简介

KENNETH BICKERS joined the faculty at CU-Boulder in 2003. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988 and his BA from TCU in Fort Worth in 1981. His first position out of graduate school was at Rice University. During 1991-92, he was a visiting scholar at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. From 1992-2003, he was on the faculty at Indiana University, where he was an Associate Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. He has twice won University-wide teaching awards. He has published articles in numerous journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Choice, Administration and Society, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. His most recent books include Public Policy Analysis: A Political Economy Approach, with John Williams (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) and Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy, with Robert M. Stein (Cambridge University Press, 1995). His current research is progressing on a number of fronts. In one, he is focusing on the consequences of devolution of federal policy activities to states and local communities. This stream of research includes the impact of federal spending on choices made by local governments to engage in forms of cooperation and non-cooperation, as well as the relationship between interlocal cooperation and electoral politics within metropolitan areas. In the second, he is studying he campaigns and elections of candidates for local offices. This research, referred to as the Local Government Elections Project, is an ongoing investigation of the recruitment and campaigns of local office holders who populate local and state offices. Surveys are being conducted in numerous states, selected to have a broad diversity of jurisdictions of differing sizes and composition, as well as a mix of single-member ward style districts and at-large districts, partisan versus nonpartisan elections, and term limited and non-term limited positions. The third stream of research is an exploration of the relationship between residential mobility and local politics. These papers examine sorting of residents into local jurisdictions based upon race/ethnicity and the mix of local collective goods and services. These papers ask about the tradeoffs between institutions for voice and the resort to mobility for residents who seek improvements in the mix of local goods and services.