Do economic inequalities translate into political inequalities, and if so, how? Combining data on over 500,000 requests for services from the 24-Hour Constituent Service Hotline in Boston, Massachusetts with fine-grained census data on income, we …
Studies of American politics consistently find little link between campaign contributions and electoral and policy outcomes, concluding that donors gain little from donating. Despite this, the donations of access-oriented interest groups continue to …
Foundational theories of the legislature disagree about why, or even whether, legislative leaders are powerful, but issues of measurement and causal inference have prevented empirical work from addressing these debates effectively. To make progress, …
This paper examines the relationship between ideological position and electoral success in U.S. elections. We study primary and general elections to the U.S. House of Representatives over the period 1980-2010, focusing on races with no incumbent. …
I show that the public funding of elections produces a large decrease in the financial and electoral advantage of incumbents. Despite these effects on electoral competition, I demonstrate that public funding produces more polarization and candidate …
In the common-law tradition, word-usage in legal documents matters because of the principle of stare decisis, the doctrine that requires judges to read and interpret previous rulings relevant to the case at hand. Yet we understand very little of how …