A Woman’s Voice in the House: Gender Composition and its Consequences in Committee Hearings Do increasing numbers of women in Congress lead to more representation of women’s voices during the legislative process? Using committee hearing transcripts from 1995-2017, Pamela analyzes how increasing the proportions of women interacts with measures of Read more…

Negotiating Bicameral Compromise Legislators encode their policy choices in the text of bills they propose, debate, and pass. The textual choices made and the shared elements of the language in House versus Senate bills provide a window to policy conflict and compromise in a bicameral setting. To characterize the nature Read more…

HOLD THE DATE!  More information will be posted soon.  This workshop is open to USC students & faculty.

Abby Wood, USC Gould School of Law, to discuss "Campaign Finance Transparency Affects Legislators’ Election Outcomes and Behavior." Do audits by executive agencies impact the behavior of those audited? Does revealing negative information about legislators affect electoral results and behavior? Institutions that encourage transparency, such as campaign finance disclosure, influence Read more…

Kevin Esterling and Marci Harris present a report that notes Congress struggles to keep pace with increasingly rapid technological advances. Kevin Esterling and Marci Harris will present a report by the American Political Science Association Task Force on Congressional Reform Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation that assesses the current status Read more…

Women’s Representation and the Gendered Pipeline to Power To diminish gender disparity in candidates, women have to be far more likely than men to run for office.The leading explanation for this under-representation of women is that women are less likely to run for office than men, but scholars have given Read more…

Legislative Staff and Representation in Congress: Do they understand their constituents' policy preferences? Previous research has indicated that political elites have, at best, a murky understanding of their constituents' policy preferences. Where does this lack of accuracy come from? What explains variation in these misperceptions across individual lawmakers and legislatures?Leah Read more…

Sidestepping Primary Reform: Political Action in Response to Institutional Change Many believe that primary elections distort representation in American legislatures because unrepresentative actors nominate extremist candidates. Advocates have reformed primaries in hopes of broadening voter participation and increasing representation. Empirical evidence, however, suggests these reforms have not substantively changed legislator Read more…

Political Economy of Executive Politics In recent years, as polarization has gripped legislatures in America and inhibited lawmaking, executive branch officials have stepped into the policymaking breach. For example, a number of Important policy decisions have been made by chief executives acting unilaterally and by agencies via new regulations. The Read more…

Monitoring bureaucratic performance in developing country governments A major challenge faced by developing country governments is how to successfully monitor bureaucratic performance, especially in environments with weak state capacity. In this research, we test whether a phone-based monitoring system can provide a scalable, cost-effective means for addressing this challenge. Jeff Read more…

By the People: Electoral Reform, Public Administration, and the California 2018 Election Although Americans broadly agree that something is wrong with government, there is much less consensus about what ought to be done. This talk connects ongoing research into electoral reforms, like California’s nonpartisan “top-two” primary, with the challenges of Read more…

Symposium at USC on Election Administration and Technology, 6 paper presentations in three panels with discussants. As the administration of elections has become a bigger and more complex political issue in the United States, the social sciences have been called on to address a set of issues that were once Read more…