About

Professor Beth A. Rosenson received her M.A. in Political Science from Yale University in 1989 and her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a journalist in the Boston area covering politics, education, and crime. Her research and teaching interests focus on political ethics and corruption, legislative behavior, media and politics, comparative state politics, and American political development. The central theme of her research is understanding democratic accountability, particularly in relation to legislators, with a special emphasis on how political reform measures and the media influence and constrain legislative behavior. Her book, Shadowlands of Conduct: Ethics and State Politics (Georgetown University Press, 2005), explores the enactment and limitations of conflict of interest laws for legislators in American states over the past fifty years. Professor Rosenson's scholarly work has been published in various academic journals, including Legislative Studies Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Public Choice, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly. Beyond her book, she has published research on media bias and media coverage of state legislatures, the effects of conflict of interest laws, campaign finance laws, and the initiative process, as well as studies on privately sponsored Congressional travel and Congressional support for Israel. Her current projects include a book manuscript analyzing the content and partisanship of House ethics investigations from 1798 to 2011, along with journal article manuscripts on media coverage of presidential candidate gaffes and newspaper endorsements of presidential candidates.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• Economics
• Economic history
• Development economics
• History
• Law and economics
• Business
• Philosophy
• International trade
• Economy

Selected publications

• Student Papers on Political Courage

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-04-04

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Data for 2019, 2020, 2021 student papers: gender of student, gender of politician, year (2019, 2020, 2021), name of politician

  PublisherDOI

• Biden's Policy Toward Israel

  Harvard Dataverse · 2026-01-03

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Contained is the dataset and explanation of variables/coding for the data analysis.

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond a “Partisan-Ethics-Wars” Interpretation of Congressional Ethics Investigations: The Cases of James Wright, Newt Gingrich, and Tom DeLay

  Journal of Policy History · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract This article examines three high-profile House ethics cases involving former Speakers James Wright (1988–1989) and Newt Gingrich (1994–1997) and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (1997–2004). The analysis of the filing and disposition of charges in the three cases provides some evidence for the “politics-by-other-means” or “partisan-ethics-wars” framework that is sometimes used to evaluate ethics enforcement in Congress. However, the analysis also provides evidence of bipartisan agreement both in the ethics committee and on the floor. The article highlights the areas of bipartisan consensus and the principles behind that consensus. In paying attention to the content of the cases, it also highlights an important change in ethics investigations over time, specifically an increase in “political gain” cases. The article thus calls attention to aspects of House ethics investigations that are undervalued and inadequately addressed by the partisan-ethics-wars framework.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The US Impact on Qatar's Foreign Policy During the Gulf Crisis

  Middle East Policy · 2022 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • International trade

  Abstract This article explains the Gulf diplomatic crisis and its repercussions by tracing its various stages. It also analyzes the inconsistency of US policy during the Trump administration toward this crisis and how this taught Qatar not to rely entirely on the United States to achieve security. These challenges pushed Qatar to diversify its international alliances and to create a rapprochement with countries in the region, such as Turkey, to achieve military security. Qatar's status as an energy provider to Asia and an alternative to Russian oil and gas, along with its soft power, also strengthened its strategic position. Eventually, the article explains, Qatar was able to strengthen its relationship with the United States once the Biden administration took power. The study concludes that Qatar has become a model for small countries in the region.

  PublisherDOI

• #NeverTrump Conservatives and the Corruption of Donald Trump

  2020-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Explainer: The Trumps’ conflict of interest issues

  2017-04-19

  preprint1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Media Coverage of State Legislatures: Negative, Neutral, or Positive?*

  Social Science Quarterly · 2015-11-01 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Objective To evaluate how neutral newspapers are in their coverage of state legislatures and whether the tone of this coverage is affected by the partisan orientation of the newspaper's owners and by the focus of the stories. Methods I examine hard news stories in four newspapers from two states, during April 2005, to assess the tone of coverage (positive, neutral, or negative) of their state legislatures and test whether tone varies with owner partisanship and focus of the particular news story on the whole legislature or individual legislators. Results The majority of coverage (81 percent) is neutral in tone. There is no difference in tone when the newspaper's owners share the same partisan orientation as the state legislature compared to when they have a different partisan orientation. There is no difference in tone when the focus of the story is on the whole legislature instead of on individual legislators. Conclusion Contrary to scholarship that suggests the media is negative toward political institutions (including legislatures), or partisan in its coverage, tone is largely neutral. When covering state legislatures, newspaper reporters adhere for the most part to the professional standard of objectivity or neutrality.

  PublisherDOI

• Ethics Evolving

  Public Integrity · 2014-07-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article presents a new typology for classifying the 163 ethics investigations in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1798 to 2011. It shows the evolution and social construction of what is deemed politically unethical in the United States. It reveals that some types of infractions—such as those pertaining to "insult" and violations of the gag rule on discussion of slavery—are no longer subject to investigation. Financial gain was consistently the basis of between one- and two-thirds of all cases in each period examined, while cases pertaining to sexual gain and political gain have increased in frequency over time. The changing content of the cases investigated reflects contemporaneous political and social tensions and is not merely a manifestation of partisan wrangling.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of Political Reform Measures on Perceptions of Corruption

  Election Law Journal Rules Politics and Policy · 2009-03-01 · 38 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• U.S. Senators’ Support for Israel Examined Through Sponsorship/Cosponsorship Decisions, 1993-2002: The Influence of Elite and Constituent Factors

  Foreign Policy Analysis · 2009-01-01 · 33 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper explores Senate policy-making toward Israel from 1993–2002. Previous scholarship suggests that congressional policymaking toward Israel is heavily influenced by the ethnic and religious identification of both legislators and their constituents, not simply by legislators' abstract perceptions of the national interest. Other literature de-emphasizes the likelihood that constituent interests will affect Congressional foreign policy making. We test for an impact of both elite and constituent characteristics on Congressional support for Israel, using sponsorship–cosponsorship decisions in the 103rd–107th Congresses. Israel's strongest supporters in this period are shown to be Jewish, conservative, Republican, and evangelical senators. Notably, elite characteristics (partisanship, ideology, and religion) matter more than constituency factors, with the exception of the Jewish population in senators' home states. While Jewish and conservative senators have long been vocal supporters of Israel, evangelical and Republican senators have not historically taken such a strong pro-Israel stance; hence they are relatively new additions to the active pro-Israel coalition. Thus the pro-Israel coalition shows both continuity and change as it has broadened to include new partners. However, we suggest that this coalition is not necessarily stable and may undergo further evolution in the future.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nouf Aljassar

  Kuwait University

  4 shared

• Kenneth D. Wald

  2 shared

• Elizabeth A. Oldmixon

  University of North Texas

  2 shared

• David D. Clark

  2 shared

• Stephen J. Clark

  Babraham Institute

  1 shared

• James P. Scheetz

  1 shared

• Andrew Potter

  1 shared

• Oonagh Gay

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2000

• M.A., Political Science

  Yale University

  1991

• B.A., Government Major, Economics Minor

  Wesleyan University

  1987