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Additional coverage from the weekend:
>> Sally Hudson Discusses Changing Face of Virginia Politics and Realities of Policy Making
>> How Effective are America’s State Legislators?
>> 6th Annual CEL Conference on Effective Lawmaking
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The UVA Batten School is excited to co-host the annual State Politics and Policy Conference, June 7 – 9, along with the Department of Politics in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. We’ll be welcoming some 140 researchers from around the country to Grounds to share their findings with academic peers on topics ranging from health and environmental policy at the state level to race, gender and public opinion in state politics, to teaching state politics and policy.
Craig Volden, Batten professor of public policy and politics and co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking, will be sharing hosting duties at the conference with Justin Kirkland, professor of politics and public policy at the College and an affiliate faculty member at Batten. Other UVA partners include the Karsh Institute of Democracy and the Quantitative Collaborative.
The State Politics and Policy Conference is one of numerous sub-sections of the American Political Science Association, the leading professional organization for the study of political science serving more than 11,000 members in more than 100 countries.
This year’s theme for the conference is Effective Governing and Representation in the American States, with keynote speaker Sally Hudson, a labor economist, politician and political reformer who served two terms in Virginia’s House of Delegates (2020-24), teaches at Batten and consults with governments and nonprofit organizations.
Also during the conference, Volden will facilitate a presentation on “Legislative Effectiveness in the States,” with an overview of a first-of-its-kind database of lawmaking effectiveness in almost all 50 states based on the CEL’s trusted methodology.
Center for Effective Lawmaking
Immediately following the state conference, the Batten School hosts the annual conference of the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), June 9 – 10.
The CEL is a joint project of Batten and Vanderbilt University which advances the generation, communication and use of new knowledge about the effectiveness of individual lawmakers and legislative institutions. It envisions American legislatures comprised of effective lawmakers, strong institutional capacity, and the incentive structure needed to address America’s greatest public policy challenges.
After opening remarks by Volden, the conference moves into presentations from CEL faculty affiliates and grant recipients on various facets of legislative effectiveness including gender perceptions, co-sponsorship of bills among women in Congress, and wealth and policymaking in the House of Representatives.
This conference culminates with the presentation of the annual Center for Effective Lawmaking Research Award.
Both conferences require prior registration.
We wish to thank UVA’s Bankard Fund, the Batten School, and the U.S. Democracy program of the Hewlett Foundation for the financial support needed to make the CEL conference possible.
