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Robert Durant Professor Emeritus Department of Public Administration and Policy

Degrees
PhD University of Tennessee, MPA University of Tennessee, and BA Maryville College

Bio
Professor Emeritus Durant resides in Atlanta, Georgia and no longer teaches classes for DPAP or AU. His teaching and research focused on executive branch politics, public management, policy implementation, environmental policy, and administrative reform. He received seven book awards, two best article awards, and the prestigious Charles H. Levine Memorial Award for excellence in research, teaching, and service to the wider community. In addition, he has won seven teaching awards including the 2007 Outstanding Teaching Award in the School of Public Affairs and the Leslie A. Whittington Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Thailand in 2002. In 2011, he was named AU Scholar-Teacher of the Year. In 2012, he received the Dwight Waldo Award for outstanding contributions to the literature of public administration over an extended career. In 2013, he received the John Gaus Award for a lifetime of exemplary research in the joint tradition of public administration and political science. He is a fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Selected Publications

Books 

  • Building the Compensatory State: Business, the Social Sciences, and the Political Economy of American Administrative Reform (Routledge, 2019-2020). 
  • Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities (2nd ed.) (MIT Press, 2017). 
  • Why Public Service Matters: Public Managers, Public Policy, and Democracy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
  • The Oxford Handbook of American Bureaucracy, editor, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 864 pages.   
  • The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007.   
  • Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities (edited with Daniel J. Fiorino and Rosemary O'Leary), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. Winner of the 2005 SENRA Best Book Award, ASPA.  
  • Managing for the Environment: Understanding the Legal, Organizational, and Policy Challenges (co-authored with Rosemary O'Leary, Daniel J. Fiorino, and Paul S. Weiland), San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999.  Winner of the Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division Award for the Best Book Published in 1999 and the 1999 Book Award Winner, Section for Environmental and Natural Resources Administration, American Society for Public Administration, as a "significant contribution to the literature on environmental and natural resources management."   
  • The Administrative Presidency Revisited: Public Lands, the BLM, and the Reagan Revolution, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Winner of the American Political Science Association's 1993 Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the "best publication on U.S. national policy" published the previous year.
  • When Government Regulates Itself: EPA, TVA, and Pollution Control in the 1970s, Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1985.   
  • Intragovernmental Regulation and the Public Interest: Air Pollution Control in the Tennessee Valley (co-authored with Michael R. Fitzgerald, Stephen J. Rechichar, and Larry W. Thomas), Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983. 

Refereed Articles: Published or Accepted for Publication

See CV.