C.C. Crawford Associate Professor in Management and Performance
University of Southern California
Sol Price School of Public Policy
Director, CLEAR Initiative
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Behavioral Public Administration
Education:
American University, PhD (2011)
Fields: Public Administration and American Politics
University of Baltimore, MPA (2007)
Fields: Public Administration and Policy
West Virginia University, BA (1997)
English Literature (major); Sociology (minor)
Welcome to my personal website. My name is Bill Resh.
I am an associate professor at the University of Southern California's Sol Price School of Public Policy where I hold the C.C. Crawford Professorship in Management and Performance and direct the Civic Leadership Education and Research (CLEAR) Initiative.
I earned my doctoral degree at the American University's School of Public Affairs in 2011. Prior to attaining tenure at USC, I was a tenure-track assistant professor in public management at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs from 2011 to 2014 and at USC from 2014-2017.
An, Brian, Cynthia Barboza-Wilkes, and William Resh. “Applying an Intersectional Understanding of Extra Work Behavior and Emotional Burnout in Local Public Service,” Public Administration, Forthcoming
Roberts, Alasdair, William Resh, Alketa Peci, Rumki Basu, Helen Sullivan, Naim Kapucu, Gedion Onyango, Rahel Schomaker, Valentina Mele “How Do We Connect Public Administration and Human Rights?” Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 2023
Resh, William, Yongjin Ahn, and Donald Moynihan. “Populism and Administrative Dysfunction: The Impact of U. S. Government Shutdowns on Personnel and Policy Implementation,” Governance, 2023
Dubnick, Melvin J., Donald F. Kettl, Norma M. Riccucci, Leisha DeHart-Davis, and William Resh. “Herbert Kaufman: Celebrating a Century of Contributions to Public Administration,” Perspectives on Public Management and Governance (with), 2023
Barboza-Wilkes, Cynthia, Esther Gonzalez, William Resh, and Stephanie Wong. “The Emotional Toll of the COVID-19 Crisis on Local Government Workers,” Review of Public Personnel and Administration, 2023
Barboza-Wilkes, Cynthia, Thai Le, and William Resh. “Deconstructing Burnout at the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Generation in Local Government,” Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, (Vol. 33, Iss. 1), 2023 (with Cynthia Barboza-Wilkes** and Thai Le)
*2023 Special Virtual Issue on “Framing the Study of Racism, Power, and Inequality in Public Administration”
Resh, William, Nico Napolio, and Keunyoung Lee. “The Pivotal and Distributive Politics of Senate-Confirmed Appointee Vacancies,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, (Vol. 52, Iss. 1), 2022
Limbocker, Scott, William G. Resh, and Jennifer Selin. “Anticipated Adjudication: An Analysis of the Judicialization of the US Administrative State,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2021
Ahn, Yongjin and William G. Resh. “Bureaucratic Motivations in Political Economy: An Overview,” In Handbook of Research on Motivation in Public Administration, ed. Randall Davis and Edmund Stazyk. Edward Elgar, 2021.
Resh, William G., Cynthia Barboza-Wilkes, and John D. Marvel. “Procedural Environment of Public Engagement: An Induced Recall Experiment of Local Government Employees.” Public Management Review, 2021
Resh, William G. "The Administrative Presidency and the Degradation of the United States Civil Service through Political Time." Handbook of Public Administration, (Forthcoming) 2021
Resh, William G., Gary Hollibaugh, Patrick Roberts, and Matthew Dull. “Appointee Vacancies in U.S. Executive Agencies, 1989-2012.” Journal of Public Policy, (Forthcoming) 2021
Resh, William G., “Reversing the Lens: Assessing the Quality of Public Administration Research Using the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey,” Review of Public Personnel Administration, (Vol. 41, Issue 1) 2021
Resh, William G., Cynthia Barboza-Wilkes, and Carmen Mooradian. “Unpaid Work? Emotional Labor Assessments and Episodic Recall Bias in Public Engagement,” Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, (Vol. 3, Issue 2) 2020
Resh, WIlliam G., "Politics and Policy by Other Means," Journal of Politics, (Vol. 82, Issue 2) 2020
My book, Rethinking the Administrative Presidency (Johns Hopkins University), explores appointee-careerist relations in the federal executive branch by systematically testing the premise that trust between career executives and political appointees is critical to advancing presidential interests administratively. I combine theories from political science and organization science to argue that these relations are critical to understanding the “black box” of organizational behavior that links politicization and performance.
The book was awarded the Best Book Award by the American Society of Public Administration in 2017 and the Herbert Simon Best Book Award by the American Political Science Association in 2019.
Reviews of Rethinking the Administrative Presidency include the following:
Bolton, A. Journal of Politics. (2017)
Genovese, M. Digital Commons. (2017)
Waterman, R. American Review of Public Administration. (2016)
Hollibaugh, G. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. (2016)
Research
While my research covers a wide array of governance topics (e.g., executive politics, public personnel policies, street- level bureaucracy, work motivations, and contracting), the core of my work focuses on how political environments affect the decision-making of civil servants and others tasked with implementing public policy.
My work has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Journal of Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, American Review of Public Administration, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Review of Policy Research, and the International Public Management Journal and presses such as Oxford University Press.
For more information on my research within this website, you can access my publications and formally submitted manuscripts, research awards and honors, working papers and projects, and (coming soon!) data for your use and replication.
Teaching
I have taught undergraduate courses in American and comparative politics and public administration as well as graduate courses in public management. At USC, I teach graduate courses in Organizational Behavior and Public Administration, a doctoral seminar in Public Management, and an undergraduate course in Ethics and Citizenship.
For 10 years, I was also the Director of the "On the Rhine" program, run in partnership with Prof. Dr. Michael Bauer and Speyer University (Germany). The program focused on governance issues taught from the comparative perspective, with a special focus on the United States, Germany, and the European Union.
Personal
Before my graduate studies, I was a curriculum developer for Success For All Foundation, a senior production editor for Wolters Kluwer, and a graduate fellow at the Schaefer Center for Public Policy in Baltimore, MD. During my doctoral studies, I was also a fellow at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies in Washington, DC and a special project adviser at the National Academy of Public Administration.
I am a native of the state of Maryland and an avid fan of classic hip hop culture and Baltimore sports.
