Kenneth N. Bickers joined the faculty at CU-Boulder in 2003. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988 and his B.A. from TCU in Fort Worth in 1981. His first position out of graduate school was at Rice University. During 1991-92, he was a visiting scholar at the LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin. From 1992-2003, he was on the faculty at Indiana University, where he was Associate Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. While at Indiana, he twice won University-wide teaching awards.
Professor Bickers has published articles in numerous journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Choice, Administration and Society, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. His most recent books include Public Policy Analysis: A Political Economy Approach, with John Williams (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), and Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy, with Robert M. Stein (Cambridge University Press, 1995). His current research focuses on the consequences of the devolution of federal policy activities to states and local communities. A book in progress, tentatively titled America’s Post-Entitlement Employment Policies, explores the politics of designing national welfare and employment policies that accommodate local economic and demographic problems. He is also in the early stages of a book coauthored with Robert M. Stein, to be titled Politics in Metropolis: The Impact of Devolution on the Electoral Connection, that asks whether devolution of federal responsibilities to state and local governments has created conditions for strong cooperative ties between national and subnational elected officials and thus linked the electoral trajectories of politicians across levels of government.