Senior Associate Editor


Ed is the Ulysses Dubach Professor of Political Science in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. He specializes in American political institutions, regulation, bureaucracy, and public policy. His research focuses on the role of bureaucracy and regulation in a democracy, and recent attempts to reinvent government and bring society back into the governing process, particularly the growing use of innovative regulatory programs, new ways to organize and control bureaucracy, and collaborative governance frameworks. Virtually all of these endeavors focus on the field of environmental and natural resource policy, especially water resource policy, watershed governance, and sustainability.


Ed’s books include Bringing Society Back In: Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), and Pluralism by the Rules: Conflict and Cooperation in Environmental Regulation (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998).

He is also author of Changing Philosophies and Policies: Endangered Species Across the Years (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2016); and co-editor of New Strategies for Wicked Problems: Science and Problem Solving in the 21st Century (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2017), with Denise Lach and Brent S. Steel.

Ed has served in various advisory and consulting roles for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Bureau of Land Management, the federal Northwest Straits Marine Conservation scientific review committee, and was Senior Science Advisor to Shared Strategy for Puget Sound, a Northwest U.S. regional, state and federal collaborative initiative to restore historic salmon runs and the broader ecological health of the Puget Sound Area of Washington State.

Ed received his B.A. in Political Science (1978) from Colorado State University, and his M.A. (1991) and Ph.D. (1996) in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the first ten years of his career, he was a carpenter and building contractor, and he still renovates for his family.