Tyler Simko
Biographic Data
| ID | 4386711 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tyler Simko |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tyler |
| FAMILY NAME | Simko |
| SIGNATURE | SIMKO T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9382-7346 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 6 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Redistricting Reforms Reduce Gerrymandering by Constraining Partisan Actors
Political actors often manipulate redistricting plans to gain electoral advantages, a process known as gerrymandering. Several states have implemented institutional reforms to address this problem, such as establishing map-drawing commissions. Estimating the impact of these reforms is challenging because each state structures its processes and rules differently. We model redistricting as a sequential game whose equilibrium solution summarizes mul…
Tabling Debate
Public officials influence policymaking by deciding which items receive attention and action—and which do not. Accounts from national legislatures typically explain agenda control in terms of party leadership and discipline. But, do politicians try to exert agenda control outside highly professionalized legislatures? We bring the agenda control discussion to US school boards, which lack strong party control and feature few restrictions on agendas…
Measuring Conflict in Local Politics
Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in Americans’ lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this article, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and use them to create a new measure of local political conflict. We validate this new approach using sentiment analysis and structural topic modeling. We t…
The Promise of Text, Audio, and Video Data for the Study of US Local Politics and Federalism
A large-scale study of US local policymaking has long been hindered by a lack of centralized data sources. Our own project, LocalView, supplements data collection efforts by creating the largest existing database of local government meeting transcripts, audio, and video yet released. In this article, we describe promises, implications, and best practices for using nontabular sources of meeting data in the study of federalism. Throughout, we argue…
Policy Trenches
The structure of federalism in the United States links housing and education policy issues in significant ways. However, institutional frictions can make it challenging for policymakers to engage in “cross-sector” policy efforts that impact multiple policy areas at once. Further, decentralization means that it is difficult to measure policymaking attention across the US system, particularly at the local level. In this article, we use a mix of met…
Presidential Patronage and Executive Branch Appointments, 1925–1959
We study presidential patronage as a form of distributive politics. To do so, we introduce comprehensive data on supervisory personnel in the executive branch between 1925 and 1959 and link each bureaucrat to the congressional representative from their home district. We identify testable hypotheses regarding the impact of electoral considerations, partisanship, and legislative support on the distribution of bureaucratic appointments across distri…
Measuring Conflict in Local Politics
Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in Americans’ lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this article, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and use them to create a new measure of local political conflict. We validate this new approach using sentiment analysis and structural topic modeling. We t…
The Promise of Text, Audio, and Video Data for the Study of US Local Politics and Federalism
A large-scale study of US local policymaking has long been hindered by a lack of centralized data sources. Our own project, LocalView, supplements data collection efforts by creating the largest existing database of local government meeting transcripts, audio, and video yet released. In this article, we describe promises, implications, and best practices for using nontabular sources of meeting data in the study of federalism. Throughout, we argue…
Policy Trenches
The structure of federalism in the United States links housing and education policy issues in significant ways. However, institutional frictions can make it challenging for policymakers to engage in “cross-sector” policy efforts that impact multiple policy areas at once. Further, decentralization means that it is difficult to measure policymaking attention across the US system, particularly at the local level. In this article, we use a mix of met…
Presidential Patronage and Executive Branch Appointments, 1925–1959
We study presidential patronage as a form of distributive politics. To do so, we introduce comprehensive data on supervisory personnel in the executive branch between 1925 and 1959 and link each bureaucrat to the congressional representative from their home district. We identify testable hypotheses regarding the impact of electoral considerations, partisanship, and legislative support on the distribution of bureaucratic appointments across distri…
Presidential Patronage and Executive Branch Appointments, 1925–1959
We study presidential patronage as a form of distributive politics. To do so, we introduce comprehensive data on supervisory personnel in the executive branch between 1925 and 1959 and link each bureaucrat to the congressional representative from their home district. We identify testable hypotheses regarding the impact of electoral considerations, partisanship, and legislative support on the distribution of bureaucratic appointments across distri…
Tabling Debate
Public officials influence policymaking by deciding which items receive attention and action—and which do not. Accounts from national legislatures typically explain agenda control in terms of party leadership and discipline. But, do politicians try to exert agenda control outside highly professionalized legislatures? We bring the agenda control discussion to US school boards, which lack strong party control and feature few restrictions on agendas…
Measuring Conflict in Local Politics
Many of the most tangible and immediate political conflicts in Americans’ lives occur at the local level. Yet, we lack large-scale evidence on how, why, and where conflict occurs in local governments. In this article, we present a new dataset of nearly 100,000 videos of school board meetings, and use them to create a new measure of local political conflict. We validate this new approach using sentiment analysis and structural topic modeling. We t…
The Promise of Text, Audio, and Video Data for the Study of US Local Politics and Federalism
A large-scale study of US local policymaking has long been hindered by a lack of centralized data sources. Our own project, LocalView, supplements data collection efforts by creating the largest existing database of local government meeting transcripts, audio, and video yet released. In this article, we describe promises, implications, and best practices for using nontabular sources of meeting data in the study of federalism. Throughout, we argue…
Policy Trenches
The structure of federalism in the United States links housing and education policy issues in significant ways. However, institutional frictions can make it challenging for policymakers to engage in “cross-sector” policy efforts that impact multiple policy areas at once. Further, decentralization means that it is difficult to measure policymaking attention across the US system, particularly at the local level. In this article, we use a mix of met…
Redistricting Reforms Reduce Gerrymandering by Constraining Partisan Actors
Political actors often manipulate redistricting plans to gain electoral advantages, a process known as gerrymandering. Several states have implemented institutional reforms to address this problem, such as establishing map-drawing commissions. Estimating the impact of these reforms is challenging because each state structures its processes and rules differently. We model redistricting as a sequential game whose equilibrium solution summarizes mul…
Political science (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (3 works) · Political economy (3 works) · Federalism (2 works) · Legislature (2 works) · Policy Transfer and Learning (2 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (2 works)