Eleanor Neff Powell
Biographic Data
| ID | 4122690 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eleanor Neff Powell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eleanor Neff |
| FAMILY NAME | Powell |
| SIGNATURE | POWELL E N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1615-3066 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 366 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
How shifting priorities and capacity affect policy work and constituency service
When elected officials gain power, do they use it to provide more constituent service or affect policy? The answer informs debates over how legislator capacity, term limits, and institutional positions affect legislator behavior. We distinguish two countervailing effects of increased institutional power: shifting priorities and increased capacity. To assess how institutional power shapes behavior, we assemble a massive new database of 611,239 leg…
Women in Legislative Studies
Representation of women in the field of legislative politics is remarkably small and the absence of women has wide-ranging ramifications. In Fall 2019, we surveyed 361 women that we identified as studying legislative politics within political science to understand why women’s representation in legislative studies is so low and what we can do about it. We found that many women study legislatures, but they do not always identify as scholars of legi…
Little is Known about Party System Volatility in Post-Communist Europe, but We Have Interesting New Methods and Data for Studying It
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Money in Exile
Understanding how money influences the legislative process is essential for assessing American democracy, but problems of endogeneity, legality, and observational equivalence make it difficult to isolate the effect of contributions on policy. We seek to answer long-standing questions about the influence of money in Congress by exploiting a congressional procedure (committee exile) that exogenously varies a member's influence over the policy-makin…
Crowded Space, Fertile Ground
This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status qu…
Professional Societies, Political Action Committees, and Party Preferences
Societies representing physician specialties and other health care personnel commonly have political action committees (PACs). These PACs seek to advance their members’ interests through advocacy and campaign contributions. We examined contribution data for health care workers’ PACs from the 2010 to 2012 election cycles and found that higher annual income was strongly associated with greater giving to Republican candidates. Patterns of giving may…
Understanding the Party Brand
The valence component of a party's reputation, or brand, has been less scrutinized than other components of party-based theories of legislatures. This lack of scrutiny results from the difficulty of isolating the valence component from policy-related components and the difficulty of studying legislators' motives. We overcome these challenges by conducting survey experiments on both voters and state legislators that show (1) that scholars have und…
Revisiting Electoral Volatility in Post-Communist Countries
This article provides a detailed set of coding rules for disaggregating electoral volatility into two components: volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit, and volatility caused by vote switching across existing parties. After providing an overview of both types of volatility in post-communist countries, the causes of volatility are analysed using a larger dataset than those used in previous studies. The results are startling: most…
Congressmen in Exile
We show how preferred committee assignments act as an electoral subsidy for members of Congress—empowering representatives’ legislative careers. When holding preferred assignments, legislators are free to focus on legislative activity in Washington, DC. But when the subsidy is removed, legislators are forced to direct attention to the district. To test our theory of legislative subsidy, we exploit committee exile—the involuntary removal of commit…
Revisiting Public Opinion in the 1930s and 1940s
Studies of mass political attitudes and behavior before the 1950s have been limited by a lack of high-quality, individual-level data. Fortunately, data from public opinion polls conducted during the late New Deal and World War II periods are available, although the many difficulties of working with these data have left them largely untouched for over 60 years. We compiled and produced readily usable computer files for over 400 public opinion poll…
Revisiting Electoral Volatility in Post-Communist Countries
This article provides a detailed set of coding rules for disaggregating electoral volatility into two components: volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit, and volatility caused by vote switching across existing parties. After providing an overview of both types of volatility in post-communist countries, the causes of volatility are analysed using a larger dataset than those used in previous studies. The results are startling: most…
Money in Exile
Understanding how money influences the legislative process is essential for assessing American democracy, but problems of endogeneity, legality, and observational equivalence make it difficult to isolate the effect of contributions on policy. We seek to answer long-standing questions about the influence of money in Congress by exploiting a congressional procedure (committee exile) that exogenously varies a member's influence over the policy-makin…
Understanding the Party Brand
The valence component of a party's reputation, or brand, has been less scrutinized than other components of party-based theories of legislatures. This lack of scrutiny results from the difficulty of isolating the valence component from policy-related components and the difficulty of studying legislators' motives. We overcome these challenges by conducting survey experiments on both voters and state legislators that show (1) that scholars have und…
Congressmen in Exile
