Robert J Mcgrath
Biographic Data
| ID | 4180293 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert J Mcgrath |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert J |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgrath |
| SIGNATURE | MCGRATH R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Mason University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8963-3231 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 196 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1963 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Shared Pain, Common Purpose: How Shared Problem Status Drives Congressional Collaboration on Opioid Legislation
Why do members of Congress collaborate on legislation in an era of intense partisan polarization? This paper argues that shared exposure to pressing, district‐level policy problems can motivate cross‐party collaboration, particularly in a policy area that cuts across traditional ideological divides. Focusing on the case of the opioid crisis, I develop the importance of shared problem status in driving cosponsorship of opioid‐related legislation. …
High Hurdles: Legislative Professionalism and the Effectiveness of Women State Legislators
American Federalism and Health Policy Spillovers: Insights from the Opioid Crisis
This article examines how federalism shapes US public health crisis responses, emphasizing that policy divergence across states creates negative spillovers that undermine effectiveness. It develops a framework arguing that policy congruence among neighboring states is key to health outcomes. Applying this to opioid mortality (2009–2016), the study finds that states aligning regulations—such as Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs—experience fewe…
Occupational licensing and income inequality in the states
The decades‐long rise of economic inequality in the U.S. has led to a growing body of literature examining the role of policy in shaping income differences. We examine one such policy: occupational licensing regulations. Licensing can restrict employment and reduce market competition, which can then inflate wages for those in licensed professions. Existing research demonstrates that occupational licensure does increase wages in specific industrie…
Rulemaking Speed in the US States
This paper explores the speed of rulemaking in American state governments. Drawing on a unique data set of over 250,000 individual rules issued by states from 1993 through 2009, we introduce new measures of the speed and breadth of rulemaking in American state bureaucracies, providing a new way of evaluating the incidence of rulemaking delay within and across governments. We focus specifically on how professionalism and oversight powers of state …
Australian dental practitioners experience of burnout
Australian dental practitioners appear to be at high risk of burnout which may impact on their health and wellbeing and ability to deliver patient care. There is a need for support services to manage burnout and education to address workplace and environmental factors that may contribute to burnout
Listen to Me: Quality of Communication and Intergenerational Political Socialization
Intergenerational political socialization is alive and well in the polarized American polity. But, by what mechanism do parental views transmit to children? We develop a theory ( dyadic social learning theory ) which posits the importance of dyadic familial communication in facilitating attitudinal concordance between parents and children. Using original survey data of 1,048 dyadic pairs of American parents and middle school-aged children, we dev…
Does Partisan Conflict Lead to Increased Bureaucratic Policymaking? Evidence from the American States
Scholars of American politics debate the consequences of polarized and divided government on lawmaking but have largely neglected the impact of institutional conflict on the policy outputs of the bureaucracy. We argue that lawmaking gridlock creates opportunities and demands for governors and civil servants to pursue policy goals through rulemaking. To explore these dynamics, we draw upon a comprehensive dataset of over 150,000 proposed and adopt…
Uncooperative Federalism as Innovation
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…
A Race for the Regs: Unified Government, Statutory Deadlines, and Federal Agency Rulemaking
Theory suggests that Congress should delegate more policymaking authority to the bureaucracy under unified government, where lawmakers are less worried about the president orchestrating “bureaucratic drift.” Yet, all unified governments come to an end, making broad delegations potentially advantageous to future lawmaking coalitions (“coalitional drift”). We seek to assess how lawmakers simultaneously limit the risk of each of these pitfalls of de…
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…
Experts, Amateurs, and Bureaucratic Influence in the American States
Over the past century, the size and reach of American state governments has increased dramatically, altering the balance of power across state capitols. Although state legislatures were historically privileged as “firsts among equals,” modern administrative reforms have transformed state governments from legislative-centric to executive-dominated systems. In many states, part-time citizen legislatures now operate alongside fully professionalized …
Constraining a Shadowy Future: Enacting APAs in Parliamentary Systems
Single‐party parliamentary governments often have no institutional checks on their authority. Such governments can pass and implement policies constrained only by the need to maintain party loyalty and win elections. Literature on delegation suggests that such governments would never adopt reforms such as Administrative Procedures Acts (APAs) that are designed to constrain this freedom. Nevertheless, such governments do pass APAs: Greece, Portuga…
