OU - Dissertations

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Open Access
ACCOUNTABILITY AND PERFORMANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: PROMISE, POTENTIAL, AND PITFALLS OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
(2013) Rabovsky, Thomas Morgan; Fryar, Alisa H
In recent years, performance based accountability regimes have become increasingly prevalent throughout government. This dissertation explores the role of performance data in higher education policymaking, both in terms of external accountability and oversight, and in terms of internal management. At the center of this discussion are debates about the proper role of quantifiable data about institutional performance and the appropriateness of various approaches for measuring and tracking student success. As tuition rates have skyrocketed and the American economy has faced increased pressure from the international arena, American universities have struggled to satisfy demands for improved performance. Policymakers have responded to these concerns by pursuing a range of policies aimed at increased accountability and a heightened emphasis on organizational performance, particularly with respect to budgeting. Similarly, many organizations have employed their own voluntary systems to track various metrics of performance as a tool to enhance internal management and improve student outcomes.
Open Access
American conservative utopias.
(1983) Clapper, Thomas H.,
An analysis of the four utopias demonstrates that conservatism has an ideology from which utopias can be formulated; that such utopias will not presume mankind to be perfect, good, equal one to another, or completely rational; that such utopias will be controlled by a natural elite; that the focus of action will be on the individual rather than on the state; that economic freedom will be emphasized rather than a planned affluent economy; and that strong government will be tolerated only in the areas of defense and other protective services.
Open Access
American political extremism in the 1960's /
(1967) George, John H.
Open Access
Assessing the status of urban public school desegregation :
(1982) England, Robert E.
A preliminary examination of desegregation techniques revealed that among elementary schools the combination of pairing and clustering with rezoning proved most successful in reducing racial isolation (operationalized as a change in the index of dissimilarity). For secondary schools the most effective technique was rezoning. These two techniques were associated, in the bivariate case, with the lowest amount of white enrollment loss as well. A multiple regression analysis also showed the most effective desegregation technique to be of some importance (although not statistically significant) in achieving desegregation success when various external, community, and district level forces were taken into account. In the multivariate case, the specific technique was of greater import at the elementary than the secondary level. Other features of the desegregation process, especially support by school officials, were important predictors of desegregation success as well, although the most powerful forces were federal coercion (positive) and size of district (negative). A multivariate analysis of white enrollment change for these 52 districts confirmed recent research that school desegregation does produce a significant one-time decline in white student enrollment. The most important predictor of white student withdrawal was percentage black in the school system.
Open Access
BIAS, GATEKEEPING, OR AMBITION?: FEMALE CANDIDATES IN STATE LEGISLATURES
(2015) Baker, Leslie; Rosenthal, Cindy; Gaddie, Keith; Hicklin Fryar, Alisa; Krutz, Glen; Damphousse, Kelly
Women hold only 24.2% of the seats in state legislatures across the United States, despite being 50.8% of the total population. This low figure presents serious concerns about the quality of representation for half of the population. In this dissertation, I examine the state of Oklahoma, which is currently ranked 48th in the nation in regard to female representation. There are three explanations for the low level of female representation in state legislatures. The first explanation centers on voter and fundraising biases, in addition to other state legislative structures, such as term limits and district characteristics. The second explanation argues that political gatekeepers fail to recruit, endorse, or otherwise support female candidates. The third explanation posits that women are not politically ambitious and therefore do not seek elected office. This dissertation utilizes a single state study that examines all three explanations to determine the explanation that best explains the low representation in Oklahoma. I use a mixed methods approach. I develop an original dataset of the legislative elections in Oklahoma from 2002 – 2012. The database includes candidate information, such as gender, party, vote share, campaign funds, and incumbency status. District level variables include measures for urbanness, political ideology, level of ethnic population, and distance from the capitol. I also survey state legislative candidates, party chairs, and other political gatekeepers about campaign experiences. I also interview several legislative candidates, party chairs, and recruiters. I further utilize interviews from the Women of the Oklahoma Legislature project. Statistical analyses, survey data, and narratives from interviews provide evidence of a lack of political ambition in Oklahoma women. Data from elections and statements made by political gatekeepers demonstrates that the low level of female representation in Oklahoma is due to a lack of candidates and a viable recruitment strategy by the parties. Further, female legislative candidates in Oklahoma principally only emerge when they perceive a threat to a preferred policy. If an active and successful recruitment strategy is employed in the state, the numbers of female representatives should rise. By testing all three explanations for the low level of female representation in a single state, this dissertation contributes to the discourse of the lack of descriptive representation.
