D. Roderick Kiewiet

Professor of Political Science

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Research interests

American politics, public policy, and Russian politics.

Research Statement

I am currently working on a number of problems, but they are pretty disparate so that it is difficult to discern an underlying theme connecting them. "Rationality and the Recall," with Mike Alvarez, is a study of individual rationality and voter strategy in the 2003 California recall election. As is true of much of my previous work, it represents an attempt to bring some empirical analysis to bear on questions informed by the central concerns of formal political theory. Our research on the 2003 recall has culminated in a number of other papers, some of which have been published, some still in the pipeline.

Sarah Hill, a graduate student in our Division, is collaborating with me in a study of the impact of Serrano-inspired court decisions on the level and distribution of public school funding across the United States during the past 30 years. I am also trying to make some headway in understanding why parliaments throughout the world vary so much in how many members they have--a topic that has received attention from Rousseau, Madison, and George Stigler. They made very little progress on this problem, and I have not gotten very far, either. What is really needed here is what we have needed since Pitkin wrote her landmark book, The Concept of Representation, and that is better theorizing as to just exactly what representation is.

Publications

Legislatures: Comparative Perspectives on Representative Assemblies, co-edited with Gerhard Loewenberg and Peverill Squire. 2002. University of Michigan Press.

"Are the Communists Dying Out in Russia?" with Mikhail Myagkov. 2002. Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 35: 39-50.

Stealing the Initiative: How State Government Responds to Direct Democracy, with Elisabeth R. Gerber, Arthur Lupia, and Mathew D. McCubbins. 2000. Prentice Hall.

"Economic Retrospective Voting and Incentives for Policymaking." 2000. Electoral Studies 19:427-44.

"Twenty-five Years After Kramer: An Assessment of Economic Retrospective Voting Based Upon Improved Estimates on Income and Unemployment," with Michael Udell. 1998. Economic and Politics 10:219-48.