Retrospective Congressional Oversight and the Dynamics of Legislative Influence over the Bureaucracy
Research stresses that congressional committees increase their oversight of the bureaucracy during divided government. We extend this research by developing an explanation, rooted in a more dynamic view of policymaking, for why Congress would sometimes conduct vigorous oversight under unified control as well. In short, committees seem to engage in what we call “retrospective oversight” and take advantage of newly friendly executive administration…
Congress as manager: Oversight Hearings and Agency Morale
Federal agencies perform many important tasks, from guarding against terrorist plots to mailing social security checks. A key question is whether Congress can effectively manage such a large and influential bureaucracy. We argue that Congress, in using oversight to ensure agency responsiveness to legislative preferences, risks harming agency morale, which could have negative long-run effects on performance and the implementation of public policy.…
The Marginality Hypothesis and Supreme Court Confirmation Votes in the Senate
Studies of Supreme Court confirmations have found that a senator's vote is primarily determined by his or her ideological proximity to a nominee and that nominee's objective qualifications. This literature does not account for the extent to which a senator's electoral safety may enhance or mitigate the effects of ideology or qualifications. We argue that senators from less competitive states are more likely to eschew a nominee's qualifications in…
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 Rise and Fall of Radical Civil Service Reform in the U.S. States
Initiated by a 1996 Georgia statute, “radical” civil service reform quickly swept the United States. This article explains the wax and eventual wane of state efforts to increase the number of at‐will employees at the expense of the population of fully protected merit system employees. Using an event history approach to explain this policy diffusion with state‐level variables, the author shows that electoral competition and gubernatorial powers ar…
Congressional Oversight Hearings and Policy Control
Oversight hearings should be an important congressional tool for controlling recalcitrant agencies, but it is not clear that this should always be equally true. The logic of principal‐agent models of legislative policy control implies that oversight might sometimes, but not always, be superfluous to said control. Here, I reintroduce oversight hearings to theories of policy control and argue that congressional committees conduct oversight hearings…
Electoral Competition and the Frequency of Initiative Use in the U.S. States
To what extent has direct democracy, specifically the ballot initiative process, served to substitute for perceived deficiencies of representative democracy in the United States? Despite extensive literatures on both direct democracy and democratic representation, there exist very few direct evaluations of the interplay between the two. I examine whether variation in the frequency of a state’s initiative use is related to the extent to which that…
Making Rules about Rulemaking: A Comparison of Presidential and Parliamentary Systems
The authors examine the administrative procedures acts (APAs) of separation of powers and parliamentary systems. They examine sixteen national APAs (thirteen parliamentary and three presidential) and forty-eight APAs from the U.S. states that have institutional structures analogous to the presidential systems. They identify a very stark difference between the parliamentary and presidential APAs. While all of the presidential system APAs place con…
Measuring general levels of physical activity: Preliminary evidence for the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children
This article reports three studies that investigated psychometric properties of the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children (PAQ-C). The PAQ-C is a guided self-administered 7-day recall measure designed to assess general physical activity levels during the school year for children in grades four and higher. Study one, with 215 students ranging in age from 9 to 15 yr, found the PAQ-C had acceptable item and test score characteristics su…
Confounding Constructs and Levels of Constructs in Affectivity Measurement: An Empirical Investigation
This study examined the potential for confounding constructs with levels of constructs in the measurement of positive and negative affectivity. Evidence for this confound was discovered in connection with measures grounded in a well-researched theoretical structure of affectivity. Self-report responses to affect-related descriptors were collected from a sample of managers in a major manufacturing organization. The results of a usefulness analysis…
A Newly Discovered Illustrated Manuscript of Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain and Lancelot in the Princeton University Library
Congressional Oversight Hearings and Policy Control
Oversight hearings should be an important congressional tool for controlling recalcitrant agencies, but it is not clear that this should always be equally true. The logic of principal‐agent models of legislative policy control implies that oversight might sometimes, but not always, be superfluous to said control. Here, I reintroduce oversight hearings to theories of policy control and argue that congressional committees conduct oversight hearings…
