Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I am also a Faculty Affiliate with the Center for Effective Lawmaking and a Research Affiliate with the Portman Center for Policy Solutions.
My research centers on bipartisan collaboration, effective lawmaking, and political representation in American legislatures. I study how legislators build relationships across party lines, how those relationships shape policymaking and legislative success, and what these dynamics mean for democratic representation. To do so, I combine original data collection with large-scale observational data and employ quantitative and computational methods.
My published work appears in the British Journal of Political Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, and PS: Political Science & Politics.
Previously, I was a Visiting Scholar in the Representation and Politics in Legislatures Lab at the University of Notre Dame. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Virginia.
Publications
Published
Selective Reciprocity in Bipartisan Collaboration: How Majority Security Shapes Legislative Success
Mackenzie R. Dobson
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, 2026
Best Graduate Student Paper on State Politics, State Politics & Policy Conference 2025 · Best Poster Presentation on State Politics, State Politics & Policy Conference 2024 · CEL Working Paper Series
Abstract
Bipartisan collaboration is widely considered a reliable route to legislative success, largely based on evidence from the contemporary U.S. Congress. Yet most state legislatures are governed by majority parties that occupy a significant share of chamber seats, permitting them to advance legislation without minority-party support. I argue that bipartisan collaboration enhances effectiveness only when cross-party support is necessary to assemble a winning coalition. Using State Legislative Effectiveness Scores and original measures of coalition-building, I show that bipartisanship enhances effectiveness in competitive chambers but not under secure majorities.The Consequences of Elite Action Against Elections
Emily E. Anderson, Mackenzie R. Dobson, and Jeffrey J. Harden
British Journal of Political Science, 2025
Abstract
Do governing elites who engage in undemocratic practices face accountability? We investigate whether American state legislators who publicly acted against the 2020 presidential election outcome sustained meaningful sanctions in response. We theorize that accountability for undemocratic activities is selective — conspicuous, highly visible efforts to undermine democratic institutions face the strongest ramifications from voters, politicians, and parties. In contrast, less prominent actions elicit weaker responses. Our results evidence heterogeneity, with the strongest consequences targeting legislators who appeared at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and weaker penalties for lawmakers who engaged in other antagonism toward democracy.Electing Amateur Politicians Reduces Cross-Party Collaboration
Rachel Porter, Jeffrey J. Harden, and Mackenzie R. Dobson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025
Abstract
Public trust in democratic institutions has dropped to historic lows, prompting electorates in major democracies to turn to "amateur" politicians with the expectation that these political outsiders will cut through stalemates to deliver policy results. Amateurs are often seen as pragmatic "doers," but also uncompromising, a combination at odds with governing systems where legislative progress depends on cross-party coalitions. Using the US Congress as a critical case, we evaluate these competing expectations by linking over four decades of election data with 2.2 million bill (co)sponsorship records. We find that electing amateurs intensifies partisan divisions: Districts that send amateurs to Congress yield representatives who attract fewer opposing-party collaborators to their bills and less often support other-party legislation.I’m Coming Out! How Voter Discrimination Produces Effective LGBTQ Lawmakers
Jacob M. Lollis and Mackenzie R. Dobson
PS: Political Science & Politics, 2025
CEL Working Paper Series
Abstract
Are LGBTQ legislators effective lawmakers? We build on theories that link voter discrimination to legislative effectiveness by arguing that voters' biases against LGBTQ candidates narrow the candidate pool, leading to the election of only the most experienced and qualified LGBTQ candidates. As a result of this electoral selection effect, we expect that LGBTQ legislators will be more effective lawmakers than their non-LGBTQ counterparts. To test this, we combine data on state legislators' LGBTQ identification with their State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES). Our findings reveal that LGBTQ legislators are meaningfully more effective than non-LGBTQ legislators.Working Projects
Congressional Bipartisanship Scores by Member and Issue Area, 1983–2024
Mackenzie R. Dobson and Jacob M. Lollis
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CEL Working Paper Series
Abstract
Although bipartisanship is central to legislative behavior and often necessary for policymaking success, no centralized, publicly accessible dataset tracks legislators' propensity to offer and attract cross-party support across time and policy issue areas. We introduce a dataset of congressional bipartisanship scores for all members of the U.S. House and Senate from 1983 to 2024. Built from more than 2.4 million cosponsorship decisions on 147,669 bills, the dataset provides two complementary member-term measures. To facilitate broad reuse among academics, researchers, journalists, legislators, and the public, we make the dataset available through Harvard Dataverse and a corresponding R package, 'biparty.'Legislative Professionalism and Perceptions of White-Collar Government
Mackenzie R. Dobson, Jacob M. Lollis, Jeffrey J. Harden, and Justin H. Kirkland
Status: Conditionally Accepted, Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy
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Abstract
The professionalization of American state legislatures is among the most consequential modern institutional reforms in legislative politics. Yet a core tension persists: citizens disapprove of professionalized legislatures even though these chambers possess capacity-enhancing resources — such as staff support, higher salaries, and longer sessions — that may improve representation and policymaking. We offer one explanation for this disapproval: citizens perceive professional legislatures as dominated by legislators from white-collar backgrounds. Consequently, we argue that opposition to professionalism stems, in part, from a belief that white-collar legislators may not represent society's interests broadly.Congressional Attention to Abortion After Dobbs: How Representational and Electoral Incentives Selectively Shape Issue Attention
