Tom Hogen-Esch earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California in 2002. His dissertation "Recapturing Suburbia: Urban Secession and the Politics of Growth Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle" examined social movements to redistribute political power through urban secession. From 1997 to 1999, he served as a policy researcher for the Los Angeles Elected Charter Commission, where he co-authored policy reports related to improving neighborhood participation in service delivery in the City of LA. More recently, he has published on the topic of municipal corruption at the local level in Southern California, examining the relationship between municipal corruption and the council manager form of government in the City of Bell, California. He is currently editing a book "America, Only Sooner: Cases in California Public Management" (Vernon Press, 2025) which examines important case studies of public management reform in California. Prof. Hogen-Esch teaches courses in urban governance and politics (PS 404 and PS 467), state and local politics (PS 403), public policy (PS 471E and PS 361) as well as American politics (PS 155 and PS 355). He is also the director of the Political Science Department's local political internship program (PS 494I).