Department of Political Science University of Missouri-Columbia College of Arts and Science

Sean C. Nicholson-Crotty

Sean C. Nicholson-CrottyOffice: 217 Professional Bldg.
Phone: 573-882-2840
Email: Nicholsoncrottys@missouri.edu
CV (pdf)

Sean Nicholson-Crotty (Assistant Professor) has been with the department since 2004. He received his Ph.D. in 2003 from Texas A&M University and specializes in American Political Institutions and Public Policy.

Research Statement
Generally speaking my research focuses on institutional influences on national and subnational policymaking. I am interested in institutions writ large, namely federalism, as well as institutions on a smaller scale, including most notably bureaucratic agencies.

These general theoretical and practical concerns are being pursued through several kinds of activities:

  1. A collaborative project with a variety of coauthors that investigates the character and impact of state government participation in the administrative rulemaking of federal agencies. It is part of a larger book-length project, which draws upon theories of collective action to understand when states choose to enter alliances with other states or the national government in pursuit of their policy goals.
  2. Individually authored work that seeks to understand the factors that determine the rapid diffusion of some public policies among the American States. Ideally, this paper will provide the anchor for a major grant application to fund research which catalogues all public policies that have diffused throughout the states since 1950. No such comprehensive list exists, which makes appropriate sampling impossible and limits the explanatory power of all policy diffusion studies to date.
  3. A project examining and challenging the assumptions employed in models of political competition in the U.S. Federal system. My work to date focuses on assumptions regarding the inability of governments to receive electoral credit for goods provided by other governments. Future work will examine the related assumption that voters accurately assign blame for taxation to the appropriate level of the federalist system.

Courses Taught

American Government
State Government
Criminal Justice Politics and Policy
Issues in Public Bureaucracy
Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations (graduate seminar)
American Political Institutions (graduate seminar)
Public Policy Theory (graduate seminar)

Representative Publications

Nicholson-Crotty, Sean. 2006. "Reassessing Madison's Diversity Hypothesis: The Case of Same Sex Marriage." Journal of Politics 68: 922-930.

Nicholson-Crotty, Sean, Nick Theobald, and B. Dan Wood. 2006. "Fiscal Federalism and Budgetary Tradeoffs in the American States." Political Research Quarterly 59: 313-321.