I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and also teach in the college's Policy Studies program.   I received my B.A. in 1989 from the University of Chicago and my M.A. and Ph.D. in 1997 and 2000, respectively, from Harvard University's Department of Government . From 1996 to 1999, I served as Assistant Head Tutor in the undergraduate tutorial office for the Harvard Government Department and from 1997 to 2000 as Assistant Senior Tutor in one of Harvard's undergraduate residential houses (indeed, its best!), Lowell House.

My first book, Managing the President's Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation, examines the formulation and success of presidents' legislative programs in the postwar era from an informational transaction costs vantage. It was published by Princeton University Press and was awarded the American Political Science Association's Neustadt Prize as best book on the presidency published in 2002. My second book, The New Imperial Presidency (University of Michigan Press), examines the post-Watergate growth of executive authority, not least in the "global war on terror," and was described by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as "a grand sequel for my own The Imperial Presidency." I have edited two volumes on contemporary presidential politics, and am currently working on two major projects examining presidents' ongoing efforts to control the executive bureaucracy.

For descriptions of and links to this and other research, published and ongoing, please see here. You may also find my commentary on ongoing political events and their relation to political science research on The Monkey Cage blog.

From 1989-96 I worked in state and local politics -- as a staffer in the Massachusetts Senate and as an elected Town Councillor in my hometown of Watertown, Massachusetts.  In 2004-05 I was a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and from 2007-09 I was a visiting professor at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (home of the Canaries!) In late fall of 2011 I will be a visiting professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques ("Sciences-Po") at the University of Lyon, France.



For a full C.V., see here.   Or you can skip to the heart of my psyche at the homepage of the Boston Red Sox , where we never again have to wait to next year.  Yankees fans are referred elsewhere.)