White Identity and the Emergence of the Republican Party in the Early-20th Century South (Co-authored with Boris Heersink, Fordham University) We explore the relationship between white identity, the GOP, and the South, by examining the role that white identity played in the Republican Party’s emergence in the former Confederacy prior to Read more…
"When Citizens Peek Behind the Bureaucratic Veil: An Experiment in Shaping Public Opinion" In this paper, we plan to conduct a novel experiment to test whether Americans form their opinions on executive agency decisions based on whether those decisions are framed as emerging from either technocratic or democratic deliberative processes. Read more…
Unbundling Polarization Chad Kendall will discuss his co-authored research on investigating the determinants of political polarization, a phenomenon of increasing relevance in Western democracies. How much of polarization is driven by divergence in the ideologies of politicians? How much is instead the result of changes in the capacity of parties to Read more…
"Implementing Particularism: Bureaucracy and the Distribution of Federal Grants" Under what conditions do bureaucrats implement policy on behalf of the President? Do ideology and politicization condition agency implementation of presidential particularism with respect to the distribution of federal grants? I develop a novel theory of the implementation of presidential policy Read more…
Bureaucratic Agency Problems and Legislative Oversight (co-authored with Abby K. Wood, USC Gould and Sean Gailmard, UC Berkeley) This paper empirically analyzes legislative oversight of bureaucracy in the US as a means to mitigate agency problems that units of Congress face with the bureaucracy. We develop a principal-agent model of Read more…
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…