"Revolving Doors" co-authored by Ryan Hubert, UC Berkeley Janna Rezaee's research focuses on the "revolving door" between government and the private sector as an institutional response to policy-development monopolies. The prevailing wisdom about the revolving door is that it provides leverage to business interests to shape policy outcomes in their Read more…

The Challenge of Measuring Political Polarization in the US over Time using Congressional Roll Call Votes Jeff Lewis is professor of Political Science, UCLA.  He is also the current president of the Society for Political Methodology. His research and teaching are in the areas of quantitative methodology and American politics. Read more…

Beyond a Reliable Vote: Coordination and Information Problems in Congressional Nominations Research in collaboration with: Knox Brown, Angela Ocampo, Shawn Patterson, John Ray and John Zaller Congressional primaries, like primary elections in general, are imagined to give voters, rather than party elites, the ability to choose which candidate wins the nomination. Read more…

The Power of Economic Interests Under Direct versus Representative Democracy The power of economic interest groups to influence policy outcomes is a common theme in economics and political science. Most theories posit that interest group power arises from the ability to influence elected or appointed government officials, that is, by exploiting Read more…

“Uncovering Discrimination in the Policing of Anti-Immigrant Hate Crime”  With an increase in ethnically motivated hate crime, we explore the issue of the rigor in which law enforcement agencies police potential hate crime activity. We conducted a large-scale field experiment on roughly 6,800 police departments throughout the United States to Read more…

LaGina Gause will discuss her research paper, The Advantage of Disadvantage: Protests, Resources, and Legislative Behavior. It is well documented that low-resource groups are disadvantaged in the political process. But, when low-resource groups can overcome barriers to engage in collective action – participation involving multiple participants publicly expressing a grievance – it Read more…

Ben Graham is an assistant professor at USC's School of International Relations. Ben will discuss his paper, Network Ties and the Political Strategies of Firms, co-written with Cesi Cruz. Social ties are critical to firms’ ability to achieve influence over government policy, and it is widely accepted that better-connected firms achieve more influence. However, Read more…

Nicolas Duquette is an assistant professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.  He completed his PhD in economics from the University of Michigan in 2014. Duquette's research is in public finance and economic history, with particular interest in the historical development of taxation and spending policy and the Read more…

Violent encounters involving police and racial minorities are taking place in greater numbers in the United States. Some of the high-profile incidents (New York City (Eric Garner), Sanford, FL (Trayvon Martin), and Ferguson, MO (Michael Brown)) have generated strong public reaction. Protest movements, such as like “Black Lives Matter,” have Read more…

Public School Finance in California: the Golden Age  On several occasions, significant changes were made in the way the public schools in California were financed. Major reforms were also made in the state's tax structure.  What did not change was the nature of the state's commitment to public education. From the time of Read more…

Policing for Profit: The Political Economy of Law Enforcement In recent years numerous observers have raised concerns about "policing for profit'' or the deployment of law enforcement resources to raise funds for cash-strapped jurisdictions. However, identifying the causal effect of fiscal incentives on law enforcement behavior has remained elusive. We model Read more…

The Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump symposium will bring together leading political scientists from across the country to explore his radical revision to US foreign policy. In doing so, we hope to better understand the key components of foreign policy in the Age of Trump and their likely Read more…

Citizen Competence and Democratic Governance Competing traditions in public opinion scholarship offer strikingly divergent understandings of the role citizens can and do play in democratic governance. Some scholars argue that most citizens are poor decision makers who are woefully uninformed and easily manipulated. Others believe that public opinion is “rational” Read more…

Political Violence in China: Terrorism, Official Media, and Political Priorities  Most scholars agree that autocracies enjoy a key counterterrorism advantage, namely the ability to control information. In reality, the information strategies of autocracies are much more sophisticated. To better understand these strategic considerations, we explore why the Chinese Communist Party Read more…