Two School faculty members win Best Book Award from ASPA for joint publication

By Andy Bradshaw

The School of Government congratulates faculty members Whitney Afonso and Kimberly Nelson, who were honored with receipt of the 2025 Best Book Award from the American Society for Public Administration’s (ASPA) Section on Public Administration Research.

Their joint publication—Municipal Corruption: From Policies to People—is the most comprehensive exploration of corruption in U.S. municipal governments written to date. Exploring the 30-year period from 1990 to 2020 and including all U.S. municipalities with populations of 10,000 people or more, Afonso and Nelson used both quantitative research and case study analysis to answer the question of why some municipalities fall victim to corrupt acts, while others do not. It tells the stories of a number of communities that suffered through public corruption; the book investigates factors that contribute to a greater risk of corruption in municipalities and identifies steps to prevent corruption in communities―including strengthening resident interest and involvement in local affairs, offsetting the decline in local journalism, and reinforcing scrutiny by state governments.

The publication begins with two sets of quantitative analyses that expand on work published in two peer-reviewed articles. From these studies, the book concludes that the council-manager form of government is associated with lower risk of a municipal corruption conviction. The remainder of the book dives deeper into the variables associated with corruption risk through its examination of corruption cases in U.S. municipalities and provides recommendations for methods for reducing corruption risk.

The collection of the data was challenging, according to Nelson.

“The process of collecting the data on municipal corruption was time-consuming; we spent more than two years collecting it,” she said. “We first used data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section and supplemented it with a keyword search in newspaper databases to find corruption convictions through the courts system.”

“We are really proud of this book.  It couples rigorous analysis with an incredibly important topic—public corruption,” said Afonso. “We analyze what governments may be particularly susceptible to corruption from bad actors and what are actual policies and levers that governments can pull to lower the likelihood of corruption.  We hope that this book will be a resource to academics, state and local governments, and those interested in hindering corruption.”

ASPA’s SPAR welcomed nominations for books on public administration published in 2024 and 2023. The Best Book Award evaluates criteria such as outstanding accomplishment of the research objectives, high-quality writing, and potential to constitute a lasting contribution to public administration literature.