Research Papers                        Dissertation

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My work broadly centers on questions relevant to democratic procedures, democratization, and elite influence (including my dissertation).  My research interests include comparative politics, political parties, legislative politics, institutional analysis, and research methods (formal modeling and quantitative analysis). As the diversity of my research interests attests, I do not confine myself to a specific region or substantive field. My interests and qualifications allow me to put my skills to work and compare political institutions around the world in both advanced industrialized democracies as well as non-democracies. 

My dissertation research mainly focuses on the design of party organization in the legislative arena, and the consequence of party discipline for party policy-making. The basic motivating question is this: how do party elites with heterogeneous preferences work together and feed into a common party policy position? My core argument is as follows: In order to achieve the collective goals of the party in the legislative arena, leaders of political parties need both influence and security. Party leaders who cannot command the support of their rank and file will not be able to harness collective action within their party. Therefore,  the intraparty dynamics between party leaders and rank-and-file members provide a commitment mechanism through which individual members can utilize the institutional environment to wield influence over their party's publicly-established policy positions. To that end, I see my research as providing a foundation for future research on the inter-party bargaining and party policy-making process. [read more]  

In addition to my dissertation, I am also involved in projects led by Professor William B. Heller and Professor Olga Shvetsova, conducting research on intraparty institutional design.