Tapping Twitter to Understand Crowd Behavior and Protests UCLA Luskin Public Policy scholar Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld authors a how-to guide on cutting-edge research using social media data

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By Stan Paul

Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld has long been fascinated by crowd dynamics, especially among those drawn to mass demonstrations. As a Ph.D. candidate in political science, Steinert-Threlkeld knew that social media generated at protests were a rich source of data — but he could find few tools to help him analyze it.

Now, in a world awash with popular uprisings and social movements — from Tahrir Square in 2011 to the Women’s March following the 2017 presidential inauguration — the assistant professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has used data generated by millions of posts on Twitter to learn more about crowd behavior and mass motivation.

Steinert-Threlkeld created a guide for acquiring and working with data sets culled from Twitter, which has more than 320 million global accounts generating more than half a billion messages every day.

His efforts culminated this year with the publication of “Twitter as Data,” the first guide in Cambridge University Press’ new Elements series on Quantitative and Computational Methods for Social Science. The series provides short introductions and hands-on tutorials to new and innovative research methodologies that may not yet appear in textbooks.

“When I was learning this as a graduate student, there was a lot of piecing together this information,” said Steinert-Threlkeld, who said he relied on sources such as Twitter documentation and online Q&A forums such as Stack Overflow. “I was able to do it, but it would have been a lot nicer if I had a textbook to show me the lay of the land.”

Steinert-Threlkeld, whose work combines his interest in computational social science and social networks with his research on protest and subnational conflict, said the book includes an interactive online version that allows users to click on links to download information and even sample data.

“It is differently comprehensive than a book,” Steinert-Threlkeld said. He described it as a “more interactive book experience — the first in social science that does this.”

In the book, Steinert-Threlkeld writes: “The increasing prevalence of digital communications technology — the internet and mobile phones — provides the possibility of analyzing human behavior at a level of detail previously unimaginable.” He compares this to the development of the microscope, which “facilitated the development of the germ theory of disease.”

He adds: “These tools are no more difficult to learn and use than other qualitative and quantitative methods, but they are not commonly taught to social scientists.”

To remedy this, Steinert-Threlkeld provides a systematic introduction to data sources and tools needed to benefit from them.

For example, people always want to know who’s protesting and how that influences others who might protest, Steinert-Threlkeld said. Most information has been restricted to surveys, which have limitations. “And so the researcher either gets lucky and happens to have scheduled a survey that occurs during a protest, but usually it’s after the fact.”

That is what’s exciting about using big data to study crowd behavior. “It’s like people always answering surveys,” he said. “Basically, every second you’re giving me survey data. Now we can tell in real time who’s protesting.”

One application of Twitter data is estimating crowd size, Steinert-Threlkeld said. In the past, he has had to rely on reports from organizers, police and the media to gauge the size of protests. “But I’m collecting tweets with GPS coordinates so I can say, ‘Oh, there are these many tweets or these many users from L.A. at this time or Pershing Square at this time, and explain whether that’s a reliable estimate or not of actual protesters.”

Twitter information can also be used to create data based on images shared from protests, Steinert-Threlkeld said. “The work I did before was all text based: What are people saying? Who’s saying it? When are they saying it? That sort of thing. But people share a lot of images online. They share more than they did three or four years ago. It’s really where the space is moving.”

Steinert-Threlkeld said that getting data into a form that a researcher can use requires a different skill set than designing and administering a survey. “But it’s still in some ways survey-like at the end of the day,” he said.

And “it’s fun,” he said. “Now we can tell in real time who’s protesting. We don’t know where the person lives, or their income, or their name. It’s still anonymous. We don’t know if the person who shares the image was there so we’re not incriminating anyone, but we can get a lot of information about protesters that we couldn’t before.”

In the final section of his guide, Steinert-Threlkeld writes: “These data are not a ‘revolution.’ Instead, they represent the next stage in the constant increase in data available to researchers. To stay at the forefront of data analysis, one needs to know some programming in order to interface with websites and data services, download data automatically, algorithmically clean and analyze data, and present these data in low-dimension environments. The skills are modern; the change is eternal.”

Recruiting ‘High-Caliber’ Luskin Students More than 200 students attend a career fair held by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, meeting with employers from a variety of fields with the hope of landing jobs and internships

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By Zev Hurwitz

Scores of first- and second-year graduate students worked the room at the annual UCLA Luskin Job and Internship Career Fair, networking and trading business cards with prospective employers.

