About

Ryan Vander Wielen is a Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis and a B.A. in Government from Lawrence University. His research and teaching interests encompass American political institutions, political decision-making, quantitative methodology, and formal modeling. Vander Wielen's work primarily examines how legislators strategically navigate electoral circumstances and investigates whether voters hold elected representatives accountable for their behavior in office. He is currently working on a book analyzing how the introduction of Fox News affected congressional behavior. His research also explores reconceptualizing congressional party leaders as social planners who use party discipline to shape members’ contribution decisions, with a focus on optimizing party welfare. Vander Wielen has published extensively in prominent journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, and Legislative Studies Quarterly, among others. He is also a co-author of several books, including 'Taming Intuition,' 'Politics Over Process,' and 'The American Congress,' contributing significantly to the field of American political institutions and legislative behavior.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Public relations
• Sociology
• Economics
• Psychology
• Philosophy
• Demographic economics
• Social psychology
• Environmental ethics
• Law and economics
• Business
• Advertising
• Microeconomics
• Epistemology
• Public economics

Selected publications

• The Changing Nature of Congressional Party Support in a Hyper-Partisan Era

  Political Research Quarterly · 2025-06-13 · 1 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Conventional wisdom suggests that many members of Congress face competing demands from their party and constituents, and therefore adjust their support for party positions as elections approach. Party leaders help members by avoiding the consideration of divisive votes when elections are near. Throughout much of the late 20th century, this dynamic produced a predictable election cycle effect in the U.S. House—a saw-toothed pattern in the frequency of party votes. However, that pattern was disrupted in the 1990s and has been unstable since. Our working hypothesis is that changes in the electoral and legislative arenas have mutually altered incentives surrounding members’ party support and the timing of divisive partisan votes. This study explores whether members have adopted a more stable, enduring support for party in recent decades, and whether there is less avoidance of divisive partisan votes in the lead-up to elections. We further examine the correlates of these behavioral changes, including the role of cohort replacement, electoral vulnerability, party size, party status, and calendar changes in the consideration of appropriations votes.

  PublisherDOI

• Proving Her Strength: The Partisan and Gendered Implications of Legislative Obstruction

  Legislative Studies Quarterly · 2025-07-22

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Why do some legislators continue to obstruct despite public support for compromise? We suggest that legislator gender and voter partisanship are key but often overlooked determinants of how voters process obstructive behaviors by legislators. Since Republicans value masculinity more than Democrats, and obstruction is a masculine behavior, we theorize that Republicans are more likely to reward obstructive behavior, especially from women legislators who are presumed to be less masculine. Using a conjoint experiment, we find evidence supporting our theory. Republicans evaluate women legislators more negatively until the perceived obstructiveness of their behavior increases. Meanwhile, perceived obstructiveness has no gendered effects among Democrats. These results suggest that Republican women should be more likely to endorse obstruction, which we find evidence of by analyzing email newsletters issued by members of the US House and Senate from 2009 to 2020. These findings explain partisan and gendered asymmetries in obstructive behaviors that counter conventional notions that women are disproportionately consensus builders.

  PublisherDOI

• The House that Fox News Built?

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-02-06 · 15 citations

  bookSenior author

  The influence of partisan news is presumed to be powerful, but evidence for its effects on political elites is limited, often based more on anecdotes than science. Using a rigorous quasi-experimental research design, observational data, and open science practices, this book carefully demonstrates how the re-emergence and rise of partisan cable news in the US affected the behavior of political elites during the rise and proliferation of Fox News across media markets between 1996 and 2010. Despite widespread concerns over the ills of partisan news, evidence provides a nuanced, albeit cautionary tale. On one hand, findings suggest that the rise of Fox indeed changed elite political behavior in recent decades. At the same time, the limited conditions under which Fox News' influence occurred suggests that concerns about the network's power may be overstated.

  PublisherDOI

• From cradle to congress: the effect of birthplace on legislative decision-making

  Political Science Research and Methods · 2025-04-04 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract The extent to which legislators pursue their privately held preferences in office has important implications for representative democracy and is exceedingly difficult to measure. Many models of legislative decision-making tacitly assume that members are willing and able to carry out the wishes of their constituents so as to maximize their reelection prospects and, in so doing, relegate their personal preferences. This project explores this assumption by examining the role that members’ place of birth plays in shaping legislative behavior, apart from other politically relevant factors like partisanship. We find that birthplace exerts an independent influence on members’ voting behavior. Using a variety of geographic measures, we find that members who are born in close proximity to one another tend to exhibit similar patterns in roll call voting, even when accounting for partisanship, constituency attributes, and a variety of other determinants of voting. We also demonstrate in a secondary analysis that the agricultural composition of members’ birthplace influences their support for agricultural protection. Our findings suggest that members’ personal history shapes the representational relationship they have with their constituents.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do voters prefer educated candidates? How candidate education influences vote choice in congressional elections

  Electoral Studies · 2023 · 12 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Public relations
  PublisherDOI

• Party leaders as welfare-maximizing coalition builders in the pursuit of party-related public goods

  Public Choice · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Law and economics
  PublisherDOI

• Intuitive Politics and Why Thinking Isn’t Guaranteed to Save Us

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Epistemology

  Abstract For many people, politics is like sports. Our intuition is to root for our team, even when the players behave poorly. From antiquity to the Enlightenment, philosophers have proposed thought as the best way to govern messy human impulses. Recent research, however, shows that intuitions play a powerful role in political decision-making, and people often use thinking as a way to rationalize their comfortable but counterproductive gut feelings. In this chapter, the authors explain how this human tendency produces undesirable dynamics in modern electoral democracies. The authors then discuss the conditions under which people can use thinking to be more reflective and what implications it has for democracy. They conclude by considering whether the design of democratic institutions can minimize the negative side effects of intuitive politics.

  PublisherDOI

• Incremental Polarization: A Unified Spatial Theory of Legislative Elections, Parties, and Roll Call Voting. By Justin Buchler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 206p. $99.00 cloth, $31.95 paper.

  Perspectives on Politics · 2019-02-13

  articleSenior author

  Incremental Polarization: A Unified Spatial Theory of Legislative Elections, Parties, and Roll Call Voting. By Justin Buchler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 206p. 31.95 paper. - Volume 17 Issue 1

  PublisherDOI

• Response to Justin Buchler’s review of <i>Taming Intuition: How Reflection Minimizes Partisan Reasoning and Promotes Democratic Accountability</i>

  Perspectives on Politics · 2019-02-13

  articleSenior author

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Unpacking the unknown: a method for identifying status quo distributions

  Public Choice · 2019-05-14

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Steven S. Smith

  Washington University in St. Louis

  60 shared

• Jason M. Roberts

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  55 shared

• René Lindstädt

  University of Birmingham

  28 shared

• Kevin Arceneaux

  University of Amsterdam

  26 shared

• Matthew Green

  17 shared

• Michael H. Crespin

  University of Oklahoma

  8 shared

• Lee Epstein

  Washington University in St. Louis

  7 shared

• Nancy Staudt

  7 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Washington University in St. Louis

• M.A.

  Washington University in St. Louis

• B.A.

  Lawrence University