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Alan Ehrenhalt

Alan Ehrenhalt

Contributing Editor

Alan Ehrenhalt served for 19 years as executive editor of Governing Magazine, and is currently one of its contributing editors. He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and op-ed page, the Washington Post Book World, New Republic and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of four books: The United States of Ambition, The Lost City, Democracy in the Mirror, and The Great Inversion. He was also the creator and editor of the first four editions of Politics in America, a biennial reference book profiling all 535 members of Congress. Alan Ehrenhalt is a 1968 graduate of Brandeis University and holds an MS in journalism from Columbia. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard from 1977-1978; a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987-1988; a Regents’ Lecturer at UCLA in 2006; an adjunct faculty member at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, at the University of Richmond, from 2004 through 2008; and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland Graduate School of Public Policy in 2009. In 2000 he received the American Political Science Association’s McWilliams award for distinguished contributions to the field of political science by a journalist. He is married, has two daughters, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

He can be reached at ehrenhalt@yahoo.com.

Legislatures regularly interfere with local affairs. The reasons, according to research, will surprise you.
They can have a big impact on economic fortunes and social cohesion, which explains the controversy that often surrounds them.
We first published in 1987, a year when states and cities seemed poised for innovation.
In 1977, the GOP faced an identity crisis. It eventually found a winning formula and returned to power.
There are no crystal balls, yet some judges expect planners and policymakers to predict the future anyway.
A lot of what fosters it is out of their control, but a little audacity goes a long way.
A lot of the hard-line GOP governors who won in 2010 have surprised their supporters with a shift toward pragmatism. What’s driving the change?
Some want to save the fiscally challenged city in New York by effectively abolishing it.
In the past, politicians have ignored the realities that exist in big cities. They seem to be doing it again.
Hip restaurants have helped revive cities. But is the boom fizzling out?