Political Science

Eric M. Patashnik is Chair of the Department of Political Science and Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy and Political Science.

Patashnik is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before coming to Brown, Patashnik held faculty positions at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, and the department of political science at Yale University.  During his time at UVA, he served as associate dean and acting dean at the Batten School. Patashnik is the author and editor of several books including Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine (with Alan Gerber and Conor Dowling, Princeton University Press, 2017)  and Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton University Press, 2008). He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and also won the Don K. Price Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution during 1995-96, served as President of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017-18, and was the editor of Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law during 2016-2019. He is currently working on a book on the politics of policy backlash.

Patashnik received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.