The economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting

Congress confronts two major organizational problems that affect the behavior of legislators, party leaders, and groups doing business with congressional committees: The costly nature of monitoring and the absence of explicit mechanisms for upholding agreements. The problem of monitoring implies that party leaders will have a difficult time influencing decisions made in decision-making arenas where the actions of legislators are less visible, as in congressional committees. While legislators can evade leadership monitoring of their actions within committees, once an issue leaves a committee, the costs of monitoring decline, and leadership influence increases. The absence of mechanisms for assuring that legislators keep their bargains means that groups will place an emphasis on dealing with reliable legislators — those who can be counted upon to uphold their end of a bargain. Thus, party leaders are more effective in influencing floor voting because of their better ability to monitor legislator behavior; however, obligations to important interest groups will be more immune to leadership influence because of the incentives for committee members to adhere to their bargains.     

Predicting the institutional effects of term limits

In this paper we develop a model to predict the seniority turnover, and transition consequences of term limit reforms for any institution with a regularized procedure for rotating membership. With this model we can predict the number of members who will be serving in their last term at any given time once an institution reaches a stable state under term limit reforms. For example, our results show that for the U.S. Senate current term limit proposals will result in a substantial increase in the number of “lame duck” members and a significant reduction in average seniority. We make no claims as to the public policy effects of term limit proposals. However, our model can be used to design a proposal that will maximize any benefits or minimize any public policy effects found to be associated with term limit reforms.     

State Tax Credits and "Making Work Pay" in Post-Welfare Reform Era

This article outlines the work incentives and income support provided by the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and illustrates how state earned income and dependent care credits assist working poor families. State earned income and dependent care tax credits serve as critical complements to the EITC, the federal government's largest antipoverty program. By attending to specific components of each tax credit, state policymakers can maximize state funds that qualify for federal maintenance of effort requirements under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PROWRA), and they can reinforce positive effects and offset work disincentives stemming from current federal tax parameters.     

John Rawls and Policy Formation

Liberalism has bay far been the most appealing ideology in modern political thought, and considered by many as one of human kind's greatest inventions, product of our development as a race. However, new theories have threatened the philosophical foundations upon which liberalism itself stands. One of the most strongly criticized theories is that of the Original Position, developed by the political philosopher John Rawls, and which is itself a fundamental cornerstone in Rawls's Theory of Justice. In this article, I will focus on discussing the problems and questions that arise for policy formation when analyzing the Orginal Position.     

Reputational capital, opportunism, and self-policing in legislatures

This paper examines the question of whether reputational capital can deter opportunistic behavior among legislators preparing to exit the House of Representatives. I create a measure of reputational trustworthiness, based upon pooled samples of constituency opinion derived from the National Election Studies surveys. I then examine the extent to which such reputational good will among constituents deters lame-duck foreign travel by exiting House incumbents within the context of a quasi-experimental research design. The analysis suggests that legislators may be ‘self-policed’ by their reputations for honesty and trustworthiness to the point of discouraging unethical activity. urveys. I then examine the extent to which such s derived from the National Election Studies     

Contesting Legality in Authoritarian Contexts: Food Safety,Rule of Law and China's Networked Public Sphere

Since the introduction of the Internet, China's networked public sphere has become a critical site in which various actors compete to shape public opinion and promote or forestall legal and political change. This paper examines how members of an online public, the Tianya Forum, conceptualized and discussed law in relation to a specific event, the 2008 Sanlu milk scandal. Whereas previous studies suggest the Chinese state effectively controls citizens' legal consciousness via propaganda, this analysis shows that the construction of legality by the Tianya public was not a top‐down process, but a complex negotiation involving multiple parties. The Chinese state had to compete with lawyers and outspoken media to frame and interpret the scandal for the Tianya public and it was not always successful in doing so. Data show further how the online public framed the food safety incident as indicative of fundamental problems rooted in China's political regime and critiqued the state's instrumental use of law.