Patashnik served as a legislative analyst for the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Elections during 1989–91.
During his time at University of Virginia, he served as associate dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.
An opinion piece in The New York Times described him as a leading scholar of why policies succeed or fail.
[4] He served as editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law from 2016 to 2019.
He was president of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017–18.