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James Snyder, Jr., Named Professor of Government at Harvard
Cambridge, Mass. - July 9, 2010 - James M. Snyder, Jr., whose research has examined how well Congress represents the economic, political, and social values of the American electorate, has been named professor of government at Harvard University, effective July 1, 2010.
Snyder was previously the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he had been a member of the faculty since 1992.
"An enormously productive scholar, Professor Snyder is among the nation's most influential political scientists," says Stephen Kosslyn, dean of social science in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "His work has had a powerful and profound impact on his profession. He is also often praised for his collegiality: His data sets are widely available and widely used by political scientists, economists, and other social scientists."
Snyder's research concerns the link between democratic representation and the political economy of the United States. He studies how well the representative institutions of American government, especially Congress, represent the economic interests, political beliefs, and social values of the electorate.
Snyder's detailed analysis of interest groups' influence in American politics has addressed the "rate of return" on campaign contributions. His studies have combined finance theory and systematic analysis of the behavior of campaign contributors and members of Congress to reach the surprising conclusion that campaign contributions do not pull public policy away from the wishes of voters.
Snyder has also examined coalition-building in complex settings. Rejecting more simplistic models, he has shown that legislative bargaining usually consists of decision-making across multiple dimensions. His recent work has also developed measures of voter preferences and coalitions in the U.S. electorate.
Snyder's work is underpinned by ambitious and creative data collection. He has developed tools for measuring governmental representation in the U.S., and especially methodologies for studying the behavior of representatives. In recent years he has developed a comprehensive archive of federal and state elections and used this dataset to better understand some of the most basic factors driving American electoral politics, such as the partisanship of the electorate, the advantages enjoyed by officeholders, and the reach of the American news media.
Snyder earned a B.A. in economics from Duke University in 1981 and a Ph.D. in economics from the California Institute of Technology in 1985. He was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago from 1985 to 1992. At MIT he was associate professor of political science from 1992 to 1997, professor of political science from 1997 to 1998, and professor of political science and of economics from 1998 to 2001. He was named the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor in 2001.
Snyder was a distinguished visitor at the London School of Economics in 2003, 2004, and 2006, and has continued as a visiting research associate at LSE since 2006. He has also been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 2006. He has served on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Economics and Politics, and Business and Politics.
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