Chris Piper

Chris Piper is a practitioner fellow at the Miller Center and a manager of public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to building a more effective federal government. His research examines presidential personnel as a central instrument of executive power — explaining the strategy behind appointments, vacancies, and acting officials, and how record levels of political appointees, the erosion of career senior leadership, and growing politicization of the civil service compound to undermine government performance and accountability.

Piper has authored or co-authored more than 25 policy publications cited by Congress, national media, and major think tanks — including Partnership reports and independent analyses published through the Brookings Institution — examining how executive branch leadership is structured, contested, and reformed. His work has been quoted or covered by the Associated Press, The New York Times, and Politico.

Piper's work is applied as well as analytical. At the Partnership, he regularly briefs Capitol Hill staff on institutional reform and workforce data, advises presidential transition teams, and convenes policymakers, scholars, and advocacy groups through public and private forums on governance reform. He also develops policy and institutional reform proposals on the confirmation process, civil service structure, and appointments guardrails — translating research findings into actionable recommendations for lawmakers and agency leaders.

A consistent finding across his research is that the strategies presidents use to maximize control over agencies often erode the very capacity they rely on to govern effectively. His current work examines the Trump administration's second term as a stress test of the institutional arrangements governing executive branch personnel — across nominations, acting officials, inspector general independence, and civil service reclassification — assessing what this moment reveals about whether existing checks on presidential power can hold.

Piper's academic research has been published in the Journal of Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. A 2025 study in the Journal of Politics found that federal agencies with persistent leadership vacancies consistently underperform those with confirmed leadership in place. 

Piper is an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He earned a PhD and MA in political science from Vanderbilt University and a BS in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.