RESEARCH

FISCAL FEDERALISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The United States is unusual among advanced countries in the amount of fiscal autonomy afforded to its subnational governments. Subject to a few modest constraints, the American states can tax their residents and businesses however they wish, resulting in high levels of interstate variation in tax policy. My current book project, tentatively titled Coordination Failure: Federalism and Taxation from the New Deal to Today, examines the changing fiscal relationship between the American national government and the states through a focus on state taxation. Beginning in the 1930s (when the modern tax systems of most states came into existence) and ending in the early-21st century, it simultaneously traces the political struggles behind the major taxation decisions that states made as well as the national government’s response, particularly its ill-fated periodic efforts to equalize the fiscal conditions of state governments.

STATE LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS

I have published four articles analyzing various historical patterns in state legislative elections. Two of these articles, in the journals Social Science Quarterly and The American Review of Politics, examine the belated Republican takeover of state legislatures in the American South during the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Another article, published in the New England Journal of Political Science, explains the dramatic increase in uncontested state legislative elections during the mid-20th century, with an in-depth case study of Rhode Island. A fourth article, published in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, examines the increase in contested state legislative elections across the country during the 2018 midterms.

UNICAMERALISM

Forty-nine of the fifty American states have bicameral (i.e., double-chambered) legislatures, a structure which many throughout American history have regarded as unnecessary and inefficient. The lone exception is Nebraska, which replaced its bicameral legislature with a unicameral one in 1934. In an article published in Studies in American Political Development, I examine efforts across the country to adopt unicameral legislatures in the 1930s (following Nebraska’s adoption, which garnered substantial national attention) . I find that unicameralism efforts outside Nebraska fizzled due to intense opposition from rural communities, who feared that they would lose political influence in single-chambered legislatures.

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

My early work focused on geographic divisions in contemporary American politics. In an article published in Electoral Studies, I used precinct-level electoral data to demonstrate how geographic political polarization in Texas grew between the years 1996 and 2012. I also published a book chapter that used precinct-level data to analyze voting patterns in the 2012 presidential and 2014 senatorial races in North Carolina.