Scott Robinson, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, and the Bush School’s Executive Associate Dean Arnold Vedlitz have been awarded the 2014 Herbert Kaufman Best Paper Award by the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Public Administration Section. Vedlitz and Robinson were honored for their paper entitled “Organizational Trust and Risk Communication: Trust in the EPA and Opposition to Fracking.”
Robinson now holds the Henry Bellmon Chair of Public Service at OU. He and Vedlitz will receive the award at the 2014 APSA annual meeting in Washington, DC.
The review committee noted that public trust in political institutions is now a ‘hot button’ issue, and that while scholars have long examined this declining trust, research has mostly looked at government as a single, undifferentiated entity. Vedlitz and Robinson’s work explores the trust issue as it relates to individual government agencies. Their research approach was cited as “well-conceived, timely, and sets forth an interesting research agenda.”
Vedlitz is the founder and director of the Institute for Science, Technology, and Public Policy (ISTPP) at the Bush School. Since its founding in 2000, ISTPP has attracted over $15 million in competitive funding from federal and state agencies and has partnered with researchers from US and international universities, government agencies, and research centers. Over the years, the Institute has become an important resource for the study of important public policy issues and for effectively communicating research results to decision makers and the public. The Institute’s research focuses on public policy related to environmental and natural resources, emerging technologies, infrastructure and built environment, and health. “It is a pleasure to share this award with my friend and colleague Dr. Scott Robinson. Scott is a Senior Research Fellow in our Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy and I look forward to our continuing to work together on other public policy projects like this one.”
