Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Erinn Lauterbach
The Center for Effective Lawmaking is excited to introduce one of our newest Faculty Affiliates, Erinn Lauterbach. A self-described “political junkie,” she is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Villanova University. Previously, she worked as both a scheduler and legislative aide for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She also served as an intern for a member of the British Parliament while studying abroad.
Professor Lauterbach specializes in American political institutions, especially the U.S. Congress and the separation of powers, lawmaking and representation. Her current research examines the bill writing behavior of members of Congress using an original data set of policy tools constructed from bill text. Her dissertation “Punishments, Incentives, and Oversight: How Legislators Turn Preference into Policy” won the Carl Albert Dissertation Award from the APSA Legislative Studies Section and her co-authored research has appeared in Research and Politics and the American Journal of Political Science.
Professor Lauterbach has been a postdoctoral fellow with the CEL. Her primary research focus was creating updated Legislative Effectiveness Scores for members of the U.S. Congress; this involved working to identify changes in language as legislation moved through the policymaking process and then identifying where that change came from, as well as building a database of amendment text language and identifying the changes that successful amendments made to legislation. In addition, she worked on projects that stemmed from her dissertation and looked at the relationship between effectiveness and detailed policy, demonstrating when higher policy content is associated with greater effectiveness. She is the author of the CEL working paper “Signals from the Hill: Policy Content Scores as a Measure of Legislative Constraint,” which looks at how to assess and measure variation in the content of legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The CEL is honored to continue its fruitful relationship with Professor Lauterbach in her new role on the team.
