About Professor Rethemeyer

University Expert

R. Karl Rethemeyer is Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy and Chair of the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany - SUNY. Rethemeyer’s primary research interest is in social networks, their impact on social, political, and policy processes, and the methods used to study such networks. A graduate of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Rethemeyer has presented work at numerous conferences, including the Academy of Management (AOM), American Political Science Association (ASPA), Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA). Rethemeyer has work published and forthcoming in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), Public Administration Review (PAR), the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), the International Public Management Journal (IPMJ), the Journal of Politics (JOP), Conflict Management and Peace Science (CMPS), and the Journal of Security Education (JSE).

Additionally, through the Project on Violent Conflict, Dr. Rethemeyer is currently co-investigator for two projects. The first focuses on organizational terrorist networks and is funded by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. His work has focused on how networks affect the use of various forms of terrorism (including suicide terrorism and CBRN attacks), the lethality of terrorist organizations, the propensity of such organizations to attack soft targets, and the propensity to choose or eschew lethal violence.

Dr. Rethemeyer is also lead investigator for a second project funded by the Office of Naval Research that examines counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This project seeks to answer the question, "What organizational factors in the counterinsurgency organizations are related to “successful” or “unsuccessful” counterinsurgency efforts?

Courses

• PAD 504: Data, Models, and Decisions I
• PAD 637: Social and Organizational Networks in Public Policy, Management, and Service Delivery: Theory, Methods, and Analysis
• PAD 705: Research Methods II
• PAD 777: Advanced Topics in Social Network Analysis

Selected Publications

• Asal, Victor H. and R. Karl Rethemeyer. (2009). “Islamist Use and Pursuit of CBRN Terrorism” in Ackerman, Gary and Jeremy Tamsett (eds). Jihadists & Weapons of Mass Destruction. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 335-358.
  
• Hatmaker, Deneen M. and R. Karl Rethemeyer. (2008). “Mobile Trust, Enacted Relationships: Social Capital in a State-Level Policy Network.” International Public Management Journal, 11(4): 426-462. [Awarded the Accenture Advances Award for best article in Volume 11 of the International Public Management Journal.
• Rethemeyer, R. Karl and Deneen M. Hatmaker. (2008). “Network Management Reconsidered: An Inquiry Into Management of Network Structures in Public Sector Service.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(4): 617-646.
• Rethemeyer, R. Karl. (2007). “Policymaking in the Age of Internet: Is the Internet Tending to Make Policy Networks More or Less Inclusive?” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 17(2): 259-284.
  
• Asal, Victor, and R. Karl Rethemeyer. 2008 “Dilettantes, Ideologues, and the Weak: Terrorists Who Don’t Kill.” Conflict Management and Peace Science. (3):244-63.
• Asal, Victor, and R. Karl Rethemeyer. 2008. “The Nature of the Beast: Terrorist Organizational Characteristics and Organizational Lethality.” Journal of Politics, 70(2): 437-449.