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Erinn Lauterbach, Ph.D.
erinn.lauterbach@villanova.edu
Assistant Professor
Villanova University
Year of PhD: 2020
Country: United States (Pennsylvania)
About Me:
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Villanova University and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. I am interested in American Political Institutions (with a focus on Congress and the Bureaucracy), legislative studies, elite behavior, policy and policymaking, and gender politics/representation. More specifically, my research focuses on the content of legislation that members of Congress introduce using an original dataset that identifies the policy tools present in over 13,000 bills introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2005-2012. Using this data, I assess patterns in lawmaking that are associated with both institutional and extra-institutional constraints that legislators face. I also have experience working on various political campaigns (from state to congressional races) and in government. In 2007 I interned for a member of Parliament in London and from 2010-2012 I worked in the personal office of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington D.C., the last position I held was Legislative Aide.
Research Interests
Legislative Politics
Gender and Politics
Bureaucracy
Congress
Political Elites
Elite Behaviour
U.S. House
Descriptive Representation
Substantive Representation
My Research:
My research focuses on the content of legislation and how members of the U.S. House of Representatives can write bills in a way that that achieves their policy goals. Additional current and past research projects also include: studying representation through a variety of mechanisms including MC interaction with bureaucratic agencies, MC and constituent communication, and how MC backgrounds impact their lawmaking behavior. Additionally, working within the Center for Effective Lawmaking I am working on projects related to legislator effectiveness and the association between effectiveness and how legislators write policy.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Despite Congress' Article I powers, challenges within and outside of Congress prevent lawmakers from influencing policy outcomes. Legislators confront obstacles when trying to pass bills, and legislation is often not implemented as intended. What strategies do lawmakers have for controlling policy outcomes? We argue that legislators use formal and informal means to influence policy, but that they choose an instrument that exploits their comparative advantage in Congress. Authority over legislative functions and access to stages of the legislative process influence lawmakers' strategy. We merge two datasets to measure the statutory tools drafted into legislation and House members' informal interactions with agencies between 2005 and 2012, drawing on nearly 14,000 bills and 65,000 contacts. Our findings contribute to theories of delegation and oversight—by focusing on the allocation of authority among individual legislators rather than transitory interbranch political explanations—and advance our understanding of the distribution of power in Congress.
This is co-authored work with Kenneth Lowande and Melinda Ritchie A vast literature debates the efficacy of descriptive representation in legislatures. Though studies argue it influences how communities are represented through constituency service, they are limited since legislators' service activities are unobserved. Using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we collected 88,000 records of communication between members of the U.S. Congress and federal agencies during the 108th–113th Congresses. These legislative interventions allow us to examine members' “follow‐through” with policy implementation. We find that women, racial/ethnic minorities, and veterans are more likely to work on behalf of constituents with whom they share identities. Including veterans offers leverage in understanding the role of political cleavages and shared experiences. Our findings suggest that shared experiences operate as a critical mechanism for representation, that a lack of political consensus is not necessary for substantive representation, and that the causal relationships identified by experimental work have observable implications in the daily work of Congress.
This paper is co-authored with Benjamin Newman and Sono Shah The scholarly literature is observing a slow but steady growth in research exploring the effects of subnational economic inequality on political attitudes and behavior. Germane to this work is the assumption that citizens are aware of the level of inequality in their local residential context. At present, however, the evidence in support of this assumption is mixed. This article attempts to offer the literature improved tests of citizens’ awareness of local inequality by addressing a key limitation in past work—the discordance between the geographic unit underlying measures of the independent and dependent variables. Analyzing two national surveys employing a measure of perceived inequality scaled to the local level, the results suggest that citizens are indeed aware of the level of income inequality in their local environment and that the link between objective and perceived local inequality is most pronounced among lower income citizens.
Media Appearances:
Blog Posts:
Having the most diverse Congress ever will affect more than just legislation (with Kenneth Lowande & Melinda Ritchie)