James M Ryan
Biographic Data
| ID | 141316 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James M Ryan |
| GIVEN NAMES | James M |
| FAMILY NAME | Ryan |
| SIGNATURE | RYAN J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utah State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3031-4276 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 76 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A forum on representation and responsiveness in public policy
This forum continues the Journal of Public Policy’ s series for debate and discussion of important ideas in the scholarly study of public policy. This exchange is anchored with an essay by Christopher Wlezien entitled, “On Policy Responsiveness: Conditions for Effective Demand and Supply.” Understanding the connection between the public and the officials meant to represent them is fundamental to democratic governance. While there is a voluminous …
Lights, Camera, Inaction? The Effects of Gavel-to-Gavel Floor Coverage on U.S. State Legislatures
As elected officials and citizens struggle to understand the increasingly polarized political landscape in the United States, some have pointed to the introduction of “gavel-to-gavel” camera coverage in legislative bodies as driving the downward trajectory of these institutions. Advocates of increased transparency suggest cameras empower voters, producing more moderate behavior among legislators, whereas opponents suggest cameras encourage partis…
High Hurdles
Legislative Gridlock and Policymaking Through the Appropriations Process
Divergent preferences within and across American lawmaking institutions make it difficult to enact legislation. Yet, individual legislators and parties have incentives to effect policy change, even during periods of gridlock. We claim appropriations offer an alternative means of policymaking when legislation is likely to be unsuccessful using authorizations because appropriations bills have an extreme reversion point. Using an original dataset of…
Motions to instruct conferees as a majoritarian tool in the U.S. house
The extent to which the policymaking process is majoritarian, rather than controlled by the majority party, is a fundamental question in U.S. congressional politics, and in collective choice institutions broadly. Previous research has examined whether some House rules empower the minority party to propose alternative legislation to the floor and circumvent the majority party’s agenda power. I argue the motion to instruct conferees allows the mino…
Electoral Systems and the Substantive Representation of Marginalized Groups
How do electoral rules shape the substantive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? Using an original dataset of introduced and passed bills in the Korean National Assembly, which has both single-member districts and proportional representation, we examine the extent to which institutions condition the relationship between lawmaker gender and the substantive representation of women. While women lawmakers engage in higher levels …
The Committee
The Committee: A Study of Policy, Power, Politics and Obama’s Historic Legislative Agenda on Capitol Hill." Congress & the Presidency, 47(3), pp. 403–404
The Partisanship of House Committees and Member Self‐Selection
The extant literature suggests that members choose committees for distributive reasons and seek more prestigious committees as they move up the seniority ranks. But why do some members chose committees like Rules and Judiciary which are not distributive in nature? I claim that committees also offer representational benefits: namely, the ability to signal ideological preferences to constituents. Members from moderate districts seek out committees …
Bicameralism and Minority‐Party Influence on Legislative Development
The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority‐party‐dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority‐party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate’s institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority‐pa…
Policy Drift
The “textbook” version of how public policy is created and implemented suggests that Congress enacts, the president executes, and policy exists in a near-permanent state until a future Congress and president revisit the issue. Norma M. Riccucci, in her comprehensive and thorough book, demonstrates that enacted public policy, rather than existing in a stable state, is instead in a state of flux as the courts, the president, and Congress continuous…
Party Effects in State Legislative Committees
Legislative scholars have theorized about the role of committees and whether they are, or are not, tools of the majority party. We look to the states to gain more empirical leverage on this question, using a regression discontinuity approach and novel data from all state committees between 1996 and 2014. We estimate that majority‐party status produces an 8.5 percentage point bonus in committee seats and a substantial ideological shift in the dire…
Veto Override Requirements and Executive Success
Presidential systems around the world vary in the proportion of legislators required to override an executive veto. We argue that the nature of the override provision affects executive influence in policymaking; as the proportion needed to override a veto increases, so should executive influence. We leverage varying override requirements across the US states to conduct a comparative study of executive influence over budgetary outcomes. Using gove…
Constructing Congressional Activity
