Bureaucratic Ambition: Careers, Motives, and the Innovative Administrator

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments When I was a child, I imagined that writing a book must be a profoundly, almost romantically solitary exploit. In reality, of course, producing a scholarly book is an inexorably social act. To the extent that this book succeeds, its success is due to the financial, intellectual, and personal support of many individuals and organizations. This project was possible thanks to the generous financial support of several institutions. Most critically, the book is based upon research supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Research awards from the Nonprofit and Public Management Center and the Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan provided funding for various expenses. A dissertation completion grant from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and a Gerald R. Ford Fellowship provided additional research funding and support for my final year of studies at Michigan. Discretionary grants from the Colgate University Research Council have supported research assistantships and various other e√orts to refine the book. I owe special thanks to Mary Corcoran, director of the Ford School’s joint PhD programs in Public Policy, xiv Acknowledgments who helped me negotiate the considerable practical obstacles to graduate studies for students with young children. Dozens of scholars have helped me with their attention to this project. Foremost are my dissertation advisor Rick Hall and committee members Nancy Burns, Barry Rabe, and David Winter. Each brought infectious enthusiasm to the project and o√ered guidance on matters methodological, theoretical , and stylistic. My undergraduate mentor and friend Jim Hogan read and commented on major portions of the text in its early stages. Adam Burnett graciously taught me about geographic analysis of climatic moisture and helped me apply the water scarcity metric that I use in chapter 4. Michael Cohen, Martha Feldman, Rick Feiock, Liz Gerber, Michael Hayes, Debra Holzhauer, Jennifer Jensen, Michael Johnston, David Konisky, Casey LaFrance, Robert Maranto, Ken Meier, Rob Mickey, Michael Mintrom, Leanne Powner, Rebecca Shiner, Charles Shipan, Chad Sparber, George Teodoro, Joe Wagner, Steve Wasby, and Patrick Wolf each read, discussed, and/or remarked on all or part of the book at various stages of its development. Each o√ered advice that substantially improved the project. I also thank anonymous reviewers from the Johns Hopkins University Press, the American Journal of Political Science, Public Administration Review, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory for valuable feedback on several parts of the manuscript. I thank Jessica Bauer, Charlotte Burns, Katrina Engelsted, Adam Hughes, Peter Mao, and Brooke Sweet for their excellent research assistance. Thanks to JHU Press editors Henry Tom and Suzanne Flinchbaugh for shepherding me through the publication process. Very sadly, Henry passed away shortly after his retirementandbeforeBureaucraticAmbitionmadeitintoprint ;Iremainindebtedto him for his guidance and support. Requiescat in pace. In conversations and correspondence, Kees Corssmit, Louis Dekmar, Brian Georgia, David LaFrance, and Paul Matthews o√ered me their important perspectives as active professionals in law enforcement and water utilities. Scores of other public administrators and public policy professionals contributed to this book by participating in interviews. Although though they must remain anonymous, I am profoundly grateful for their dedication to their jobs and their contributions to this research. The conventions of academic etiquette demand that I absolve all of the aforementioned people and organizations of responsibility for the many errors and shortcomings that likely plague this book, despite their e√orts to steer me right. I do so partly because they really are blameless and partly Acknowledgments xv because, as an ambitious professional, it is strategically rational for me to conform to the norms of my profession (as I explain in chapter 3). My most heartfelt acknowledgments are to my family, who encouraged me throughout the process of researching and writing despite the considerable costs to them. I thank my mother, Dee Teodoro, for terrific copyediting of several chapters and for her maternal pride and a√ection. I thank my father, Reynaldo Teodoro, for his confidence in me throughout my academic career and for the ambition that I seem to have inherited from him. My Foley in-laws in Grand Rapids—John, Terry, Ed, Kandi, Patrick, and Paula—have been materially and emotionally generous in support of this project. My daughter Tess was just five years old and my son Tony was just three when I started to work on this book; as I complete it, they are twelve and ten, respectively. True to...