Experts, Amateurs, and Bureaucratic Influence in the American States
Over the past century, the size and reach of American state governments has increased dramatically, altering the balance of power across state capitols. Although state legislatures were historically privileged as “firsts among equals,” modern administrative reforms have transformed state governments from legislative-centric to executive-dominated systems. In many states, part-time citizen legislatures now operate alongside fully professionalized …
Retrospective Congressional Oversight and the Dynamics of Legislative Influence over the Bureaucracy
Research stresses that congressional committees increase their oversight of the bureaucracy during divided government. We extend this research by developing an explanation, rooted in a more dynamic view of policymaking, for why Congress would sometimes conduct vigorous oversight under unified control as well. In short, committees seem to engage in what we call “retrospective oversight” and take advantage of newly friendly executive administration…
Congress as manager: Oversight Hearings and Agency Morale
Federal agencies perform many important tasks, from guarding against terrorist plots to mailing social security checks. A key question is whether Congress can effectively manage such a large and influential bureaucracy. We argue that Congress, in using oversight to ensure agency responsiveness to legislative preferences, risks harming agency morale, which could have negative long-run effects on performance and the implementation of public policy.…
Does Partisan Conflict Lead to Increased Bureaucratic Policymaking? Evidence from the American States
Scholars of American politics debate the consequences of polarized and divided government on lawmaking but have largely neglected the impact of institutional conflict on the policy outputs of the bureaucracy. We argue that lawmaking gridlock creates opportunities and demands for governors and civil servants to pursue policy goals through rulemaking. To explore these dynamics, we draw upon a comprehensive dataset of over 150,000 proposed and adopt…
Making Rules about Rulemaking: A Comparison of Presidential and Parliamentary Systems
The authors examine the administrative procedures acts (APAs) of separation of powers and parliamentary systems. They examine sixteen national APAs (thirteen parliamentary and three presidential) and forty-eight APAs from the U.S. states that have institutional structures analogous to the presidential systems. They identify a very stark difference between the parliamentary and presidential APAs. While all of the presidential system APAs place con…
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…
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…
Constraining a Shadowy Future: Enacting APAs in Parliamentary Systems
Single‐party parliamentary governments often have no institutional checks on their authority. Such governments can pass and implement policies constrained only by the need to maintain party loyalty and win elections. Literature on delegation suggests that such governments would never adopt reforms such as Administrative Procedures Acts (APAs) that are designed to constrain this freedom. Nevertheless, such governments do pass APAs: Greece, Portuga…
Rulemaking Speed in the US States
This paper explores the speed of rulemaking in American state governments. Drawing on a unique data set of over 250,000 individual rules issued by states from 1993 through 2009, we introduce new measures of the speed and breadth of rulemaking in American state bureaucracies, providing a new way of evaluating the incidence of rulemaking delay within and across governments. We focus specifically on how professionalism and oversight powers of state …
American Federalism and Health Policy Spillovers: Insights from the Opioid Crisis
This article examines how federalism shapes US public health crisis responses, emphasizing that policy divergence across states creates negative spillovers that undermine effectiveness. It develops a framework arguing that policy congruence among neighboring states is key to health outcomes. Applying this to opioid mortality (2009–2016), the study finds that states aligning regulations—such as Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs—experience fewe…
Listen to Me: Quality of Communication and Intergenerational Political Socialization
Intergenerational political socialization is alive and well in the polarized American polity. But, by what mechanism do parental views transmit to children? We develop a theory ( dyadic social learning theory ) which posits the importance of dyadic familial communication in facilitating attitudinal concordance between parents and children. Using original survey data of 1,048 dyadic pairs of American parents and middle school-aged children, we dev…
A Race for the Regs: Unified Government, Statutory Deadlines, and Federal Agency Rulemaking
Theory suggests that Congress should delegate more policymaking authority to the bureaucracy under unified government, where lawmakers are less worried about the president orchestrating “bureaucratic drift.” Yet, all unified governments come to an end, making broad delegations potentially advantageous to future lawmaking coalitions (“coalitional drift”). We seek to assess how lawmakers simultaneously limit the risk of each of these pitfalls of de…
The Marginality Hypothesis and Supreme Court Confirmation Votes in the Senate
