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Environmental Science Faculty

Randall Baker
Professor

Ph.D., London University, 1968

Professor Baker is interested in using the unique SPEA structure to bridge the gap between the natural and social sciences. To this he adds a consuming interest in comparative study for the perspective it brings to the factors that are normally implicit, buried, or simply overlooked when we examine the way that we perceive and handle problems. The third element in his array of intellectual fascinations is a consuming passion for the oft-neglected element of history in completing the analysis of contemporary environmental, and other, policy problems.

In recent years this has led him to publish several books that exemplify the congruence of these various elements. The first of these, in 1992, was Environmental Management in the Tropics: An Historical Perspective, in which he illustrated the rationale of so-called "traditional" systems of land use. He then went on to explore the way in which the explosion of colonial Europe from the fifteenth century caused a total redirection in the evolution of these ancient systems in non-Western cultures, and created the divided world economy, and much of the distortion in tropical land-use we see now.

His fourth book, Summer in the Balkans (1994), explored the way the process of "democratization" has occurred in Bulgaria. The book takes the form of a journal, as this is the only vehicle that will accurately convey the elements of uncertainty, frustration, and anxiety, which are the staple fare of people who have known nothing but rigid totalitarianism and ossified administrative sclerosis for decades. The study was written as a result of a Fulbright scholarship, and is now used as the briefing medium for new Fulbrights.

In a book published in 1995, entitled Comparative Public Management, Baker explored the usefulness of looking at other developed democracies as a mirror for our own policy debates. He tried to recast the conventional approach to comparative study, moving it away from a descriptive concern with the way other countries do what they do, to an analytical tool for uncovering the inherent cultural properties of our own policies and the associated policy process. This book was written at the request of the professional body for public affairs to provide a tool for "internationalizing" the core elements of the MPA degree—something that has remained astonishingly parochial for decades despite the inconvenience of reality.

Professor Baker has recently completed a study entitled Environmental Law and Policy in the United States and the European Union, exploring the way that center-periphery relations operate in the "federal" structures of both institutions and how these two richest agglomerations in the world deal with the consequences of prosperity. This research was a joint venture with SPEA's Dutch partners at the Universities of Rotterdam and Leiden.

In a later book, Professor Baker compares the process of transition to democracy in both right-, and left-wing authoritarian countries. In particular, he looks at the role of the inherited civil service in "delivering" democracy. In a collaboration with the emeritus professors of physics and economics at IU, he recently also completed a book on Energy, the Environment and Pursuit of Sustainability. with a foreword by former Congressman Lee Hamilton.

Professor Baker's principal applied professional interest is in establishing new schools and departments of public affairs overseas. He helped create the New Bulgarian University in 1990, and he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from there in 1997. He has also helped develop degree programs in Azerbaijan (from which country he also holds an honorary doctorate), Seville, Madrid, Bolivia, the United Kingdom—where he was co-founding Dean of the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia.

As part of his other interests, he published, in 1979, a biography of the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, founder of the modern Hashemite Dynasty, which examines Turkish-Arab relations in the peri-First War period. As a result of his work with the European Union in the South Pacific, he produced the book Public Administration in Small and Island States. Most recently, as a result of his second Fulbright in Bulgaria, he has started writing a trilogy for the Academy of Sciences. The first of these (in Bulgarian), To Sofia and Back, is a tribute to pioneer 19th century writer Alecko Konstantinov. The second (also in Bulgarian) is entitled Strange Places, which looks at the persistence of political anomalies. This will be published in the fall of 2005. His book Kavkazia, which is a personal view of the North and South Caucasus, will be published in Russian and Azeri in the early part of 2006. Currently, he is engaged on completing Why America Isn’t Europe. He also published, in 2005, a biography of his son, entitled Adopting Eldar.

Awards