Held Jan. 30, 2018, at the UCLA Faculty Center, the event gave students in all three disciplines — Public Policy, Urban Planning and Social Welfare — a chance to meet future employers, who were looking to fill jobs and internships.

Mirna Jewell, a researcher with the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, attended for the first time to recruit UCLA Luskin students on the advice of her colleague, a public policy graduate. Jewell was looking for interns for the Public Health Department’s food insecurity program.

“I work with a Luskin MPP graduate who has said so many nice things about the program,” Jewell said. “My colleague specifically wanted to target these students because of the high caliber and strong reputation.”

Stanley Hoffman MA UP ’72, who is also a Senior Fellow at UCLA Luskin, speaks with first-year Urban Planning student Marina Wassef about possible openings at his firm, Hoffman Associates. Photo by Aaron Julian

A strong contingent of Luskin School alumni were on hand.

“Half of the employers we have here today are represented by our alumni,” said VC Powe, director of career services and leadership development at UCLA Luskin. “To see these former students come back and hear about what they’re doing is wonderful. Seeing them here to give back to our students is the best.”

Greg Srolestar, director of technical assistance with Fair and Just Prosecution, a group that works with elected local prosecutors to provide policy and networking support, said he was looking for a few good students to join his team.

“Thus far, our organization has been really heavy on lawyers, which makes sense,” said Srolestar, a Luskin public policy alumnus. “It’s always great to get people with different perspectives and backgrounds. I’ve been the core team member without a law background, and it’s time to look for more people who may come from that kind of background.”

Srolestar was one of several dozen Luskin alumni who attended the fair on behalf of their employers.

Megan Kirkeby MPP ’12, a housing policy research specialist at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, attended to fill recently opened positions.

“We’re primarily recruiting for jobs,” Kirkeby said. “ We passed a big housing package in 2017 with 15 new laws that went into effect Jan. 1. We know we’re going to have to staff up starting in July, so we want to make sure people know about us and know that Sacramento is a wonderful place to work and live.”

Adam Russell, a first-year urban planning student with a focus on design, development and transportation, said the career fair had a good mix of employers.

“This is a really good starting point for looking at internships,” Russell said. “I’ve been making the rounds, getting to know who’s here and what’s out there.”

Abigail “Rosy” Doud, first-year student in urban planning, introduces herself at the career fair. Photo by Aaron Julian

Sarah Burtner, a second-year MPP candidate, said she also hoped to size up potential employers.

“I’m looking to see how I’ll spend my 40-hour work week in the near future,” she said. “The type of work I will be doing, the type of communities I’ll be working with, and will they make good bosses or coworkers.”

Corina Post, a graduate student in her third and final year of a dual degree in public policy and social welfare, said she was hoping the job fair would kick off her career search.

“I’m hoping to learn more about organizations, what they’re looking for and put things on my radar for me to look for as I’m graduating,” Post said. “I appreciate the diversity of organization that are here. Coming from both public policy and social welfare backgrounds, I’m really impressed with how VC and the career center staff have been able to bring together organizations that are interesting to all three departments.”

Tuesday’s event marked a return to the traditional job fair format. Last year, a “speed dating”-style event paired alumni employers with students with related interests.

“I’m excited about tonight because a lot of employers thought that career fairs are becoming passé, so we didn’t do one last year,” Powe said. “It was students who asked me to bring back a nonprofit career fair.”

While the event was originally billed as a nonprofit fair, high interest from alumni and employers in government and the private sector helped broaden the scope. Powe had hoped to attract at least 30 employers, but more than 200 students and 55 employers registered for the event, making it one of the most popular job fairs ever, Powe said.

“It’s a little bit tricky to have a job fair in January, because it’s difficult for students to commit,” Powe said. “But there are employers here with internships, fellowships and jobs in hand for this session.”

A Smart Way to Make a SMART Park New toolkit produced by the Luskin Center for Innovation provides a guide for making parks more user-friendly and sustainable

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By George Foulsham

The burgeoning world of smart technology includes everything from phones and televisions to thermostats and voice-activated home assistants. Now, thanks to the Luskin Center for Innovation at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, you can add neighborhood parks to the “smart” category.