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Bureaucracies and the Supply of Information in Higher Education Policy
(2019-04-30) Bark, Tracey; Workman, Samuel; Fryar, Alisa Hicklin; Carlson, Deven; Robinson, Scott; Garn, Gregg; Koski, Chris
Most discussions of the policy process begin with and focus on the legislative branch, as this is the institution most directly responsible for crafting policies. Many also bring the chief executive or interest group lobbyists into the equation through the study of executive orders and campaign contributions. In contrast, very few of these types of discussions mention the bureaucracy as an actor in this process. This project strives to rectify this oversight by investigating the role of bureaucratic agencies in directing public policy, most notably in the early stages of problem definition and agenda setting. In particular, this project views bureaucratic agencies as key providers of information on which legislation is based. To support this argument, I draw on a number of academic literatures, including theories of attention dynamics, institutional friction, and higher education governance. At the nexus of these literatures lies the basis for the overarching theoretical argument made in this project: the influence of bureaucratic organizations on the policy process can be substantial, but is conditioned by the structural characteristics of the agency in question. This assertion is supported empirically by analyses of an original dataset drawn from the annual reports of higher education governance bodies and state legislation related to higher education in two archetypal states. The methodologies used include assessments of various distributional characteristics, correlations, and regression models. The findings from these models demonstrate institutional structure can have a substantial impact on the agendas of bureaucratic organizations. A highly centralized organization is limited in its ability to attend to a broad array of substantive topics at once, resulting in a narrower and more volatile agenda. This in turn leads to greater difficulty in influencing legislative debates. A less centralized organization, however, is better able to maintain attention on a large number of issues simultaneously. This allows an agency to have a broader and more stable agenda, facilitating greater influence on subsequent bill introductions in the state legislature. Overall, the results demonstrate support for the central hypothesis in that the decentralized organization (the Illinois Board of Higher Education) had tangible impacts on its state’s legislature while the centralized organization (the Kansas Board of Regents) did not. These findings deepen our understanding of the impacts of bureaucratic structure on agency outputs and suggest that bureaucrats can have a broader role in the policy process than often recognized through the information they provide to legislators. Additionally, this study connects theories of agenda setting and problem definition to the state level and produces a dataset for future exploration of similar questions.
Open Access
The Catholic Church and the rebirth of civil society: Elite convergence, mobilization and democratic transitions in east-central Europe.
(1998) Gagnere, Nathalie.; Cox, Robert H.,
In addition to these developments at the elite level, the Church also nurtured moral and religious values at the grassroots level, sometimes in difficult conditions such as in Czechoslovakia. The stronger and more visible position of the Polish Church served as a source of inspiration to Czech and Slovak underground activists. After years of relentless efforts and an intricate process of diffusion, this action at the grassroots level participated in the rebirth of civil society. It catalyzed the larger mobilization of the popular masses, and eventually contributed to the collapse of communism.
Open Access
Center for Economic Development and Administration :
(1984) Sharma, Bharat Raj,
Much of the data for this study has also been collected from various agencies and institutions. The best practical research design for this study was found to be the institution building model developed by Milton Esman. It provides the necessary framework for the orderly collection, classification and analysis of the data for the case study, namely: (a) institution; (b) linkages; (c) transaction.
Open Access
Choosing to run: The dynamics of candidate emergence in the state legislature of Oklahoma.
(2001) Birdsong, Jeffrey Wayne.; Copeland, Gary,
This research is a qualitative study on potential candidates who were in the process of deciding to run for the state legislature. From the interviews and observations of potential candidates, a greater understanding develops on why individuals decide to run for office and also how organizations, namely political parties, help them. While individuals must ultimately make a personal decision on whether or not to run for office, all potential candidates are shaped by the same factors, such as a state's political culture, political party strength, and the status of the incumbent. These factors and others are portrayed in the following chapters. Chapter one provides a literature review on candidate emergence and theories on candidacy. Chapter two describes how the political culture of Oklahoma is changing and how this change will affect the decisions of potential candidates. Chapter three categorizes potential candidates for the state legislature based on their motivations and political abilities. In chapter four, the outcomes of the 2000 election are used to evaluate the success of potential candidates that participated in the research. On the basis of deciding to run, the status of the incumbent has the most influence on candidacy. The most qualified candidates, those with name recognition, political experience, and fundraising capabilities, are less likely to run against incumbents. This leaves those with less qualification to challenge incumbents, which perpetuates the strength of incumbency. The ability of incumbents to "scare off" quality challengers suggests the effectiveness of the permanent campaign for officeholders, especially for those incumbents in rural districts. The research contends that the process of individuals' decisions to be candidates is not only a good indicator for the attractiveness of an office and the strength of an incumbent but also an important signal to the status of a country's democracy.
Open Access
The Christian Right and congressional elections in Oklahoma: Can a social movement impact candidate-centered elections?
