Mailing address
Littauer 339A
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
79 John F. Kennedy Street, Mailbox 53
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
December 9, 2009
"A Carbon Tax Would Provide a Sunnier Forecast"
Op-Ed, Politico
By Robert J. Shapiro and Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Politically, a tax shift can help neutralize the glaring political liability of all climate programs: that they raise everyone's energy costs. Just as important, a tax-based climate program can provide stronger and more stable incentives than the Senate's cap-and-trade approach to get businesses and households to transition to low-carbon technologies and fuels. The critical aspect of using a tax shift to address climate change is that it applies a known price to carbon, so companies can figure out how much they might earn by developing climate-friendly fuels and technologies, and other businesses — along with the rest of us — can calculate how much could be saved by adopting them."
AP Photo
August 3, 2009
"Gore's Carbon 'Tax Shift' Beats Cap-and-Trade"
Op-Ed, Roll Call
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"At the core of the cap-and-trade approach is a new financial market in carbon permits. The economics of a cap mean that permit prices will be very volatile, inviting a frenzy of financial speculation by Wall Street. As Americans suffer through the worst recession in their lifetimes, they will find it hard to trust the fate of the planet to the same individuals who brought us credit default swaps, subprime mortgage securities and other exotic financial instruments."
AP Photo
June 2009
"Addressing the Risks of Climate Change: The Politics of the Policy Options"
Paper
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
Dr. Kamarck's paper explores some of the politics and pitfalls surrounding climate change policy, specifically carbon tax and cap-and-trade solutions. A carbon tax would directly tax the carbon content of fuels. A cap-and-trade system would set an overall cap for emissions and allow trading of emission permits between companies that more than meet their caps with those that don't. The analysis is intended to help decision makers and the public better understand some of the pros and cons associated with these particular climate policies.
AP Photo
Spring 2009
"Reinventing Reform"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Reforming government is a difficult and thankless task. Political leaders find that reform is almost always unpopular in the short term because it disrupts existing power arrangements. And if they manage to produce reforms that bear lasting and positive results in the long run, they are often out of power by the time the reforms bear fruit. I should know—I’ve been there."
AP Photo
November 29, 2008
"Look to the Internet to Fight Poverty"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
"Internet innovation has transformed business, entertainment, and even government. In an Obama administration, it can transform approaches to poverty at home and abroad. The government's efforts should be focused on expanding access to Internet and other technologies for as many Americans as possible while continuing to develop our national broadband capacity. An expanded technological infrastructure will help Obama make good on a broad social justice agenda as he confronts the myriad problems he has inherited."
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, 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."
