Ryan J. Vander Wielen
Assistant Professor

Personal Website – http://unix.temple.edu/~rvwielen/

Phone: 215.204.1466
E-mail: ryan.vanderwielen@temple.edu

Ryan J. Vander Wielen received both his B.M. in music (classical guitar performance) and B.A. in government from Lawrence University in 2001. He received his M.A. (2003) and Ph.D. (2006) in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a fellow in the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. His research interests span the study of American political institutions, with a particular emphasis on U.S. congressional politics. His approach to research tends to favor quantitative analysis of theoretical models. He is currently researching various aspects of U.S. congressional conference committees, including the ideological composition of conferences, their policy implications, and the rationale for their use. He is also conducting research exploring how Senators change their behavior over the course of their terms using item response theory, a project examining how changes in the House’s agenda have influenced party voting across time, and a project exploring the influence that Congress has upon the structure of bureaucratic institutions by analyzing congressional voting behavior.

Three most recent publications

"Shirking in the Contemporary Congress: A Reappraisal." Political Analysis (Spring, 2004) 12(2): 176-179. With Jamie Carson, Michael Crespin, and Jeffery Jenkins.

The American Congress, 4th ed. 2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. With Jason M. Roberts and Steven S. Smith.

“Judging Statutes: Interpretive (or Contextual) Regimes.” Forthcoming, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (Symposium). With Nancy Staudt, Lee Epstein, Peter J. Wiedenbeck, and Rene Lindstädt.