Frank R. Baumgartner

Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
358 Hamilton Hall
Campus Box 3265
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265, USA
Phone 919 962 3041
Fax 919 962 0432
Frankb@unc.edu

Google Scholar Profile

Biographical information

Frank R. Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the department in 2009 as the first holder of the Richardson professorship. A native Detroiter, he attended Detroit's Cass Technical High School and then received all his academic degrees at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (BA 1980; MA 1983, PhD 1986). He held academic positions at The University of Iowa (1986-87); Texas A&M University (1987-98); and Penn State University (1998-2009) where he served as Department Head (1999-2004), Distinguished Professor (2005-07), and then was the first holder of the Bruce R. Miller and Dean D. LaVigne Professorship (2007-09). He has had visiting professor appointments at Caltech (1998-99) and at the universities of Michigan, Washington, Bergen (Norway), Aberdeen (Scotland), the Institute for Public Management (Paris), Sciences Po (Paris), the European University Institute (EUI, Florence, Italy), the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), and the University of Barcelona (Spain). He has a continuing appointment as a visiting researcher at the Center for European Studies / Sciences Po in Paris, and often teaches a graduate class in public policy there in May-June.

He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Public Policy, Public Administration, Policy Studies Journal, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of European Public Policy, Gouvernement et Action Publique, and other journals. His work focuses on public policy, agenda-setting, and interest groups in American and comparative politics and has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy, and Legislative Studies Quarterly.

With Bryan D. Jones, he created the Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org), and they continue to co-direct it, with John Wilkerson. Books from that project include The Dynamics of Policy Change in Comparative Perspective, special issue of Comparative Political Studies (August 2011, vol. 44, no. 8; co-edited with Sylvain Brouard, Christoffer Green-Pedersen, Bryan D. Jones, and Stefaan Walgrave); Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas, a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy (13,7, September 2006; coedited with Bryan D. Jones and Christoffer Green-Pedersen); The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems (with Bryan D. Jones; University of Chicago Press, 2005); Policy Dynamics (co-edited, with Bryan D. Jones; University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Agendas and Instability in American Politics (with Bryan Jones; University of Chicago Press, 1993; second edition 2009). In 2001, the APSA Organized Section on Public Policy awarded the Aaron Wildavsky Award for this book as "a work of lasting impact on the field of public policy."

Other books include Basic Interests (with Beth Leech), on the importance of interest groups in American politics and political science (Princeton University Press, 1998) and Conflict and Rhetoric in French Policymaking (Pittsburgh, 1989), on agenda-setting in French politics.

In 2008, his book The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence (Cambridge University Press, 2008, with Suzanna De Boef and Amber E. Boydstun) was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award by the American Political Science Association for the best book on US national policy. He remains involved in various projects relating to the death penalty including its use in the state of North Carolina.

In 2009, the University of Chicago Press published Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why (Frank R. Baumgartner, Jeffrey M. Berry, Marie Hojnacki, David C. Kimball, and Beth L. Leech), reporting the findings from the Lobbying and Policy Advocacy Project, based on interviews with over 300 Washington lobbyists and policymakers. This book won the Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the APSA Section on Political Organizations and Parties in 2010.

His current research projects focus on extensions of the Policy Agendas Project (internationally in Europe, for the state of Pennsylvania, and adding more resources to the US project) as well as European extensions of the Lobbying and Advocacy Project. Comparative policy agendas projects are underway in Canada, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Israel, Germany, Italy, Australia, for the state of Pennsylvania, and in Hong Kong. He is also involved in various projects relating to the use of the death penalty in North Carolina and elsewhere, in particular issues of racial bias, cost, and innocence. Further projects relate to issue-framing more generally both in the media as well as in lobbying efforts by interest groups. This work is equally balanced between US and European applications.

In 2011 the APSA Section on Political Organizations and Parties named Baumgartner the recipient of the Samuel J. Eldersveld Award for Career Achievement.

He is married to Jennifer E. Thompson, co-author of the New York Times best-seller Picking Cotton and advocate for judicial reform, increasing awareness about sexual violence, and the elimination of the death penalty. Click on her photo below to go her her professional web site.

Links to the left of this page will take you to information concerning his CV, teaching materials, published books and articles, conference papers, and links to web sites and research projects in which he is involved.

Prof. Baumgartner has a bajillion nephews and a lovely wife.