Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Emily Cottle Ommundsen The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce that Emily Cottle Ommundsen has joined us as one of our newest faculty affiliates, having recently been one of our graduate affiliates. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Mississippi, where her research focuses on American political institutions, particularly congressional representation and institutional capacity. Her research has been published in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Behavior, and PS: Political Science & Politics.  Professor Ommundsen earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in…

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Michael Kistner The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is pleased to announce Michael Kistner as one of our newest faculty affiliates. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. He studies representation, policymaking, and the influence of money in American legislatures (both in Congress and the states). In Professor Kistner's award-winning book manuscript Paying for the Party: How Fundraising Demands Lead to Less Productive and Representative Legislatures, Kistner explores the causes and consequences of party-driven fundraising demands. His research has been…

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Jaclyn Kaslovsky The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is thrilled to announce one of our newest faculty affiliates, Jaclyn Kaslovsky. Kaslovsky is an Assistant Professor at the Washington University in St. Louis. She specializes in American politics, focusing on Congress, representation, and women in politics. In her current work, Professor Kaslovsky analyzes how legislators choose to allocate their resources, including their time and staff, and the effect of these choices on the legislator-constituent relationship. Professor Kaslovsky's other projects leverage unique time series and congressional speech datasets…

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Andrew Ballard The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce one of our newest faculty affiliates, Andrew Ballard. Professor Ballard serves as an assistant professor of Political Science at Florida State University. He studies American politics with a particular interest in legislative institutions, political parties, and the interplay between legislators and the public. Some of the overarching topics he investigates are the influence of minority parties over legislation, how party goals drive legislative behavior, why some legislators and citizens are more willing to compromise…