Allan Rosenbaum

Biography

In Memory March 17, 2024

For the past seventeen years, Allan Rosenbaum served as Director of the Institute for Public Management and Community Service and Professor of Public Administration at Florida International University (FIU), Miami, Florida. FIU is a 50,000 student state university and the Institute is its principal vehicle for working internationally in the areas of governance reform, decentralization, legislative development, strengthening local government and democratic institution-building. Toward those ends, the Institute has been involved in many projects funded by USAID and other international organizations in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. The Institute, in conjunction with Miami-Dade County government, each year organizes the Inter-American Conference of Mayors and Local Authorities, which has become the largest and most important annual meeting in the hemisphere concerned with the development and strengthening of local governance in Latin America.

Prior to assuming his current position, Dr. Rosenbaum served for six years as Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Services at FIU. Prior to that, he was, for seven years, an Associate Professor of Policy Sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Graduate School, where he directed the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research, a state government-oriented public policy research institute. Dr. Rosenbaum served in the U.S. federal government dealing with executive branch-congressional relationships in the area of educational policy during the Carter Administration and on the faculty at the Universities of Connecticut and Wisconsin, Madison and held a research position at the University of Chicago. He has also worked in state government in Illinois as Assistant to the Senate Minority Leader and, subsequently, as Administrative Assistant (concerned with legislative relationships) to the Lieutenant Governor, and, for one year, served as acting budget administrator of the City of Miami, Florida.

Before assuming the Deanship at Florida International University, Professor Rosenbaum was actively involved in research and consulting activities with national, state and local government in the United States in a variety of fields including higher education, employment and training policy, economic development, elementary and secondary education, social welfare and science and technology policy. Since leaving the Deanship, Dr. Rosenbaum has been heavily engaged in international public administration and democratic development technical assistance, consulting and research. He has written on governance reform, decentralization issues and legislative relations in various countries including Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Sierra Leone and Ukraine. During the past dozen years, he has consulted, worked or spoken in over 80 countries around the world. He has had extensive experience working with the Ukrainian Parliament and as director or co-director of large USAID projects with numerous Latin American legislative bodies and local governments and with the Parliament and President in Sierra Leone. He has authored, co-authored or co-edited a number of publications for the United Nations, as well as prepared papers on issues of decentralization, democracy and civil society for major United Nations Conferences in Bucharest, Marrakech, New York, Windhoek and Rio de Janeiro.

Dr. Rosenbaum served as President of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA) from 2001-04 and 2007-10. In December of 2011, he was elected Vice President of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and will assume the Presidency of this organization in 2014. He has served on the Executive Committees of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) and the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA). He has also chaired International Committee of NASPAA. In addition, he has served on the International Committee and chaired the Leonard D. White Committee of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and chaired a UN appointed Taskforce on Standards of Excellence in Public Administration Education and Training. He is the recipient of many awards and honors from local and regional governments and public administration associations around the world. Dr. Rosenbaum received a B.A. in History from the University of Miami and a Master’s Degree in Higher Education Administration from Southern Illinois University as well as a a Master’s Degree in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 1976.