Faculty & Research

David Campbell – Director

Professor; Fellow, Institute for Educational Initiatives (BA, Brigham Young; PhD, Harvard, 2002)

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David Campbell is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and the founding director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. He is the co-author (with Robert Putnam) of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which has been described by the New York Times as “intellectually powerful,” by America as “an instant classic” and by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the most successfully argued sociological study of American religion in more than half a century.” American Grace has also received both the 2011 Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs and the Wilbur Award from the Religious Communicators Council for the best non-fiction book of 2010.

Prof. Campbell is also the author of Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life and the editor of A Matter of Faith: Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election. As an expert on religion, politics, and civic engagement, he has often been featured in the national media, including the New York Times, Economist, USA Today, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, NBC News, CNN, NPR, Fox News, and C-SPAN.

Research and Teaching Interests

American politics, political participation, religion and politics, and education policy

Peri E. Arnold

Professor (BA, Roosevelt U.; Ph.D., Chicago, 1972)

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Peri E. Arnold’s primary research interest is the presidency’s institutional development. Arnold has published numerous book chapters and articles on topics in presidential politics, administrative history and administrative reform. His book Making the Managerial Presidency addressed centralizing administrative reform in the executive branch and won the 1987 Brownlow Book Award. His recently published Remaking the Presidency examines the emergence of presidential activism in the Progressive Era. In 2006 Arnold was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration

Research and Teaching Interests

The American presidency, public administration and American political development

  • Office: 418 Decio Hall
  • Phone: 574-631-7430
  • E-mail: parnold@nd.edu
  • Curriculum Vitae: C.V.

Sotirios A. Barber

Professor (BA, Illinois; Ph.D., Chicago, 1973)

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Professor Barber combines interests in political philosophy and the American Constitution. He is the author of: The Constitution and the Delegation of Congressional Power (Chicago); On What the Constitution Means (John Hopkins); The Constitution of Judicial Power (Johns Hopkins); Welfare and the Constitution (Princeton); and, with James Fleming, Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions (Oxford; named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2008 by Choice Magazine). With Robert George, he is the co-editor of Constitutional Politics: Essays in Constitution Making, Maintenance, and Change (Princeton). With Walter Murphy, James Fleming, and Stephen Macedo, he is co-author/editor of American Constitutional Interpretation, 4th edition (Foundation Press). He has also published numerous articles in constitutional theory. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, and he has held visiting professorships at Princeton University and the University of Michigan. He is currently completing a book on theories of American federalism.

Darren Davis

Professor (PhD, University of Houston, 1994)

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Davis is a leading and nationally recognized scholar in public opinion, elections and voting behavior, political psychology, research methods and statistics, and racial politics. Professor Davis is the author of Negative Liberty: Public Opinion and the Terrorist Attacks on America (Russell Sage Foundation), which examines citizens’ perceptions of threat and vulnerability on the tradeoffs between democratic values and security following the September 11 terrorist attacks. His research has been published in the most prestigious journals in political science, such as The American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and Political Behavior. He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Research Quarterly. Professor Davis received the Emerging Scholar Award, which recognizes the top scholar within 10 years of Ph. D., from the Public Opinion and Elections Section of the American Political Science Association. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and The Russell Sage Foundation. He also served as an elected member of the ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research). Professor Davis is currently working on the political and social consequences of fear, social desirability (political correctness), stereotype threat, the measurement of racial attitudes, perceptions of citizenship, political tolerance, and the social-psychology of African American political attitudes and behavior.

Research and Teaching Interests

American Politics, Political and Social Psychology; Political Behavior; Public Opinion; Research Methods; and Race and Politics

Geoffrey C. Layman

Professor (BA, Virginia Tech; PhD, Indiana University, 1995)

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Before Notre Dame, Professor Layman taught at Vanderbilt University and the University of Maryland. He specializes in political parties, public opinion, electoral behavior, and religion and politics. Layman’s first book, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics (Columbia, 2001), examines the growing division of the Democratic and Republican parties along religious and cultural lines. His current book project (with Thomas Carsey) focuses on “conflict extension” in American party politics and assesses the impact of partisanship and party commitment on the policy attitudes of and polarization among the parties’ elites, activists, and mass identifiers. Professor Layman also is involved in a variety of projects on religion and American political behavior, including one focusing on the political causes and consequences of growing secularism in the U.S. (with David Campbell and John Green), another on the way in which candidates’ religious orientations shape voter reactions to them (also with Campbell and Green) and others focusing on Americans’ attitudes toward Muslims and the impact of those attitudes on electoral behavior (with Ozan Kalkan, John Green, and Eric Uslaner). He has published numerous articles in the discipline’s leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and the Annual Review of Political Science.

Research and Teaching Interests

Political parties, public opinion, electoral behavior, and religion and politics

  • Office: 445 Decio Hall
  • Phone: 574-631-0379
  • E-mail: glayman@nd.edu
  • Curriculum Vitae: CV

Vincent Phillip Muñoz

Associate Professor (BA, Claremont McKenna College; PhD, Claremont Graduate School, 2001)

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Vincent Phillip Muñoz writes and teaches across the fields of constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy. His recent research has focused on the theme of religious liberty and the American Constitution. His first book, God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. Professor Muñoz is currently completing a second book, which is on the original meaning of the Constitution’s Religion Clauses. Articles from that project have appeared in Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. Professor Muñoz has also published articles in American Political Science Review, The Review of Politics, The Wall Street Journal, and The Claremont Review of Books. His media appearances include commentary on National Public Radio, Voice of America Radio, and Fox News Channel. In 2004 he testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on the matter of "Hostility to Religious Expression in the Public Square.

