Coalition Politics and Parliamentary Democracy
A long-running line of research, conducted with Lanny Martin (Bocconi University), examines coalition governments in parliamentary democracies. Much of this work has focused on legislative institutions — committee systems, parliamentary scrutiny, ministerial oversight — as the central mechanisms through which coalition partners manage the delegation and principal-agent problems that arise when ideologically distinct parties share governing authority. A related set of questions concerns how these institutions structure the relative influence of coalition members on policy outcomes — who gets what, and why. Our most recent book, Voter Sophistication and Coalition Politics (Oxford University Press, 2025), turns to a different question: how the anticipation of voter reactions — which depend on how politically aware voters are — shapes the strategic choices of party leaders, including which coalitions to join, when to remain in opposition, and how to allocate cabinet portfolios.
Books
Voter Sophistication and Coalition Politics: How Ideological Awareness Shapes Government Formation in Multiparty Democracies. With Lanny Martin. Oxford University Press, 2025.
Parliaments and Coalitions: The Role of Legislatures in Multiparty Governance. With Lanny Martin. Oxford University Press, 2011. Winner of the 2012 Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize for the best book published in legislative studies.
Articles
"Refining Gamson: The Isometric Log-Ratio Transformation and Portfolio Proportionality in Multiparty Governments." With Lanny Martin. Political Analysis, forthcoming.
"What You See Is Not Always What You Get: Bargaining Before an Audience Under Multiparty Government." With Lanny Martin. American Political Science Review, 2020.
"Coalition Governance, Legislative Institutions, and Public Policy in Parliamentary Democracies." With Lanny Martin. American Journal of Political Science, 2020.
"Committee Chairs and Legislative Review in Parliamentary Democracies." With David Fortunato and Lanny Martin. British Journal of Political Science, 2017.
"Parties and Policymaking in Multiparty Governments: The Legislative Median, Ministerial Autonomy, and the Coalition Compromise." With Lanny Martin. American Journal of Political Science, 2014.
"A Step in the Wrong Direction: An Appraisal of the Zero-Intelligence Model of Government Formation." With Lanny Martin. Journal of Politics, 2014.
"Multiparty Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Public Spending." With Lanny Martin. Journal of Politics, 2013. Winner of the award for the best paper published in the Journal of Politics in 2013.
"Coalition Government and Political Communication." With Lanny Martin. Political Research Quarterly, 2008.
"A Robust Transformation Procedure for Interpreting Political Texts." With Lanny Martin. Political Analysis, 2008.
"Reply to Benoit and Laver." With Lanny Martin. Political Analysis, 2008.
"Coalition Policymaking and Legislative Review." With Lanny Martin. American Political Science Review, 2005.
"Policing the Bargain: Coalition Government and Parliamentary Scrutiny." With Lanny Martin. American Journal of Political Science, 2004.
"Wasting Time? The Impact of Ideology and Size on Delay in Coalition Formation." With Lanny Martin. British Journal of Political Science, 2003.
"Election Laws, Disproportionality, and Median Correspondence: Implications for Two Visions of Democracy." With G. Bingham Powell. British Journal of Political Science, 2000.
Chapters
"Trust, but verify: Control mechanisms in multiparty governments." With Lanny Martin. In Bräuninger and Debus (eds.), Elgar Handbook on Coalition Politics. Edward Elgar, 2025.
"Government formation in the shadow of an uncertain future election." With Scott de Marchi and Michael Laver. In Bräuninger and Debus (eds.), Elgar Handbook on Coalition Politics. Edward Elgar, 2025.
"Models of Coalition Politics: Recent Developments and New Directions." With Lanny Martin. In Franzese and Curini (eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations. SAGE Publications, 2020.
"Coalition Formation and Policymaking." With Lanny Martin. In Ghandi and Ruiz Rufino (eds.), Handbook of Political Institutions. Routledge, 2015.
"Legislative Institutions and Coalition Government." With Lanny Martin. In Saalfeld, Strøm, and Martin (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Judicial and Constitutional Politics
My work in this area examines courts, constitutions, and the political foundations of constitutional government. One strand concerns judicial politics in the narrow sense — courts as strategic actors embedded in broader political systems, anticipating how legislatures, executives, and publics will react to their rulings, and the conditions under which judicial independence is sustained or eroded. A second strand takes up the broader politics of constitutionalism: the design of constitutional rules, the institutional foundations of constitutional enforcement, and the political conditions under which constitutional order itself holds. A central concern across this work is the gap between formal constitutional authority and the political conditions that give such authority real force.
Book
The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Edited Volume
Constitutionalism in Times of Financial Crisis. Co-edited with Tom Ginsburg and Mark Rosen. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Articles
"Federalism, Political Imbalance, and the Right to Secession." With Bahar Leventoglu and Alessandra Waggoner. Constitutional Political Economy, 2025.
"Feuding, Arbitration, and the Emergence of an Independent Judiciary." With Benjamin Broman. Constitutional Political Economy, 2021.
"The Future Matters: Judicial Preferences over Legal Rules and Decisionmaking on Collegial Courts." With Caitlin Ainsley and Cliff Carrubba. Journal of Law and Courts, 2021.
"Contractarianism, Constitutionalism, and the Status Quo." With Michael Munger. Public Choice, 2021.
"A Square Peg in a Round Hole: Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Citizen Sovereignty." Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, 2021.
"Constitutional Political Economy, Democratic Theory, and Institutional Design." Public Choice, 2018.