The Luskin Center has just released “SMART Parks: A Toolkit” to highlight how technology can enhance the efficiency of — and more comfortable access to — public spaces.

What makes a park smart?

“A smart park uses technology to achieve equitable access, enhanced health, safety, resilience, water and energy efficiency, and effective opera­tions and maintenance,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, professor of urban planning and associate dean at UCLA Luskin, who led a small team of researchers and UCLA students on the SMART Parks project.

The toolkit, which is intended for park managers, designers, landscape architects, advocates and anyone who wishes to learn how technology can be incorporated into parks, is a compilation of technologies that cities and counties can use to make parks smarter.

The 275-page guide is organized by pertinent chapters — activity spaces, digital landscapes, hardscapes, lighting, irrigation, softscapes, stormwater management and urban furniture.

The kit includes a wide range of technologies that can be utilized in parks to provide benefits:

  • Interactive play sets that increase park accessibility for children with physical and mental disabilities by providing language, game and noise settings that can be adjusted by park management to meet community needs.
  • Path pavement materials that are more comfortable for older adults, making them feel welcome in parks and encouraging them to walk, thus improving their health.
  • Energy-generating exercise equipment that charges cellphones while providing users with free access to physical activity.
  • Irrigation controllers that conserve water by optimizing watering patterns in each park area depending on microclimate and soil type.
  • Soils that improve groundwater infiltration and remove pollutants from stormwater runoff, thus improving local water quality.
  • Self-healing concrete that reduces maintenance and replacement needs by preventing and healing cracks in park infrastructure, thus reducing park management costs.

The toolkit also includes guidance on how to navigate the challenges associated with the park management process, such as staff training and cost constraints, and pro­vides an overview of potential funding strategies to help create SMART Parks.

“The toolkit’s aim is to address concerns about park underutilization, high maintenance costs, and water and energy waste by rethinking the neighborhood park so that it becomes ‘smart.’ Parks represent assets for cities, but in an era of limited municipal resources and concerns about energy and water usage, they have also been viewed as liabilities,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

The researchers emphasize that the toolkit is a starting point for park managers, landscape professionals, local government, nonprof­its and interested community members to gain information on technological innova­tions and their potential benefits for parks.

More research is needed, they add, to ensure that the technologies and their benefits are appropriate for specific parks.

A downloadable copy of the SMART Parks toolkit is now online.

KCRW President Emphasizes the Value of Open Dialogue UCLA Luskin Senior Fellow Jennifer Ferro stresses the good that can come just from a willingness to truly listen

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By Les Dunseith

Jennifer Ferro was still a UCLA undergrad in the early 1990s when she landed an internship at KCRW, the public radio station in nearby Santa Monica.

“Jennifer had an internship that turned into a job,” noted Sarah Burtner, a second-year student in public policy at UCLA Luskin who helped introduce Ferro to a crowd of about 75 people, mostly students, who gathered Jan. 18, 2018, to hear Ferro’s Senior Fellows Speakers Series presentation. Ferro has been with KCRW for 25 years now.

“Millennials, on average, change jobs every three to five years, so this type of longevity is truly lost on us,” said Burtner with a smile.

Today, KCRW is the flagship public radio outlet in Southern California and Ferro is the station’s president. She is also an active participant in the UCLA Luskin Senior Fellows program, serving as a mentor for current students such as Burtner and Andres Carrasquillo of urban planning.

“We were drawn to Jennifer’s work at KCRW to help us understand how we might use the tools from the field of communication in thoughtful, engaging ways to help the public navigate the complexities of our fields,” Carrasquillo told the audience in the California Room at the UCLA Faculty Center.

Sarah Burtner and Andres Carrasquillo, both mentees of Ferro, introduced the key speaker. Photo by Aaron Julian

Ferro’s presentation focused on a central question: “What role can public media play in making good people?”

“At KCRW and in public media, we do very high quality work. And I do think it matters that when your goal and your mission is to serve people and not to get the largest audience,” Ferro said. “It means that you attract people with integrity and talk to people who care about integrity.”

She leads a radio outlet that is among the nation’s largest, best-known and most prolific, producing more than 100 hours of public interest and music programming each week. Her station offers hard news reporting as well as feature coverage of trendsetters in fields such as food, art, Hollywood or culture.

“Most of all,” Ferro said, “we believe in disseminating truthful information — which seems like something that we would not even need to talk about, until recently.”

