Michael Kraft

Biography

Michael E. Kraft is Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs Emeritus and Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Environmental Studies Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of California, Riverside, and he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from Yale University.  From 1970 to 1976 he taught at Vassar College, and from 1977 to 2013 at UW-Green Bay, where he offered courses on environmental politics and policy, public policy analysis, Congress, and environmental science and policy. He continues to teach part time in a new online Sustainable Management master’s program in the UW System. He also has held visiting faculty appointments at Oberlin College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Among other works, he is author of Environmental Policy and Politics (6th ed., Pearson 2015, transferred to Routledge in May 2015); co-author of Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance (MIT Press 2011), co-author of Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives (CQ Press, 5th edition, 2015); and co-editor and contributing author of Environmental Policy (CQ Press/Sage, 9th ed., 2015); The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy (2013); Business and Environmental Policy (MIT Press, 2007); Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy (MIT Press, 2nd ed. 2009); and Public Reactions to Nuclear Waste: Citizens' Views of Repository Siting (Duke University Press, 1993), among other works. He also serves as co-editor (with Sheldon Kamieniecki) of a book series, American and Comparative Environmental Policy, at MIT Press.  

Kraft’s research interests focus on U.S. environmental policy and politics, and his most recent project dealt with the impact of information disclosure programs on corporate environmental performance in the United States. It used the federal Toxics Release Inventory program to examine trends in toxic chemical releases and risk reduction at some 10,000 industrial facilities nationwide and the reasons for variation among firms, communities, and states. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and was the focus of the book, Coming Clean, co-authored with Mark Stephan and Troy Abel; the book won the 2012 Lynton K. Caldwell Award from the American Political Science Association.

Education

BA, U.C., Riverside; MA and Ph.D., Yale University

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

U.S. government and public policy; environmental policy and politics; policy analysis; information disclosure and environmental policy.

Personal Interests

Gardening, travel, walking/hiking

Books