Members and parties have electoral incentives to address issues on the congressional agenda to satisfy public demand. When determining which issues to address, majorities seek to minimize their uncertainty about the costs and electoral benefits of legislating by revisiting policy areas previously addressed. This theory is tested using error-correction models that demonstrate that policy activity within each chamber is in a long-term equilibrium a…
Partisan Dynamics in Presidential Primaries and Campaign Divisiveness
Observers have noted that the Republican and Democratic primaries differ substantially, with Republicans typically having an easier time selecting their nominee. Previous research has suggested that this may be attributable to Republican Party homogeneity and delegate allocation rules that winnow candidates faster, but there is little empirical evidence on how these factors influence the primary process. Rather than predicting overall vote share …
Gubernatorial Veto Powers and the Size of Legislative Coalitions
Few political institutions are as central to theories of lawmaking as the executive veto. Despite its importance, institutional continuity at the national level has precluded identification of empirical effects of the veto on legislative behavior. We address this limitation and present evidence from the states demonstrating how the veto affects the formation of legislative coalitions and, indirectly, executive influence over policymaking. We find…
Examining Legislative Cue‐Taking in the US Senate
We examine congressional cue‐taking theory to determine its extent, conditionality, and various forms in the US Senate. Using a novel data‐collection technique (timed C‐SPAN footage), we focus on temporal dynamics via event history analysis. Examining the effects of senator characteristics across 16 votes from the 108th Congress, we find that committee leadership and seniority generally predict cue‐giving, while other types of characteristics pre…
Redistricting in the Classroom
We describe a hands-on teaching module on the redistricting process for use in undergraduate classes. Students engage in the process of strategically drawing district lines, which allows them to inductively understand gerrymandering and its consequences. The module also encourages students to consider the many factors that complicate efforts to identify a “fair” approach to redistricting, focusing on communities of interest. We also discuss a num…
Conference Committee Proposal Rights and Policy Outcomes in the States
Most states and Congress allow only one version of a bill to be reported out of a conference committee. Because of their control over the conference membership, party leaders may use conferences to produce nonmedian outcomes. However, in three states the rules allow a minority to propose its own competing conference report. A formal model demonstrates that this institutional design produces more moderate legislative outcomes despite the preferenc…
Reconsidering the “Palin Effect” in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
The ‘Palin Effect’ in the U.S. 2008 Presidential Election” analyzes the effect of Sarah Palin on presidential vote choice. Two of the substantive conclusions are (1) Palin cost McCain votes among independents and moderates, and (2) Palin had the largest effect on vote choice of any recent vice-presidential nominee. Our analysis shows that the data do not support these findings. We find that respondent evaluations of Palin have a positive effect o…
The Disappearing Conference Committee
Despite the importance of post-passage bargaining for legislative outcomes, little is known about the factors that lead to a conference committee. While the conventional wisdom claims conferences are used to resolve differences on important or complicated legislation, the theory developed here claims that coalition size and chamber rules are increasingly important determinants of conferencing. The empirical results demonstrate that post-passage b…
Is the Democratic Party's superdelegate system unfair to voters
Consumption, Landscapes of
George Ritzer (2005) has built upon his notion of cathedrals of consumption to describe what he terms “landscapes of consumption,” or “geographic areas that encompass two, or more, cathedrals of consumption” (p. 149). This definition can be extended to define landscapes of consumption as locales that encompass two or more cathedrals of consumption that allow, encourage, and even compel people to consume . The prototypical example of this would be…
Ballistic Trauma
"Ballistic Trauma: A Practical Guide provides a concise guide to the clinical and operational issues surrounding the management of the ballistic casualty. The book crystallizes the knowledge and experience accrued by those dealing with ballistic trauma on a regular basis and extends this to those who have to manage these patients on an occasional basis only." "This book is aimed at all medical and paramedical personnel involved in the care of pat…
The Cultural Contribution To Jealousy
This study explores the cultural contribution to emotional responses. Specifically, it examines the contribution of social structures to the severi ty of aggression in sexual jealousy situations. It is hypothesized that the aggression in jealousy situations is correlated with the cultural importance attached to being married, the limitations placed on nonmarital and extra marital sexual gratification, the emphasis on private ownership of proper t…
Examining Legislative Cue‐Taking in the US Senate
We examine congressional cue‐taking theory to determine its extent, conditionality, and various forms in the US Senate. Using a novel data‐collection technique (timed C‐SPAN footage), we focus on temporal dynamics via event history analysis. Examining the effects of senator characteristics across 16 votes from the 108th Congress, we find that committee leadership and seniority generally predict cue‐giving, while other types of characteristics pre…
