Research

Book project

Building a Civil Rights Agenda: The Democratic Party and the Origins of Racial Liberalism

This book project, based on my dissertation, investigates the construction of the civil rights legislative agenda during the realignment of U.S. political parties on racial issues (1933-68). While an extensive literature has shed light on the timing and causes of position change, we lack a comprehensive analysis of the policy agenda at the center of the realignment. My project turns its attention to this question, asking why the northern Democratic politicians in Congress who led the charge on civil rights legislation advanced and prioritized some issues and proposals on the agenda while neglecting others. I argue that competing pressures in the northern Democratic party coalition motivated northern Democrats to selectively prioritize issues. Since national parties are made up of varied local parties, variation in the structure of local party coalitions across the northern cities shaped how differently-situated northern Democratic legislators were susceptible to these pressures.

Read full description of book project

Through analyses of bill sponsorship (including an original dataset), omnibus bill debates, and other congressional activity, I show that an expansive set of proposals were available at the margins of the congressional agenda, but that the northern Democratic caucus selectively crafted and pursued a narrower agenda. They were most unified and assertive on southern-centric issues, such as voting rights. On issues that could affect their northern constituencies, they were cautious and selective: they aggressively pursued action on employment discrimination, but avoided other issues such as housing discrimination.

I argue that coalitional dynamics shaped northern Democrats’ agenda-setting choices: they faced competing pressures from new groups in their party coalition (e.g., Black voters and civil rights advocacy organizations) and from existing groups (e.g., urban white voters and housing industry groups). Pursuing a selective agenda allowed them to offer some form of responsiveness to new groups in their coalition while attempting to avoid alienating existing groups. Through analyses of congressional activity, public opinion data, archival records, and secondary sources, I show the presence of such competing pressures and politicians’ awareness of them.

These dynamics did not affect all northern Democratic politicians in the same way, since national parties are made up of varying local party coalitions. Taking a closer look at the small subset of legislators who pursued a more expansive civil rights agenda, I argue that their distinctiveness was enabled by the demographic composition of their districts and the structure of their local party coalitions. Through a comparison of Chicago, New York, and Detroit, I show that local parties varied in the extent to which they prioritized policy responsiveness (as opposed to other benefits such as patronage) when incorporating Black and other non-white voters into the coalition.

In analyzing agenda development among northern Democrats, this project shows that racial liberalism was limited from the start, constrained by the heterogenous and fractious Democratic party coalition. It also has implications for theories of political parties and party realignment, and contributes to our understanding of the limits of civil rights law and the development of the Democratic party coalition.

Research on urban politics

Politics of gentrifying neighborhoods

My ongoing research project with Tom Ogorzalek and Matt Nelsen examines how gentrification shapes political experiences and attitudes, drawing on the Chicago Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Survey (CMANS), an original survey that included oversamples of rapidly changing neighborhoods and suburbs in the Chicago area. This includes two papers:

Our article published in Urban Affairs Review examines how policing-related experiences and attitudes differ between gentrifiers and longtime residents in gentrifying neighborhoods in Chicago. We find that the longstanding pattern where high-SES, mostly-white neighborhoods experience low police contact and race-class subjugated neighborhoods experience “over-policing and under-protection” is replicated within gentrifying neighborhoods, showing that forms of urban inequality may persist even as patterns of cross-neighborhood spatial segregation erode.
Our working paper examines how gentrification shapes perceptions of and experiences with neighborhood diversity. We find that gentrifiers express more comfort with living in diverse neighborhoods than residents of high-SES neighborhoods, and that they value neighborhood diversity more than their counterparts in high-SES neighborhoods and their non-gentrifier neighbors. However, gentrifiers are less likely to report unplanned interactions with non-white and immigrant neighbors than non-gentrifiers. These findings suggest that gentrifiers’ abstract commitments to neighborhood diversity may not map onto their actual experiences in their neighborhoods.

The emergence of factional politics in Chicago City Council

In this working paper, I analyze the re-emergence of factional conflict in Chicago’s non-partisan City Council. For two decades, council members focused on city service provision and largely delegated policymaking to the mayor. Since the mid-2010s, however, factional conflict has re-emerged. I use roll call votes, campaign contribution data, and evidence from election campaigns to show increasing factionalism and identify the factions. The emerging factionalism in Chicago politics does not resemble the conflicts between ideologically opposed factions that we see in national or state politics. Instead, it features a progressive faction that seeks to use the Council’s legislative powers to advance a policy agenda and a non-ideological faction that prioritizes service provision over legislative functions.

Commentary on local politics

For the Chicago Democracy Project at Northwestern University, I wrote several blog posts on current affairs in Chicago politics, including analyses of the 2019 mayoral election, the 2020 State’s Attorney election, experiences of policing, and fractures in the Democratic party coalition.

Research on law and public policy

Civil rights and social welfare policy

My article published in Studies in American Political Development examines the impact of civil rights law on social policy in the United States through a case study of family and medical leave policy. I argue that the distinctive gender-neutral and broad-coverage design of US family and medical leave policy lies in contestation over civil rights law. I summarized these findings in 3Streams and the Gender Policy Report.

Judicial power and democratic accountability in the policymaking process

My ongoing research project with Warren Snead explores how the politics of the contemporary Supreme Court affect democratic accountability in the policy process. This project includes three papers:

One article, published in The Forum, argues that the “major questions doctrine” exacerbates the prevalence of policy drift in federal governance.
The second paper examines the relationship between political parties and the Court, revisiting concerns about the “counter-majoritarian difficulty” in light of contemporary conditions of high inter-party competition and high intra-party cohesion.
The third paper, additionally co-authored with Robin Bayes, examines how the public attributes responsibility for Supreme Court decisions. Using a survey experiment, we show responsibility attribution to the president increases when respondents are shown a message emphasizing the latter’s role in nominating Justices.

Research on race and political behavior

Partisanship and racial politics in the Civil War

My co-authored article with Nathan Kalmoe, published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, examines the distinct motives of the mass public, activists, and elites in the U.S. Civil War. We argue that partisanship better explains white northerners’ war participation than their racial views, and suggest that parties can act as a potent force in mobilizing the mass public even when their preferences do not align with the goals or outcomes of a political conflict.

Immigration policy and politics

My co-authored article with Natalie Masuoka and Jane Junn, published in Political Research Quarterly, argues that rates of political participation among Asian Americans must be interpreted in light of the structural barriers that the large proportion of non-citizens in this group face. We summarized the findings at the LSE US Centre’s American Politics and Policy blog.

For a full list of publications, ongoing projects, and presentations, see my CV.