Ryan J. Vander Wielen

Professor of Political Science and (by affiliation) Economics

About

I am a Professor of Political Science and (by affiliation) Economics, and Director of the M.A. in Public Policy at Stony Brook University. My research and teaching interests are in the areas of American political institutions, political decision-making, quantitative methodology, and formal modeling.

Much of my research examines how legislators strategically navigate their electoral circumstances, and whether voters hold elected representatives accountable for their behavior in office. My work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Analysis, Public Choice, Political Research Quarterly, and elsewhere. I am the co-author of The House that Fox Built? (Cambridge University Press), Taming Intuition (Cambridge University Press), Politics Over Process (University of Michigan Press), The American Congress (Rowman & Littlefield), and The American Congress Reader (Cambridge University Press). More information about my research can be found here.

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in legislative politics, statistical methods, and game theory. For more information on courses taught, please click here.

I received my Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis after receiving my B.A. in Government and B.Mus. in Music Performance (classical guitar) from Lawrence University. I have held visiting fellowships at Duke University and Sciences-Po Lyon.