Studies of Supreme Court confirmations have found that a senator's vote is primarily determined by his or her ideological proximity to a nominee and that nominee's objective qualifications. This literature does not account for the extent to which a senator's electoral safety may enhance or mitigate the effects of ideology or qualifications. We argue that senators from less competitive states are more likely to eschew a nominee's qualifications in…
Electoral Competition and the Frequency of Initiative Use in the U.S. States
To what extent has direct democracy, specifically the ballot initiative process, served to substitute for perceived deficiencies of representative democracy in the United States? Despite extensive literatures on both direct democracy and democratic representation, there exist very few direct evaluations of the interplay between the two. I examine whether variation in the frequency of a state’s initiative use is related to the extent to which that…
A Newly Discovered Illustrated Manuscript of Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain and Lancelot in the Princeton University Library
Confounding Constructs and Levels of Constructs in Affectivity Measurement: An Empirical Investigation
This study examined the potential for confounding constructs with levels of constructs in the measurement of positive and negative affectivity. Evidence for this confound was discovered in connection with measures grounded in a well-researched theoretical structure of affectivity. Self-report responses to affect-related descriptors were collected from a sample of managers in a major manufacturing organization. The results of a usefulness analysis…
Measuring general levels of physical activity: Preliminary evidence for the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children
This article reports three studies that investigated psychometric properties of the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children (PAQ-C). The PAQ-C is a guided self-administered 7-day recall measure designed to assess general physical activity levels during the school year for children in grades four and higher. Study one, with 215 students ranging in age from 9 to 15 yr, found the PAQ-C had acceptable item and test score characteristics su…
Electoral Competition and the Frequency of Initiative Use in the U.S. States
To what extent has direct democracy, specifically the ballot initiative process, served to substitute for perceived deficiencies of representative democracy in the United States? Despite extensive literatures on both direct democracy and democratic representation, there exist very few direct evaluations of the interplay between the two. I examine whether variation in the frequency of a state’s initiative use is related to the extent to which that…
Making Rules about Rulemaking: A Comparison of Presidential and Parliamentary Systems
The authors examine the administrative procedures acts (APAs) of separation of powers and parliamentary systems. They examine sixteen national APAs (thirteen parliamentary and three presidential) and forty-eight APAs from the U.S. states that have institutional structures analogous to the presidential systems. They identify a very stark difference between the parliamentary and presidential APAs. While all of the presidential system APAs place con…
The Rise and Fall of Radical Civil Service Reform in the U.S. States
Initiated by a 1996 Georgia statute, “radical” civil service reform quickly swept the United States. This article explains the wax and eventual wane of state efforts to increase the number of at‐will employees at the expense of the population of fully protected merit system employees. Using an event history approach to explain this policy diffusion with state‐level variables, the author shows that electoral competition and gubernatorial powers ar…
Congressional Oversight Hearings and Policy Control
Oversight hearings should be an important congressional tool for controlling recalcitrant agencies, but it is not clear that this should always be equally true. The logic of principal‐agent models of legislative policy control implies that oversight might sometimes, but not always, be superfluous to said control. Here, I reintroduce oversight hearings to theories of policy control and argue that congressional committees conduct oversight hearings…
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…
Constraining a Shadowy Future: Enacting APAs in Parliamentary Systems
Single‐party parliamentary governments often have no institutional checks on their authority. Such governments can pass and implement policies constrained only by the need to maintain party loyalty and win elections. Literature on delegation suggests that such governments would never adopt reforms such as Administrative Procedures Acts (APAs) that are designed to constrain this freedom. Nevertheless, such governments do pass APAs: Greece, Portuga…
Retrospective Congressional Oversight and the Dynamics of Legislative Influence over the Bureaucracy
Research stresses that congressional committees increase their oversight of the bureaucracy during divided government. We extend this research by developing an explanation, rooted in a more dynamic view of policymaking, for why Congress would sometimes conduct vigorous oversight under unified control as well. In short, committees seem to engage in what we call “retrospective oversight” and take advantage of newly friendly executive administration…
Congress as manager: Oversight Hearings and Agency Morale
Federal agencies perform many important tasks, from guarding against terrorist plots to mailing social security checks. A key question is whether Congress can effectively manage such a large and influential bureaucracy. We argue that Congress, in using oversight to ensure agency responsiveness to legislative preferences, risks harming agency morale, which could have negative long-run effects on performance and the implementation of public policy.…
