About the Author

Irene S. Rubin is Professor Emeritus of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University.  She is the author of Running in the Red: The Political Dynamics of Urban Fiscal Stress, Shrinking the Federal Government, Class Tax and Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States, and Balancing the Federal Budget: Eating the Seed Corn or Trimming the Herds, all four of which rely extensively on qualitative interviews.  She has written journal articles about citizen participation in local level government in Thailand, how universities adapt when their budgets are cut, and fights between legislative staffers and elected and appointed officials about unworkable policy proposals, all based on qualitative interviews.  She is in the middle of an interviewing project about how local officials view and use contracts with the private sector and with other governmental units to provide public services.