Kent Weaver is a professor at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the

Brookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...

. His focus is on a variety of fields in U.S.

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

, including comparative social policy, comparative political institutions, and the politics of expertise. Weaver joined the

Georgetown Public Policy Institute The McCourt School of Public Policy is one of ten constituent schools of Georgetown University. The McCourt School offers master's degrees in public policy, international development policy, policy management, data science for public policy, and ...

in the fall of 2002, after 19 years at the

. Before coming to Brookings, Weaver taught in the Political Science Department at the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

for several years. He received his B.A. from

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...

and his Ph.D. in Political Science from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Weaver's focus is on understanding how political institutions, past policy choices and the motivations of politicians interact to shape public policy choices. Much of his work has attempted to understand when and why politicians undertake actions that appear to offer more political risks than rewards, and how they attempt to avoid blame when they do so, popularly known as blame avoidance. From 2002 to 2002, he served as co-director of the Welfare Reform & Beyond Initiative at Brookings, which sought to build a better understanding of social science research findings among policymakers and advocates in the lead-up to congressional debate on reauthorization of welfare reform legislation. He is currently completing a book on what the United States can learn from the experiences of other advanced industrial countries in reforming their public pension systems. He is also writing another book on how states have implemented welfare reform legislation in the United States.

Education

* B.A.

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

* Ph.D.

Selected publications

*Weaver, R. Kent. 2000. Ending Welfare as We Know It. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. *Weaver, R. Kent. 1998. "The Politics of Pension Reform: Lessons from Abroad," In R. Douglas Arnold, Micheal Graetz, and Alicia Munnell, eds., Framing the Social Security Debate: Values, Politics, and Economics. Washington, DC: National Academy of Social Insurance, p. 183-229. *Weaver, R. Kent. 1988. Automatic Government: The Politics of Indexation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. *The Politics of Industrial Change (Brookings, 1985) *The Collapse of Canada? (Brookings, 1992) *Do Institutions Matter?: Government Capabilities in the U.S. and Abroad (Brookings, 1993) *Think Tanks and Civil Societies (TransAction Publishers, 2000) *The Government Taketh Away: The Politics of Pain in the United States and Canada (Georgetown University Press, 2003)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weaver, R. Kent McCourt School of Public Policy faculty Living people Haverford College alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 1953 births People from San Mateo, California Ohio State University faculty