Ph.D, Washington University-St. Louis, Political Science
Dr. Whitford serves as the Crenshaw Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His current research centers on moral hazard and emerging technologies.
His latest research articles are on moral hazard and body-worn cameras in Government Information Quarterly, surveillance in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, privacy regulation in Policy Design and Practice, agile governance in Public Administration Review, cryptocurrency in Regulation & Governance, and robotics in Public Administration Review.
He is Founding Co-Editor of the Cambridge Elements Series in Public and Nonprofit Administration. He is also an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He received the 2017 Herbert A. Simon Award for “significant contribution to the scientific study of bureaucracy.”
His most recent book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Herding Scientists: A Story of Failed Reform at the CDC offers a compelling narrative about the perils of using reorganization to direct scientific agencies.
His 2021 book was written with Derrick Anderson on nanotechnology governance for Cambridge University Press. Integrating Logics in the Governance of Emerging Technologies: The Case of Nanotechnology offers a synthetic platform for analyzing the governance of emerging technologies.
His 2016 book, Above Politics: Bureaucratic Discretion and Credible Commitment, was published by Cambridge University Press. Written with Gary J. Miller, this book is about how the regulatory state shapes markets, economic performance, and innovation.
This book received the American Political Science Association’s 2021 Herbert Simon Award for the best book in public administration. In 2017, this book received APSA’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for US national public policy and the International Political Science Association’s Levine Prize for comparative administration and public policy. In 2016, it received the Book of the Year Award of the Section of Public Administration Research (SPAR) of the American Society of Public Administration.
His 2009 book, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs, written with Jeff Yates, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book is about the War on Drugs as a political strategy.
His research papers have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the American Journal of Public Health, Public Administration Review, and the American Journal of Political Science.
He is also an Honorary Professor at University College London, a Member in the UGA Center for Cyber-Physical Systems, and Research Fellow in Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design. He spent time at the University of Manchester as Hallsworth Visiting Professor in Political Economy, at the National University of Singapore as a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar, at University College London as Visiting Honorary Senior Research Associate, in Germany as a Fulbright German Studies Seminar Scholar, and at the University of Michigan as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research.
