Cosponsored by the Center for Effective Lawmaking

Laurel Harbridge-Yong’s teaching and research focuses on partisan conflict and the lack of bipartisan agreement in American politics. Her research examines why Congressional parties prioritize partisan conflict, focusing on both institutional changes and public preferences for bipartisanship. Her 2015 book, Is Bipartisanship Dead? (Cambridge University Press), explores how party leaders in the House of Representatives changed from prioritizing legislation with bipartisan agreement in the 1970s to prioritizing legislation with partisan disagreement by the 1990s. Her newest book, Rejecting Compromise: Legislators' Fear of Primary Voters (2020, Cambridge University Press) examines how legislators' perceptions of primary voters is an obstacle to legislative compromise, and examines what types of reforms can increase compromise.

She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University in 2009 and her work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Behavior, and American Politics Research, among others. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation Time Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS), the Social Science Research Council, and the Dirksen Congressional Center. She is actively engaged with the Institute for Policy Research, the Applied Quantitative Methods Workshop, and the American Politics Workshop.