Electoral Systems and the Substantive Representation of Marginalized Groups
How do electoral rules shape the substantive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? Using an original dataset of introduced and passed bills in the Korean National Assembly, which has both single-member districts and proportional representation, we examine the extent to which institutions condition the relationship between lawmaker gender and the substantive representation of women. While women lawmakers engage in higher levels …
Bicameralism and Minority‐Party Influence on Legislative Development
The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority‐party‐dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority‐party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate’s institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority‐pa…
Party Effects in State Legislative Committees
Legislative scholars have theorized about the role of committees and whether they are, or are not, tools of the majority party. We look to the states to gain more empirical leverage on this question, using a regression discontinuity approach and novel data from all state committees between 1996 and 2014. We estimate that majority‐party status produces an 8.5 percentage point bonus in committee seats and a substantial ideological shift in the dire…
Veto Override Requirements and Executive Success
Presidential systems around the world vary in the proportion of legislators required to override an executive veto. We argue that the nature of the override provision affects executive influence in policymaking; as the proportion needed to override a veto increases, so should executive influence. We leverage varying override requirements across the US states to conduct a comparative study of executive influence over budgetary outcomes. Using gove…
Reconsidering the “Palin Effect” in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
The ‘Palin Effect’ in the U.S. 2008 Presidential Election” analyzes the effect of Sarah Palin on presidential vote choice. Two of the substantive conclusions are (1) Palin cost McCain votes among independents and moderates, and (2) Palin had the largest effect on vote choice of any recent vice-presidential nominee. Our analysis shows that the data do not support these findings. We find that respondent evaluations of Palin have a positive effect o…
Gubernatorial Veto Powers and the Size of Legislative Coalitions
Few political institutions are as central to theories of lawmaking as the executive veto. Despite its importance, institutional continuity at the national level has precluded identification of empirical effects of the veto on legislative behavior. We address this limitation and present evidence from the states demonstrating how the veto affects the formation of legislative coalitions and, indirectly, executive influence over policymaking. We find…
The Disappearing Conference Committee
Despite the importance of post-passage bargaining for legislative outcomes, little is known about the factors that lead to a conference committee. While the conventional wisdom claims conferences are used to resolve differences on important or complicated legislation, the theory developed here claims that coalition size and chamber rules are increasingly important determinants of conferencing. The empirical results demonstrate that post-passage b…
The Cultural Contribution To Jealousy
This study explores the cultural contribution to emotional responses. Specifically, it examines the contribution of social structures to the severi ty of aggression in sexual jealousy situations. It is hypothesized that the aggression in jealousy situations is correlated with the cultural importance attached to being married, the limitations placed on nonmarital and extra marital sexual gratification, the emphasis on private ownership of proper t…
Constructing Congressional Activity
Members and parties have electoral incentives to address issues on the congressional agenda to satisfy public demand. When determining which issues to address, majorities seek to minimize their uncertainty about the costs and electoral benefits of legislating by revisiting policy areas previously addressed. This theory is tested using error-correction models that demonstrate that policy activity within each chamber is in a long-term equilibrium a…
Conference Committee Proposal Rights and Policy Outcomes in the States
Most states and Congress allow only one version of a bill to be reported out of a conference committee. Because of their control over the conference membership, party leaders may use conferences to produce nonmedian outcomes. However, in three states the rules allow a minority to propose its own competing conference report. A formal model demonstrates that this institutional design produces more moderate legislative outcomes despite the preferenc…
Legislative Gridlock and Policymaking Through the Appropriations Process
Divergent preferences within and across American lawmaking institutions make it difficult to enact legislation. Yet, individual legislators and parties have incentives to effect policy change, even during periods of gridlock. We claim appropriations offer an alternative means of policymaking when legislation is likely to be unsuccessful using authorizations because appropriations bills have an extreme reversion point. Using an original dataset of…
Partisan Dynamics in Presidential Primaries and Campaign Divisiveness