(1999) Bednar, Nancy Louise.; Hertzke, Allen D.,
The research indicates a flaw in McAdam's model, the need to develop continuing leadership if a social movement is to avoid decline. The surge and decline nature that McAdam builds into his political process model of social movements is caused by the lack of leadership development within social movement organizations to allow the organizations to continue to flourish. Within the Christian Right, this should not be problematic, because the world of Evangelical Christianity is continually developing new leadership.
Open Access
Collaboration and Indian Education: Exploring Intergovernmental Relationships Between Tribes and Public Schools
(2012) Conner, Thaddieus; Fryar, Alisa H.
The education of American Indian students in public schools requires the coordinated effort of managers at multiple levels of government including tribal, local, state, and federal. With more than 90% of American Indian students served in public schools in the United States, the strength of these relationships are argued to be critical in ensuring that local school officials adequately meet the unique cultural and academic needs of Native students. However, little is known about the nature of these relationships, and what effect government-to-government collaboration has on Native student outcomes. This dissertation seeks to address this dearth of knowledge and explores the relationship between tribes and public schools in New Mexico and Oklahoma, two of the largest states in the nation with regards to Native student enrollment in the public school system.
Open Access
Committees, Subcommittees, and Information - Policymaking in Congressional Institutions
(2010) Ellis, William Curtis; Krutz, Glen
Congressional policymaking occurs in an information-rich environment, among a vast and complex set of institutional and representational demands. In this dissertation, I examine how congressional institutions interact with the broader political and policymaking environment in order to successfully manipulate the policy process. My theory of information management in Congress argues that committees and subcommittees provide the Congress with the management tools necessary to adaptively respond to demands in the policy environment by structuring the flow of information in policy debates and facilitate policymaking success, primarily through the use of congressional hearings. Using expectations produced by my theory of information management in Congress, I address four primary research questions: 1) When and why do committees publicly manage information? 2) When and why do committees delegate the management of information to subcommittees? 3) Which subcommittees are most likely to conduct information management activities and why? 4) How do committees utilize subcommittees in the management of information to generate policy success?
Open Access
Compliance-gaining strategies as revealed by the contents of selected federal funding proposals.
(1982) Harman, Keith.
This study involved the testing of a typology of persuasive strategies in a descriptive setting for the first time. The "Project Narrative" portion of a set of federal funding proposals was analyzed via content analysis.
Open Access
Computer simulation and time series analysis of an integrate urban system.
(1977) Hall, Michael Lindsay,
Open Access
The concept of nonalignment and the Nigerian foreign policy 1960-1983 /
(The University of Oklahoma., 1985) Inamete, Ufot Bassey,
It is with this conceptual scheme of nonalignment, that this study developed, that the nonalignment content in the Nigerian foreign study also developed another novel way of studying the phenomenon of nonalignment; which is that of evaluating how, or whether, it is manifested, in terms of conceptualizing nonalignment as an amalgam of perspectives and dimensions.
Open Access
Congress, the Court, and the Constitution: Constitutional Deliberation in an Affiliated Age
(2011) Field, Matthew Owen; Peters, Jr., Ronald M.
The relationship between Congress and the Constitution and more specifically, constitutional deliberation within Congress, has been the focus of important scholarship (Pickerill, 2004; Devins & Whittington, 2005). This research furthers that enterprise through a comparative case study striving to understand the nature, content, and character of constitutional deliberation in the modern Congress. I examined a series of contemporaneous cases of constitutional interaction between Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution itself, with particular emphasis on the content of congressional discourse. The cumulative evidence from the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, and the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 suggest that constitutional deliberation in Congress can best be understood through a "political regime" analysis (Dahl, 1957; Clayton & May, 1999; Pickerill & Clayton, 2004; Keck, 2007). More specifically, these cases, falling within reasonably the same "affiliated" era (Skowronek, 1997), demonstrate and illustrate the importance, and effects, of regime contestation: the normative engagement and debate between competing national governing coalitions. Operating as a part of this affiliated regime, Congress is a predictably highly partisan institution functioning within a highly political environment encompassing both fundamental "settled" values and secondary "unsettled" values. Its deliberation is for the most part symbolic and derivative in nature, acting under an umbrella of judicial supremacy and attempting to exert influence primarily on unsettled values, by which fundamental regime shifts are desired. These cases belie the notion of "settled" law and a "settled" regime, yet, despite these deviations from an undiluted "republic of reasons," Congress plays an important representational role by acting, and, further still, continues and perpetuates an ongoing dialogue (Fisher, 1988) with the other branches which would not arguably take place otherwise.
Open Access
Congress, the intelligence community, and the president: Evolving institutional relationships in the Post-Cold War Era.
