Democratic Institutions & Lawmaking
Examining the structures, actors, and formal mechanisms through which governments operate and how laws, institutions, and the people within them shape democratic life.
Overview
Faculty study legislatures, executive politics, civil service, political parties, and the rules and processes that shape how policy is created and diffused across states and localities. The central questions are about the supply side of politics: How does a bill become law? What makes legislators effective? How do institutions constrain or enable executive power? The work spans domestic and international contexts, from U.S. Congress to Latin American political economy and civil society, and encompasses both the formal architecture of democratic governance and the practical realities of policy implementation in the real world.
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Ben GoehringAssistant Professor of Public Policy and PoliticsBen Goehring is an assistant professor of public policy and politics in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He studies American political institutions, with a particular focus on executive branch politics at the state and federal levels.
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Craig VoldenProfessor of Public Policy and PoliticsCraig Volden is a professor of public policy and politics at the University of Virginia, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Politics. He studies the politics of public policy, with a focus on what policy choices arise within legislative institutions and within American federalism. He is founder and co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking.
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Melanie Anne EgorinProfessor of Practice in Public PolicyEgorin served most recently as assistant secretary for legislation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she was the principal advisor to the HHS secretary and the liaison for members of Congress and their staff across the broad range of issues handled by the department.
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Gerald WarburgProfessor of Practice in Public PolicyGerry Warburg is a professor of practice in public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Prior to Batten, he worked with Congress for several decades, serving as a legislative assistant to members of leadership in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
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SoRelle Wyckoff GaynorAssistant Professor of Public Policy and PoliticsSoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor is an assistant professor of public policy and politics at the University of Virginia Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where she specializes the U.S. Congress and political institutions. Her research focuses on Congressional leadership, institutional reform, and partisan communication.
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Andrew S. PennockAssociate Professor of Public PolicyAndy Pennock is an associate professor of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He serves UVA as the faculty director of Batten’s MPP orientation program, on Batten’s curriculum committee, and as an elected member of the Executive Council of the Faculty Senate. Pennock’s academic research examines public policy in the global economy as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning
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Peter JohannessenAssociate Professor of Public PolicyPeter Johannessen is an associate professor of public policy at the University of Virginia Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and a faculty fellow at UVA’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). Johannessen’s research explores how popular participation shapes the local policy-making process, including projects that focus on local electoral responsiveness and the design of participatory governance institutions in Brazil.