We show how preferred committee assignments act as an electoral subsidy for members of Congress—empowering representatives’ legislative careers. When holding preferred assignments, legislators are free to focus on legislative activity in Washington, DC. But when the subsidy is removed, legislators are forced to direct attention to the district. To test our theory of legislative subsidy, we exploit committee exile—the involuntary removal of commit…
Crowded Space, Fertile Ground
This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status qu…
Revisiting Public Opinion in the 1930s and 1940s
Studies of mass political attitudes and behavior before the 1950s have been limited by a lack of high-quality, individual-level data. Fortunately, data from public opinion polls conducted during the late New Deal and World War II periods are available, although the many difficulties of working with these data have left them largely untouched for over 60 years. We compiled and produced readily usable computer files for over 400 public opinion poll…
Little is Known about Party System Volatility in Post-Communist Europe, but We Have Interesting New Methods and Data for Studying It
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Women in Legislative Studies
Representation of women in the field of legislative politics is remarkably small and the absence of women has wide-ranging ramifications. In Fall 2019, we surveyed 361 women that we identified as studying legislative politics within political science to understand why women’s representation in legislative studies is so low and what we can do about it. We found that many women study legislatures, but they do not always identify as scholars of legi…
Revisiting Public Opinion in the 1930s and 1940s
Studies of mass political attitudes and behavior before the 1950s have been limited by a lack of high-quality, individual-level data. Fortunately, data from public opinion polls conducted during the late New Deal and World War II periods are available, although the many difficulties of working with these data have left them largely untouched for over 60 years. We compiled and produced readily usable computer files for over 400 public opinion poll…
Congressmen in Exile
We show how preferred committee assignments act as an electoral subsidy for members of Congress—empowering representatives’ legislative careers. When holding preferred assignments, legislators are free to focus on legislative activity in Washington, DC. But when the subsidy is removed, legislators are forced to direct attention to the district. To test our theory of legislative subsidy, we exploit committee exile—the involuntary removal of commit…
Understanding the Party Brand
The valence component of a party's reputation, or brand, has been less scrutinized than other components of party-based theories of legislatures. This lack of scrutiny results from the difficulty of isolating the valence component from policy-related components and the difficulty of studying legislators' motives. We overcome these challenges by conducting survey experiments on both voters and state legislators that show (1) that scholars have und…
Revisiting Electoral Volatility in Post-Communist Countries
This article provides a detailed set of coding rules for disaggregating electoral volatility into two components: volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit, and volatility caused by vote switching across existing parties. After providing an overview of both types of volatility in post-communist countries, the causes of volatility are analysed using a larger dataset than those used in previous studies. The results are startling: most…
Professional Societies, Political Action Committees, and Party Preferences
Societies representing physician specialties and other health care personnel commonly have political action committees (PACs). These PACs seek to advance their members’ interests through advocacy and campaign contributions. We examined contribution data for health care workers’ PACs from the 2010 to 2012 election cycles and found that higher annual income was strongly associated with greater giving to Republican candidates. Patterns of giving may…
Money in Exile
Understanding how money influences the legislative process is essential for assessing American democracy, but problems of endogeneity, legality, and observational equivalence make it difficult to isolate the effect of contributions on policy. We seek to answer long-standing questions about the influence of money in Congress by exploiting a congressional procedure (committee exile) that exogenously varies a member's influence over the policy-makin…
Crowded Space, Fertile Ground
This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status qu…
Little is Known about Party System Volatility in Post-Communist Europe, but We Have Interesting New Methods and Data for Studying It
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Women in Legislative Studies
Representation of women in the field of legislative politics is remarkably small and the absence of women has wide-ranging ramifications. In Fall 2019, we surveyed 361 women that we identified as studying legislative politics within political science to understand why women’s representation in legislative studies is so low and what we can do about it. We found that many women study legislatures, but they do not always identify as scholars of legi…
How shifting priorities and capacity affect policy work and constituency service
When elected officials gain power, do they use it to provide more constituent service or affect policy? The answer informs debates over how legislator capacity, term limits, and institutional positions affect legislator behavior. We distinguish two countervailing effects of increased institutional power: shifting priorities and increased capacity. To assess how institutional power shapes behavior, we assemble a massive new database of 611,239 leg…
Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Legislature (5 works) · Public Administration (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · Public Administration (4 works) · Public relations (4 works)