The Marginality Hypothesis and Supreme Court Confirmation Votes in the Senate
Studies of Supreme Court confirmations have found that a senator's vote is primarily determined by his or her ideological proximity to a nominee and that nominee's objective qualifications. This literature does not account for the extent to which a senator's electoral safety may enhance or mitigate the effects of ideology or qualifications. We argue that senators from less competitive states are more likely to eschew a nominee's qualifications in…
Experts, Amateurs, and Bureaucratic Influence in the American States
Over the past century, the size and reach of American state governments has increased dramatically, altering the balance of power across state capitols. Although state legislatures were historically privileged as “firsts among equals,” modern administrative reforms have transformed state governments from legislative-centric to executive-dominated systems. In many states, part-time citizen legislatures now operate alongside fully professionalized …
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…
Uncooperative Federalism as Innovation
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…
A Race for the Regs: Unified Government, Statutory Deadlines, and Federal Agency Rulemaking
Theory suggests that Congress should delegate more policymaking authority to the bureaucracy under unified government, where lawmakers are less worried about the president orchestrating “bureaucratic drift.” Yet, all unified governments come to an end, making broad delegations potentially advantageous to future lawmaking coalitions (“coalitional drift”). We seek to assess how lawmakers simultaneously limit the risk of each of these pitfalls of de…
Does Partisan Conflict Lead to Increased Bureaucratic Policymaking? Evidence from the American States
Scholars of American politics debate the consequences of polarized and divided government on lawmaking but have largely neglected the impact of institutional conflict on the policy outputs of the bureaucracy. We argue that lawmaking gridlock creates opportunities and demands for governors and civil servants to pursue policy goals through rulemaking. To explore these dynamics, we draw upon a comprehensive dataset of over 150,000 proposed and adopt…
Australian dental practitioners experience of burnout
Australian dental practitioners appear to be at high risk of burnout which may impact on their health and wellbeing and ability to deliver patient care. There is a need for support services to manage burnout and education to address workplace and environmental factors that may contribute to burnout
Listen to Me: Quality of Communication and Intergenerational Political Socialization
Intergenerational political socialization is alive and well in the polarized American polity. But, by what mechanism do parental views transmit to children? We develop a theory ( dyadic social learning theory ) which posits the importance of dyadic familial communication in facilitating attitudinal concordance between parents and children. Using original survey data of 1,048 dyadic pairs of American parents and middle school-aged children, we dev…
Occupational licensing and income inequality in the states
The decades‐long rise of economic inequality in the U.S. has led to a growing body of literature examining the role of policy in shaping income differences. We examine one such policy: occupational licensing regulations. Licensing can restrict employment and reduce market competition, which can then inflate wages for those in licensed professions. Existing research demonstrates that occupational licensure does increase wages in specific industrie…
Rulemaking Speed in the US States
This paper explores the speed of rulemaking in American state governments. Drawing on a unique data set of over 250,000 individual rules issued by states from 1993 through 2009, we introduce new measures of the speed and breadth of rulemaking in American state bureaucracies, providing a new way of evaluating the incidence of rulemaking delay within and across governments. We focus specifically on how professionalism and oversight powers of state …
Shared Pain, Common Purpose: How Shared Problem Status Drives Congressional Collaboration on Opioid Legislation
Why do members of Congress collaborate on legislation in an era of intense partisan polarization? This paper argues that shared exposure to pressing, district‐level policy problems can motivate cross‐party collaboration, particularly in a policy area that cuts across traditional ideological divides. Focusing on the case of the opioid crisis, I develop the importance of shared problem status in driving cosponsorship of opioid‐related legislation. …
High Hurdles: Legislative Professionalism and the Effectiveness of Women State Legislators
American Federalism and Health Policy Spillovers: Insights from the Opioid Crisis
This article examines how federalism shapes US public health crisis responses, emphasizing that policy divergence across states creates negative spillovers that undermine effectiveness. It develops a framework arguing that policy congruence among neighboring states is key to health outcomes. Applying this to opioid mortality (2009–2016), the study finds that states aligning regulations—such as Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs—experience fewe…
Political science (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (15 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Legislature (13 works) · Public Administration (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (10 works)