The Electoral College isn’t perfect. But that’s not enough of a reason to end it.

This week Electors met in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to formally elect Donald Trump as the 45th president of the US, despite the fact that his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million votes. In light of this disparity, is it now time to abolish the Electoral College? Kristin Kanthak argues that such a move could create a new set of problems in future elections. Instead, she writes, a better move would be to end the two ‘bonus’ Electors states have regardless of population

Election aversion means that leveling the electoral playing field may not be enough to convince women to run for office

Of the 535 seats in the 114th U.S. Congress, women hold 104, or just over 19 percent. While this is the greatest number of women to hold office in Congressional history, there is clearly a great deal of work to be done before equality is achieved. In new research, Kristin Kanthak and Jonathan Woon look at the reasons behind the continuing lack of representation of women in politics, even after efforts to level the electoral playing field. They find that women are much less willing to compete in elections than men, even if they are equally qualified and confident in their own abilities

Replication Data for: "Women's Political Ambition and the 2016 Election"

Online Appendix and data for Chapter 11 "Women's Political Ambition and the 2016 Election" in Good Reasons to Run

Replication data for: Women Don't Run? Election Aversion and Candidate Entry

To study gender differences in candidate emergence, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which we control the incentives potential candidates face, manipulate features of the electoral environment, and measure beliefs and preferences. We find that men and women are equally likely to volunteer when the representative is chosen randomly, but that women are less likely to become candidates when the representative is chosen by an election. This difference does not arise from disparities in abilities, risk aversion, or beliefs, but rather from the specific competitive and strategic context of campaigns and elections. Thus, we find evidence that women are election averse whereas men are not. Election aversion persists with variations in the electoral environment, disappearing only when campaigns are both costless and completely truthful

Coordination dilemmas and the valuation of women in the U.S. Senate: Reconsidering the critical mass problem

We offer a model of colleague valuation to illuminate the coordination challenges women legislators face. Our model predicts that women members' strategies depend upon whether they value women colleagues as much as men do, or instead value fellow women colleagues more highly. We test these predictions by analyzing leadership PAC campaign contributions U.S. Senators made to incumbent and challenger women during the 150th — 108th Congresses. We find that women Senators value fellow incumbent women colleagues less highly than do men Senators, whereas they value women challengers more highly than do men. Attaining a critical mass of women in legislatures is thus not sufficient for creating a successful working environment, but instead creates a coordination problem that supplants the previous token minority problem.colleague valuation; coordination problems; critical mass; gender and descriptive representation; U.S. Senate

And keep your enemies closer: Building reputations for facing electoral challenges

Rather than occupants of a position in an ideological policy space, we conceive of legislators as reputation builders – the reputation they think will best serve them in the next election. Our theory suggests that legislators will seek to undercut the efforts of the challenger they fear most – the one in the primary or the one in the general election. We test our reasoning by examining legislative cosponsorship patterns in the U.S. House of Representatives. We find evidence that legislators respond to information about their potential future electoral challenges by building reputations as loners, partisans, or dissidents. We also show that these choices have implications for an incumbent's prospects in the next election. Building the wrong reputation increases the strength of future challenges

Realizing Regional Resilience: Appalachian Collegiate Research Initiative

A cross-disciplinary group of University of Pittsburgh students will collaborate with the Fayette County Cultural Trust (FCCT) and other key stakeholders in developing a county-wide asset map and recommendations toward sustainable economic development. The project builds upon last year’s work to address the so-called “brain-drain” that greatly affects the Appalachian region, as the capacity of the region to remain economically competitive suffers with the outmigration of skilled human capital

Legislative Pivots, Presidential Powers, and Policy Stability

We offer a general model of policy making across presidential systems, exploring how checks and balances interact with legislative party systems to determine the responsiveness of political systems to electoral change. Using the two dominant theories of policy making in the United States as a starting point, we formally model the legislative process across presidential regimes characterized by a wide array of institutional designs, simulate expected policy behavior, and then test our models empirically with data capturing economic policy choices. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected], Oxford University Press.