Amanda Clark, Ph.D.
adclarkphd@gmail.com
Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Dallas
Year of PhD: 2018
Country: United States (Texas)
About Me:
Amanda D. Clark, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Instruction with the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the Director of the Initiative for Civic Leadership at UT Dallas. Dr. Clark’s research focuses on election administration, citizen engagement/democracy, and governance. After serving at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office in 2020, where she ran early voting, Dr. Clark focused her research on election administration and the role that public affairs academics play in supporting this essential public service. Her work includes examining the public service motivations of poll workers, the impact of the Help America Vote Act on Florida election law and administrative burden, and strategies for election workers dealing with emotional labor in their positions. Her recent journal articles have been published in Administration & Society, Teaching Public Administration, Administrative Theory & Praxis, and Urban Affairs Review.
Research Interests
Public Policy
Political Participation
Social Movements
Political Framing
Democracy
Election Administration
Publications:
Journal Articles:
With Christina S. Barsky Recent attacks on election integrity and the dehumanization of civil servants have raised concerns about the health of American democracy. Democracy administration rests on four pillars: trust/transparency, resources, education, and accountability/oversight. Election administrators, their employees, and poll workers administer democracy through these mechanisms. Ideally, centering these important public administrators via research in a way that re-humanizes the administrative process may be the ultimate strategy to stabilize the foundation upon which these pillars rest. In addition, we must incorporate election administration into the classes we teach. However, many public administration scholars do not understand the daily challenges election administrators face as our programs do not center election administration as a field of study or interest. This academic-practitioner disconnect leads to roadblocks that minimize public administration’s stated goal of democracy promotion.
with Christina Barsky and Monica Bustinza. The American democratic system depends on the regular execution of free and fair elections, delivered by front-line public workers. Local election officials (LEOs), their staff, and temporary election workers are tasked with providing excellent constituent service and expertise with a high degree of professionalism. Following the 2020 U.S. presidential contest, the very institution of elections has been under attack. This exploratory study investigates the impact of emotional labor on election workers in this atmosphere. The authors uncover the presence and nuances of emotional labor in election administration and raise questions about what this means for the future of election administration.
with Ashley E. Nickels Abstract: Even amid a global pandemic, the ideologies, thought processes, and motivations of public actors can be explained through theory, particularly framing. We argue that the words and symbols used or not used are vitally important to shaping how the public understands, responds to, and navigates our new normal. Moreover, this framing shapes our collective understanding of who or what is valued. We posit that austerity politics at all levels of government has not only helped to create a patchwork system of crisis response, but also explains the variation in framing of the pandemic response as tradeoffs among competing values (e.g., equity versus economy; us versus other; health versus business). The success or failure of these frames can lead to an environment in which administrative evil flourishes.
Nickels, Ashley E., Amanda D. Clark, and Zachary D. Wood. Municipal takeovers are a state policy ostensibly designed to address urban fiscal crises by “temporarily” taking over local government, suspending local control, and implementing sweeping austerity measures. Although framed as “apolitical,” takeovers have the capacity to reshape local democracy. These changes radically rearrange how decisions are made, who has access to decision makers, and, ultimately, who is in power. Using a policy-centered approach, we compare the cases of Camden, New Jersey and Flint, Michigan, illustrating how variations in policy design and localized implementation reshaped the local political landscape in different ways. While the Camden takeover institutionalized the emergent “community development regime,” Flints’ grassroots activists and community-based organizations destabilized the emergent regime.
with Ashley E. Nickels The Flint Water Crisis captured the attention of the world in January 2016 when both the state and federal governments declared a public health emergency in Flint, MI. Building on framing theory, we look to both the theory of casual stories and critical intersectionality to explain both how and why local grassroots associations (GAs) and high-capacity nonprofits (HCNPs) differed in their rhetorical responses to the crisis. Interviews, speeches, and op-eds published from both groups between May 2014 and May 2017 were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. We find that, while all spoke in terms of helping the community recover from the crisis, the narratives surrounding the crisis unfolded along two distinct paths—one focusing on the technical responses and moving forward, while the other focused on identifying root causes and calling for intersectional solutions.
with: Prentiss A. Dantzler and Ashley E. Nickels The rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as an intentionally intersectional movement, challenges us to consider the ways in which BLM is reimagining the lines of Black activism and the Black Liberation Movement. BLM may be considered the “next wave” of the Civil rights movement, guiding how and with whom the movement will progress. We use a content analysis of public statements and interviews of the founding members from October 2014-October 2016 to discuss the ways in which the founders of BLM frame the group’s actions. We bring together the critical feminist concept of intersectionality with framing theory to show how the founders of BLM have strategically framed the movement as one that honors past Black Liberation struggles, but transforms traditional framing of those struggles to include all Black lives inclusive of differences based on gender, sexual orientation, age, nationality, or criminal status.
with Anuj Gurung In this paper, we argue natural disasters have a positive association with the likelihood of internal or domestic trafficking. Trafficking is a function of individual vulnerability and subsequent criminal agency. Economic scarcity and lack of government protection are conditions of vulnerability that are exploited by criminal agents and networks in recruiting and transporting victims. The advent of natural disasters exacerbates these conditions and provides an opportunity for criminals. We argue that internal trafficking is more likely in the wake of disasters as routes to transnational trafficking may be inaccessible. Employing generalized estimation equations on a unique cross-section, time-series dataset of 158 countries, between 2001 and 2011, we find a consistent positive link between natural disasters and the likelihood of internal trafficking. The internal trafficking angle is under-studied, and our findings point at the need for further exploration of the topic.
