I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois.

I study political institutions with an emphasis on the strategic elements of separation of powers. My research demonstrates the value of taking a broader view when studying the division of decision-making authority: checks and balances create expectations between institutions that can be fully understood only by identifying their strategic interactions.

My first research program focused on how constitutional requirements for interbranch negotiations influence U.S. House members’ choices about how to organize their chamber, and who, in the House, has the authority to make policy decisions. In a second line of work, I study how legislators strategically adjust their behavior when the executive wields the power to veto (parts of) legislation, at the state level in the U.S., and in other systems with dispersed and divided authority.