Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the Director of the Management and Leadership Initiative at Brookings. She is a public sector scholar with wide experience in government, academia and politics.  Kamarck is an expert on government innovation and reform in the United States, OECD countries and developing countries.  In addition, she also focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns.  In the 1980s, she helped to found the “New Democrat” movement that resulted in the presidency of Bill Clinton.

As a senior staffer in the White House she created the National Performance Review, the largest government reform effort in the last half of the twentieth century.  After the White House, she spent fifteen years at Harvard University teaching government management and American politics.   Her most recent book on politics is Primary Politics: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating System.  Her most recent book on government organization is The End of Government As we Know it: Making Public Policy Work.  Her forthcoming book (summer 2013) will focus on American Politics and Public Policy and is called How Change Happens: Understanding Success and Failure in Modern American Politics.