Alexander M. Crenshaw Professor of Public PolicyProfessor of Public Administration and Policy
Dr. Whitford serves as the Alexander M. Crenshaw Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, and a Member of the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems. His research concentrates on strategy and innovation in public policy and organization studies. His current research centers on moral hazard and emerging technologies such as surveillance tools and prediction engines.
His latest research articles are on robotics in Public Administration Review, agile governance in Public Administration Review, cryptocurrency in Regulation & Governance, geographic administration in Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, presidential reorganization in Administration & Society, the USCIS in Public Organization Review, and PPPs in the journal Governance. His forthcoming book is with Derrick Anderson on nanotechnology governance for Cambridge University Press.
He is Founding Co-Editor of the Cambridge Elements Series in Public and Nonprofit Administration, a new publication channel for the research community. 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, Above Politics: Bureaucratic Discretion and Credible Commitment, was published in 2016 in the Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions series of Cambridge University Press. Written with Gary J. Miller of Washington University in St. Louis, this book is about the most recent financial crisis and how the regulatory state shapes markets, economic performance, and innovation.
This book received the American Political Science Association’s 2017 Gladys M. Kammerer Award for US national public policy, the International Political Science Association’s 2017 Levine Prize for comparative administration and public policy, and the 2016 Book of the Year Award of the Section of Public Administration Research (SPAR) of the American Society of Public Administration.
His first book, Presidential Rhetoric and the Public Agenda: Constructing the War on Drugs, written with Jeff Yates of Binghamton University, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2009. This book is about narcotics control in the US and how presidents have used 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 Research Fellow in Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design. He has also 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, 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.
Dr. Whitford is also a National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) fellow.