Ferro tailored her presentation in part to the policy interests of her audience, most of whom were from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She noted, for example, that many people have the mistaken perception that public radio exists mostly on money doled out to stations by the federal government.

In reality, just 6 percent of the station’s budget comes via taxpayers. “KCRW receives close to half of its $20-million budget annually from individuals who decide, voluntarily, to support it,” she said. In all, about 55,000 people donate to the cause. The remaining funding “comes from sponsorship, or what we call underwriting,” Ferro explained.

She and her colleagues try to use those funds wisely, Ferro said, covering stories in ways that will enlighten listeners and broaden their perspectives.

Noting the overriding sense of political division in the country of late, Ferro played a couple of audio clips from public radio programs that tried to bridge the divide between left and right by including voices from both sides on controversial topics.

In one piece that aired prior to the 2016 presidential election, a woman who supported Donald Trump speaks of her beliefs, including the idea that radical Islamists had been infiltrating the country in large numbers with the intent of doing harm to Americans. An interviewer points out that white men have been responsible for the vast majority of terrorist violence in this country, but the woman refuses to believe him.

Ferro said this piece sticks out in her memory not because of the woman’s views but because of the reaction the interview generated among many listeners.

“If you are like me, you presume that people who listen to public radio are rational and reasonable — kind, even,” she said. “Of all the media consumers, public radio people would be like Canada, you know, tolerant and nice.”

Yet, after that interview aired, the woman who expressed her conservative views on air was flooded with hateful emails and tweets, including many that were vile — even death threats.

“One of the things I hear all of the time is that we just need to listen more to each other,” Ferro told the crowd. But when people with opposing views do try to communicate, “sometimes I feel that what we really want is to wait for them to stop talking so that we can then persuade them to think the way that we think.

“It comes from this notion, this concept, that ‘I’m right, and you’re wrong.’ But that’s what the other person is thinking about you too.”

As a Senior Fellow at UCLA Luskin, Ferro engages with students who benefit directly from her experience and efforts to expand their worldviews. She and other participants in the mentorship program provide other benefits too.

VC Powe, who organized Ferro’s talk as part of her role as director of career services at UCLA Luskin, generated a buzz among the crowd when she told them of a new donation by Edmund J. Cain, vice president of grant donations for the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, that will provide $5,000 stipends to UCLA Luskin students who land summer internships that would otherwise be unpaid. The catch? The stipends can only go to students whose internships are somehow connected to a senior fellow.

That won’t be a problem at KCRW, which still offers internships like the one that first got Ferro her foot in the door there. Now, as station president, she continues to delight in the opportunity that public media provides for open, honest communication.

“We let people tell their own stories, in their own voices,” Ferro said, while urging that it’s important that all voices be heard. “Are we going to allow ourselves to hear things that we don’t agree with, that we think are absolutely wrong, that we find personally repulsive?”

She continued, “I think there’s a better goal in all of this, and it’s the goal of exercising our humanity. You should go and meet your neighbors. You should talk to people about anything besides politics,” Ferro said. “You should try to like people in spite of who they voted for.”

Suicides by Drugs in U.S. Are Undercounted, Study Suggests Report co-authored by UCLA Luskin professor Mark S. Kaplan finds that a substantial gap between the rates of drug suicides and 'accidental' drug deaths is likely due to misclassification

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By Stan Paul

Mark S. Kaplan

The rate of suicides by drug intoxication in the United States may be vastly underreported and misclassified, according to a new study co-written by Mark S. Kaplan, professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The study was published online Jan. 10 in the journal PLOS ONE. The researchers report that the drug suicide rate in the United States rose nearly one-quarter (24 percent) between 2000 and 2016, and the accidental opioid and other drug intoxication death rate increased by 312 percent. This rate gap suggests an increase in suicide undercounting, according to the multidisciplinary international team of researchers led by Ian Rockett of West Virginia University School of Public Health.

“Unfortunately, part of the problem is due to serious under-resourcing of state and local death investigation systems throughout most of the U.S.,” said Kaplan, whose research has focused on using population-wide data to understand suicide risk factors among veterans, seniors and other vulnerable populations. Kaplan added that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported more than 63,000 drug deaths in 2016, up from 52,000 in 2015.

