Darrell M. West
Darrell West (born October 6, 1954) is an American author, political scientist, and political commentator. West is the vice president and director of governance studies and a senior fellow of the center for technology innovation at the Brookings Institution. He holds the Douglas Dillon Chair in governance studies, and has written about technology policy, mass media, and campaigns and elections in the United States. He is the Co-Editor of the Brookings technology policy blog, “TechTank”. He is the Co-Host and Co-Producer of the Brookings technology policy podcast.

Life
He was born in Richmond, Indiana and grew up on a dairy farm outside of Eaton, Ohio. His father was Robert M. West and his mother was Jean E. West. His siblings include Kenneth West of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Joanne Shaver of College Corner, Ohio, and Shirley Mitchell of Eaton, Ohio.
He graduated from Eaton High School in 1972 and went on to earn a B.A. from Miami University (Ohio) in 1976 and a PhD in political science from Indiana University in 1981. He taught at Brown University from 1982 to 2008. He was the director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. The spring 2008 semester was his final semester at Brown University after 26 years on the faculty.

Career
His book Digital Government is the winner of the Don K. Price award for best book on technology and his co-authored book Cross Talk won the Doris Graber Award for best book on political communications.

His book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust (Brookings Institution Press, 2014) looks at the 1,645 billionaires in the world today and how "wealthification" is affecting politics and society. It goes inside the world of the ultra-wealthy and examines the role of Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg, David and Charles Koch, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Donald Trump, as well as international billionaires around the globe. He argues that the growing political engagement of the supra-wealthy raises important questions about influence, transparency, and government performance. It was named by the Washington Post as one of the best political books of 2014 and was the winner of the Foreword Review Book of the Year Silver Award for Political Science.

He was honored by Public Administration Review for having written one of the 75 most influential articles since 1940. This was for his 2004 article "E-Government and the Transformation of Service Delivery and Citizen Attitudes".

In 2015, his project on financial inclusion was named by philanthropist Bill Gates as one of the top five "good news stories" of the year. Writing on December 18, 2015 at his personal blog, Gates said that "mobile banking exceeds our optimistic projections" and is "one of the best tools we've ever seen for helping people lift themselves out of poverty".

In 2018, The Washington Post reported that West has spoken at various events hosted by Huawei since 2012 and that Huawei has financially supported West's research. At a 2014 conference, West stated, "the way that Huawei has been singled out by the US government has been unfair and counterproductive".

Books

Making Campaigns Count (Greenwood Press, 1984)
Congress and Economic Policymaking (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987)
Public Opinion in Rhode Island, 1984–1993 (Brown University, 1994) with Thomas Anton and Jack Combs
Cross Talk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a Presidential Campaign, (University of Chicago, 1996) with Marion Just, Ann Crigler, Dean Alger, Tim Cook, and Montague Kern
The Sound of Money: How Political Interests Get What They Want (Norton, 1999) with Burdett Loomis
Checkbook Democracy: How Money Corrupts Political Campaigns (Northeastern University Press, 2000)
Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power (Prentice-Hall, 2000)
The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment (Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2001) (Chinese edition, Peking University Press, 2010)
Rhode Island Public Opinion, 1994–2000 (Brown University, 2001) (with Tom Anton and Jack Combs)
Celebrity Politics, (Prentice-Hall, 2002) with John Orman
Running on Empty: Campaign Discourse in American Elections (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) co-edited with Sandy Maisel
Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance (Princeton University Press, 2005)(Chinese edition, 2010)
Evaluating Campaign Quality: Can the Electoral Process Be Improved? (Cambridge University Press, 2007) with Sandy Maisel and Brett Clifton
Biotechnology Policy Across National Boundaries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Digital Medicine: Health Care in the Internet Era (Brookings, 2009) with Edward Miller
Brain Gain: Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy (Brookings, 2010)
The Next Wave: Using Digital Technology to Further Social and Political Innovation (Brookings, 2011)(Korean translation, Korea National Open University Press, 2013; Chinese translation, Shanghai Publishing, 2014)
Digital Schools: How Technology Can Transform Education (Brookings, 2012)
Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust (Brookings, 2014; Korean translation, Wonderbox Publishing, 2016)
Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952–2016 (Congressional Quarterly Press, Seventh edition, 2017) (Japanese edition, 1996)
Going Mobile: How Wireless Technology is Reshaping Our Lives (Brookings, 2015)
Megachange: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21st Century (Brookings, 2016; Korean translation, Hanul Books, 2018)
The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation (Brookings, 2018; Korean translation, Hanbit Biz, 2019)
Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era (Brookings Institution Press, 2019)
Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, co-authored with Brookings President John R. Allen (Brookings Institution Press, 2020)

References

External links

American political scientists
Brown University faculty
1954 births
Writers from Richmond, Indiana
Miami University alumni
Living people