"Judicial Retirements and the Staying Power of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions." With Stuart Benjamin. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.
"Constitutional Courts in Comparative Perspective: A Theoretical Assessment." Annual Review of Political Science, 2015.
"Narrow versus Broad Judicial Opinions." With Justin Fox. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2014. Winner of the 2015 Elinor Ostrom Prize.
"Who Controls the Content of Supreme Court Opinions?" With Cliff Carrubba, Barry Friedman, and Andrew D. Martin. American Journal of Political Science, 2012.
"Substance vs. Procedure: Constitutional Enforcement and Constitutional Choice." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2011.
"Assessing the Partisan Allocation of Pork: Evidence from Congressional Earmarks." With Erik Engstrom. American Politics Research, 2010.
"Measuring Policy Content on the U.S. Supreme Court." With Kevin McGuire, Gregory Caldeira, and Charles Smith. Journal of Politics, 2009.
"The Value of Vagueness: Delegation, Defiance, and Judicial Opinions." With Jeffrey Staton. American Journal of Political Science, 2008.
"Resurrecting Lochner: A Contingent Defense of Judicial Activism." With James Rogers. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 2007.
"Judicial Advisory Opinions and Legislative Outcomes in Comparative Perspective." With James Rogers. American Journal of Political Science, 2002.
"Law, Politics, and Interdisciplinary Work." European Union Politics, 2002.
"Legislative-Judicial Relations: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Constitutional Review." American Journal of Political Science, 2001.
"Establishing Judicial Independence in West Germany." Comparative Politics, 2000.
"Abstract Judicial Review, Legislative Bargaining, and Policy-Compromise." Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1998.
"Reply to Stone Sweet." Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1998.
Chapters
"Constitutional Political Economy." In Bjornskov and Jong-A-Pin (eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice. Edward Elgar, 2025.
"Courts: A Historical Political Economy Perspective." With Tom Clark. In Jenkins and Rubin (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy. Oxford University Press, 2023.
"The Rise and Protection of Judicial Independence." With Ben Broman and Chris Ritter. In Tushnet and Kochenov (eds.), Elgar Handbook of the Politics of Constitutional Law. Edward Elgar, 2023.
"Judicialization and the Political Executive." In Andeweg et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Executives. Oxford University Press, 2020.
"Financial Crisis and Constitutional Compromise." With Mitu Gulati. In Ginsburg, Rosen, and Vanberg (eds.), Constitutionalism in Times of Financial Crisis. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
"Introduction." With Tom Ginsburg and Mark Rosen. In Ginsburg, Rosen, and Vanberg (eds.), Constitutionalism in Times of Financial Crisis. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
"Constitutional Design and Politics-as-Exchange: The Optimism of Public Choice." In Wagner (ed.), James M. Buchanan: A Theorist of Political Economy and Social Philosophy. Palgrave MacMillan, 2019.
"The Least Dangerous Branch? Public Choice, Constitutional Courts, and Democratic Governance." In Congleton and Voigt (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Public Choice. Oxford University Press, 2019.
"Paper Tigers (or How Much Will Courts Protect Rights in a Financial Crisis?)." With Mitu Gulati. In Allen, Carletti, and Gulati (eds.), Institutions and the Crisis. European University Institute, 2018.
"Politics, Polarization, and the U.S. Supreme Court." With Moohyung Cho and Jason Todd. In Kaiser, Petersen, and Saurer (eds.), The U.S. Supreme Court and Contemporary Constitutional Law: The Obama Era and Its Legacy. Nomos, 2018.
"Contractarian Perspectives in Law and Economics." With Viktor Vanberg. In Parisi (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Oxford University Press, 2017.
"Gordon Tullock as a Political Scientist." With Michael Munger. Constitutional Political Economy, 2016: 194–213.
"Towards a (re-)integration of the social sciences: The Calculus of Consent at 50." With Viktor Vanberg. Public Choice, 2012: 245–252.
"The Will of the People: A Comparative Perspective on Friedman." Michigan State Law Review, 2010: 717–728.
"Establishing and Maintaining Judicial Independence." In Caldeira, Kelemen, and Whittington (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics. Oxford University Press, 2008.
"John Marshall Has Made His Decision: Implementation, Transparency, and Public Support." In Bond, Fleming, and Rogers (eds.), Institutional Games and the Supreme Court. University of Virginia Press, 2006.
"Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit und Gesetzgebung: Zum politischen Spielraum des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes." In Manow and Ganghof (eds.), Neue theoretische Perspektiven auf das deutsche Regierungssystem. Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, 2005.
Authoritarian Politics and Legacies
A third, more recent line of work examines authoritarian politics and its legacies — how democratic regimes erode, and how institutions inherited from authoritarian rule shape the political possibilities that follow. With Caterina Chiopris and Monika Nalepa, I have studied how citizen uncertainty about elite intentions can enable democratic backsliding even when voters would, in principle, oppose it. With Holger Kern, I have examined how the personnel legacies of the Nazi era in the postwar German judiciary shaped the pursuit — and the avoidance — of accountability for National Socialist crimes. A common thread runs through these projects: the institutional and informational conditions under which democratic accountability succeeds or fails, whether before, during, or after authoritarian rule.
Articles
"A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Citizen Uncertainty and Democratic Backsliding." With Caterina Chiopris and Monika Nalepa. Journal of Politics, 2025.
"Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law: Tainted Judges and Accountability for Nazi Crimes in Post-War West Germany." With Holger Kern. Journal of Politics, 2024.