Professor
Director, Center for American Politics and Public Policy
Fields of Interest
Biography
CV (228.8 KB)John Wilkerson (Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1991) is professor and director of the Center for American Politics. His research centers on legislative organization and decision-making, with related interests in health politics and comparative legislative studies. He is particularly interested how information technologies can advance political science research and instruction.
He teaches American Politics, Legislative Politics, State Politics and Research Methods for Graduate Students.
Research
Selected Research
- "The Pandemic Policy U-Turn: The role of partisanship, public health, and race in decisions to ease COVID-19 social distancing policies in the U.S.” conditionally accepted. Perspectives on Politics. (with Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, NancyFullman, Beatrice Magistro, Grace Reinke, RachelCastellano, and Megan Erickson
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Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, Nancy Fullman, Beatrice Magistro, Grace Reinke, Rachel Castellano, Megan Erickson, and John Wilkerson. 2021. “The Pandemic Policy U-Turn: Partisanship, Public Health, and Race in Decisions to Ease COVID-19 Social Distancing Policies in the United States.” Perspectives on Politics.
Download PDF (1.25 MB)
- Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, Nancy Fullman, Beatrice Magistro, Grace Reinke, and John Wilkerson. 2022. “Governor Partisanship Explains the Adoption of Statewide Mask Mandates in Response to COVID-19.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly. 21(1): 24-49.
- Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, Nancy Fullman, and John Wilkerson. 2021. “Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. 46(2): 211–232.
- Wilkerson, John, Nora Webb-Williams and Andreu Casas. Images as Data for Social Science Research: An Introduction to Convolutional Neural Nets for Image Classification. New York, Cambridge Elements, 2020.
- "More Effective Than We Thought: Accounting for Legislative Hitchhikers Reveals a More Inclusive and Productive Lawmaking Process.” 2020. American Journal of Political Science (2020) (with Andreu Casas and Matthew J. Denny)
- "Archived Attributes: A Web Archive Approach to Measuring Legislator Attributes." 2020, British Journal of Political Science. (with Emily K. Gade, Sarah Dreier and Anne Washington).
- "Dangers, Toils and Snares: U.S. senators' rhetoric of public anxiety and religiosity.” 2020. Politics and Religion. (with Emily K. Gade, Sarah Dreier and Jon Schaeffer)
- "What Was the Problem in Parkland? Using Social Media to Measure the Effectiveness of Issue Frames.” 2020 Policy Studies Journal (with Kevin Aslett, Andreu Casas, Nora Webb Williams and Wesley Zuidema).
- "Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19” 2020. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. (with Chris Adolph, Kenya Amato, Bree Bang-Jensen, and Nancy Fullman).
- "Frontiers in data analytics for adaptation research: Topic modeling.” 2019. WIREs Climate Change (featured article). (with Alexandra Lesnikowski, Ella Belfer, Emma Rodman, Julie Smith, Robbert BiesbroekJames D. Ford, Lea Berrang‐Ford)
- Large Scale Computerized Text Analysis in Political Science: Opportunities and Challenges. (2017) Annual Review of Political Science (with Andreu Casas)
- The GOV Internet Archive: A Big Data Resource for Political Scientists. Spring 2017. The Political Methodologist. (with Emily Gade and Anne Washington)
- "A Delicate Balance: Party Branding during the 2013 Government Shutdown.” 2017. American Politics Research (with Andreu Casas)
- "Legislative Explorer: Data-driven discovery of lawmaking” (2015) PS: Political Science and Politics 48:1 (with Nick Stramp)
- "Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach” (2015) American Journal of Political Science, April 2015 (with David Smith and Nick Stramp)
- John Wilkerson, David Smith and Nicholas Stramp, Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach, In American Journal of Political Science, Volume 59, Issue 4, pp. 943–956, October 2015.
