Mailing address
Littauer 339A
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA, 02138
Elaine Kamarck
Lecturer in Public Policy
Contact:
Telephone: 617-495-9002
Fax: 617-495-8963
Email: elaine_kamarck@harvard.edu
Experience
Elaine C. Kamarck is a Lecturer in Public Policy who came to the Kennedy School in 1997 after a career in politics and government. In the 1980s, she was one of the founders of the New Democrat movement which helped to elect Bill Clinton president. She served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, where she created and managed the Clinton Administration's National Performance Review, also known as "reinventing government." At the Kennedy School, she served as Director of Visions of Governance for the Twenty-First Century and as Faculty Advisor to the Innovations in American Government Awards Program. In 2000, she took a leave of absence to work as senior policy adviser to the Gore campaign. She conducts research on twenty-first century government, the role of the Internet in political campaigns, homeland defense, and governmental reform and innovation. She teaches courses on twenty-first century government, innovation, and electronic government. Kamarck received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
AP Photo
August 27, 2008
"Political Conventions are Just as Fun on TV"
Op-Ed, Newsday
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"...[T]here's only one thing I'm missing by not being in Denver, and that's the ability to walk around outside and say to the Hillary/McCain supporters, "What are you thinking!?"
I've been bombarded by their e-mails for months now and frankly, I'm mystified. When you're a loyal member of an American political party, as they claim to be, you sign up to be inside a big tent, where compromise is the name of the game. When parties have real divisions, they're usually over big, ideological issues. It's hard to see where all this venom is coming from...."
Kent Dayton
Summer 2008
"Super-Delegates Q&A with Elaine Kamarck"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
With the current attention on the role of super-delegates in the selection of a Democratic candidate for president, we asked Elaine Kamarck, Kennedy School lecturer in public policy, if we might reprint a portion of her doctoral dissertation on the history of super-delegates. Her dissertation, "Structure as Strategy: Presidential Nominating Politics Since Reform,” was submitted to the political science department of the University of California, Berkeley in 1986. The following is extracted from the original. Kamarck will serve as a super-delegate at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
AP Photo
March 31, 2008
"Young Voters May Not Remember McCain's Heroic Past"
Op-Ed, Newsday
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
Half of all living Americans today were born after McCain's A4E Skyhawk was shot down in an attempted bombing run on the Yen Phu power plant....his "rescuers" stripped him and beat him before handing him over to the military, which put him in Hoa Lo and then moved him around to several other prisons, where he continued to be repeatedly tortured....The Democrats can't compete with John McCain's past. But given the emergence of the millennial generation and its contributions so far to the Democratic comeback, they should be more than able to compete with John McCain for the future.
AP Photo
February 14, 2008
"A History of 'Super-Delegates' in the Democratic Party"
Op-Ed
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
Elaine Kamarck, lecturer of Public Policy at the Kennedy School, gives a detailed history of how today's "super delegates" came into being.
December 26, 2007
"Increasing Internet Capacity"
Op-Ed, The Boston Globe
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"In any other business model, growing to meet this demand would be easy. Rapid growth usually provides more money for investment. But the Internet business got started as a flat-fee business — we all pay one monthly fee regardless of how much bandwidth we use."
November 2007
"Fixing the Department of Homeland Security"
Policy Brief
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
In November 2002, Congress passed legislation creating the first new Cabinet department in more than a decade — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Now in its fourth year, the department is plagued with problems and chronic mismanagement. If DHS is to fulfill its mission, the next president will have to take a hard look at the agency and make some major structural changes....This paper proposes a redirection and redefinition of DHS, with an aim toward helping it more effectively pursue its core mission: protecting the American people.
May 11, 2007
How Blair Modernized the U.K.
Op-Ed, Newsday
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
May 2007
The End of Government . . . As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work
Book
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
In the last decades of the twentieth century, many political leaders declared that government was, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "the problem, not the solution." But on closer inspection, argues Elaine Kamarck, the revolt against government was and is a revolt against bureaucracy—a revolt that has taken place in first world, developing, and avowedly communist countries alike.
To some, this looks like the end of government. Kamarck, however, counters that what we are seeing is the replacement of the traditional bureaucratic approach with new models more in keeping with the information age economy.
November 12, 2006
"Democrats Have Two Years to Show Americans They Mean Business on War, Health and Reform"
Op-Ed, Newsday
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Americans gave George W. Bush six years in which to match his actions to his words. He didn't. They won't be so patient next time around."
Fall 2006
"The Gathering Storm"
Journal Article, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, issue 2
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
One year after Katrina, what if it’s not just once in a lifetime? Making sense of our disaster-prone future.
