Rate My Professor Kenneth Lowande

Kenneth Lowande is an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, holding a courtesy appointment as associate professor of public policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and serving as a faculty associate in the Center for Political Studies within the Institute for Social Research. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Government from the University of Virginia in 2016 and a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in History from Baylor University in 2011. Lowande joined the University of Michigan in 2018 as an assistant professor, advancing to associate professor in 2023. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics from 2017 to 2018 and at Washington University in St. Louis from 2016 to 2017.

Lowande’s research examines leadership and policymaking in American civic institutions, with a focus on congressional oversight, presidential power, bureaucratic politics, and policy implementation. His scholarship has appeared in premier outlets including the American Political Science Review (“Who Polices the Administrative State?”, 2018; “Executive Power in Crisis”, 2021, with Jon Rogowski), American Journal of Political Science (“Bureaucratic Responsiveness to LGBT Americans”, 2020, with Andrew Proctor; “Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress”, 2019, with Melinda Ritchie and Erinn Lauterbach), The Journal of Politics, and Nature Human Behaviour (“Police Demilitarization and Violent Crime”, 2021). In 2024, he published the book False Front: The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age with the University of Chicago Press, which earned the 2025 Richard E. Neustadt Award for the best book on the American presidency, the 2025 Jewell-Loewenberg Prize in American Politics, and the 2025 Emerging Scholar Award from APSA’s Presidency and Executive Politics section. Additional honors include the 2022 Samuel Eldersveld Prize from Michigan’s Political Science department, the 2019 American Journal of Political Science Best Article Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, and the 2020 Kenneth J. Meier Award. Lowande contributes to the field through editorial board service for the American Journal of Political Science (2025-2027) and the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy (2023-2025), as well as departmental committees including the Executive Committee (2025-2027). His work has influenced public discussions through opinion pieces in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog and The Hill.