Dr. Brian Gran
The Public-Private Dichotomy
Much of my
research focuses on what is considered public and
private and how we draw the line between the two. Given
my interests in law and social policies, my work often
examines social policies that cannot easily be
characterized as either public or private. I have
examined U.S. governments’ roles, both federal and
state, in collaborating with religious organizations to
provide social services. Daniel Béland and I plan to
co-edit a book on public-private qualities of social
policies, in particular retirement pensions and health
insurance. Debra Street and I are working on a
manuscript that takes seriously President Bush’s notion
of “an ownership society” by examining the role of
government in public and private social policies. Will
Henry and I are preparing a manuscript on private
prisons. I am interested in how the Dover Ban is used by
the federal government to control visual evidence about
the current war in Iraq. Although gaps appear in
public-private, collaborative systems of social
policies, little research has been undertaken to explain
how and why these gaps are mended. An important
contribution my research is making is examining how
“law” is used to repair public-private gaps. Finally, I
am preparing a book-length manuscript on fuzzy
boundaries between public and private social policies
across the OECD countries.
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