Mackenzie R. Dobson

Hello! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Government at the University of Virginia and a Visiting Scholar in the Representation and Politics in Legislatures Lab at the University of Notre Dame.

I study American political institutions with broad interests in legislative behavior, collaboration, representation, and institutional power. My research examines how lawmakers form coalitions, navigate partisan divisions, and respond to the incentives embedded in institutional structures. I’m especially interested in the conditions that shape bipartisan cooperation and legislative effectiveness across Congress and the U.S. states. Methodologically, I draw on quantitative approaches, social network analysis, and computational tools to study lawmaking in diverse political environments.

My dissertation, Asymmetric Bipartisanship: Conditional Cooperation and the Limits of Legislative Reciprocity, examines how power asymmetries shape the structure, strategy, and consequences of bipartisan collaboration in U.S. state legislatures.