William Gormley

I have long been interested in bureaucratic politics and how to improve bureaucratic accountability. I addressed these issues in Taming the Bureaucracy: Muscles, Prayers, and Other Strategies (Princeton University Press, 1989), which won the Louis Brownlow Book Award in 1990. Steve Balla and I also investigated these issues in four editions of our book, Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance (Congressional Quarterly Press).
For over 20 years, I served as Principal Investigator for the Tulsa Pre-K Project, which evaluated the short-term and long-term effects of Tulsa’s extraordinary universal pre-K program. Our research has been featured on the PBS Evening News and the CBS Evening News and has appeared in many scholarly journals, including the Journal of Human Resources, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Science magazine. That research is summarized in loving detail on our website (http://www.crocus.georgetown.edu).
Years ago, in 2001, I published an article in the Public Administration Review, entitled “Moralists, Pragmatists, and Rogues: Bureaucrats in Modern Mysteries.” During COVID, with time on my hands, I decided to write my own murder mystery, set in Pittsburgh, my home town. Having retired from Georgetown University, in 2023, I now focus much of my time on mystery writing. My first mystery, Too Many Bridges (Level Best Books), will be published in July 2024.