Gary L. Wamsley is public administration specialist and professor emeritus at

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

Center for Public Administration and Policy The Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP) is an academic department of Virginia Tech focused on public administration and public policy. It has campuses in Blacksburg, Alexandria, and Richmond. One of the Center's founding faculty me ...

. He is perhaps best known as the coordinating editor of Refounding Public Administration, a work that followed from a well-known public administration paper called the Blacksburg Manifesto. He has also for many years edited the journal Administration & Society. He received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

, and a Ph.D. from the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

. Wamsley was a student of

Charles Perrow Charles B. Perrow (February 9, 1925 – November 12, 2019) was an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University. He authored several books and many articles on organizations, and was primaril ...

and a co-author with Mayer Zald. As with many scholars of his generation in the field of public administration, he is deeply influenced by

Dwight Waldo Clifford Dwight Waldo (September 28, 1913 – October 27, 2000) was an American political science, political scientist and is perhaps the defining figure in modern public administration. Waldo's career was often directed against a scientific/t ...

. As a budget theorist, Wamsley's work built on a framework started by

Aaron Wildavsky Aaron Wildavsky (May 31, 1930 – September 4, 1993) was an American political scientist known for his pioneering work in public policy, government budgeting, and risk management. Early years A native of Brooklyn in New York, Wildavsky was th ...

. In recent years, Wamsley has discussed budgeting in terms of the sociology of

Erving Goffman Erving Goffman (11 June 1922 – 19 November 1982) was a Canadian-born sociology, sociologist, Social psychology (sociology), social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth ...

and used other innovative approaches to underscore the political and theatrical nature of budget formation in government.

References

American political scientists American sociologists Virginia Tech faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of Pittsburgh alumni People from Blacksburg, Virginia Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Public administration scholars Place of birth missing (living people) {{US-sociologist-stub