Political Science

Berkley Ponce, berkley_ponce1@baylor.edu
Baylor University, with Dr. Jessica Trounstine

The Role of Information in Generating Split State Legislatures
Over the last several decades, political polarization has become a fact of political life in the United States. Yet, wecontinue to witness state legislatures that are divided between the two parties. While an abundance of literature exists on this phenomenon at the national level, the state-level literature exploring the factors that influence splitting is sparse. Scholars have long argued that split legislative control, where a state's upper and lower house are controlled by different parties, can be generated by purposeful ticket splitting among voters. However, I contend that this behavior requires agreat deal of information about the political environment. I hypothesize that an increase in the number of newspaper reporters in a state will lead to an increase in the likelihood that a state will have a split legislature. I use the number ofnews reporters in a state as a proxy for voters' access to information. My results indicate that the number of local reporters is positively correlated with the likelihood that the state will have a split legislature. These findings demonstrate theimportant role official news sources play in the partisan composition of state governments. Future studies should examine the content and quantity of information these reporters disseminate to develop a deeper understanding of what kind of information might influence the outcome of a split state legislature.
 

Brianna Colon, bcolon@trinity.edu
Trinity University, with Austin Bussing

How Do Institutional Rules Affect Legislative Oversight of the Executive Branch?
In a time of political turmoil and growing fears of the seemingly ever-expanding power of the Executive Branch of the United States government, the checks-and-balances system has been at the forefront of many political conversations. Oversight of the executive branch by the legislative branch is often seen as a public good and thus comes with the difficulties associated with the collective action problem (whereby members can reap the benefits of someone else engaging in oversight and are not incentivized to do so themselves). As such, this project aims to explore how Congressional Committees have engaged in oversight activities, document changes in the amount and nature of those oversight activities and answer the question of how institutional rules (and changes to those rules) affect the oversight activities engaged in by the legislative branch. To do this, we collected data using the published reports of various Congressional Committees going back to 1995—with particular focus on oversight hearings—and documented whether the hearings were completely jointly with another committee and/or whether the hearings took place in Washington, D.C. or were done elsewhere (known as a field hearing). 
 

Melissa Meredith, mmeredith94@outlook.com
Montana State University, with Dr. J. Mitchell Vaterlausg

What is Congress Doing to Protect Our Kids?
The question of how federal lawmakers and witnesses frame the issue of youth and social media use in congressional hearings is the topic of our research. The use of social media has been tangentially linked to mental health problems, academic failure, cyber bullying, suicide, and human trafficking. Future longitudinal research is needed to examine impacts on youth and there is an opportunity to explore the impacts of social media policy implemented in other countries and apply it here in the United States.