Sanford School of Public Policy
Duke University

Research

Rigorous, relevant research is a hallmark of the Sanford School of Public Policy and its faculty. With expertise in a wide variety of fields, the public policy faculty is recognized for research in health policy, media and democracy, education finance and achievement, and many other areas. Recent publications are highlighted here; for additional publications information, you may visit individual faculty web pages or use the links at the top of this page. To find faculty with a particular area of expertise, browse this list of topic areas or search within our faculty directory.

Recent Publications

"You're the First One I've Told:" the New Faces of HIV in the South

Kathyrn Whetten and Brian Pence
March 2013, Rutgers University Press

A second edition of “You’re the First One I’ve Told:” The New Faces of HIV in the South by Kathryn Whetten, professor of public policy and global health, and Brian Pence, associate professor of community and family medicine and global health, has been released by Rutgers University Press. First published in 2002 with Trang Quyen Nguyen as co-author, the book featured the stories of 25 people living with HIV/AIDS combined with survey data from the Deep South.

In the 10 years since, HIV/AIDS has continued to spread through the rural South, which accounts for 36 percent of new cases while representing 22 percent of the U.S. population. The book’s second edition incorporates research from the authors’ recent quantitative study, “Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast” (CHASE), which includes 611 HIV-positive patients from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. The research showed that many of the patients had also experienced sexual abuse, family violence and other traumatic events and highlights challenges to treating this population. 

“We found that HIV was simply one more event in a long history of traumatic life experiences,” the authors wrote. “We believe it is critical to develop HIV medical care models that acknowledge, ask about and respond to patients’ life histories in order to best promote patients’ health.”

 

The Paradox of Gender Equality: How American Women’s Groups Gained and Lost Their Public Voice

Kristin A. Goss
December 2012 University of Michigan Press

Drawing on original research, Kristin A. Goss examines how women's civic place has changed over the span of more than 120 years, how public policy has driven these changes, and why these changes matter for women and American democracy. Suffrage, which granted women the right to vote and invited their democratic participation, provided a dual platform for the expansion of women's policy agendas. As measured by women's groups' appearances before the U.S. Congress, women's collective political engagement continued to grow between 1920 and 1960—when many conventional accounts claim it declined—and declined after 1980, when it might have been expected to grow. This waxing and waning was accompanied by major shifts in issue agendas, from broad public interests to narrow feminist interests.

 

Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City

Edward O. Wilson and Alex Harris
October 2012, Liveright Publishing Corp.

Sanford professor and documentary photographer Alex Harris teamed up with Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson to produce this book that presents the life and history of Mobile, Ala. Wilson, a Mobile native and the world’s leading expert on ants and the social behavior of animals, traces his family’s racial and economic struggles from the Civil War through the Depression, providing a rare perspective on Mobile’s rich and varied history. Harris, an Atlanta native who has photographed extensively in the American South, interweaves Wilson’s story with images of daily life in Mobile to create a story of conservation, revitalization and radical change. Wilson and Harris will speak at a reception and book signing at the Nasher Museum of Art on Dec. 12 at 6:30 p.m.

Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America

William Ascher and Natalia Mirovitskaya, eds. 
November 2012, Palgrave Macmillan

The book is the first in a series “Politics, Economics, and Inclusive Development,” and explores the links between economic policy and inter-group violence in Latin America with a collection of case studies.The transformation from open ideological conflict to confrontations over natural resources, drugs and street violence seen across the region is traced to shifts in economic strategies of right, centrist and leftist governments. The cases use both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how economic development strategies and policies have shaped the levels and forms of violence in 10 countries. Co-editor Natalia Mirovitskaya is a senior research scholar at DCID. 

 

Does Monitoring Really Assure Free and Fair Elections?

Why do some countries invite election monitoring when candidates clearly intend to cheat? Do foreign election monitors really improve the quality of elections? Judith Kelley spent six years pursing the answers to these questions, which she presents in her book, Monitoring Democracy: When International Election Observation Works, and Why It Often Fails.

Analyzing original data on over 600 monitoring missions and 1,300 elections, Kelley grounds her investigation in solid historical context as well as studies of long-term developments over several elections in fifteen countries. She pinpoints the weaknesses of international election monitoring and looks at how practitioners and policymakers might help to improve them. Demonstrating the power and problems of transnational actors, Kelley crystallizes the tough dilemmas that the international community faces in using international election monitoring to promote democracy and liberal values.

The book was published in March 2012 by Princeton University Press.

Cook Examines Costs and Tradeoffs in Crime Control.

Criminal justice expenditures have more than doubled since the 1980s, dramatically increasing costs to the public. With state and local revenue shortfalls resulting from the recent recession, the question of whether crime control can be accomplished either with fewer resources or by investing those resources in areas other than the criminal justice system is more relevant
than ever.

In Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Philip J. Cook and his co-editors Jens Ludwig and Justin McCrary collected proceedings from a January 2010 National Bureau of Economic Research conference. Among the topics considered are criminal justice system reform, social policy and government policies affecting alcohol and drug abuse, and private crime prevention. Particular attention is paid to the respective roles of both the private sector and government agencies.

The book was published in October 2011 by the University of Chicago Press.

 

Strange Bedfellows: Big-Time Sports and the Academic Enterprise

Scandals in the athletic programs of major universities, especially in football and basketball make national news. With television contracts and sports merchandise the programs earn serious money and spend it on coaches salaries and stadiums. Should this really be part of higher education?

Drawing on new research findings, Sanford Professor Charles Clotfelter takes a fresh look at these issues in his book, Big-Time Sports in American Universities. Rather than being the inconsequential student activity that universities often imply, commercial sports entertainment has become a core function for many universities in a way not found in other countries. Clotfelter presents evidence for a fresh discussion of the values and contributions, the costs and tensions between athletics and academics.

The book was published in May 2011 by Cambridge University Press

Overview of Global Finance and Goverance by Elson

In his new book Governing Global Finance, Anthony Elson, visiting lecturer in public policy studies, examines the evolution of financial globalization and the attempts that have been made at the international level to establish a system of global financial governance to safeguard the functioning of the international financial system. The book focuses on how the international financial architecture has taken the form that it has, and why it was unable to prevent the recent global financial crisis. The book considers reforms that have been proposed to minimize the risk of future financial crises, as well as others that need to be implemented.

The book was published in March 2011 by Palgrave MacMillan.

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