Observers have noted that the Republican and Democratic primaries differ substantially, with Republicans typically having an easier time selecting their nominee. Previous research has suggested that this may be attributable to Republican Party homogeneity and delegate allocation rules that winnow candidates faster, but there is little empirical evidence on how these factors influence the primary process. Rather than predicting overall vote share …
Is the Democratic Party's superdelegate system unfair to voters
The Cultural Contribution To Jealousy
This study explores the cultural contribution to emotional responses. Specifically, it examines the contribution of social structures to the severi ty of aggression in sexual jealousy situations. It is hypothesized that the aggression in jealousy situations is correlated with the cultural importance attached to being married, the limitations placed on nonmarital and extra marital sexual gratification, the emphasis on private ownership of proper t…
Ballistic Trauma
"Ballistic Trauma: A Practical Guide provides a concise guide to the clinical and operational issues surrounding the management of the ballistic casualty. The book crystallizes the knowledge and experience accrued by those dealing with ballistic trauma on a regular basis and extends this to those who have to manage these patients on an occasional basis only." "This book is aimed at all medical and paramedical personnel involved in the care of pat…
Consumption, Landscapes of
George Ritzer (2005) has built upon his notion of cathedrals of consumption to describe what he terms “landscapes of consumption,” or “geographic areas that encompass two, or more, cathedrals of consumption” (p. 149). This definition can be extended to define landscapes of consumption as locales that encompass two or more cathedrals of consumption that allow, encourage, and even compel people to consume . The prototypical example of this would be…
The Disappearing Conference Committee
Despite the importance of post-passage bargaining for legislative outcomes, little is known about the factors that lead to a conference committee. While the conventional wisdom claims conferences are used to resolve differences on important or complicated legislation, the theory developed here claims that coalition size and chamber rules are increasingly important determinants of conferencing. The empirical results demonstrate that post-passage b…
Is the Democratic Party's superdelegate system unfair to voters
Reconsidering the “Palin Effect” in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
The ‘Palin Effect’ in the U.S. 2008 Presidential Election” analyzes the effect of Sarah Palin on presidential vote choice. Two of the substantive conclusions are (1) Palin cost McCain votes among independents and moderates, and (2) Palin had the largest effect on vote choice of any recent vice-presidential nominee. Our analysis shows that the data do not support these findings. We find that respondent evaluations of Palin have a positive effect o…
Redistricting in the Classroom
We describe a hands-on teaching module on the redistricting process for use in undergraduate classes. Students engage in the process of strategically drawing district lines, which allows them to inductively understand gerrymandering and its consequences. The module also encourages students to consider the many factors that complicate efforts to identify a “fair” approach to redistricting, focusing on communities of interest. We also discuss a num…
Conference Committee Proposal Rights and Policy Outcomes in the States
Most states and Congress allow only one version of a bill to be reported out of a conference committee. Because of their control over the conference membership, party leaders may use conferences to produce nonmedian outcomes. However, in three states the rules allow a minority to propose its own competing conference report. A formal model demonstrates that this institutional design produces more moderate legislative outcomes despite the preferenc…
Gubernatorial Veto Powers and the Size of Legislative Coalitions
Few political institutions are as central to theories of lawmaking as the executive veto. Despite its importance, institutional continuity at the national level has precluded identification of empirical effects of the veto on legislative behavior. We address this limitation and present evidence from the states demonstrating how the veto affects the formation of legislative coalitions and, indirectly, executive influence over policymaking. We find…
Examining Legislative Cue‐Taking in the US Senate
We examine congressional cue‐taking theory to determine its extent, conditionality, and various forms in the US Senate. Using a novel data‐collection technique (timed C‐SPAN footage), we focus on temporal dynamics via event history analysis. Examining the effects of senator characteristics across 16 votes from the 108th Congress, we find that committee leadership and seniority generally predict cue‐giving, while other types of characteristics pre…
Veto Override Requirements and Executive Success
Presidential systems around the world vary in the proportion of legislators required to override an executive veto. We argue that the nature of the override provision affects executive influence in policymaking; as the proportion needed to override a veto increases, so should executive influence. We leverage varying override requirements across the US states to conduct a comparative study of executive influence over budgetary outcomes. Using gove…
Constructing Congressional Activity
