Research

The U.S. Congress

My research focuses on how legislating in Congress has changed over time, and whether these changes have shifted the distribution of power in Congress or reduced its capacity to write laws effectively. I investigate these issues through the study of the annual appropriations process. Appropriations bills must be passed every year, and for that reason, they offer an important way to observe change over time. 

My work in appropriations shows that high levels of partisanship disrupted "textbook" methods of legislating and led members to adopt "unorthodox" methods such as creating omnibus spending bills that consolidate individual spending bills into a single, large package for passage. The most important consequence of this adaptation is that Congress has maintained its ability to adopt a budget in challenging legislative environments. Other consequences of this change are hard to assess because unorthodox legislating mostly takes place informally, behind closed doors. My research finds that unorthodox legislating on appropriations bills has centralized power to some degree in party leaders, but that committees continue to play important roles in policymaking and gatekeeping. 

My book Too Weak to Govern: Majority Party Power and Appropriations in the U.S. Senate investigates the emergence of omnibus spending bills in the 1980s and demonstrates that they are an adaptation that allowed members to overcome obstacles they faced on the Senate floor and ensure continued funding for the government. In later work, I further assess the causes and consequences of this transformation. In our co-authored chapter "Does Regular Order Produce a More Deliberative Congress? Evidence from the Annual Appropriations Process," Lee Drutman and I show that textbook methods of legislating open the door to both fruitful bipartisan collaboration and partisan gamesmanship that can prevent the passage of appropriations bills. My chapter "Still Muddling Along? Assessing the Hybrid Congressional Appropriations Process" explains how textbook bill drafting processes in the House and Senate are slowing eroding as Congress holds fewer hearings and markups, and does more of its work writing appropriations bills behind closed doors. My co-authored article with Molly Reynolds "Just How Unorthodox? Assessing Lawmaking on Omnibus Spending Bills" finds that the lawmaking behind stand-alone bills added to omnibus spending packages is informal, decentralized, and generally bipartisan. 

Public Opinion

A second branch of my research analyzes the attitudes of the American people toward liberty, equality and liberal democratic institutions as part of my work directing the Grinnell College National Poll.