- Noah A. Smith, Claire Cardie, Anne L. Washington, and John Wilkerson. “Overview of the 2014 NLP Unshared Task in PoliInformatics.” in Proceedings of the ACL 2014 Workshop on Language Technologies and Computational Social Science, Baltimore MD, (2014)
- Jason Chuang, Yuening Hu, Ashley Jin, John D. Wilkerson, Daniel A. McFarland, Christopher D. Manning, and Jeffrey Heer. “Document Exploration with Topic Modeling: Designing Interactive Visualizations to Support Effective Analysis Workflows.” (2013) Workshop on Topic Models, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS). Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
- "Staying Focused: Tracing the flow of ideas from the Online Parliament to Canberra” (2013) in Lyn Carson and John Gastil eds. The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy. Penn State University Press. (with John Gastil)
- John Gastil and John Wilkerson. “Staying Focused: Tracing the flow of ideas from the Online Parliament to Canberra.” in The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy, edited by Lyn Carson and John Gastil, Penn State University Press, 2013.
- “Tradeoffs in Accuracy and Efficiency in Supervised Learning Methods.” (2012) Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 9(3): 298-318. (with Loren Collingwood)
- "Textual Predictors of Bill Survival in Congressional Committees.” (2012). Proceedings of the Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. (with Noah Smith and Tae Yano, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.)
- Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving, Cambridge University Press (Dec. 2012) (with E. Scott Adler)
- Noah Smith, John Wilkerson, and Tae Yano. “Textual Predictors of Bill Survival in Congressional Committees.” Proceedings of the Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2012.
- Loren Collingwood and John Wilkerson. “Tradeoffs in Accuracy and Efficiency in Supervised Learning Methods.” Journal of Information Technology and Politics, vol. 9, no. 3, 2012, pp. 298-318.
- Scott Adler and John Wilkerson. Congress and the Politics of Problem Solving. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- "The Ties that Bind: Coalitions in Congress.” (2011) Eric Shickler and Frances Lee, eds, Oxford Handbook of Congress. Oxford University Press. Chapter 27 (with Barry Pump)
- “Comparative Studies of Policy Dynamics.” (2011) Comparative Political Studies, 44(8): 947- 972. (with Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones).
- “Rethinking Advanced High School Coursework: Tackling the Depth/Breadth Tension in the AP US Government and Politics Course.” (2011) Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43:4, 533-559 (with John Bransford, Susan Mosborg, Walter Parker, Nancy Vye and Robert Abbott)
- John Bransford, Susan Mosborg, Walter Parker, Nancy Vye, Robert Abbott, and John Wilkerson. “Rethinking Advanced High School Coursework: Tackling the Depth/Breadth Tension in the AP US Government and Politics Course.” Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 43, no. 4, 2011, pp. 533-559.
- Frank Baumgartner, Bryan Jones, and John Wilkerson. “Comparative Studies of Policy Dynamics.” Comparative Political Studies, vol. 44, no. 8, 2011, pp.947- 972.
- Project-based advanced placement courses: AP U.S. Government and Politics (Technical Report). (2009) Seattle: University of Washington LIFE Center. Mosborg, S., Bransford, J., Abbott, R., Vye, N., Parker, W., & Wilkerson, J.
- “Representation and American Governing Institutions.” (2009) Journal of Politics, 71: 277- 290 (with Bryan Jones and Heather Larsen-Price).
- “Representation and American Governing Institutions.” (2009) Journal of Politics, 71: 277- 290 (with Bryan Jones and Heather Larsen-Price).
