I am Professor of Public Policy and Politics at the University of Virginia, where I previously served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Acting Dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. I am also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. I previously held faculty positions at Yale University and UCLA.  I received both my PhD (political science) and MPP from the University of California at Berkeley.  

My research examines the politics of U.S. public policymaking, with a substantive focus on health policy, fiscal politics, and the welfare state. I am currently writing a book (with Alan S. Gerber) entitled Unhealthy Politics: Professional Authority, Partisan Polarization, and the Battle Over Evidence-Based Medicine (under advanced contract with Princeton University Press). This project is supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator's Award in Health Policy Research (press release) and the Smith Richardson Foundation. A recent Health Affairs article of ours is here 

My edited book (with Jeffery A. Jenkins) Living Legislation: Durability, Change and the Politics of American Lawmaking was published in 2012 by University of Chicago Press.

My other books include: Promoting the General Welfare: New Perspectives on Government Performance (co-edited with Alan S. Gerber, Brookings Institution Press, 2006) and Putting Trust in the U.S. Budget: Federal Trust Funds and the Politics of Commitment (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

My essays have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Governance, P.S., Policy Sciences, Health Affairs, Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law, Social Service Review, and in many edited volumes.