Published Work

Does Global Warming Increase Public Concern About Climate Change? (Journal of Politics, forthcoming)

Scholars have not determined whether exposure to a changing climate influences public concern about climate change. In this paper, we examine the link between cli- mate change and public opinion using a comprehensive index of the mass public’s latent concern about climate change in each state from 1999-2017. The index aggregates data from over 400,000 survey respondents in 170 polls. These new estimates of state-level climate concern enable us to exploit geographic variation in locally experienced cli- mate changes over an extended time period. We show that climate concern peaked in 2000 and again in 2017. At the national level, trends in public opinion clearly mirror trends in temperature. Moreover, climate concern is modestly responsive to changes in state-level temperatures. Overall, our results suggest that continued increases in temperature are likely to cause public concern about climate change to grow in the future. But a warming climate, on its own, is unlikely to yield a consensus in the mass public about the threat posed by climate change.

Congress as Theatre: How Advocates Use Ambiguity for Political Advantage (Journal of Public Policy, forthcoming)

Ambiguity – the capacity to have multiple meanings – is endemic to politics. Ambiguity creates political opportunities, structures debates and provides leeway for political entrepreneurs to advance their interests. I use the 2012 passage and 2014 rollback of reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program to show how ambiguity enables political entrepreneurship. In this puzzling case, Congress enacted and rolled back changes that threatened to impose politically unpalatable costs. Using semi-structured interviews and congressional testimony, I show how political entrepreneurs engaged with ambiguity in the buildup to the reforms’ passage. They used information strategically to interpret problems, solutions, rules, and goals; shape legislators’ perceptions of the reforms’ political implications; and adapt their arguments to the policy windows that opened. The case shows that ambiguity facilitates policy reform, but the direction of change depends on the priorities that are salient when a policy window opens and on the interests of political entrepreneurs.

Work in Progress

Controlling the Regulators: How Party Control of Government Affects Environmental Enforcement in the 21st Century

In an increasingly polarized political environment, the consequences of state elections for policy have increased in magnitude. But most knowledge about state policy respon- siveness to the parties’ programs comes from studies of legislative outputs, which make up only a fraction of the work of government. How does party control of government influence policy implementation, enforcement, and bureaucratic outputs? This ques- tion is particularly important in the environmental policy area, wherein scholars have highlighted political influence over administrative policy at the federal level and states have a great deal of leeway within a national regulatory framework. I use the case of the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) Title V permitting program to assess the parties’ influence over state-level regulatory enforcement. I apply a regression discontinuity design to assess whether Republican control of state houses and governors’ mansions causes a change in the number of enforcement actions state agencies report between 2000 and 2017. The findings suggest that governors and state legislatures influence enforcement, albeit through different channels. The paper provides new evidence of political influence over administrative policy, and for partisan influence in environmental politics..

Backyard Voices: How Sense of Place Shapes Views of Large-Scale Energy Transmission Infrastructure (Under Review)

Expanding U.S. energy infrastructure capacity is inevitable, but reconfiguring or expanding the nation’s transmission infrastructure requires the engagement and guidance of the American public. It is thus critical to understand public perceptions of transmission infrastructure. While scholars have assessed the drivers of public views of electricity generation infrastructure, attention to transmission infrastructure has been limited. Moreover, perceived socioeconomic impacts drive public attitudes about energy generation facilities, but questions remain about what shapes these perceptions. We apply a framework rooted in social psychology to explain how the scale of place attachments and the symbolic meanings underlying place attachments shape residents’ interpretations and evaluations of proposed projects as a threat or an opportunity. We draw from in-depth interviews with public officials, residents, landowners, and stakeholders in communities along the routes of two proposed energy transmission projects in the American Midwest.