Center Personnel
University of Virginia
Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
Professor of Public Policy and Politics
Craig Volden is a Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. He is a Professor of Public Policy and Politics, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. He studies legislative politics and the interaction among political institutions, with a focus on what policy choices arise from legislative-executive relations and from American federalism.
Before joining the Batten School, Prof. Volden taught at The Ohio State University, the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and Claremont Graduate University. His previous work includes Revolving Gridlock, co-authored with David Brady, which explores the conditions under which members of Congress are able to overcome the constraints that frequently produce policy gridlock. He has published numerous articles in such journals as: American Political Science Review; American Journal of Political Science; Journal of Politics; Legislative Studies Quarterly; Journal of Law, Economics & Organization; and Publius: The Journal of Federalism.
Vanderbilt University
Chair, Department of Political Science
Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Economy
Professor of Political Science and Law (by courtesy)
Alan Wiseman is a Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. He is the Chair of the Political Science Department at Vanderbilt University, where he is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Political Economy and a Professor of Political Science and Law (by courtesy). He has research and teaching interests in American political institutions and positive political economy, focusing on legislative politics, regulation and bureaucratic policy making, and business-government relations.
Before joining the Vanderbilt Faculty, Professor Wiseman taught at The Ohio State University, where he directed the undergraduate public policy minor in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. He has also taught at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and served as a visiting economic scholar with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. He is the author of The Internet Economy: Access, Taxes, and Market Structure (Brookings Institution Press, 2001), and has published numerous articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics.
Associate Director
Colin Achilles is the Associate Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, where he is the manager of day-to-day operations. Prior to joining the Center, he worked at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget with a focus on the organization’s FixUS initiative. He has also interned and volunteered for the federal and state legislatures as well as other nonprofit groups.