What Americans Still Want From Government Reform – A Midsummer Update

Elaine C. Kamarck is a Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program as well as the Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on American electoral politics and government innovation and reform in the United States, OECD nations, and developing countries. She focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns. Kamarck is the author of “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates” and “Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again.” She is also the author of “How Change Happens—or Doesn’t: The Politics of US Public Policy” and “The End of Government-As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work.”

Kamarck is also a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She started at the Kennedy School in 1997 after a career in politics and government. She has been a member of the Democratic National Committee and the DNC’s Rules Committee since 1997. She has participated actively in four presidential campaigns and in ten nominating conventions—including two Republican conventions—and has served as a superdelegate to five Democratic conventions. In the 1980s, she was one of the founders of the New Democrat movement that helped elect Bill Clinton president. She served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, where she created and managed the Clinton Administration's National Performance Review, also known as the “reinventing government initiative.” At the Kennedy School, she served as Director of Visions of Governance for the Twenty-First Century and as Faculty Advisor to the Innovations in American Government Awards Program. In 2000, she took a leave of absence to work as Senior Policy Advisor to the Gore campaign.

Kamarck conducts research on 21st century government, the role of the Internet in political campaigns, homeland defense, intelligence reorganization, and governmental reform and innovation. Kamarck makes regular appearances in the media, including segments on: ABC, CBS, NBC, the BBC, CNN, Fox News Now New England Cable News, and National Public Radio. Kamarck received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Paul C. Light is NYU Wagner's Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service and founding principal investigator of the Global Center for Public Service, Before joining NYU, Dr. Light served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program. He has served previously as director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and associate dean and professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.  

Light is the author of 25 books, including works on social entrepreneurship, the nonprofit sector, federal government reform, public service, and the baby boom. His most recent book is The Government-Industrial Complex: Tracking the True Size of Government, 1984-2019 (Oxford University Press, 2019), Government by Investigation: Presidents, Congress, and the Search for Answers, 1945-2012 (Brookings Institution Press, 2014).  His award-winning books include The President's Agenda: Domestic Policy Choice from Kennedy to Clinton (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, 1998),  Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability (Brookings Institution Press, 1995), The Tides of Reform: Making Government Work, 1945-1995 (Brookings Institution Press, 1997), and A Government Ill Executed: The Decline of the Federal Service and How to Reverse It  (Harvard University Press, 2008).  A Government Ill Executed received the American Political Science Association's Herbert Simon Award in 2008 as the most important book on public administration in the preceding three-to-five years upon publication.  Light's work earned the American Political Science Association's John Gauss Award in 2015 for exemplary career service in political science and public administration. Light is also a co-author of an American government textbook, Government by the People. His research interests include: bureaucracy, civil service, Congress, entitlement programs, the executive branch, government reform, nonprofit effectiveness, organizational change, and the political appointment process.

Bio Coming Soon...

Tom Shoop is the former executive vice president and editor in chief at Government Executive Media Group, where he oversaw editorial operations at Government Executive, Nextgov, Defense One and Route Fifty. He started as associate editor of Government Executive magazine in 1989; launched the company’s flagship website, GovExec.com, in 1996; and served as editor in chief from 2007 to 2021.