Research and Teaching Interests

Constitutional law, American politics, and political philosophy

David Nickerson

Assistant Professor (BA, Williams College; PhD, Yale, 2005)

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Professor Nickerson specializes in political behavior and research methodology. His research concerns experimental methodology, how parties and organizations mobilize their supporters, and how behaviors diffuse through social networks. His work has appeared in, among others journals, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. His article, “Scalable Protocols Offer Efficient Design for Field Experiments,” received the Miller Prize for the best article published in Political Analysis in 2005 and was selected as one of “100 Seminal Papers from the last 100 years of journal publishing" by Oxford University Press. His dissertation won the 2005 APSA Section Award for Best Dissertation in Political Psychology.

Research and Teaching Interests

American politics; research methodology; political participation; political behavior

Dianne Pinderhughes

President’s Distinguished Professor and Full Professor, Departments of Africana Studies and Political Science ( BA, Albertus Magnus College; MA, PhD, University of Chicago )

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Before Notre Dame, Pinderhughes taught at Dartmouth College, and the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Her teaching focuses on racial and ethnic politics in the US, Voting Rights policy and American urban politics. Pinderhughes’s research addresses issues of inequality with a focus on racial and ethnic politics and public policy, explores the creation of American civil society institutions in the twentieth century, and analyzes their influence on the formation of voting rights policy. Her publications include her book, Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory. Pinderhughes also examines the intersection of race and gender in American electoral representation, in a current study, the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project. Pinderhughes was recently President of the American Political Science Association (2007-2008).

Research and Teaching Interests

Racial and ethnic politics in the US, Voting Rights policy, American urban politics

Benjamin Radcliff

Professor (BA, University of Illinois-Urbana; PhD, University of Illinois-Urbana, 1991)

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Professor Radcliff specializes in mass political behavior, empirical democratic theory, and public policy. He has contributed numerous articles to the discipline’s leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and the British Journal of Political Science, among many others. His current research agenda focuses on how partisan control of government affects the quality of life that citizens experience.

Research and Teaching Interests

Electoral participation; social choice theory; democratic theory; theories of the state; the political determinants of quality of life

Ricardo Ramirez

Associate Professor (Ph.D., Stanford University; M.A., Stanford University: B.A., University of California, Los Angeles)

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Professor Ramirez’s research interests include state and local politics, political behavior, and the politics of race and ethnicity, especially as they relate to participation, mobilization, and political incorporation. He is coeditor (with T. Lee and K. Ramakrishnan) of Transforming Politics, Transforming America: The Political and Civic Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States. His most recent writings include: “Segmented Mobilization: Latino Nonpartisan Get-Out-the-Vote Efforts in the 2000 General Election”; “Are Naturalized Voters Driving the California Latino Electorate? Measuring the Impact of IRCA Citizens on Latino Voting” (with M. Barreto and N. Woods); and “Giving Voice t o Latino Voters: A Field Experiment on the Effectiveness of a National Nonpartisan Mobilization Effort.” His current projects include field experiments on the effects of elite mobilization efforts of Latino voters and on the role of gender and ethnicity on career paths in state legislatures since 1990.

Research and Teaching Interests

Political Behavior; State and Local Politics; Race and Ethnicity

John Roos

Emeritus Professor (BA, Notre Dame; PhD, Chicago, 1971)

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Professor Roos specializes in Congress, political theory (especially medieval), and politics and literature. His articles have appeared in several anthologies and in Polity, Studies in Short Fiction, The Review of Politics, Policy Studies Journal, and Political Methodology. He is one of the authors of the book Housing and Public Policy: A Role for Mediating Structures (Ballinger). In 1983 he was awarded The Charles Sheedy Award for outstanding teaching. His most recent research includes a lengthy study of Flannery O’Connor, and an ongoing interest in Religion and Politics.

Research and Teaching Interests

American Politics, Congress, Urban Problems, American Political Philosophy, Thomas Aquinas, legal theory, Natural law theory, Politics and Literature

  • Address: 544 Flanner Hall
  • Phone: 574-631-7556
  • E-mail: Roos.1@nd.edu
  • Curriculum Vitae: C.V.

Christina Wolbrecht

Associate Professor (BA, Pacific Lutheran U.; PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 1997)

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Professor Wolbrecht specializes in American politics, political parties, interest groups, mass behavior, and gender politics. Her book, The Politics of Women’s Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change (Princeton, 2000), received the 2001 Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties Section of the American Political Science Association. She is currently engaged in collaborative projects using new ecological inference techniques to investigate women’s voting behavior after suffrage, examining the impact of female role models on the political engagement of women and girls, evaluating the quality of women’s representation, and (solely) linking agenda change and party realignment.

Research and Teaching Interests

American politics, political parties, American political development, and gender politics

Michael P. Zuckert

Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor (BA, Cornell; PhD, Chicago, 1974)

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Professor Zuckert works in political philosophy, American constitutional law and theory, and American political thought. He has published Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton) and The Natural Rights Republic (Notre Dame), which has been named an Outstanding Book for 1997 by Choice Magazine, as well as many articles on a variety of topics, including George Orwell, Plato’s Apology, Shakespeare, and contemporary liberal theory. He is currently completing a book on the American founding, A System Without a Precedent, and has been commissioned to write the volume on John Rawls for a new series on Twentieth Century Political Philosophy. He co-authored and co-produced the public radio series Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson: A Nine Part Drama for the Radio and was senior scholar for Liberty! a six hour public television series on the American Revolution. He has received grants from NEH, the Woodrow Wilson Center, Eart Foundation and NSF, and has taught at Carleton College, Cornell University, Claremont Men’s College, Fordham University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

  • Office: 450 Decio Hall
  • Phone: 574-631-8050
  • E-mail: Zuckert.1@nd.edu
  • Curriculum Vitae: