Professor Shvetsova's research focuses on determinants of political strategy in the political process. Broadly stated, these include political institutions that define the “rules of the game” and societal characteristics that shape goals and opportunities of the participant players. Her work belongs in the fields of constitutional political economy and institutional design. She published in The American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Democracy, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Law and Society Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Constitutional Political Economy, Journal of Modern African Studies, and other peer-reviewed journals. She wrote Designing Federalism, co-authored with Mikhail Filippov and Peter Ordeshook (2004, Cambridge University Press) and Party System Change in Legislatures Worldwide (2013, Cambridge University Press) and Formal Modeling in Social Science (2019, University of Michigan Press), both co-authored with Carol Mershon. Professor Shvetsova teaches courses on Constitutional Political Economy, Comparative Constitutions, Comparative Government, Political Parties, Democratic Institutional Design, Formal Theory, and Political Economy of Health.
The study’s authors said their findings show why health professionals and not politicians should be determining public health policies.
The party’s promise to be all things to all people has hit a wall.
States led by Republican governors generally had higher COVID-19 case and death rates in 2020.
There’s no budget agreement because factions within the GOP hold contradictory policy positions on almost every issue. James Madison, an author of the Federalist Papers might have framed the problem this way: The party draws on votes from – and is accountable to – diverse groups of citizens with conflicting interests. That conflict within the Republicans’ voting base means that any policy they propose would hurt at least some of the members’ key constituents.
In an era of hyperaccountability, swift electoral punishment from any negatively impacted constituency is all but inevitable. Every vote and utterance by a political incumbent is scrutinized on Facebook and Twitter. The personal electoral costs of following the party line are prohibitive for enough to break down compromise within the party and preclude any significant policy change.