On-Going Projects
I am currently engaged in several ongoing projects at different stages in the research pipeline. My work employs a mixed-methods approach, incorporating interviews with lawmakers, legislative aides, and caucus and committee staff; extensive archival research; empirical models that predict bill introduction and viability based on lawmaker attributes and co-sponsorship networks; and large language models to analyze the technical complexity of legislative proposals and track the evolution of bill text as it merges into omnibus bills. You can read more about my broader research trajectory here.
Committee Votes and Legislative Polarization: This project scales committee roll-call votes to develop ideology scores that more accurately reflect the ideological polarization within state legislatures in closed-door committee settings. While existing research has focused on vote switching between committee and floor votes, my primary aim is to capture the impact of bipartisan committee support for bills, identify instances of legislative cooperation, and assess the timeliness of legislative action. This committee-level analysis tests whether committee composition and domain specialization influence bipartisan cooperation in ways that are not captured by floor-level voting measures.
Occupational Expertise and Policy Complexity: This project examines bill authorship by career-expert legislators in health and education policy to assess whether former educators and medical professionals in state legislatures propose more ambitious and costly bills compared to their non-expert counterparts. Specifically, I explore whether expertise leads to more narrowly focused bills with specific goals, measured through text comparison (diffing) and proposed changes to the civil code, or whether it results in broader, more expansive proposals requiring greater resources, evaluated through research cost analyses and the proposed expenditures of the bills.
Identity Caucuses and Legislative Compromise (with Rana McReynolds): This paper interrogates co-sponsorship behavior within networks of Black, Latino, and Asian caucuses in state legislatures. We focus on the survival of bills proposed by identity caucus members and, more specifically, the adoption of amendments introduced by these members in policy areas critical to racial justice, including environmental policy, health policy, and public safety. Our model of legislative bargaining explores how caucus members negotiate with Republican lawmakers to advance their agendas, despite resistance from Democratic leadership.
Paige Pellaton, PhD 