National statistical systems are the enterprises tasked with collecting, validating and reporting societal attributes. These data serve many purposes – they allow governments to improve services, economic actors to traverse markets, and academics to assess social theories. National statistical...

One consequence of the president's use of rhetoric to shape the public agenda, the media, and congressional attention is less recognized: presidential rhetoric shapes the priorities of the administrative agents over whom he seeks managerial control. We present statistical tests of the managerial...

In this article we assess the ramifications of the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore for the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Presidency and the Court. In Part I, we briefly explore how the Court came to help determine the outcome of the election, and reflect on several short-term political...

Does racial threat motivate support for anti-immigration laws? I answer this question by manipulating the skin-tone and geographical proximity to American citizens of a fictional undocumented Mexican immigrant. I find that when respondents are exposed to a non-Caucasian immigrant, support for...

 I propose a mechanism for partisan sorting and geographic polarization which is tested using the mass migration of African-Americans from New Orleans to Houston, Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. According to the Migration-Polarization (MP) Theory, diversity-increasing migration...

Can gender discrimination explain the limited growth of female election to the House of Representatives? Do female politicians lead to female voter empowerment? We answer these questions with a novel regression discontinuity design using close House primaries between 1982-2012. We find that...

Do partisans sort? If so, why? I address both questions in this paper by developing the Migration-Assimilation-Polarization (MAP) theory of partisan sorting which is tested using Hurricane Katrina migration to Houston, Texas as a natural experiment. According to the MAP Theory, conservative...

A fundamental concern of government is getting citizens to comply with its laws. Yet, citizen beliefs on the importance of following the law have received relatively little attention in political science scholarship. People's feelings regarding legal compliance are driven by a dynamic and...

Two prominent theories of legal decision making provide seemingly contradictory explanations for judicial outcomes. In political science, the Attitudinal Model suggests that judicial outcomes are driven by judges' sincere policy preferences - judges bring their ideological inclinations to the...