Center for Effective Lawmaking

Meet our Research Affiliate: Kisoo Kim

Meet our Research Affiliate: Kisoo Kim The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce our newest research affiliate, Kisoo Kim.Dr. Kim is a postdoctoral research associate at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. His research examines how elections and political information hold representatives accountable in democratic systems. He uses econometric methods for causal inference to study how democratic institutions shape elected officials’ behavior, with a focus on legislators' policy positions and legislative productivity. He earned his Ph.D. from the Harris…

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Meet our Faculty Affiliate: SoRelle Gaynor

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is pleased to announce SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor as one of our newest faculty affiliates.Dr. Gaynor is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where she specializes in the U.S. Congress and political institutions. Her research focuses on congressional leadership, institutional reform, and partisan communication, and has been published in the Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies, and other outlets. She is an author…

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Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Steven Rogers

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Steven Rogers The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is pleased to announce Steven Rogers as one of our newest faculty affiliates.Steven Rogers is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on elections and representation in American politics, particularly at the state level. His recent book, Accountability in State Legislatures, argues that there is limited accountability in state legislative elections. Rogers’s research has also appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. He also…

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Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Tessa Provins

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Tessa Provins Tuesday, September 9, 2025The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is pleased to announce Tessa Provins as one of our newest faculty affiliates.Provins is an Assistant Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on American legislative institutions, with particular attention to how the design of legislative rules and procedures shapes lawmaking and representation. She examines how institutional features—including committee referral practices, debate rules, and party control of the agenda—affect the ability of legislatures to produce…

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Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Connor Halloran Phillips

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Connor Halloran Phillips The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce the promotion of Connor Halloran Phillips from CEL Research Affiliate to Faculty Affiliate.Dr. Phillips is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST). His research examines interest groups, parties, legislatures, and elections in the US with a focus on how federalism shapes phenomena such as partisan polarization and voter participation. In his current work, Dr. Phillips analyzes interest groups’ campaign contributions and ratings of state legislators to…

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Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Amy D. Meli

Meet our Faculty Affiliate: Amy D. Meli Monday, August 18, 2025The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce the promotion of Amy D. Meli from CEL Research Affiliate to Faculty Affiliate.Dr. Meli is an assistant professor of political science at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. Her research centers around interest groups and the way they influence the political system. Her research projects include an examination of the way involvement in interest groups influences interest group member political efficacy and affective polarization, the relationship between interest groups and the…

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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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Prior Experience and State Legislative Effectiveness

Prior Experience and State Legislative Effectiveness Tuesday, June 24, 2025How do the prior experiences of lawmakers shape their performance in office? Representatives who have held prior elected office or professional backgrounds in relevant fields—specifically law, government, or politics—seem to have an advantage in winning elections. It is unclear whether those experiences help them become more effective legislators. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly based on a Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, Associate Professor Eric Hansen at Loyola University Chicago and Professor Sarah Treul (and CEL Faculty Affiliate) at the University of North…

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Strategies of Control: Members of Congress and Policy Outcomes

Strategies of Control: Members of Congress and Policy Outcomes Monday, June 23, 2025 Members of Congress enter their roles with various policies they hope to implement, but passing legislation is difficult. Lawmakers spend their tenure navigating complex procedures and institutional barriers created by the legislative process and the separation of powers. In this published paper in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Assistant Professor Erinn Lauterbach (Villanova University and Center for Effective Lawmaking Faculty Affiliate) and Associate Professor Melinda Ritchie (The Ohio State University) investigate how members of the House of Representatives leverage…

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Advancing the Study of Effective Lawmaking: Highlights from CEL’s 7th Annual Research Conference

Group photo in the Commons Center (photo by Anne Rayner) Advancing the Study of Effective Lawmaking: Highlights from CEL’s 7th Annual Research Conference Nashville, TN – On Monday, June 2nd, 2025, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) hosted its 7th annual research conference at Vanderbilt University. The conference brought together researchers and practitioners from around the country to share their latest research findings and to discuss trends in effective lawmaking in congress and state legislatures. The morning opened with remarks from CEL co-director Alan Wiseman, Associate Provost of Strategic Projects…

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