LGBTQ+ Civil Rights: Local Government Efforts in a Volatile Era

LGBTQ+ issues at the local level pose some of the most pressing civil rights challenges in the current U.S.context. This analysis provides insight into what is taking place in major municipalities and how these efforts can be improved to bolster equity and civil rights for LGBTQ+ populations. At a time when identity, language, and public sector values are inherently intertwined and constantly changing, the following question is ripe for analysis: how are major U.S. municipalities addressing the civil rights needs of the LGBTQ+ population? To answer this question, an analysis of government websites from the top 10 U.S. cities by population is conducted, examining the policies, programs, and services that municipalities offer LGBTQ+ residents and the language used to frame these policies, programs, and services as expressions of power, representations of identity, and the website presentation itself

Constructing and Implementing Transgender Policy for Public Administration

Sex and gender are increasingly complex topics that prompt new policy and administrative responses within public agencies. As the federal workforce evolves, federal employment policy must accommodate the needs of employees who do not fit traditional sex/gender categories. One emerging area of policy targets transgender employees, particularly policy that guides the employer response throughout the transitioning process. This research seeks to answer the following questions: How can transitioning policy and implementation within federal agencies affect employees? and How should transitioning policy be crafted and implemented? This work addresses organizational behavior and management issues by presenting a successful case of a workplace transition. Interviews of an administrator guiding the transitioning process and one of the first federal employees to complete a transition while in a federal field office are conducted. Ultimately, this research explores challenges with emergent policy and suggests avenues for designing and enacting future transitioning policy

Digitizing Deliberation: Normative Concerns for the Use of Social Media in Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy as a form of citizen engagement and social media as a means to achieving greater citizen engagement have both received considerable attention in recent years; however, little attention has been paid to the way deliberative democracy and social media function together. The central aim of this research is to highlight the normative considerations surrounding social media in a deliberative democratic process. To do this, the article uses Iris Marion Young\u27s model of deliberative democracy that is rooted in inclusion, political equality, reasonableness, and publicity. Applying this model\u27s normative values to the use of audience response systems demonstrates that social media have the capacity to fundamentally shift the normative dimensions of deliberative democracy by changing the process itself. The broad philosophical and social-theoretical concerns related to the implications of social media for long-standing ontological and epistemological questions of achieving the public good and structuring deliberative democratic processes underlie this work

Shifting Diversity Perspectives and New Avenues for Representative Bureaucracy

This work explores the meaning of diversity for bureaucratic representation. In light of the United States becoming an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse society, attitudes and approaches toward diversity are likewise shifting. It is important to consider the way we think and talk about diverse representation, which in turn, contributes to different actions and policies within federal agencies. To evaluate this process of meaning-making, federal policy seeking to increase representation in the following Executive Orders: 13078, 13163, 13171, 13518, 13548, and 13585 is analyzed. Prime emphasis is devoted to the most recent and comprehensive efforts, Executive Order 13583: Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce issued on August 18, 2011 and the Government-wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan. This research demonstrates significant implications for management and governance, particularly in the text, discursive practice, and social practice surrounding the meaning of diversity purported for the federal bureaucrac

Challenging Technicism: Space for the Individual Bureaucrat in Public Administration Theory and Practice

Participation in PAT-Net 2011 led me to rethink some basic assumptions surrounding public administration theory and what constitutes knowledge in public administration scholarship and practice. My reflection responds to the major questions posed during the Ph.D. Student Workshop on Writing Theory in a Technicist Field : specifically, why a technicist attitude is so pervasive in a democratic society and what alternatives have been posited for confronting technicism to advance theoretical and critical scholarship

Improving Transgender Policy for a More Equitable Workplace

Sex and gender categories have become more fluid in recent years. With evolving understandings of sexual orientation and gender identity, public administrators are confronted with questions of how to craft policy and make decisions based on new conceptions of sex and gender for transgender employees. Policy and practice is especially challenging in the workplace where sex and gender encompass both personal and professional dimensions. Within the public sector, the federal government is recognized as a leader on these issues, and this work examines federal transgender policy to answer the following questions: 1) how are federal agencies addressing transgender issues in the workplace through formal policy? and 2) what can be done to improve future transgender policy? To gain a better understanding of what constitutes an effective transgender workplace policy, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of nine transgender plans from the following federal agencies: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Internal Revenue Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, United States Office of Special Counsel, United States Department of Interior, United States Department of Labor, United States Environmental Protection Agency, and United States Office of Personnel Management. Our analysis includes the identification of major themes within the nine policy documents. From this analysis, we propose best practices and future policy directions, as well as suggest ways of expanding the limited scholarship on transgender issues in the public sector

Gambling for Certainty: Luck, Chance, and Uncertainty in Politics

How much of what we do is the result of our will, and how much the result of chance or luck or fortune? This is a decidedly un-decidable question, but one that needs to be asked. The general assumption seems to be that a person\u27s lot in life is physically, morally, politically, even romantically linked to choice. But the use of the term lot betrays the underlying uncertainty of what causes our lot , laying bare questions of responsibility, burden, and even explanation. Much (perhaps at the very least 50% according to Machiavelli) of what happens in our lives can be attributed to forces outside of our own will, and in that sense are not a result of our choices. In this paper, we explain why the Moral Luck literature can be helpful as an analogy to political theory even without the use of morality. In doing so, we also highlight how radically close attention to the role of uncertainty, chance, and luck can undermine the ideals of rationality, institution and control. By even examining the role of luck in political thinking, one almost necessarily calls into question the very definition of what constitutes politics. Most significantly, we will explain how the arguments of the Moral Luck theorists can inform debates about redistribution in a democracy

A Third Option: Understanding and Assessing Non-binary Gender Policies in the United States

Our fundamental understandings and treatments of gender and gender identity within the United States are evolving. Recently, a few countries and several U.S. states have moved away from the binary categories of male and female to include a non-binary gender option for official state documents. This third, gender-neutral option, is usually represented as X where M for male and F for female traditionally appeared. The purpose of this study is twofold; first, to utilize Iris Marion Young\u27s theory of oppression to help contextualize the historical oppression of non-binary gender identity recognition by the State, and second, to analyze recent efforts by U.S. states to include non-binary gender categories. Using Young\u27s theory for normative explanation along with the Open Society Foundations\u27 (OSF) practical recommendations, we present a simple administrative framework for comparing proposed, adopted, and enacted non-binary gender policies across the United States. Tying each OSF best practice to one of Young\u27s faces of oppression, we are able to assess each law or policies\u27 effectiveness in dismantling the oppressive binary constructs of society

The importance of engaging students on public assistance: New insights and recommendations for practice

Student engagement in institutions of higher education has become a central priority for educators and administrators. What student engagement means for a diverse student body is an important question for public institutions with justice-related missions. As social welfare policy shifts to allow more recipients of public assistance access to higher education, research regarding their engagement experiences remains scarce. To support a socioeconomically diverse student body, consistent with the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) standards, this project explores the nature of engagement among student recipients of public assistance by asking the following research questions: what forms of engagement with students on public assistance take place? Why is engaging students on public assistance important? How can we foster greater engagement with students on public assistance? To answer these questions, student and faculty focus groups are conducted. From this analysis, we highlight normative implications of engaging a socioeconomically diverse student population and present recommendations for fostering greater engagement

Beyond Bostock: Implications for LGBTQ+ theory and practice.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County is a landmark piece of case law that offers fundamental rights to LGBT persons. This essay reflects on how this case arrived at the Supreme Court and its implications for theory and praxis. The overall conclusion is that cautious optimism is warranted