Colin Achilles – Center for Effective Lawmaking

Effective Lawmaking and Legislative Negotiations

Effective Lawmaking and Legislative Negotiations Tuesday, July 22, 2025On Wednesday, July 9, the Center for Effective Lawmaking co-hosted a discussion panel on Capitol Hill with the Program on Legislative Negotiation (PLN) and the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA) entitled “A Guide to Effective Lawmaking and Legislative Negotiations.” Panelists discussed the importance of legislative negotiations and other keys to effective lawmaking on Capitol Hill. The panel featured CEL Co-Director Craig Volden (University of Virginia), CEL Co-Director Alan Wiseman (Vanderbilt University), PLN Director Bettina Poirier (American University), and PLN Co-Founder Chris Bertram (American University), who…

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July 22, 2025

Events

CEL Co-Hosts “Capitol Connections” Event

CEL Co-Hosts "Capitol Connections" Event Wednesday, July 16, 2025On Tuesday, July 8, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) co-hosted a networking reception titled “Capitol Connections: A UVA & Batten School Networking Mixer.” Taking place at the Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar in Washington, D.C., the event brought together 130 current and prospective students, alumni, faculty, and staff of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the University of Virginia more broadly. Participants connected with new and familiar people, while hearing how bipartisan leadership is shaping the future…

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July 16, 2025

About the CEL / Board of Advisors / Center Affiliates

Meet our new Advisory Board Member: Leigh Ann Caldwell

Meet our new Advisory Board Member: Leigh Ann Caldwell The Center for Effective Lawmaking is excited to welcome Leigh Ann Caldwell to our Board of Advisors.Ms. Caldwell is the Chief Washington Correspondent for Puck News and is an Emmy Award–winning veteran of various news outlets covering politics and policy on Capitol Hill. Previously, she was a senior reporter at The Washington Post, where she was co-author of The Post’s Early 202 and an anchor for Washington Post Live. Before joining The Post in 2022, she was a correspondent at NBC News. As a…

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July 10, 2025

Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / State Legislative Effectiveness Scores

Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success

Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success Monday, June 30, 2025In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Co-Directors Craig Volden (University of Virginia) and Alan Wiseman (Vanderbilt University), and Faculty Affiliates Danielle Thomsen (University of California-Irvine) and Sarah Treul (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) examine the question of whether effective state lawmakers are more likely than ineffective state lawmakers to be elected to Congress. The authors draw on the CEL's dataset of State Legislative Effectiveness Scores from 1993 to 2018 to examine the relationship between lawmaker effectiveness and the…

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June 30, 2025

Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

Measuring Partisanship and Representation in Online Congressional Communication

Measuring Partisanship and Representation in Online Congressional Communication Social media and the internet have created new ways for representatives to communicate. How have members of Congress responded to these opportunities? This is the subject of a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper from Associate Professor (and CEL Faculty Affiliate) Michael Kistner, and Ph.D. candidates Robert Alvarez, Lucas Lothamer, and Maya Fitch (all of the University of Houston), as well as post-doctoral researcher Michael Heseltine of the University of Amsterdam and Associate Professor Elizabeth Simas of Texas A&M University. The…

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June 5, 2025

Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

Getting what you pay for: Resource allocations and legislative success

Getting what you pay for: Resource allocations and legislative success Thursday, May 29, 2025Members of Congress run for office with a variety of goals they hope to achieve if elected. How members go about achieving these goals is constrained by numerous institutional factors. Yet there exist two areas in which members are afforded broad discretion: the allocation of their time and budget. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Emily Cottle Ommundsen, Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi (and Center for Effective Lawmaking Faculty Affiliate), assesses the personal qualities…

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May 29, 2025

Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research

Pivots or Partisans? Proposal-Making Strategy and Status Quo Selection in Congress (Published Paper)

Pivots or Partisans? Proposal-Making Strategy and Status Quo Selection in Congress (Published Paper) Thursday, May 15Lawmakers vary considerably in how effectively they advance their priorities through Congress. However, the actual proposal-writing strategies undergirding these differences have remained largely unexplored, due to measurement and methodological difficulties. These obstacles have included prohibitively small sample sizes, costly data requirements, and strong theoretical assumptions. In this published paper in Quarterly Journal of Political Science and based on a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Associate Professor Jesse Crosson of Purdue University (and CEL…

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May 15, 2025

Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research / State Legislatures

Gendered Perceptions of Legislative Influence (Published Paper)

Gendered Perceptions of Legislative Influence (Published Paper) Tuesday, May 13, 2025In this published paper in Perspectives on Politics based on a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Faculty Affiliate Jaclyn Kaslovsky (Washington University in St. Louis), Tabitha Koch (Rice University), and Michael P. Olson (also of Washington University) examine whether legislative and electoral accomplishments translate into perceived influence differently for women and men. Women legislators often report that they must work harder than men to achieve the same outcomes and recognition. Yet, little previous scholarship has quantitatively examined whether legislative…

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May 12, 2025

Events / Legislative Research

CEL presentation to the LEGIS Congressional Fellows 2025

CEL presentation to the LEGIS Congressional Fellows 2025 On Friday, April 25, 2025, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) gave our annual presentation to the LEGIS Congressional Fellowship program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The LEGIS program is composed of a bipartisan group of professionals from government agencies selected by offices in both chambers of Congress to learn about the lawmaking process and serve as subject-matter policy experts for legislators. Co-director Craig Volden, Professor at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of…

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May 7, 2025

Conversations with Lawmakers

Discussing Effective Lawmaking with Representative Gus Bilirakis

Discussing Effective Lawmaking with Representative Gus Bilirakis Friday, April 24, 2025Representative Gus Bilirakis has represented Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2007, and he currently represents Florida’s 12th congressional district. He has a well-established track record of being successful at advancing his sponsored bills through the legislative process, and he has been identified by the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) as having one of the longest active streaks of being in our prestigious “exceeds expectations” in lawmaking effectiveness category. He has also been often recognized as being the…

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April 24, 2025