Chris Den Hartog

About Chris Den Hartog

My teaching and research deal with policy making by the United States government. In particular, I study congressional procedures and the ways in which such procedures give some members of congress opportunities to influence policy making, while simultaneously denying other members opportunities to influence policy making. I focus especially on the question, "how does the interaction between political parties and congressional procedures affect the policy decisions made by Congress?" I also study the ways in which procedures can be (and often are) reshaped by some members so that the legislative process will be more likely to produce certain kinds of outcomes. Related interests include the presidency, courts, and state legislatures--and the ways in which interactions among Congress and these other institutions produce policy decisions and policy outcomes. Classes I teach include American and California Government, The U.S. Congress, The Presidency, and Politics of Economic Policy. Prior to Cal Poly, I taught at UCSD and Northwestern University. I am the co-author, with Nathan Monroe, of Agenda Setting in the U.S. Senate: Costly Consideration and Majority Party Advantage (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and The Jeffords Switch: Changing Majority Status and Causal Processes in the U.S. Senate (University of Michigan Press, 2011).