Research


My research interests include the United States Congress and the U.S. legislative process; Congressional Record analysis; framing, language, and rhetoric in politics; media in politics and political communication; political institutions and institutional organization; and LGBT politics and policy.
 
Generally speaking, I approach the study of Congress from a viewpoint that privileges development, dynamism, and change over time. Static approaches focus only on the politics and processes of the moment and lend themselves too easily to a belief that the way things are now is the way things have always been and must always be. Though contemporary media coverage of Congress suggests a sclerotic institution incapable of even mundane legislative action, there are many truths about Congress which run counter to the common public stereotype of a dysfunctional gathering of pocket-lining, pork-barreling, endlessly bickering, innately dishonest malingerers.
 
I adhere to the same philosophy in my approach to teaching legislative politics, as well as American federal government and state and local governments. I want students to leave my class understanding that they are not doomed to forever face the politics of this moment, especially if they take their role in our system seriously and become active, engaged citizens.
 
My primary research interest, and the foundation for my dissertation, is the evolution of issue frames in congressional discourse over time. I hope to make a contribution to the study of both political representation and political communication by synthesizing answers to several of the common questions that underlie both of these areas. How do representatives frame the issues that are important to their constituents? How do they decide which aspects of given issues to put forward at the expense of others? How and why do some issue frames become dominant in elite discourse over long periods of time? What does the long-term dominance of certain types of issue frames mean for representation, responsiveness, and policy innovation?
 
Dissertation Working Title

  • “Issue Frames in Congress: An Evolutionary Perspective”
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    Conference Submissions and Presentations

  • “(No?) Past Experience Needed: Explaining Governors’ Conciliatory and Confrontational Uses of Power” (with Mitchell Sellers) – accepted for presentation at American Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2015)
  • “Processes of Congressional Frame Selection, Adaptation, and Taxonomy: Theory and Methods” – accepted for presentation at Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2015)
  • “Immigration Policy Frames in Congress and Partisan Media, 2009-2014” – accepted for presentation at Florida Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2015)
  • “On the Origins of Issue Frames: Adoption of News Media Frames in the U.S. Congress,” presented at Southern Political Science Association Annual Meetings (2015)
  • “Incrementalism Redux: A New Analysis of Processes for the Adoption of Marriage Equality in the U.S.,” accepted for presentation at Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2014)
  • “Flunking the Electoral College? Comparing Normative Critiques with Empirical Analysis of Alternative Models, 1952-2012,” (with Richard S. Conley) – presented at Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2014)
  • “Debating ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: A Critical Analysis of Elite Discourse in the Congressional Record” – presented at Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting (2014)
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    Selected Working Papers

  • “The Decline of Unions and Working Class Access to Government (with Robert L. Mermer II) (2015)
  • “Parties in Peril: Toward an Organizational Learning Theory of American Political Party Development” (2013)
  • “Media Influence in American Interventions: Exploring Action and Inaction in Haiti, 1991-1994, and Honduras, 2009-2010” (2013)