Christopher Hood was a preeminent scholar of government and public administration whose work fundamentally reshaped understanding of executive governance and public sector management. He held the prestigious Gladstone Professorship of Government at All Souls College, Oxford from 2001 to 2014, following an illustrious career at the London School of Economics where he served as Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy. Born in 1947, Hood earned his first-class BA in Social Sciences from the University of York in 1968 and subsequently obtained a B.Litt. from the University of Glasgow in 1971, establishing the academic foundation for his distinguished career. His professional journey spanned multiple leading institutions including the University of Sydney, National University of Singapore, and University of Glasgow, where he cultivated a reputation as one of the most influential public administration scholars of his generation.
Hood pioneered groundbreaking theoretical frameworks that transformed how scholars and practitioners analyze governmental operations, most notably through seminal works including The Tools of Government (1983), The Art of the State (1998), and A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? (2015, with Ruth Dixon). His conceptualization of public service bargains, administrative dilemmas, and organizational cultural biases provided essential analytical tools that became foundational in political science and public administration. His influential 1991 article A Public Management of all Seasons? critically examined the New Public Management movement, identifying its core principles while thoughtfully analyzing how economic values like efficiency could overshadow essential values such as honesty and fairness in governance. Hood's innovative work on transparency mechanisms, blame games, and internal government regulation established new paradigms for understanding the complex interplay between political accountability and bureaucratic performance in modern democratic systems.
Throughout his career, Hood maintained exceptional scholarly rigor while generously mentoring generations of public administration scholars who now occupy influential positions worldwide. He directed the ESRC Research Programme on Public Services: Quality, Performance and Delivery from 2004 to 2010 and chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics' Working Party on medical profiling and online medicine, demonstrating his commitment to applying theoretical insights to practical governance challenges. His contributions earned him election as Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011, and multiple prestigious book awards including the W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize on two occasions. Hood continued his scholarly work actively as Visiting Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government until his passing on January 3, 2025, leaving an enduring legacy that continues to inform both academic research and practical governance approaches across the global public sector.
