Charles Kaye-Essien

EXPERTISE

Institutional governance, policy analysis, performance evaluation, environmental and social impact assessment and regulatory strategy with a focus on health systems, water and transport infrastructure, crises management, and sustainable development. 

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Charles Kaye-Essien is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. Dr. Kaye-Essien is an international scholar and consultant whose work sits at the intersection of institutions, policy, and equity. His research asks a simple but persistent question: When government hands off responsibility for essential services through fragmentation, delegation, or partnerships with private and local actors, who benefits, and who gets left behind?

One strand of his current research looks at U.S. health technology policy, tracing how private contractors are left to fill the gap between FDA approval and Medicare coverage decisions, often at real cost to patient access. He has applied this same approach to water governance and sustainability, and more recently to disaster recovery, using the Los Angeles wildfires as a case study in how jurisdictional fragmentation and adaptive governance play out during a crisis.

Dr. Kaye-Essien previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy, University of Connecticut. Before that, he was Assistant Professor and MPA Director at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He has also taught at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and Sullivan College of Technology in Kentucky.

His work has appeared in journals including Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, Governance, Public Administration and Development, the International Public Management Journal, and the International Development Planning Review. He reviews regularly for Nature, Public Management Review, Administration & Society, Feminist Media Studies, the International Journal of Public Administration, and State and Local Government Review.

Dr. Kaye-Essien is a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow and a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) scholar. He also brings substantial practitioner experience to his research, having consulted for UNICEF, Development Pathways, and the Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy.