American Politics and Democratic Governance
Andrew Reeves
Political scientist studying presidential power, policy delivery, and democratic accountability in American governance.
Andrew Reeves studies how presidential leadership and institutional design shape public policy outcomes.
His research examines executive decision-making, federal resource allocation, and the conditions under which citizens hold leaders accountable when policy meets lived experience. Across projects, he links democratic accountability to institutional capacity and administrative action.
He is Director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, where he leads cross-disciplinary initiatives linking research, policy design, and public engagement.
Reeves also serves as Senior Advisor to the Chancellor, helping advance the Ordered Liberty Project, a university-wide effort supporting academic freedom, open inquiry, and collaboration across schools and disciplines. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
His research appears in leading journals and national media. He is coauthor of The Particularistic President and No Blank Check. Across this work, he combines empirical rigor with sustained attention to how institutions structure governance and everyday democratic experience.
Director, Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy
Washington University in St. Louis
Professor of Political Science
Washington University in St. Louis
Senior Advisor to the Chancellor
Washington University in St. Louis
Visiting Fellow
Hoover Institution
Research Themes
Reeves’s research explains how power is exercised, how policy is delivered, and when democratic accountability succeeds or fails.
Books
Books examining presidential power, distributive politics, and democratic inequality.
No Blank Check: The Origins and Consequences of Public Antipathy toward Presidential Power
Cambridge University Press, 2022, with Jon C. Rogowski
No Blank Check shows that public support for presidential power is conditional rather than automatic, and that citizens impose meaningful constraints on executive action.
The Particularistic President: Executive Branch Politics and Political Inequality
Cambridge University Press, 2016, with Douglas Kriner
This book examines how presidents target distributive benefits to favored constituencies, with implications for representation and democratic equality.