“Many of these deaths were probably suicides, yet reported as accidental self-poisoning rather than intentional self-harm, particularly among the middle-aged,” Kaplan said.

The researchers report that suicide notes and psychiatric history, including a prior suicide attempt or diagnosed depression, are much more important in helping medical examiners and coroners identify drug suicides than suicides by more violent and obvious methods. The new research further shows this evidence is absent in a large majority of suicide and possible suicide cases.

“A suicide note, prior suicide attempt or affective disorder was documented in less than one-third of suicides and one-quarter of undetermined deaths,” the research team reported in the study. The researchers cited larger prevalence gaps among drug intoxication cases than gunshot or hanging cases.

“Our incorporation of undetermined deaths, as well as registered suicides, not only provided a window on the nature of suicide misclassification within the undetermined death category, but within the accident category — as a much larger reservoir for obscuring drug intoxication suicides,” the researchers wrote in the report.

The opioid epidemic in the United States is also exacerbating problems with suicide accounting, the researchers report. And that severely impedes the understanding and prevention of suicide and drug deaths nationally.

The team analyzed data from the Restricted Access Database in the National Violent Death Reporting System, which is administered by the CDC.

Maciek Kolodziejczak: A Legacy of Giving Former graduate advisor founds Fellowship Fund in Public Policy to benefit future students

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After 20 years of service to Public Policy students, former Graduate Advisor Maciek Kolodziejczak wasn’t ready to walk away without leaving a legacy at UCLA Luskin.

In June, Kolodziejczak retired from his post after mentoring every Public Policy student to ever step foot on the UCLA campus; he had held the position since the creation of the Master of Public Policy in 1996. In his time, he advised and fostered the education of about 700 policy students who have gone on to directly influence the world.

As a final act of service to those he cared about so deeply, he founded the Maciek Kolodziejczak Fellowship Fund in Public Policy. A month-long campaign leading up to his retirement celebration on June 12 raised over $34,500 for fellowships for students who will demonstrate excellence in leadership and service in the department, the Luskin School, UCLA and the community at large. Donors included students, alumni and friends from throughout UCLA Luskin Public Policy’s history.

Because Maciek himself provided a generous lead gift and the Dean of the Luskin School provided a $25,000 matching gift, nearly $55,000 was raised in all. Public Policy students will thus have another source of funding to advance their desire to become Luskin agents of change.

The legacy of Maciek Kolodziejczak will continue well into the future.

Latest Updates Regarding Support for UCLA Luskin The School's education and research efforts are bolstered by support from alumni and other advisors

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Each issue of the Luskin Forum magazine includes information regarding recent gifts to UCLA Luskin and the various development activities that help us maintain and strengthen our education and research. Here are highlights from the most recent issue:

Students Say Thank You to the Luskins

Last spring, recipients of a Luskin Graduate Fellowship from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs met for lunch with Meyer and Renee Luskin. The students wanted to thank the Luskins for their generous support of academic endeavors. Meyer and Renee Luskin are among the school’s most generous supporters and have supported UCLA Luskin students from the school’s beginning. Students from each of the three departments are selected each year for this prestigious award.

 

A Salute from the UCLA Luskin Board

The Board of Advisors for UCLA Luskin met Oct. 3, 2017, to discuss the school’s future with Dean Gary Segura, and to salute and say thank you to the outgoing board chair, Susan Rice. The board, made up of civic leaders, business executives and social entrepreneurs, helps shape the vision and strategic plan for the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. In her final meeting as board chair, Rice was recognized for her five years of service as leader of the board. Taking over as the new board chair is Michael Fleming.

Members of the board include, back row, from left, Chuck Gatchell MPP ’05, Miguel Santana, Keenan Behrle, Michael Mahdesian, Fleming and Len Unger. Middle row, from left, Vicki Reynolds, Laura Shell, Fran Inman, Karen Hill Scott, Annette Shapiro and Jill Black Zalben. Front row, from left, Dean Segura, Rice and Marcia Choo.

Board members not pictured are Michael Dukakis, David Fisher, Gadi Kaufmann, Joanne Kozberg, Randall Lewis, Meyer Luskin, Dan Maldonado, George Pla, Jeff Seymour and Steve Soboroff.

From left, Sherrie Schlom, Dick Lewis, the 2016-17 Kathleen Lewis Family fellow Ummra Hang, and Ricardo Quintero, UCLA Luskin’s director of development.