Jacob M. Lollis and Mackenzie R. Dobson
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Abstract
Landmark Supreme Court rulings can reshape policy, rights, and public opinion, but their effects on congressional issue attention remain less clear. We argue that such rulings do not uniformly reshape congressional attention; instead, they do so selectively, depending on how legislators' representational and electoral incentives align. We test this argument in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022). Using nearly 1.6M statements from U.S. House committee hearings, we leverage the leak of the draft opinion in a difference-in-differences design that estimates differential changes in abortion attention across party and gender.Bipartisan Campaigners Become Effective Lawmakers
Mackenzie R. Dobson, Craig Volden, and Alan E. Wiseman
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CEL Working Paper Series
Abstract
Strong evidence exists that effective lawmakers in one legislative term are very likely to be effective lawmakers in subsequent terms. But can voters glean insights into the likely lawmaking effectiveness of candidates even before they hold office? We examine the initial campaigns of more than 800 congressional Representatives and find that candidates who exhibited bipartisan traits during those campaigns became more effective lawmakers than those not identified as bipartisan.Policy Agendas and Effective Lawmaking in the American States
Andrew Ballard, Mackenzie R. Dobson, Martín Gandur, Craig Volden, and Alan E. Wiseman
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Abstract
The politics of public policymaking varies not only across institutions and over time but also across different issue areas. We leverage transformer-based text classification to accurately assign more than 1.6 million state bills to 18 different policy areas. We then introduce Issue-Specific State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (ISLES), enabling systematic, cross-state comparisons of lawmaking effectiveness by members of state legislatures at the issue level for 2009–2018, across 48 states.Building Effective Coalitions in the American States
Mackenzie R. Dobson
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CEL Working Paper Series
Abstract
Bipartisan collaboration is widely considered a reliable route to legislative success, largely based on evidence from the contemporary U.S. Congress. Yet most state legislatures are governed by majority parties that occupy a significant share of chamber seats, permitting them to advance legislation without minority-party support. I argue that bipartisan collaboration enhances effectiveness only when cross-party support is necessary to assemble a winning coalition. Using State Legislative Effectiveness Scores and original measures of coalition-building, I show that bipartisanship enhances effectiveness in competitive chambers but not under secure majorities.Does Training Legislators Improve Policymaking?
Mackenzie R. Dobson, Emma Schroeder, Daniel M. Butler, James M. Curry, Thad Kousser, and Jeffrey J. Harden
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Abstract
Research on legislative behavior implies that manipulating institutional design and/or lawmaker characteristics to improve performance would pose practical difficulties and unpredictable consequences. We examine the efficacy of a more direct intervention on policymaking skill: legislator training. We theorize that educating politicians enhances lawmaking success via learning and network-based pathways. We test our expectations with two complementary research designs from American state legislatures. Our results indicate precisely-estimated negligible effects; returns to training do not appear in several measures of legislative success. We conclude that structural constraints overshadow individual talent in policymaking. The health of statehouse democracy depends more on institutional incentives than human capital development.Procedural Rights and Minority Party Influence in American Legislatures
Géssica de Frietas, James M. Curry, and Mackenzie R. Dobson
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Performative Bipartisanship: Symbolic Cross-Party Cooperation in an Era of Insecure Majorities
Mackenzie R. Dobson and Jacob M. Lollis
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Timing Bipartisanship: Cross-Party Cooperation in a Polarized Congress
Mackenzie R. Dobson and Jacob M. Lollis
Book project
Status: Manuscript in preparation
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Data, Software, & Public Projects
I develop original datasets, open-source software, and interactive public tools for broad reuse by scholars, journalists, legislators, and the public. Replication materials for published papers are linked with each paper above.
Dobson & Lollis (2026) · R package v0.1.0 · MIT license
biparty is an R package providing Congressional Bipartisanship Scores (CBS) for every member of the U.S. House and Senate across the 98th through 118th Congresses (1983–2024). The package includes two datasets — aggregate.cbs and issue.area.cbs — and a suite of functions for member lookup, ranking, trend analysis, issue-area filtering, and visualization. Scores capture two complementary dimensions of cross-party behavior: attract (the share of out-party original cosponsors drawn to a member’s own bills) and offer (the share of a member’s cosponsorships directed toward out-party-sponsored bills). Built from 2.4 million cosponsorship decisions on 147,669 bills, the dataset covers 2,056 unique legislators and 11,549 member-term observations.
Working paper (PDF) R documentation
Dobson (2026) · Harvard Dataverse · State Politics & Policy Quarterly
The State Legislative Bipartisanship Scores (SLBS) provide original measures of bipartisan collaboration for 10,817 legislators serving in 43 U.S. state legislatures between 2009 and 2018. Comprising 27,129 legislator-term observations, the dataset captures two complementary dimensions of bipartisan engagement: the extent to which legislators support bills introduced by members of the opposite party and the extent to which they attract support from across party lines on their own legislation.
Additional projects will be listed here as they are released.