Research
Legislative Politics
I research the role of parties and interest group lobbyists in Congress and the American state legislatures.
Health Policy
I have written about how lobbying from the American health care industry makes health care more expensive. I have also written first-person accounts of the Congressional effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Peer Reviewed Research
7. "Laboratories of Politics: There is Bottom-Up Diffusion of Attention in the American Federal System"Garlick, Alex (2023)Political Research Quarterly 76 (1), 29-43 [html | dataverse | ungated with appendix]
6. "Interest group lobbying and partisan polarization in the United States: 1999–2016"Garlick, Alex (2022)Political Science Research and Methods 10 (3), 488-506[html | dataverse | appendix | ungated]
5. "The Battle Over Health Care"Garlick, Alex (2022)In Under the Iron Dome, edited by Herrnson, P; Campbell, C.; Dulio, D.[html | ungated]
4. "Automated estimates of state interest group lobbying populations"Garlick, Alex and John Cluverius (2020)Interest Groups & Advocacy 9 (3), 396-409[html | dataverse | ungated with appendix]
3. "Mercy and Malice: An Inside View of the Push to Repeal and Replace Obamacare"Garlick, Alex (2018)PS: Political Science & Politics 51 (2), 491-493[html | ungated]
2. "National Policies, Agendas, and Polarization in American State Legislatures: 2011 to 2014"Garlick, Alex (2017)American Politics Research 45 (6), 939 - 979[html | ungated]
1. "'The Letter after Your Name' Party Labels on Virginia Ballots"Garlick, Alex (2015)State Politics & Policy Quarterly 15 (2), 147-170[html | dataverse | ungated | appendix]
Dissertation"Interest groups, lobbying and polarization in the United States"Garlick, Alex (2016)UPenn Dissertation Repository[html | ungated]
Book Reviews
3. "The legacy of lobbying on the Affordable Care Act"
Garlick, Alex (2023)Interest Groups & Advocacy [html | ungated]Books reviewed: Stealth Lobbying by Amy McKay, Ten Year War by Jonathan Cohn, The Committee by Bryan Marshall and Bruce Wolpe2. "Interest groups and the evolution of gun and racial politics in the USA"Garlick, Alex (2021)Interest Groups & Advocacy 10 (1), 91-94[html | ungated]Books reviewed: The Gun Gap by Mark Joslyn, Warped Narratives by Melissa Merry
1. "A new wave of pluralism in the study of environmental policy in the USA"Garlick, Alex (2020)Interest Groups & Advocacy 9 (2), 244-247[html | ungated]Books reviewed: Short Circuiting Policy by Leah Stokes, Falter by Bill McKibben, California Greenin' by David Vogel
Works in Progress
Please find links to publicly accessible versions of the data I use in my research, and also details on works in progress. I can share drafts of in-progress work via email.
Datasets
Built on top of the legacy OpenStates data for all 50 states from ~2009-2018, this contains over one million observations of state legislation to measure how far it progressed in the bicameral legislative process. It includes an original coding scheme.
This uses a dictionary method (keyword searches of LexisNexis State Capital Universe) to identify state legislation by 22 policy areas dating back to 1991. It demonstrates high precision (placing bills into the correct category), and consistent recall over time.
This uses an automated method to estimate the policy sector of the interest groups in the National Institute for Money in State Politics database of groups registered to lobby in the 50 states from 2006-2018.
Working Papers
Legislative Capacity, Term Limits, and Group Involvement: This paper investigates how a reduction in staff changed how interest groups helped California legislators write bills in 1990 (with Mary Kroeger, UNC-Chapel Hill and Paige Pellaton, U.California-Davis).
Measuring American State Legislative Policy Agendas Using Machine Learning: This paper uses a machine learning method to code the universe of state legislation since about 2009 by policy area (with Ethan Dee, U. Illinois).
Lobbying Impacts Policy: This review explores a renaissance in the study of interest groups over the past decade (with Heath Brown, CUNY-John Jay and Wiebke Junk, U. Copenhagen).