Peter J. May

Peter J. May is the Donald R. Matthews Distinguished Professor of American Politics at the University of Washington.  He completed his undergraduate degree in 1972 at Dartmouth College graduating magna cum laude with high distinction in Mathematics and Social Sciences.  He completed a Masters in Public Policy in 1976 and PhD in Public Policy in 1979 at the University of California, Berkeley.  He came to the University of Washington in 1979 as assistant professor of political science.  He has been at the University of Washington his entire academic career advancing to associate professor in 1985 and full professor in 1992.  He is a core faculty member of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy and holds an adjunct appointment in the Evans School of Public Affairs.  May has been a visiting scholar at the U.S. Department of Interior (1997-78), a senior Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Australia National University (1991), a visiting professor at Aarhus University, Denmark (1998), a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong (2009), and a research affiliate of the Danish National Centre for Social Research in Copenhagen.

May’s research addresses policy processes, environmental regulation, and policymaking for natural hazards and disasters.  His research about policy processes places him among the leading scholars in the field for which he has pioneered research addressing policy design and implementation, the coherence of policies, and policy learning.  He has recently examined the implications for policymaking and governance of widespread policy disruptions as illustrated by the terrorist events of 2001.  His current research extends that investigation to consideration of problems that span multiple areas of policy and the challenges of creating and sustaining policy regimes to address such messy problems.  His research on environmental regulation has addressed different approaches to environmental management, accountability issues posed by different regulatory regimes, and a variety of studies of regulatory enforcement and compliance.  He has investigated these issues for various environmental issues in the United States, Australia, Denmark, and New Zealand.  May is also noted for his research on policymaking for natural disasters and hazards.  His book on the politics of and policymaking for disaster relief is one of the classics in the field.  Other research contributions include studies of earthquake risk reduction policy and politics, and studies of environmental planning for hazard reduction.

May has authored or co-authored four books:  Recovering from Catastrophes: Federal Disaster Relief Policy and Politics (Greenwood 1985), Disaster Policy Implementation (Plenum 1986), Environmental Management and Governance: Intergovernmental Approaches to Hazards and Disasters (Routledge 1996), and Making Governments Plan: State Experiments in Managing Land Use (Johns Hopkins University Press 1997).  He has numerous publications that have appeared in leading journals in public policy and public administration.  His most cited articles include “Policy Learning and Failure” (Journal of Public Policy 1991), “Reconsidering Policy Design: Policies and Publics” (Journal of Public Policy 1991), “Mandate Design and Compliance” (Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 1993), “Compliance Motivations: Affirmative and Negative Motivations” (Law and Society Review 2004), and “Regulatory Regimes and Accountability” (Regulation and Governance 2004).  He received the American Society for Public Administration’s William E. Mosher and Fredrick C. Mosher award for the best article by an academic in the 2005 volume of the Public Administration Review for his article “Regulation and Motivations: Examining Different Approaches.”

May’s research has been funded over the years with ten different grants from the National Science Foundation, funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, and multiple grants from the United States Geological Survey.  He has been a core research member of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley that has also provided funding for a variety of his research projects.  He regularly serves as an advisor to governmental agencies that include service on panels for the National Research Council and the National Science Foundation.  He was the main force for creating a mentoring program in 1996 for junior faculty, “Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards Researchers,” which the National Science Foundation has subsequently funded for three cohorts of faculty.  He has served on the editorial boards of eight journals that are leading journals among his respective areas of research.

May has taught undergraduate and graduate courses addressing American politics, bureaucratic politics, environmental regulation, public policy processes, policy analysis, risk politics, and quantitative methods.  He has a strong commitment to graduate education for which he was a recipient in 2007 of an honorable mention for the University of Washington’s Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award.  This commitment is reflected by his funding of numerous graduate research assistantships through his grants and his numerous publications with graduate students.  He has supervised dissertations of thirteen students who have gone on to successful academic careers or other notable accomplishments.  Many of these individuals have subsequently advanced through the academic ranks and are themselves notable scholars in the field of policy processes.  These include a number of graduate students who came to the University of Washington as Donald R. Matthews Graduate Fellows.