Books Written:
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the anti–human trafficking movement have proliferated over the past few decades; many of these NGOs have joined coalitions to pool resources and expertise. How do changes in the external political environment or the internal coalition structure impact NGO framing strategy? Framing the fight Against Human Trafficking: Movement Coalitions and Tactical Diffusion uses a unique dataset to analyze the discursive processes of fifteen U.S. anti-trafficking NGOs involved in the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST) from 2008-2014. This analysis shows that ATEST has targeted the state (contentious politics) and private industry (private politics) to advance its agenda. Sex trafficking has normally been met with tactics from the contentious politics model due to its historical legal connection with prostitution; labor trafficking, conversely, has been approached via the private politics model due to its connection with business. However, the coalition’s formal organizational structure has enabled members to learn from each other and apply these models in innovative ways. This study builds theory by showing how learning in social movement coalitions can diffuse tactics and provide new action repertoires for members.
Book Chapters:
In S.M. Zavattaro, J.E. Sowa, A.C. Henderson, & L.H. Edwards (Eds.), Portraits of Public Service: Untold Stories from the Front Lines Varying levels of visibility are evident across the spectrum of public service. For some, the desire to be visible may also vary as the harsh limelight of criticism, warranted or not, shines on them. Elections offices around the country have experienced an increased level of attention over the past few major election cycles. How do those involved with administering elections perceive this attention? What would these public servants want the public to know about the task of running elections? For many public servants who do election work, there is a desire for the public to know that they care deeply about doing a good job. However, they also would express that while their job is extremely important, it is also routine and bound by laws over which election workers have little control. The phrase “serving in silence” can mean public servants who prefer to serve in silence because silence is a metaphor for having done a job well. More ominously in the world of elections, not being visible may also be preferable for safety reasons. For election workers across the country, both ideas hold merit and were particularly present in Palm Beach County, Florida.
Co-author: Ashley E. Nickels The implementation of public policy has consequences, some unintended, most deliberate, that impact citizens in a variety of ways. Even when public officials have the best intentions, a backlash by community members often catches them off guard, indicating a lack of understanding of what citizens actually need. Many factors have attributed to this disconnect recently including the impact of globalization, the prevalence of neoliberalism, and a lack of transparency and accountability in government decision making. This environment has led many modern social movements to reclaim the community development mantra from the 1960s Black Power Movement by calling for community control. In this chapter, the authors argue that community control has become an important overarching master frame for many social movements, particularly those related to community development. The importance of the New Public Service (NPS) paradigm, which holds that government entities should not dictate policy solutions to citizens, but involve them in the planning process itself becomes evident as we examine the impact of backlash in policy regarding the use of public space, allocation of public goods and services and electoral representation.
with Patrick G. Coy The success of the 1960 Nashville Student Sit-In Movement in desegregating the city’s downtown lunch counters was an important event in both the history of the US Civil Rights movement and in the diffusion and progression of nonviolent action nationally and internationally. In the short span of about six months, previously inexperienced young students learned to push their agenda for equality, not through violence and anger, but through thoughtful and deliberate actions that claimed their power and appealed to the rationality of all involved. Those once inexperienced students would go on to lead a new generation of nonviolent activists in the Civil Rights movement and achieve great success along the way.We show that Nashville is a useful case for teaching strategic nonviolent action at the university level because of its short duration, its relatively clear stages, its emphasis on training and discipline, and the integral role played by students. More specifically, this paper applies an adapted version of Adam Curle’s conflict progression theory as a theoretical framework to the Nashville case, demonstrating its rich potential in helping students to think analytically about nonviolent campaigns.
Book Reviews:
From Austerity to Abundance? is an important book to stoke the creativity of public administration scholars and practitioners in addressing some of today’s most intractable concerns. We need more thought into radical changes in governance, both in theory and action. This volume would be best suited to graduate-level scholars as this framework is very dense and complex. However, higher-level undergraduates and public policy administrators could also benefit. While the examples in this volume are very localized in context, further research into how to extend these philosophies to larger circles of governance is needed. Meaningful engagement of the citizenry, at all levels, will be necessary to solve increasingly global problems like saving our environment, stopping violence, and reducing financial inequality. Stout and the authors provide a great roadmap to those wanting to elevate the conversation in their own circles and integrate radical approaches to group problem-solving.