(2000) Korb, Charles Michael.; Ray, David,
This dissertation is a case study of Congressional-Executive Branch relations with respect to intelligence policy. The project utilizes the methods of secondary source assessment, interviews with key governmental officials, and formal content analysis to highlight important contextual elements that help to explain institutional behaviors and policies since the end of the Cold War. The evolving degree of presidential interest in, and control over, the intelligence community, is assessed. Additionally, the extent and character of post-Cold War Congressional intelligence oversight is found to be unique in several respects.
Open Access
Conservatism and Immigration Opinion in the United States
(2018-03-27) Moore, Jonathan; Krutz, Glen; Shortle, Allyson; Lamothe, Scott; Fryar, Alisa; Edy, Jill
The popular and academic consensus on the substance of conservative opinion on immigration is that it is universally and overwhelmingly in favor of restrictive policy, but the existence of pro-immigration figures such as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan is one reason among many to doubt the predictive accuracy of this stereotype. I argue that part of this phenomenon can be explained by understanding the diversity of thought underlying modern conservative ideology, and that by focusing more on these values and less on big tent conservatism, better predictions can be achieved. This dissertation seeks to empirically examine the substance of conservative opinion on immigration at the mass, engaged, and elite levels, and to compare these results at every stage against the popular stereotype of these opinions. The dissertation features a three-part research design including large-n regression analysis of existing survey data for the mass level, original survey research for the engaged level, and qualitative interviews at the elite level. The results of my empirical analyses suggest that while conservatism and conservative values generally do correlate with more restrictive opinions on immigration, some conservative values like limited government are frequently associated with liberalized attitudes towards immigration. This suggests that the literature’s current dismissal of ideological values as an variable useful in explaining immigration opinion comes from measurement error (focusing on big tent ideologies like liberalism and conservatism rather than smaller component values like adherence to limited government and moral traditionalism) rather than a true insignificance of ideology itself as a useful explanatory variable in this context.
Open Access
Consolidations in Higher Education: How Collaborative Structures and Processes Impact the Outcomes of Organizational Change
(2018-08) Valentine, Paul; Fryar, Alisa; Carlson, Deven; Robinson, Scott; Workman, Samuel; Houston, Derek
Over the past several decades, institutions of higher education have found themselves in a difficult environment. States have reduced funding, total enrollment has either fallen or flattened across several years, and technological advancements have placed institutions in direct competition with a larger number of colleges and universities. In response to this changing environment, policymakers and administrators have increasingly looked at consolidation to reorient systems of higher education in a way that makes them more suited to participate in this environment. These consolidations have wide-ranging impacts on administrators, faculty, staff, students, and communities by determining the missions, goals, procedures, and outcomes of colleges and universities. Additionally, these efforts are highly relevant to longstanding discussions in public administration on bureaucratic reform, bureaucratic structures, performance measurement, the role of efficiency, and accountability. Despite this, there has been little development in the literature on the outcomes of consolidations in the U.S. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of these consolidations within two main components. The first component is an exploration of the outcomes of consolidations which occurred in the U.S. over the past two decades. Chapter 2 uses a propensity score matching method to compare consolidated institutions with a control group of highly similar, non-consolidated institutions. This analysis produced evidence that while consolidations may increase their revenue in the short term, those gains are offset by increased expenses and the failure to reduce costs in expected areas. Chapter 3 utilizes student-level data from the University System of Georgia which has, since 2012, consolidated several colleges and universities. Using this data, a gradient boosted decision tree regression model develops a prediction algorithm from retention patterns pre-consolidation to predict post-consolidation retention based on the characteristics of enrolled students. These predictions are then compared to observed first-year retention. This comparison provides some evidence that consolidating institutions experience an opportunity cost where students expected to retain instead depart from the institution, especially for the cohorts which enrolled immediately after consolidation implementation. In the second component, qualitative interviews from consolidating institutions are used to explore how the process of organizational change is impacted by the collaboration between the consolidating institution. Based on the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework’s development of the external environment, particular the rules-in-use which define participants’ behaviors, Chapter 4 proposes a framework for understanding how the collaboration between institutions impacts organizational change. This process is based on two sets of factors. The first, persistent factors, are factors which relate to the process of change and collaboration and will therefore be present any time an organization is undergoing change or collaboration. These factors generally determine the time and resource costs to employees, with higher costs being related to more negative outcomes for employees and organizations. The second set, particular factors, are based on the IAD framework’s external environment, where rules-in-place change the behavior of participants, and thus either promote or constrain certain decisions within the organizational change based on the specific external environment of the participating institutions.
Open Access
Coping with limits: Responding to reform in Oklahoma.
(1998) Farmer, Rick D.; Copeland, Gary,
The model of legislative reform posited here include internal factors like: members' characteristics, professionalism, and internal political culture. It also include external influences like: the constitution, the states' traditional political culture, the current political environment, and the length of the term limits.