Lewis Family Fellowship Honors Outstanding MSW Student

The Kathleen Lewis Family Fellowship was established in 2013 to support Master of Social Welfare (MSW) students in memory of Kathleen “Kathy” Lewis MSW ’60. Dick Lewis, Kathy’s husband of 54 years, and their two daughters, Carol Gullstad Lewis and Susan Lewis, created the fellowship to honor Kathy Lewis’s memory and her legacy as a social worker who was dedicated to community and political issues.

As the first in her family to graduate from college, Kathy Lewis overcame significant family challenges, which helped lead her to a career in social work. Her family believes there is no better way to ensure her memory is carried on by future generations of social workers who are passionate about helping others.

The 2016-17 Kathleen Lewis Family fellow was Ummra Hang, who received her MSW degree last June.

Hang chose UCLA Luskin because of her desire to be an impactful change agent. She is dedicated to working with the juvenile justice population and those who have been impacted by the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC).

A survivor of sexual exploitation herself, Hang became more involved with CSEC research and empowering youth through shared knowledge of trauma and healing that is possible through higher education. Her research involved working on the CSEC research team and hosting a conference that highlighted survivors and services to assist the population and their healing.

Hang was a part of the Justice Workgroup, as well as the Formerly Incarcerated Externship, where she researched policies and pathways and advocated for the formerly and currently incarcerated so they too could heal and combat the cradle-to-prison pipeline.

Hang had extensive internship experience while at UCLA Luskin. She was an Education and Workforce Development Intern for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, where she researched and wrote grants for program development. She also researched and wrote a report on the school-to-prison pipeline and compiled research to help the Chamber become more equitable.

She also collected data and created a collaborative model, assisted in organizing youth educational events, and worked with the Smart Justice team to expand program development for formerly incarcerated youth.

Match Program Boosts Endowed Scholarship Gifts to UCLA Luskin

UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs is pleased to announce an exceptional opportunity for friends and alumni of the school to expand the impact of their gifts.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block has created the Chancellor’s Centennial Scholars Match program. Through June 30, 2018 — or until matching funds are exhausted — the UCLA Chancellor’s Centennial Scholars Match program will add 50 percent to the value of all qualifying gifts for endowed scholarships. With the Chancellor’s Match, a $250,000 gift automatically becomes $375,000 to support high-achieving Luskin students. A $1 million scholarship gift automatically becomes $1.5 million.

“Endowed scholarships are vital for our students and the school,” said Ricardo Quintero, director of development at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “They attract diverse and talented applicants who want to take advantage of the rich education we offer in the fields of social work, urban planning, and policymaking. They also help the School to provide the access and excellence that are our hallmarks as one of the top public affairs schools in the country. In addition, endowed gifts remain intact in perpetuity, giving donors a permanent legacy at the School.”

HOW THE CHANCELLOR’S CENTENNIAL SCHOLARSHIP MATCH WORKS:

Qualifying gifts of $250,000 to $1 million will be matched at 50 percent. Gifts eligible for matching funds must support new or existing endowments that are specifically designated to support scholarships at UCLA Luskin. Cash gifts and pledges will be matched. Corporate matching gifts and planned gifts are not eligible. Pledges are payable over a maximum of five years. The Chancellor’s Centennial Scholarship Match is part of the Centennial Campaign for UCLA — a seven-year, $4.2 billion effort to prepare UCLA for a second century of leadership as one of the greatest public universities in the world — and it will help strengthen UCLA Luskin for decades to come. 

For more information, contact Ricardo Quintero at (310) 206-7949, or by email at rquintero@luskin.ucla.edu

 

Catalysts For Change

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On Nov. 1, 2017, Global Public Affairs @UCLA Luskin hosted a lunchtime talk with Duncan Green, an educator, writer and head of research at Oxfam GB, about power and how power systems shape global policy and change. As detailed in his latest work, “How Change Happens,” Green shared his expertise and knowledge gained through years of working with different institutions of power ranging from governments to grassroots social and political activists.

A Flickr album of photos from the presentation can be accessed below.

