Barry G. Rabe

Barry Rabe is a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings who studies the durability and performance of environmental and climate policy. Trained as a political scientist at the University of Chicago, he is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emeritus of Environmental Policy at the University of Michigan. He also held the J. Ira and Nikki Harris Family Chair of Public Policy at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy. Rabe has received five awards in honor of his research from the American Political Science Association, including the 2025 Elinor Ostrom Award for career contributions to the study of environmental policy.  His current research examines nuclear energy and waste policy, short-lived climate pollutants such as methane and hydrofluorocarbons, and pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Rabe is currently a visiting scholar at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo, a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, a global fellow of the Wahba Initiative for Strategic Competition, and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is the author or co-author of six books and co-edits a leading environmental policy textbook with Michael Kraft that was most recently released in 2025. Prior Brookings Press books include “Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism” (2020), “Statehouse and Greenhouse” (2004), and “Beyond NIMBY” (1994), each of which won awards in the United States or Canada.

Rabe regularly advises elected and appointed officials across governmental levels in the United States and Canada. He has served in formal advisory roles to the secretaries of commerce and interior, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the governor of Oklahoma. He was the first social scientist to receive an EPA Climate Protection Award and is regularly cited and quoted in the media.