Newswise — Melvin Dubnick, professor of public administration with the University of New Hampshire, is available to discuss the accountability issues and political repercussions of the federal government and corporate responses to British Petroleum’s oil spill in Louisiana.
Dubnick has extensively studied accountability and public administration issues regarding the local, state and federal responses to Hurricane Katrina, Boston’s Big Dig, and the financial crisis.
“This is the kind of moment that challenges the capacity of public administration at number of levels. It is more of an Exxon Valdez moment that a Katrina moment for the nature of the damage this will do to the environment, but it's the political implications that are magnified by its location and timing -- and will play out as long as the slick is making its way to the coastal and delta areas,” Dubnick says.
“BP's claim that this was containable and that it can handle the situation is now seen as so much public relations, and if anything the administration will be criticized for not realizing that sooner. Much is already being made of the fact that tougher regulations were not in place, or were not being enforced -- regulations, it seems, that Brazil has mandated for its off-shore drilling that the oil companies deem too costly and unnecessary for the U.S. off shore operations,” he says.
Dubnick says that politically, this disaster will fall back on the Bush Administration and its connections to the oil industry. The Obama Administration will backtrack on the recent off shore drilling policy change and could use the incident as leverage to boost the clean energy agenda, which is good news for supporters of the Cape Wind project.
The professor also notes that he has not seen anything quite like the past week or so in terms of an almost 180 degree shift in the nation's political “atmospherics.”
“The building movement and collective rant against government has effectively been turned around. The focus is now on doing something about corporations -- whether Wall Street banks or oil companies. The GOP is suddenly in defensive mode and much of what they and the Tea Party leadership has stated in public will come back to haunt them. If anything, the Arizona episode has put a break on the Tea Party ‘movement,’ and together, with the Louisiana oil spill, is creating a huge opportunity for the Democrats who just a week or so ago looked like big political losers. For those of us who watch all this for a living, the shift has been stunning,” he says.
For nearly three decades, Melvin Dubnick's scholarly work has focused on accountability and governance in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. He is especially concerned with the conceptual and research issues surrounding accountability and how to develop a more realistic and credible approach to governance reforms aimed at enhancing accountability. Dubnick is the co-author of textbooks on public policy analysis, public administration, and American government. In addition to his work on government accountability systems, his scholarly publications include articles on a wide range of topics, including third-world development planning, health care reform, government regulatory policies, intergovernmental relations, industrial policy, administrative reform, and teaching administrative ethics.
The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling more than 12,200 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.
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