Wildavsky taught at
Oberlin College from 1958 until 1962, then lived and worked in Washington D.C for a year before moving to the
University of California, Berkeley, where he worked as a professor of
political science for the rest of his life. At Berkeley, he was chairman of the
political science department (1966–1969) and founding dean of the
Graduate School of Public Policy (1969–1977). Wildavsky was president of the
American Political Science Association for 1985–86. He was also a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration. Wildavsky was a scholar on
budgeting and
budget theory. He is associated with the idea of
incrementalism in budgeting, meaning that the most important predictor of a future political budget is the prior one; not a rational economic or decision process undertaken by the state. His book
Politics of the Budgetary Process was named by the
American Society for Public Administration as the third most influential work in
public administration in the last fifty years. In
Searching for Safety (1988), Wildavsky argued that
trial and error, rather than the
precautionary principle, is the best way to manage risks. He noted that rich, technologically advanced societies were the safest, as measured by
life expectancy and
quality of life. Precautionary approaches to approving new technology are irrational, he said, because they demand that we know whether something is safe before we can do the very tests that would demonstrate its safety or dangerousness. Furthermore, precaution eliminates the benefits of new technology along with the harms. He advocated enhancing society's capacity to cope with and adapt to the unexpected, rather than trying to prevent all catastrophes in advance. Wildavsky was a prolific author, writing or co-writing thirty-nine books and numerous journal articles, including important works on the budgetary process, policy analysis, political culture, foreign affairs, public administration, and comparative government. Five more books were published posthumously—bringing the total to forty-four. Wildavsky was the recipient of the 1996
University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, with Max Singer. Wildavsky was awarded multiple honorary degrees over the course of his life, including degrees from
Yale University and the
University of Bologna. He died of lung cancer on September 4, 1993, in Oakland, California. ==Managing risk==