Members and parties have electoral incentives to address issues on the congressional agenda to satisfy public demand. When determining which issues to address, majorities seek to minimize their uncertainty about the costs and electoral benefits of legislating by revisiting policy areas previously addressed. This theory is tested using error-correction models that demonstrate that policy activity within each chamber is in a long-term equilibrium a…
Partisan Dynamics in Presidential Primaries and Campaign Divisiveness
Observers have noted that the Republican and Democratic primaries differ substantially, with Republicans typically having an easier time selecting their nominee. Previous research has suggested that this may be attributable to Republican Party homogeneity and delegate allocation rules that winnow candidates faster, but there is little empirical evidence on how these factors influence the primary process. Rather than predicting overall vote share …
Policy Drift
The “textbook” version of how public policy is created and implemented suggests that Congress enacts, the president executes, and policy exists in a near-permanent state until a future Congress and president revisit the issue. Norma M. Riccucci, in her comprehensive and thorough book, demonstrates that enacted public policy, rather than existing in a stable state, is instead in a state of flux as the courts, the president, and Congress continuous…
Party Effects in State Legislative Committees
Legislative scholars have theorized about the role of committees and whether they are, or are not, tools of the majority party. We look to the states to gain more empirical leverage on this question, using a regression discontinuity approach and novel data from all state committees between 1996 and 2014. We estimate that majority‐party status produces an 8.5 percentage point bonus in committee seats and a substantial ideological shift in the dire…
The Committee
The Committee: A Study of Policy, Power, Politics and Obama’s Historic Legislative Agenda on Capitol Hill." Congress & the Presidency, 47(3), pp. 403–404
The Partisanship of House Committees and Member Self‐Selection
The extant literature suggests that members choose committees for distributive reasons and seek more prestigious committees as they move up the seniority ranks. But why do some members chose committees like Rules and Judiciary which are not distributive in nature? I claim that committees also offer representational benefits: namely, the ability to signal ideological preferences to constituents. Members from moderate districts seek out committees …
Bicameralism and Minority‐Party Influence on Legislative Development
The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority‐party‐dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority‐party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate’s institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority‐pa…
Motions to instruct conferees as a majoritarian tool in the U.S. house
The extent to which the policymaking process is majoritarian, rather than controlled by the majority party, is a fundamental question in U.S. congressional politics, and in collective choice institutions broadly. Previous research has examined whether some House rules empower the minority party to propose alternative legislation to the floor and circumvent the majority party’s agenda power. I argue the motion to instruct conferees allows the mino…
Electoral Systems and the Substantive Representation of Marginalized Groups
How do electoral rules shape the substantive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? Using an original dataset of introduced and passed bills in the Korean National Assembly, which has both single-member districts and proportional representation, we examine the extent to which institutions condition the relationship between lawmaker gender and the substantive representation of women. While women lawmakers engage in higher levels …
Legislative Gridlock and Policymaking Through the Appropriations Process
Divergent preferences within and across American lawmaking institutions make it difficult to enact legislation. Yet, individual legislators and parties have incentives to effect policy change, even during periods of gridlock. We claim appropriations offer an alternative means of policymaking when legislation is likely to be unsuccessful using authorizations because appropriations bills have an extreme reversion point. Using an original dataset of…
Lights, Camera, Inaction? The Effects of Gavel-to-Gavel Floor Coverage on U.S. State Legislatures
As elected officials and citizens struggle to understand the increasingly polarized political landscape in the United States, some have pointed to the introduction of “gavel-to-gavel” camera coverage in legislative bodies as driving the downward trajectory of these institutions. Advocates of increased transparency suggest cameras empower voters, producing more moderate behavior among legislators, whereas opponents suggest cameras encourage partis…
High Hurdles
A forum on representation and responsiveness in public policy
This forum continues the Journal of Public Policy’ s series for debate and discussion of important ideas in the scholarly study of public policy. This exchange is anchored with an essay by Christopher Wlezien entitled, “On Policy Responsiveness: Conditions for Effective Demand and Supply.” Understanding the connection between the public and the officials meant to represent them is fundamental to democratic governance. While there is a voluminous …
Political science (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (15 works) · Legislature (12 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Law and economics (7 works)