On October 28-29, 2016, the Anxieties of Democracy program’s Working Group on Institutions convened its first conference at Princeton University. The conference was generously sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs’ Center for the Study of Democratic Politics and Princeton University’s Department of Politics.

The conference brought our Working Group on Institutions’ members into conversation with a diverse array of young scholars and experts, who presented new research and together tested the Working Group’s principal axes of investigation regarding the capacity and performance of democratic institutions.

The conference was organized by the Working Group’s co-chairs: Frances Lee, Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, and Nolan McCarty, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Conference participants authored and examined papers on the following themes:

Party Structure and the Political System

Sam Rosenfeld
Assistant Professor of Government, Hamilton College

Daniel Schlozman
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University

The Influence of Business on American Democracy

Anthony Chen*
Associate Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University

Cathie Jo Martin
Professor of Political Science, Boston University

The Influence of Protest

Daniel Gillion*
Presidential Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Megan Ming Francis
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Washington

Lobbying Inequality and American Governance

Lee Drutman
Senior Fellow: Program on Political Reform, New America

Matthew Grossmann*
Associate Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University
Director, Institute for Public Policy and Social Research

Tim LaPira
Associate Professor of Political Science, James Madison University

Dara Strolovitch
Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Princeton University

Mining Data to Measure Political Sophistication

Ken Benoit
Professor of Political Science Research Methodology, London School of Economics

Burt Monroe
Professor of Political Science, Penn State University

Kevin Munger
PhD Candidate in Politics, New York University

Arthur Spirling*
Associate Professor of Politics and Data Science, New York University

Legislative Capacity in the Contemporary Congress

R. Douglas Arnold
William Church Osborn Professor of Public Affairs, Princeton University

James Curry
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Utah

Frances Lee*
Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland

Public Policy & Political Dysfunction

Sarah Binder
Professor of Political Science, George Washington University

Claire Leavitt
PhD Candidate in American Politics, Cornell University

Suzanne Mettler*
Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions, Cornell University

The Impact of Polarization on Administration

Gillian Metzger*
Stanley H. Fuld Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

David Spence
Professor of Law, Politics & Regulation, University of Texas at Austin

Regular Order in Congress

Lee Drutman
Senior Fellow: Program on Political Reform, New America

Peter Hanson
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Grinnell College

Mark Schmitt*
Director: Program on Political Reform, New America

Responsiveness to the Donorate

Brandice Canes-Wrone*
Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

Charles Stewart III*
Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Polarization and Congressional Dysfunction

Dan Carpenter*
Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Harvard University
Director of Social Research, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

Nolan McCarty*
Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Comparative Perspectives on American Anxieties

Henry Farrell
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University

Ira Katznelson
Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University
President, Social Science Research Council

Cathie Jo Martin
Professor of Political Science, Boston University

David Samuels*
Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota

*Member, Working Group on Institutions