty exchanges to encourage collaboration and cultivation of joint research projects on public-private-nonprofit collaboration, placing emphasis on collective choice processes and public service delivery

Adam Douglas Henry is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona in the School of Government and Public Policy. He is an affiliated member of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment. Dr. Henry’s research focuses on questions of policy learning and sustainable development, particularly how networked groups of actors in the policy process collaborate to manage complex and divisive issues of environmental policy and sustainability. Henry’s recent research has focused on the integration of science and policy in issues of environmental risk (in a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation) and the development of computational models of social influence and the adoption of residential solar energy (in a project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Henry uses a variety of approaches to study questions of policy learning and sustainability, including agent-based modeling, statistical models of network structure, and mathematical models of self-organizing networks.

Dr. Henry joined the University of Arizona faculty in August 2012, and teaches courses in environmental policy, program evaluation, and statistics. Henry is a core faculty member in the University of Arizona’s Master of Public Administration (MPA) program. Henry was a recipient of a Giorgio Ruffolo Fellowship in Sustainability Science and spent two years as a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Henry is originally from Virginia, completed a B.A. and B.S. at Washington and Lee University, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis.

Expertise:

sustainability science, network analysis, public policy, social learning

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