Experts

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Practitioner Senior Fellow
TenpasVitaSEPT2020.pdf

Fast Facts

  • Director, Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government and visiting fellow with Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
  • Host, Democracy in Question podcast, Brookings Institution
  • Advisory board member, White House Transition Project 

Areas Of Expertise

  • The First Year
  • Governance
  • Elections
  • Leadership
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas is director of the Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government and a visiting fellow with Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is also an advisory board member of the White House Transition Project.

Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing and turnover, presidential transitions, and the intersection of politics and policy within the presidency (e.g., presidential reelection campaigns, trends in presidential travel, and polling). She is the author of Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the Presidential Campaign and has published more than 80 articles, book chapters, and papers on these topics.

Tenpas earned her BA degree from Georgetown University and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Virginia.
 

Featured Publications

Presidents as Candidates
Presidents as Candidates

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed

BFM
A more conservative US in the works?
President Donald Trump is expected to nominate an ideologically conservative successor to the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Senior Fellow with the University of Virginia, discusses the implications.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas BFM
Partnership for Public Service
The Replacements: Why and How “Acting” Officials Are Making Senate Confirmation Obsolete
The Constitution vests responsibility for filling federal leadership positions in both the president and the Senate — the president nominates officials for key posts, and the Senate provides “advice and consent.” But in recent years, presidents have found it increasingly easy to sidestep this process altogether and to install temporary, “acting” officials in place of Senate-confirmed leaders. This report examines the prevalence of vacancies and temporary officials in Senate-confirmed positions, the use of acting officials and the reasons the nomination and confirmation process has broken down. This report also includes specific recommendations to address the prevalence of temporary officials, fix broken processes and improve accountability.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Partnership for Public Service
Government Executive
The Incumbent: Bending the Bureaucracy
Trump’s management style contributes to high turnover within the administration, said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a nonresident senior fellow with Brookings’ Governance Studies and a fellow and secretary of the Governance Institute. Tenpas calculates that as of August 24, the turnover rate among 65 senior administration positions—Trump’s “A Team”—was 91%, significantly surpassing that of his five predecessors after a full term. “I think what’s unique about this administration is that the president himself tends to publicly fire a lot of his senior staff and humiliate them, and he also oftentimes leaves them looking incompetent,” Tenpas told Government Executive. “If there is a second term, that’s not going to change.”
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Government Executive
CNBC
The plan for Trump to speak every night at the RNC may be overkill: Expert
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the University of Virginia says President Trump is shattering norms in a very aggressive way and his speeches every night at the RNC may be overkill, that could lead to fewer viewers on the final night.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas CNBC