Patrick Buhr

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and a graduate affiliate with the Center for Effective Lawmaking and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

I study the U.S. Congress and presidency. My primary research agenda assesses how Congress’s increasingly partisan electoral incentives affect the president’s ability to advance a legislative agenda—particularly given that presidents frequently require bipartisan support to enact their priorities. I use a mixed-methods approach to address this question, using statistical methods alongside elite interviews and formal models. My work is supported by The Rogers Center for the American Presidency.

Prior to graduate school, I worked as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives covering health policy and the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. I graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in Political Science and Economics and a minor in Philosophy.

I am originally from Golden, Colorado and am an avid skier and mountaineer, having summited 27 of the 60 highest peaks in the contiguous United States.

You can email me at patrick.buhr@vanderbilt.edu, or you can find a PDF of my CV here.

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