Author Duncan Green

Professor Donald Shoup Speaks to Urban Planners from China

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On Sept. 19, 2017, Professor Donald Shoup of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning spoke to a group of 25 urban planners from China who were touring the United States. He talked about his research on urban congestion and the negative consequences of offering free parking on municipal streets in American cities. A gallery of photos by George Foulsham of Luskin Communications is available on Flickr:

Professor Donald Shoup's Presentation to Urban Planners from China

Tackling the Resource Curse UCLA researchers launch the Project on Resources, Development, and Governance to design policies in countries where corruption, conflict undercut natural abundance

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By George Foulsham

From left, Michael Ross, professor of political science; Graeme Blair, assistant professor of political science; and Darin Christensen, assistant professor of public policy at UCLA Luskin, are the co-founders of PRDG. Photo by George Foulsham

For three UCLA scholars, it just didn’t add up. Why do so many people who live in developing countries with an abundance of natural resources struggle in poverty every day?

“You would think that it’s a simple thing to take wealth that’s underneath the ground and turn it into wealth on top of the ground for everybody to share,” said Michael Ross, a professor of political science at UCLA. “But we know from studying countries around the world that that very rarely happens.”

Social scientists call it the resource curse, and it’s one of the reasons why Ross and two UCLA colleagues, UCLA Luskin’s Darin Christensen and political science faculty member Graeme Blair, have created the Project on Resources, Development, and Governance (PRDG), a network of social scientists, policymakers, nongovernmental organizations and industry representatives dedicated to finding policies that promote welfare, peace and accountability in resource-rich countries.

“For the past 15 years or so, I have been living in two worlds,” Ross said. “One is an academic world where I do research and I speak to some of the smartest young social scientists in the world who are studying the problems of developing countries. In the other world, I’m sitting around the table with policymakers who are worried about how to fix a problem called the resource curse.”

About three dozen countries in the low- and middle-income world are economically dependent on oil, gas and mining, but they all seem to struggle despite the riches provided by the resources. Those countries include Angola, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Indonesia, East Timor and Kazakhstan.

“They tend to be conflict-ridden,” Ross said. “There are protests, there’s pollution, there are civil wars around these projects.” There’s also plenty of corruption, with many of the countries in economic turmoil because of bribery and other issues in regions of exceptional resource wealth, such as mining areas.

“There are so many opportunities for corruption, and politicians are a whole lot less responsive to the people and a whole lot more concerned with siphoning off money for their own bank accounts overseas,” Ross said.

Finding solutions to these challenging issues won’t be easy.

“We have a generation of super-smart young political scientists and economists who are interested in this problem,” Ross said. “Our project is designed to bring together the smartest sort of leading-edge people in political science and economics with the policymakers who are dealing with these problems on a day-to-day level.”

That mission officially begins Sept. 21-22, 2017, with the first PRDG summit at the Luskin Conference Center on the UCLA campus. Researchers and policymakers from UCLA, the World Bank, Barnard College, the University of Pittsburgh, the Natural Resource Governance Institute and many other organizations and universities will make presentations and discuss issues that range from creating successful research-policy partnerships to the research priorities of funders.

The September conference at UCLA was generously funded by the Luskin Center for Innovation, Natural Resource Governance Institute, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Burkle Center and UCLA’s Political Science Department. The initiative also recently received a one-year, $600,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support additional workshops in Washington, D.C., and Accra, Ghana, and the research partnerships that emerge from these meetings.

“One of the important parts of PRDG is the effort to bring in local researchers,” said Blair, assistant professor of political science at UCLA. “We want to provide training in modern social science research methods, and to provide learning-while-doing at matchmaking workshops where we bring together academics, policymakers and practitioners.”

Providing guidance on policy issues is Christensen, assistant professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “I think policy plays an essential role in this PRDG initiative,” Christensen said. “What PRDG is trying to do is bring policymakers and academics around the same table and allow policymakers to propose solutions and team up with researchers who can go to the field and determine whether these new initiatives are actually helping root out the corruption or address the grievances that often accompany these big mining, oil and gas projects.”

PRDG’s short-term goals include generating a series of new research projects on solutions to problems faced in resource-rich countries, bringing together researchers, policymakers and practitioners. “Another goal is to start joint learning exercises where we go out into the field and try to help build research into their existing program,” Blair said.

In the long term, the UCLA researchers are hoping that the conversation about these issues becomes circular — the research feeds back into the policymaking conversation, which generates new questions the researchers can tackle.

“We want to figure out ways to make a difference, and find ways to fix this problem,” Ross said.