AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP
Kim Moxley: “Collective Action on the (Hot)Line: Re-Examining Legislative Dysfunction in the Modern U.S. Senate”
Abstract: What do changes in lawmaking practices reveal about legislative institutions’ capacity to navigate increasingly polarized political contexts? This paper examines the U.S. Senate’s “hotline” process—a relatively underexplored yet critical component of modern Senate lawmaking. The hotline combines the low public visibility of “unorthodox” procedures with the internal transparency of traditional “textbook” legislative practices, creating a unique pathway with high intra-chamber accountability and low external visibility. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, the paper demonstrates that the hotline facilitated the passage of over 90% of substantive public laws enacted during the 112th–116th Congresses (2011–2020) and enabled bipartisan collaboration amid significant political polarization. By allowing senators—regardless of party or majority status—to monitor, influence, and sustain their individual and partisan legislative agendas, the hotline highlights the Senate’s adaptability and resilience. These findings challenge prevailing narratives of Congressional dysfunction, instead revealing how institutional innovation sustains collective action under polarized conditions.
Kim Moxley (she/her/hers) is a third-year PhD student in the Yale Political Science Department. Her research focuses on the U.S. Congress, particularly the processes and procedural dynamics shaping legislative outcomes. She is currently working on several projects that use case studies, legislative histories, and elite interviews to examine legislative dysfunction in the modern U.S. Senate and the evolution of U.S.-Tribal policy negotiations. Before beginning her PhD, Kim served as a U.S. Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Spain, earned an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford, and worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.
Eric Scheuch: “Exploring the Durability of Political Persuasion”
Abstract: In the study of political persuasion, a salient question is how long the effects of such persuasion lasts. While the literature on persuasion agrees that effects from a single exposure decay rapidly, it has not thoroughly focused on the factors that affect the durability of persuasive messaging. We evaluate the influence of two potential factors: the number of times an individual is treated, and the time interval between those treatments, through an increasingly salient issue: persuasion around climate change. We do so through a 10 week, 5 wave panel study (n = 4,783), varying the number of times individuals are exposed to persuasive messages (1 vs 3) and the interval between those messages (2 days or 1 week). We also measure for the persistence of effects up to 10 weeks after initial exposure-double the length of any previous panel study on the persistence of political persuasion. We find that repeated exposure to persuasive messages more than doubles their durability 1 week after treatment, but that repeated exposure does not increase the level of initial persuasion with each subsequent treatment. We also outline future steps in durability studies, including the decomposition of individual decay curves and the downscaling of durability effects. Collectively, these findings provide a major improvement in the understanding and study of political persuasion.
Eric Scheuch is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science (American Politics and Quantitative Research Methods, focus) at Yale University. His research focuses on climate change, systematic racism, and the urban-rural divide. Prior to Yale, he worked on diversity, equity, and inclusion and solving startup scaling challenges at a startup in NYC. He earned his BA (Cum Laude) in Political Science (Departmental Honors) and Sustainable Development from Columbia University, where he earned the Charles Beard Prize for his thesis on the politics of climate mitigation.