Frances E. Lee

Lee has contributed major work in three areas. In Insecure Majorities (2016), she argues that, since around 1980, intensifying party competition for control of Congress has made governing especially difficult: The congressional parties audition for the next election rather than compromise to solve problems. In Beyond Ideology (2009), she showed using roll calls that partisan battles for power, not just ideological disagreements--there is a difference--have motored conflict in Congress. In Sizing Up the Senate (coauthored 1999) and associated articles, she supplied leading work on the policy effects of the Senate's two-members-per-state apportionment.