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.

A recent recipient of a Packard Foundation grant, Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing and turnover and presidential transitions. She also studies interbranch relations, particularly the complex relationship between federal courts and Congress. 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.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed

The Biden administration has far less turnover than Trump. Does that impact agency performance?

Tenpas suggested Biden’s long career helped him develop a team that he knew would stick around. “He’s been in politics for so many years, he knows how to pick staff and knows who he trusts,” she said.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Government Executive

Stability or chaos: The turnover rate in the Biden vs. Trump Cabinets speaks for itself

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a visiting fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, has written detailed analyses on overall staff turnover in the Trump administration and the Biden administration.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Daily Kos

Staff turnover in year three of the Biden administration

2023 was another challenging year for the president — tepid approval ratings, narrow margins in Congress, calls for impeachment, new and continuing military conflict abroad, and an economy struggling to regain its footing. Despite these challenges, relative stability in White House staffing continued to be a Biden administration hallmark, particularly when compared to the tumult in the Trump administration.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Brookings

In Memoriam: Charles O. Jones

Charles O. Jones rose to prominence in political science as an expert on the U.S. Congress – the subject he first taught me at the University of Virginia. But over time he expanded the scope of his influence and became perhaps the nation’s preeminent student of Washington’s political institutions.

Russell Riley, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Good Authority