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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.
Information and resources related to specific research projects on the policy, management and implementation of city sustainability and city resiliency efforts are available at this Local Sustainability website.
Latest Book
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.
Krause, Rachel M., Le Anh Nguyen Long, S. Mohsen Fatemi, Gwen Arnold, and Sara Ludwick. (2026) "Information Processing and Changes to Local Governments' Practices Amid Intensifying Environmental Hazards." Review of Policy Research 43(3) e70098.
Siciliano, Michael D., Mashal -E Zehra, Raul Gutiérrez-Meave, Aaron Deslatte, and Rachel M. Krause. (2026). Local Governance and Green Ties: Assessing the Relationship Between Functional and Institutional Collective Action. State and Local Government Review. DOI: 10.1177/0160323X251410491.
Hawkins, Christopher V, Rachel M. Krause, Angela Y.S. Park, (2026). “Explaining the Use of Influence Tactics to Achieve Intraorganizational Collective Action Around Local Sustainability.” Public Administration Review. 86(1): 110-124.
Le Anh Nguyen Long, Rachel M. Krause, Gwen Arnold, Sara Ludwick and Mohsen Fatemi (2025) Do decision-maker diversity, trust, and policy entrepreneurship matter when steering transformative urban climate governance? Cities. DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2025.106668.
S. Mohsen Fatemi, Rachel M. Krause, Le Anh Nguyen Long, Gwen Arnold and Sara Ludwick (2025). Do cities with greater transformative governance capacity pursue more ambitious policies? Examining U.S. cities through the lens of climate resiliency. Climate Policy. DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2025.2512453
Hsi-Chuan Wang, Rachel M. Krause, Xiaoheng Wang. (2025) “Concerns and collaboration around infrastructure resilience in rural and urban places.” State and Local Government Review. DOI: 0160323X251353247.
Rachel M. Krause, Angela Y.S. Park, Christopher V. Hawkins and Aote Xin”. (2025) “Do municipal efforts ‘move the needle’ in reducing local greenhouse gas emissions? An initial assessment of US cities.” Cities, DOI:10.1016/j.cities.2025.105769
Deslatte, Aaron, Michael D. Siciliano, and Rachel M. Krause. (2024) "Applying collective action frameworks to analyse local-level collaboration for electric vehicle-related policies." Policy & Politics. DOI: 10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000034
Arnold, Gwen, Sara Ludwick, S. Mohsen Fatemi, Rachel M. Krause, and Le Anh Nguyen Long. (2024) "Policy entrepreneurship for transformative governance." European Policy Analysis. DOI: 10.1002/epa2.1222
Hofmeyer, Sarah L., Christopher V. Hawkins, Rachel M. Krause, and Angela Park. (2024). "How Do Local Officials Conceptualize Sustainability as Practiced in Their Communities? An Examination of US Cities." Journal of the American Planning Association: 90(4): 686-698.
Krause, Rachel M., S. Mohsen Fatemi, Le Anh Nguyen Long, Gwen Arnold, and Sarah L. Hofmeyer. (2023) "What is the Future of Survey-Based Data Collection for Local Government Research? Trends, Strategies, and Recommendations." Urban Affairs Review (2023): 10780874231175837.
Deslatte, Aaron, Michael D. Siciliano, and Rachel M. Krause. (2023). "Local government managers are on the frontlines of climate change: Are they ready?." Public Administration Review. 83: 1506-1511.
Long, Le Anh Nguyen, Rachel M. Krause, Gwen Arnold, Ryan Swanson, S. Mohsen Fatemi. (2023). "The networked micro-decision context: a new lens on transformative urban governance." Urban Transformations 5.1 (2023): 1-13.
Yuan (Daniel) Cheng, Angela Y.S. Park, and Rachel M. Krause. 2023.Nonprofit Sector Size and the Breadth of Local Government Climate Actions: Exploring the Moderating Role of Collaboration. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 0 10.1177/08997640221146967
Hawkins, Christopher V., and Rachel M. Krause. (2022). Decisions institutions, policy arenas, and inter-departmental collective action around urban sustainability. Urban Governance.
Rachel M. Krause, Christopher V. Hawkins, and Angela YS Park. (2022). How has the COVID crisis impacted local governments' sustainability efforts? An examination of initial effects. State and Local Government Review.
Moldogaziev, Temirlan T., Rachel M. Krause, Gwen Arnold, Le Ahn Nguyen Long, Tatyana Ruseva, Chris Silvia, and Christopher Witko. (2022). Support for the environment post‐transition? Material concerns and policy tradeoffs." Review of Policy Research.
Deslatte, Aaron, Rachel M. Krause, and Christopher V. Hawkins. (2022). The Road to Routinization: A Functional Collective Action Approach for Local Sustainability Planning and Performance Management. State and Local Government Review. 54(4): 310-327.
**Awarded best research article published in State and Local Government Review in 2022.
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. (2021) Staff Support and Administrative Capacity in Strategic Planning for Local Sustainability. Public Management Review. DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2021.1999667
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.
Public Leadership to Expand the Boundaries of Urban Sustainability
Public Leadership to Expand the Boundaries of Urban Sustainability
Presentation for the National Academy of Public Administration
Fall 2021
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