Rachel Augustine Potter is a nonresident senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and an associate professor of politics and public policy at the University of Virginia. Her research explores administrative law, bureaucratic politics, and the federal rulemaking process, with a particular focus on outsourcing and procedural strategies in the executive branch. She is the author of “Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy” (University of Chicago Press), which received multiple awards including the APSA-IPSA Theodore J. Lowi Award, the APSA Richard E. Neustadt Award, the APSA Herbert Simon Award, and the National Academy of Public Administration’s Louis Brownlow Award. Her work has appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Politics, Duke Law Journal, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Annual Review of Political Science.
Before joining the University of Virginia, Potter earned her Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan, her M.P.P. from the University of Southern California, and her B.A. from Boston College. She previously served as a policy analyst at the Office of Management and Budget and was a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in Berlin. She is also a senior fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs and has consulted for the Administrative Conference of the United States.
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Current Positions
- Nonresident Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
- Associate Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia
- Director of Graduate Admissions, University of Virginia
- Senior Fellow, Miller Center for Public Affairs
- Affiliated Scholar, Scholars Strategy Network
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Education
- Ph.D., Political Science and Public Policy, University of Michigan
- M.P.P., University of Southern California
- B.A., Boston College