Welcome

During the 2012/2013 academic year, I am a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Robert Eckles Swain National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I earned my Ph.D. in 2008 from the Department of Government at Harvard. My work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among other outlets.

Beginning on July 1, 2013, I am assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis. During the 2011/2012 academic year I was a fellow at the Center for the Study of American Politics within the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. Until June 2013, I am on-leave as an assistant professor of political science at Boston University.

I study the political accountability between voters and their elected officials. My primary research agenda examines the particularistic nature of the U.S. president in his dealings with an electorate that increasingly holds him accountable for local phenomenon. I've examined how presidents are held accountable for local outcomes like natural disasters and federal spending. Indeed, even perceptions of the national economy are strongly influenced by local experiences.

I argue that presidents respond to these incentives as well as those created by the electoral college by targeting resources. These resources include campaign resources and also federal dollars. This research suggests that presidents are hardly a universalistic counterbalance to the particularistic desires of the U.S. Congress.

Here, you can find information on my research, my cv, courses I teach, and my contact information. In addition, you can find replication materials for my published research at my dataverse.