Tessa Provins
Biographic Data
| ID | 4247811 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tessa Provins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tessa |
| FAMILY NAME | Provins |
| SIGNATURE | PROVINS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9115-8732 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Illusion of Accountability
Lights Out
In the United States, state governments play an essential role in balancing the interests of consumers and electricity providers. While scholars have explored how regulations are crafted, less attention has been paid to the impact of regulation, particularly on the disadvantaged. By analyzing data on over two decades of disconnections, we find that investor-owned utilities have significantly lower disconnection rates than municipal utilities, des…
What Explains Party Unity? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
Party unity is central to studying legislative politics and explaining the organization of legislative chambers, passage of policy, and even electoral outcomes. Its effect has been shown at the subnational, national, and international levels. While party unity has been used to explain many phenomena in legislative politics, there is much less known about the determinants of party unity, especially at the subnational level. We leverage a dataset o…
The political economy of climate action in Indian Country
Toward a theory of minority-party influence in the U.S. Congress
The literature on congressional decision-making has largely ignored the influence of the minority party in the legislative process. This follows from the widely held belief that the majority party dominates the agenda-setting process. Though the minority party rarely achieves major policy success in Congress, we argue that the minority has significantly more influence over the legislative agenda than is commonly believed. We posit that, under som…
Hurdles to inference
Objective Various shirking behaviors in survey-taking can inhibit researchers' ability to draw unbiased inferences from the resulting data. We define three types of shirking behavior, identify their demographic correlates among survey respondents, show how shirking may lead to biased or incorrect inferences, and offer suggestions for navigating these threats. Methods We analyze responses from a large (N=3,256), representative survey of Americans,…
Allocating Costly Influence in Legislatures
Committee seats endow holders with both policy influence and labor obligation. These benefits and costs present the organizational majority with an interesting choice: how many seats should it allocate to the opposition? We present a theoretical framework for understanding the allocation of committee seats by the majority coalition that incorporates both procedural and electoral concerns in the decision calculus and predict that when the majority…
Compensation, Opportunity, and Information
We present a parsimonious framework for understanding contextual variation in legislative nonresponse. We argue that legislators’ propensity to vote is a function of their willingness and ability to be physically present in the chamber and determine the best position to take on a given proposal. From this framework, we derive four hypotheses regarding the compensation legislators receive, their opportunity to pursue work outside of the chamber, a…
Compensation, Opportunity, and Information
We present a parsimonious framework for understanding contextual variation in legislative nonresponse. We argue that legislators’ propensity to vote is a function of their willingness and ability to be physically present in the chamber and determine the best position to take on a given proposal. From this framework, we derive four hypotheses regarding the compensation legislators receive, their opportunity to pursue work outside of the chamber, a…
Allocating Costly Influence in Legislatures
Committee seats endow holders with both policy influence and labor obligation. These benefits and costs present the organizational majority with an interesting choice: how many seats should it allocate to the opposition? We present a theoretical framework for understanding the allocation of committee seats by the majority coalition that incorporates both procedural and electoral concerns in the decision calculus and predict that when the majority…
Lights Out
In the United States, state governments play an essential role in balancing the interests of consumers and electricity providers. While scholars have explored how regulations are crafted, less attention has been paid to the impact of regulation, particularly on the disadvantaged. By analyzing data on over two decades of disconnections, we find that investor-owned utilities have significantly lower disconnection rates than municipal utilities, des…
Hurdles to inference
Objective Various shirking behaviors in survey-taking can inhibit researchers' ability to draw unbiased inferences from the resulting data. We define three types of shirking behavior, identify their demographic correlates among survey respondents, show how shirking may lead to biased or incorrect inferences, and offer suggestions for navigating these threats. Methods We analyze responses from a large (N=3,256), representative survey of Americans,…
Compensation, Opportunity, and Information
We present a parsimonious framework for understanding contextual variation in legislative nonresponse. We argue that legislators’ propensity to vote is a function of their willingness and ability to be physically present in the chamber and determine the best position to take on a given proposal. From this framework, we derive four hypotheses regarding the compensation legislators receive, their opportunity to pursue work outside of the chamber, a…
Hurdles to inference
Objective Various shirking behaviors in survey-taking can inhibit researchers' ability to draw unbiased inferences from the resulting data. We define three types of shirking behavior, identify their demographic correlates among survey respondents, show how shirking may lead to biased or incorrect inferences, and offer suggestions for navigating these threats. Methods We analyze responses from a large (N=3,256), representative survey of Americans,…
Allocating Costly Influence in Legislatures
Committee seats endow holders with both policy influence and labor obligation. These benefits and costs present the organizational majority with an interesting choice: how many seats should it allocate to the opposition? We present a theoretical framework for understanding the allocation of committee seats by the majority coalition that incorporates both procedural and electoral concerns in the decision calculus and predict that when the majority…
Toward a theory of minority-party influence in the U.S. Congress
The literature on congressional decision-making has largely ignored the influence of the minority party in the legislative process. This follows from the widely held belief that the majority party dominates the agenda-setting process. Though the minority party rarely achieves major policy success in Congress, we argue that the minority has significantly more influence over the legislative agenda than is commonly believed. We posit that, under som…
What Explains Party Unity? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
Party unity is central to studying legislative politics and explaining the organization of legislative chambers, passage of policy, and even electoral outcomes. Its effect has been shown at the subnational, national, and international levels. While party unity has been used to explain many phenomena in legislative politics, there is much less known about the determinants of party unity, especially at the subnational level. We leverage a dataset o…
The political economy of climate action in Indian Country
The Illusion of Accountability
Lights Out
In the United States, state governments play an essential role in balancing the interests of consumers and electricity providers. While scholars have explored how regulations are crafted, less attention has been paid to the impact of regulation, particularly on the disadvantaged. By analyzing data on over two decades of disconnections, we find that investor-owned utilities have significantly lower disconnection rates than municipal utilities, des…
Political science (8 works) · Economics (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (5 works) · Legislature (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works)