Jeffery A. Jenkins

Jeffery A. Jenkins holds appointments as professor of public policy, political science, and law at the USC Gould School of Law and Provost Professor of Political Science, Public Policy, and Law, Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise, Director of the Bedrosian Center, and Director of the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. He previously held tenure-stream positions at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University, and Michigan State University.

His research interests include American political institutions and development (with a special emphasis on Congress and political parties), lawmaking, separation-of-powers, and political economy. Much of his work takes a positive political theory (or rational choice) approach, and examines how political actors pursue their interests while being constrained by formal and informal institutional arrangements. His current work involves papers on the ideological content of federal lawmaking in the post-war era and book projects on how civil rights policy has been dealt with in Congress over time and how the Republican Party evolved in the South after the Civil War.

Jenkins holds a PhD in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MS in mathematical methods for the social sciences from Northwestern University. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and Michigan State University.

He currently serves as the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Politics.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2018
Re: Sam Erman

Sam Erman published the op-ed, "Devastation Without Representation in Puerto Rico" on colonial oppression of the territory. Under the Foraker Act of 1900, Puerto Ricans received no federal voting power, no U.S. citizenship and no guarantee of eventual statehood. This led to a gap between purported ideals of the United States and its treatment of Puerto Rico, Erman wrote."The 120-year epic tragedy of Puerto Rico can be told as a tale of two hurricanes. The one fresh in our memory is Maria, which reached Puerto Rico a year ago. The other was hurricane San Ciriaco in 1899, which devastated the island just after it became part of the United States. on colonial oppression of Puerto Rico."

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
July, 2018

"The Certification Paradox", The Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardization Law, Vol. 2.

Michael Simkovic
July, 2018

"Luck or Skill? Mutual Funds that Borrow," International Conference on Economic Modeling 2018, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy.

Thomas D. Lyon
June, 2018

"The Productivity of Wh- Prompts in Child Forensic Interviews" (with Elizabeth C. Ahern, Samantha J. Andrews & Stacia N. Stolzenberg), Journal of Interpersonal Violence 33 (2018): 2007.