Graduate School of Public Policy

On August 29 – September 1, 2019, Maxat KASSEN, Assistant Professor of Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Public Policy, participated in the annual symposium as a chair of the panel in the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC (USA). More than 5 thousand political scientists from such world-famous universities as Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Chicago, California, Cambridge, New York and other universities and research centers from all over the world took part in this prestigious international scientific meeting.

The annual congress of the American Political Science Association is a global political platform to discuss the current trends in politics and share the best experiences/methodologies in research and teaching in various fields and areas of political sciences, public affairs, public administration and international relations.

As part of the association’s work, an international scientific symposium is held annually at the end of August – early September, which brings together prominent scientists from more than 80 countries around the world to discuss various issues of political science development in general and public policy and public administration in all its manifestations, in particular.

In July 2019, Maxat KASSEN received an invitation from the organizers of the conference to take part in this representative political and scientific forum and act with three participating roles as a chairman, presenter and discussant/expert in three separate panels in the field of public policy and public administration (DIVISION 24: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION).

On August 29th, 2019, Maxat KASSEN participated with two roles, first, as a discussant/expert in the panel titled “Making Use of the Market: Government Contracts and Outsourcing” and then as a presenter in the panel titled “Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Comparative Context”. The title of the paper that he presented in the second panel was “Open data as a collaborative trend: understanding peer-to-peer interactions”.

On September 1st, 2019 he participated in the conference with one more role, now as the chair of the panel titled “Experimental Research and Behavioral Public Administration” (please see the truncated conference program here).

In addition, during the conference, Maxat KASSEN participated in the APSA Business Meeting as a member to discuss the current work of the association and the latest trends in the field as well as vote for new agendas for the upcoming year. At the event, he met APSA current president Professor Rogers Smith and Association’s Executive Director Professor Steven Smith. The event itself was intrinsically designed for political scientists who rely on rich empirical evidences and resort to various methods of investigation in analyzing political decision making in public administration and public policy. The scientific panel on experimental research and behavioral public administration, at which Maxat KASSEN acted as a chairman, was devoted to the study of administrative behavior, including through the prism of quasi-natural experiment, survey experiment and laboratory experiment in trying to understand how decision makings are made in various institutional and cross-country perspectives and shed lights on the behavioral aspects of representative bureaucracy. Prominent scientists from the United States, Germany, China, the Netherlands, Japan and many other countries, in particular from such prestigious universities and research centers as Rutgers, California, Georgia, Indiana, Pittsburg, State University of New York, University of Konstanz, University of Oldenburg, Tsinghua University, Leiden and many other universities, took part in the work of the abovementioned panels and also in the extensive scientific discussion that followed.

Also, Professor Maxat KASSEN attended the book exhibition that was held at the conference main hall and where his recently published book titled “Open Data Politics” was exhibited for visitors by such a prestigious English-speaking and internationally recognized academic publishing house as Springer in their booth (please see the link to the book).