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Connor Halloran Phillips is an assistant teaching professor in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST). His research examines interest groups, parties, legislatures and elections in the United States, and he teaches classes on American political institutions.Ìý

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Tell me about your scholarly work.

My research investigates how structural factors interact with individual actors’ choices to shape American politics, specifically to what extent institutional arrangements lead parties, interest groups and voters to behave in certain ways and how these patterns of behavior contribute to contemporary problems such as partisan polarization or voter disengagement. I am particularly interested in federalism — the division of power between national and state governments — and its consequences for politics at both the state and national levels.

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How is your scholarly work adding to the greater field?

The current partisan discord in federal politics has conspicuously spilled over into state and local government, a phenomenon that political scientists call nationalization. At the same time, recent research has found that the roots of national polarization actually lie as much in the states as they do in Washington. My work contributes to this emerging literature by exploring the mechanisms through which partisanship in state government fosters polarization in Congress. For example, in a my co-authors and I demonstrate that the rising polarization among state legislators creates a more ideologically extreme pool of viable potential candidates for Congress, which accounts for a significant portion of congressional polarization. In ongoing research, I am examining how interest groups’ electoral involvement results in more extreme candidates being elected to state legislatures in the first place.Ìý

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How did you become interested in this topic?

Politics and current events have always interested me, and this fascination evolved into an academic path shortly after I started college. At the time, tensions between then-President Obama and congressional Republicans were dominating headlines, culminating in the 2013 federal shutdown — which, if you can believe it, then seemed to mark the rock bottom of governmental dysfunction. I wanted to understand the broader institutional forces that had brought us to that moment. These questions led me from an undergraduate research assistantship on a project studying polarization to graduate school in political science, and they remain at the heart of my work today.Ìý

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What are you most excited to accomplish as a faculty member at ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTV?

Computational research methods are redefining political science, especially in the study of state and local government, where data is abundant compared to the national level but also more difficult to obtain, organize and analyze without technological assistance. CMU is at the cutting edge of many of these tools, and I look forward to collaborating with colleagues across disciplines as we partner to determine how to employ them most effectively. In addition, CMIST has greatly expanded its American politics programming over the past several years, and I am excited to help develop this curriculum in part by introducing new classes on important political institutions and contemporary issues, including the presidency and subnational politics this spring along with interest groups and lobbying in the fall.Ìý

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What are your goals for the next generation of scholars?

I hope that the next generation of political scientists continues to gain an appreciation for the importance of states and localities, both because these jurisdictions wield immense power in shaping their residents’ everyday lives and because what happens in them resonates across the country. Regardless of my students’ future career paths, my goal is to instill in them the ability to look beyond conventional wisdom and think critically about the political world. As American politics grows increasingly inflammatory and divisive, understanding how politicians’ actions are influenced by the strategic environment they face and distinguishing genuine matters of concern from the raucous give-and-take that has always characterized our democracy will prove essential for informed citizenship.