The Center for Effective Lawmaking has compiled a massive database to measure the effectiveness of nearly every state legislator in the U.S.  Based on the center's trusted methodology developed a decade ago to rank the effectiveness of members of Congress, the project is the first to collect this kind of data at the state level in a comprehensive fashion.

Xiao Wang (MPP '09) an assistant professor at the Law School and Batten School and an expert on the U.S. Constitution, spoke at this week's "Batten Hour" about the implications of citizen-driven initiatives in response to unpopular rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court.

How can Congress reclaim its constitutional authority to shape foreign policy? Gerald Warburg, Batten professor of practice of public policy, offers insight in an article in the Wilson Quarterly.

Ashley Jardina is an associate professor of public policy and politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Jardina’s research focuses on racial attitudes, racial conflict, and the way in which group identities influence political preferences in the United States.

Are effective state lawmakers more likely than ineffective state lawmakers to be elected to Congress? Our findings offer important insights into how American federalism contributes to representation by effective lawmakers.

Batten School professor Gerald Warburg, in a piece written for The Conversation, states that Nancy Pelosi's stepping aside will leave the door open for others.

Enrolling young people to participate as Teach For America (TFA) teachers has a large positive effect on rates of voter turnout among those young people who participate. This effect is considerably larger than many previous efforts to increase youth voter turnout. After their 2 years of service, these young adults vote at a rate 5.7 to 8.6 percentage points higher than that of similar nonparticipant counterparts. These results suggest that civilian national service programs targeted at young people show great promise in narrowing the enduring participation gap between younger and older citizens in the United States.

Batten's Craig Volden and co-author Rachel Augustine Potter were recognized for their research exploring the effectiveness of female agency leaders. They discuss the "glass walls" effect and the potential implications of their findings.

Effective lawmakers are the workhorses of the US Congress, yet we know little about the electoral payoffs of their efforts. Are effective lawmakers better at warding off challengers in the next election? Do they win at a greater rate?

This paper documents the extent and nature of inequities in voter participation in the United States with a level of granularity and precision that previous research has not afforded.