Does comparative advantage explain legislators’ support for trade liberalization? We use data on potential crop yields as determined by weather and soil characteristics to derive a new plausibly exogenous measure of in agriculture each district the United States. Evidence shows that predicts how legislators vote ratification preferential agreements Congress. show districts with high agricultura...

Interest groups often seek to influence legislators and legislative behaviour. We argue that the likelihood of taking interest group requests preferences into account is shaped by how – with what tactic they are conveyed. expect more direct, real-time, contact increases legislators’ receptiveness demands. To test this argument, we introduce take advantage uniquely nuanced lobbying data provide ...

This article shows that judicial review has a democratic justification, although it is not necessary for democratic government and its virtues are controversial and often speculative. Against critics like Waldron and Bellamy, it shows that judges, no less than legislators, can embody democratic forms of representation, accountability and participation. Hence, judicial review is not undemocratic...

Party brands are central to theories of Congressional action. While previous work assumes that a party’s brand—its long run reputation—is a direct consequence of the content of legislation, in this presentation I show how partisans from both parties use public statements to craft their own party’s reputation and to undermine their opponents party. The incentive to craft and destroy brands varie...

In the US Congress, a legislator can endorse a bill publicly before the vote to determine whether it is passed on to the president to sign by co-sponsoring it. Although there is no limit at this time on number of co-sponsors, a legislator only co-sponsors 2-3% of all the bills. Thus, the legislators make considerable effort in deciding which bills to co-sponsor and the network of co-sponsorship...

We develop a model of legislative policy-making in which individual legislators are concerned with both policy and re-election. Legislators’ preferences are private information, and they have two means of communicating their preferences to voters. First, they each have a ‘party label’ which credibly identifies an interval within which their ideal points must lie. Second, their roll call votes m...

This paper addresses the puzzle of why redistributive legislation, which benefits a small minority, may pass with overwhelming majorities. It models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods, showing how he can exploit a legislature (completely) in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him. In equilibrium, a large majority of legisla...

Standard accounts of congressional behavior treat legislators as individuals whose actions are the result of the interaction of member-specific characteristics and institutional factors. However, members of Congress do not act alone but instead depend on professional staffers who are intimately involved in every aspect of the institution. In this paper, we use a novel dataset of comprehensive l...

The campaign to expand physical activity options for our youth takes many forms, but by far the most frequent tool for change is state legislation. This journal contains several reviews of legislative efforts throughout the country that are building momentum for active living in our towns, cities, and states. As a public health professional by training and a Maine state legislator by election, ...