Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) presents an opportunity to contribute to longstanding inquiries into the political safeguards of federalism by identifying the mechanisms through which state officials are able to wield influence in the congressional policy...

Recent research has demonstrated that Congress is far representing public opinion as it expressed in surveys, but has neglected alternative benchmarks for evaluating representation. In this paper, I show that senators may act as roughly representative draws from the distribution of issue opinion...

Given its recent development of becoming a fully fledged legislature in EU politics, the European Parliament is increasingly compared to the USA House of Representatives. At the same time, a lot of scholars that have analyzed the evolution of party cohesion within the European Parliament (see,...

Using a simple model similar to one that correctly predicted a party turnover in the House of Representatives in 2006, the chance of the Republicans recapturing the chamber is estimated. According to the model, the odds are against them, sufficient to stoke their hopes for success

In short (particularly because the SSRN held up posting this paper absent the abstract), the paper addresses the Section 326 amendment to the Canada Elections Act. We find that the law has failed and that Elections Canada seems to lack the will to enforce the law

This paper reports preliminary results of a more extensive project to understand the intellectual and legal history of the commander in chief clause of the U.S. Constitution. This project hopes to eventually develop a rigorous explanation of when, and why, the balance of war powers between...

In recent election cycles, Republican members of Congress distanced themselves, at least rhetorically, from an unpopular party image and president. Why should the behavior of members change in the short-term if there are no changes in ideology or membership? This project explores two...

Debate exists over whether presidents are sincere or strategic in submitting their legislative proposals to Congress and the implications of strategic versus sincere behavior on presidential success with Congress. This paper tests for strategic behavior in presidential proposing to Congress and...

Studies of legislatures often link electoral conditions and party preferences to policy outcomes. These studies link electoral strategies and measures of party preferences to legislator behavior or government expenditures, such as support for welfare spending. In this paper, I further consider...