The influence of congressional primary elections on candidate positioning remains disputed
and poorly understood. We test whether candidates communicate artificially “extreme” …

Does public campaign financing improve representation by reducing politicians' reliance on
wealthy donors as advocates claim, or does it worsen representation by expanding the …

Measurement is the weak link between theory and empirical test. Complex concepts such as
ideology, identity, and legitimacy are difficult to measure; yet, without measurement that …

Recent research suggests that the penalty congressional candidates pay for ideological
extremism declined abruptly in 1994, when the House majority became competitive for the …

Why have the people running for Congress become more ideologically extreme over time,
causing Congress to polarize? In this paper, we study how the pool of state legislators …

Among political institutions in the United States, state courts are surprisingly susceptible to
ideological extremism because of the non-uniform ways judges are selected. In this paper …

Scholarly work has missed the key reason for the extraordinary levels of political polarization
and poor governance in American politics in recent years. Contrary to the appearance that …

Fenno (1975) famously posited that the mass public's assessments of the US Congress are
rooted in a paradox, with citizens holding negative evaluations of the collective Congress …

US state legislatures are critical policymaking bodies and the major pipeline of candidates to
national office. Polarization in state legislatures has increased substantially in recent …

For years, countless scholars have posited the role of constituency and party pressure on
legislators' roll call voting records. Indeed, though popular estimates of legislators' …