Workingpapers

Are State Legislative Leaders Centrists or Extremists? Yes, but it's complicated.

Median voter and party cartel theories of legislative organization predict or assume that elected party leaders will be centrists with respect to their constituency, the party caucus. Yet most recent empirical studies of leader positioning find that …

Agenda Control in the States: Parties, Interest Groups, and Majority Rolls

An extensive literature on partisan gatekeeping argues that majority parties use negative agenda control to prevent bills that divide their parties from coming up for a vote. Despite this, majority party rolls -- bills that pass despite being opposed …