Rachel M. Krause
I am a Professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas and serve as the program director for our Masters of Public Administration (MPA) degree.
My research engages theories of urban governance, the selection and use of policy tools, collaboration, and the influence of institutions on policy and management decisions to understand the dynamics of urban sustainability and climate protection initiatives.
Latest Book
Implementing City Sustainability examines the structures and processes that city governments employ to pursue environmental, social, and economic well-being within their communities. As American cities adopt sustainability objectives, they are faced with the need to overcome fuzzy-boundary, coordination, and collective action challenges to achieve successful implementation.
Sustainability goals often do not fit neatly into traditional city government structures, which tend to be organized around specific functional responsibilities, such as planning, public works, parks and recreation, and community development. The authors advance a theory of Functional Collective Action and apply it to local sustainability to explain how cities can—and in some cases do—organize to successfully administer changes to achieve complex objectives that transcend these organizational separations. Implementing City Sustainability uses a mixed-method research design and original data to provide a national overview of cities’ sustainability arrangements, as well as eight city case studies highlighting different means of organizing to achieve functional collective action.
By focusing not just on what cities are doing to further sustainability, but also on how they are doing it, the authors show how administrative structure enables—or inhibits—cities to overcome functional divides and achieve successful outcomes.
Krause, Rachel M. and Christopher V. Hawkins. (2021). Implementing City Sustainability. Temple University Press.
Public Leadership to Expand the Boundaries of Urban Sustainability
Presentation for the National Academy of Public Administration
Fall 2021
Bromley-Trujillo, Rebecca; Joshua A. Basseches; Maxwell Boykoff; Trevor Culhane; Galen Hall; Noel Healy; David J. Hess; David Hsu; Rachel M. Krause; Harland Prechel; R. Timmons Roberts; Jennie C. Stephens (2022). Climate policy conflict in the US states: a critical review and way forward. Climatic Change, 170(3), pp.1-24.
Hawkins, Christopher V., Rachel M. Krause, Aaron Deslatte. (accepted) Staff Support and Administrative Capacity in Strategic Planning for Local Sustainability. Public Management Review.
Rachel M. Krause, Christopher V. Hawkins. (2021). Viewpoints: Improving cities’ implementation of sustainability objectives. Cities. 113, 103167.
Rachel M. Krause. (2021) Why are we doing this? Issue framing, problem proximity, and cities’ rationale for regulating single-use plastics. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. DOI: 10.1080/1523908X.2021.1881463
Pierce, John C.; Krause, Rachel M.; Hofmeyer, Sarah L.; Johnson, Bonnie J. (2021) Explanations for Wind Turbine Installations: Local and Global Environmental Concerns in the Central Corridor of the United States? Energies, 14, 5830. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14185830
Park, Angela Y.S., Rachel M. Krause. (2021) Exploring the landscape of sustainability performance management systems in U.S. local governments. Journal of Environmental Management. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111764
Hawkins, Christopher V., Rachel M. Krause. (2021) Trends in Resource Capacity and Collaboration for City Sustainability: Implications for Planning Research and Practice. Planning Theory and Practice. 22 (1): 141-147.
Rachel M. Krause, Christopher V. Hawkins, Angela Y.S. Park. (2021). The perfect amount of help: An examination of the relationship between capacity and collaboration in urban energy and climate initiatives. Urban Affairs Review. 57 (2):583-608.