Dr. Mackenzie R. Dobson

Welcome! I am an incoming Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Notre Dame. I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Virginia. I am also a Research Affiliate with the Center for Effective Lawmaking and the Portman Center for Policy Solutions.

My published work appears in the British Journal of Political Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, and PS: Political Science & Politics.

I study American political institutions with a focus on legislatures, effective lawmaking, and representation. My research advances two interconnected lines of inquiry: first, I investigate how parties, legislative rules, and institutional capacity structure opportunities for bipartisan collaboration and effective lawmaking in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures; second, I examine how voters and the media evaluate legislators’ behavior and identities in ways that shape representation and accountability. I am a quantitative social scientist who regularly employs big data, machine learning, causal inference, social network analysis, and other computational approaches in my research.