Susan Moffitt is the John Hazen White Professor of Public Policy, Chair of the Political Science Department, and Director of the Realizing Rights Lab. Her research combines political science and public policy to explain and address challenges confronting policy development and implementation in government agencies, especially in the fields of public health and education. She has published 3 books: Reforming the Reform: Problems of Public Schooling in the American Welfare State (with Michaela Krug O’Neill and David K. Cohen; University of Chicago Press, 2024), Making Policy Public: Participatory Bureaucracy in American Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools (with David K. Cohen; Harvard University Press in 2009). Her articles appear in leading journals including American Journal of Political Science; Journal of Politics; Perspectives on Politics; and Governance. She has been a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and received the 2025 Herbert Simon Award from the Midwest Political Science Association for her contributions to the scientific study of bureaucracy.
Administrative Ease: the design and operation of public programs to enhance the experience of government and its provision of public goods Venue
Democracy: administrative and political designs that facilitate public access to spaces of political action, including elections
Maya Chanel Nuñez, Cameron Arnzen, Hannah Rosenstein, Jonathan Collins, Susan Moffitt. 2026. Administrative Designs and Access to Political Arenas in Public Education. Governance 39 (1) https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.70086
Lindsey Kaler, Michaela Krug O’Neill, Patricia Strach, Susan Moffitt. 2026. California’s System of Special Education Staffing, Technical Report. Getting Down to Facts III. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford, SCALE Initiative.
Kaler, Lindsey, Cameron Arnzen, Alejandro Contreras, Bryan Natividad, Niamh Stull, and Susan Moffitt. 2026. The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information. (EdWorkingPaper: 26-1447). https://doi.org/10.26300/s2br-zh02
Susan L. Moffitt, Michaela K. O’Neill, David K. Cohen. 2023. Reforming the Reform: Problems of Public Schooling in the American Welfare State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Susan L. Moffitt, Cadence Willse, Kelly B. Smith, and David K. Cohen. 2023. Centralization and Subnational Capacity: The Struggle to Make Federalism Work Equitably in Public Education. Perspectives on Politics 21 (4): 1283-1303.
IAPA 1701U, What Makes Policies Work
IAPA 1701D, Turning Rights into Realities
POLS 2065, Public Bureaucracy
POLS 2100, Proseminar in American Politics