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Accountability as an Instrument of Power: The Louisiana Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Grant and the Spaces of Public Affairs

Heidelberg, Roy L
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1362665658

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Public Policy and Management.
The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program is a grant and loan program funded as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The objective of the program is to promote access and use of high speed Internet in communities that have been and continue to be underserved or unserved by Internet service providers. In 2010 the Louisiana Board of Regents along with four other agencies collectively applied for a grant under the newly formed ad hoc organization of the Louisiana Broadband Alliance. The National Telecommunications and Information Agency, and agency under the US Department of Commerce, awarded a BTOP grant to the Board of Regents in February, 2009. Roughly eighteen months later, the grant became the only of its kind to be rescinded by the federal government. This dissertation tells the story of how the grant was managed and the administration of it leading up to the rescission. The target area of the grant is one of the most persistently impoverished parts of the country, an area that has a history of being subjected to failed efforts for development and security. It is a mostly rural community still served by electric cooperatives created by the Rural Utilities Service to provide electricity to the households. The grant targeted this area with over 75 percent of the dollars requested, but the Governor of Louisiana and his Administration openly opposed the plan. They explicitly argued in favor of allowing the private sector to provide the necessary services despite ample evidence that this was not feasible. Private companies opposed the plan because they considered the government to have overstepped its role and to have entered into a competitive environment without justification. The Governor declared that the federal government was trying to become a public telecom. Despite the open opposition, the grant was awarded to the Board of Regents, but the story of the grant only begins at the point when the Division of Administration became involved in the administration of the grant. The Division of Administration acquired control of the grant through established and legitimate means and eventually prompted scrutiny from the federal agency with oversight of the grant, the NTIA. The story I tell is about politics and accountability. I argue that the BTOP case illustrates how the legitimate mechanisms intended to ensure accountability provide instruments for practices that obscure and obvert the intent of accountable governance. I call this the paradox of practice. I also argue that the remedy for this paradox is not a technical solution but must incorporate a political solution. I encourage a rethinking of the concept of politics in the field of administration and make a case for the reintroduction of politics into administrative concerns. Where others have made the point that the politics-administration dichotomy does not work in practice, these arguments have tended to focus upon the descriptive state of the dichotomy. My argument is normative: I am proposing that politics should be a part of administration in a democratic society if fulfilling accountability is a priority.
Anand Desai (Committee Chair)
Jos C.N. Raadschelders (Committee Member)
David Landsbergen (Committee Member)
Adam Eckerd (Committee Member)
246 p.
Political Science; Public Administration; Public Policy
Accountability; Public Policy; Public Administration; Power; Implementation

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Heidelberg, R. L. (2013). Accountability as an Instrument of Power: The Louisiana Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Grant and the Spaces of Public Affairs [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1362665658

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Heidelberg, Roy. Accountability as an Instrument of Power: The Louisiana Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Grant and the Spaces of Public Affairs. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1362665658.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Heidelberg, Roy. "Accountability as an Instrument of Power: The Louisiana Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Grant and the Spaces of Public Affairs." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1362665658

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1362665658
641
© 2013, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Accountability as an Instrument of Power: The Louisiana Broadband Technology Opportunities Program Grant and the Spaces of Public Affairs by Roy L Heidelberg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.