- "Comparer Les Productions Legislatives: Enjeux et Methods.” (2009) Revue Internationale de Politique Comparee, 16(3): 381-404. (with Sylvain Brouard, Frank Baumgartner, Arco Timmermans, Shaun Bevans, Geraard Breeman, Christian Breunig, Laura Chaques, Christopher Green-Pedersen, Will Jennings, Peter John, Bryan D. Jones, David Lowery)
- “Le Projet Agendas Compares: Objectifs et Contenues.” (2009) Revue Internationale de Politique Comparee, 16(3): 365-379. (with Frank Baumgartner, Sylvain Brouard, Laura Chaques, Christopher Green-Pedersen, Emiliano Grossman, Bryan D. Jones, Arco Timmermans, Stefaan Walgrave)
- Frank Baumgartner, Sylvain Brouard, Laura Chaques, Christopher Green-Pedersen, Emiliano Grossman, Bryan D. Jones, Arco Timmermans, Stefaan Walgrave, and John Wilkerson. “Le Projet Agendas Compares: Objectifs et Contenues.” Revue Internationale de Politique Comparee, 16, no. 3, 2009, pp, 365-379.
- Sylvain Brouard, Frank Baumgartner, Arco Timmermans, Shaun Bevans, Geraard Breeman, Christian Breunig, Laura Chaques, Christopher Green-Pedersen, Will Jennings, Peter John, Bryan D. Jones, David Lowery, and John Wilkerson. "Comparer Les Productions Legislatives: Enjeux et Methods.” Revue Internationale de Politique Comparee, 16, no. 3, 2009, pp. 381-404.
- Bryan Jones, Heather Larsen-Price, and John Wilkerson. “Representation and American Governing Institutions.” Journal of Politics, 71, 2009, pp. 277- 290.
- Wilkerson, John and Laura Chaques, Luz Maria Munoz Marquez and Anna Maria Palau Roque. "Comparing Governmental Agendas: Evolution of the Prioritization of Issues in Spain and the U.S.” (2008) IBEI Working Paper. University of Barcelona.
- Wilkerson, John and Laura Chaques, Luz Maria Munoz Marquez and Anna Maria Palau Roque. "Comparing Governmental Agendas: Evolution of the Prioritization of Issues in Spain and the U.S.” (2008) IBEI Working Paper. University of Barcelona.
- Wilkerson, John and Mahesh Joshi, Xui Wang and Carolyn Penstein Rose. "A Needs Analysis for Instructional Support in LegSim.” (2008) International Perspectives in the Learning Sciences, Utrecht, June 24-28 2008. (Dept of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon)
- Wilkerson, John and Stephen Purpura and Dustin Hillard. "The US Policy Agendas Legislation Corpus – Volume 1: A Language Resource from 1947- 1998.” (2008) International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC). Marrakech, May 26-June 1.
- Wilkerson, John and Scott Adler. “Intended Consequences? Jurisdictional Reform and Issue Control in the U.S. House of Representatives.” (2008) Legislative Studies Quarterly, 33(1): 85-114.
- Wilkerson, John, and Dustin Hillard and Stephen Purpura. “Computer assisted Topic Classification for Mixed Methods Social Science Research” (2008) Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 4(4): 31-46.
- Wilkerson, John, and Dustin Hillard and Stephen Purpura. “Computer assisted Topic Classification for Mixed Methods Social Science Research” (2008) Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 4(4): 31-46.
- Wilkerson, John, and Dustin Hillard and Stephen Purpura. “Computer assisted Topic Classification for Mixed Methods Social Science Research” (2008) Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 4(4): 31-46.
- Wilkerson, John, and Claire Cardie. Edited Volume. Text Annotation for Political Science. (2008) Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 5(1). (Computing and Information Sciences, Cornell).
- Wilkerson, John, and Scott Adler. "The Biggest Problem Facing Congress? Ex-members say: Itself.” Roll Call: The Newspaper of Capitol Hill, October 26, 2006
- Wilkerson, John, and Christoffer Green-Pedersen. “How Agenda-setting Attributes Shape Politics: Problem Attention, Agenda Dynamics and Comparative Health Policy Developments in the U.S. and Denmark.” (2006) Journal of EuropeanPublicPolicy, 13(7):1039-52.
- Wilkerson, John, and Ruth Fruland. “Simulating A Federal Legislature” (2006) Academic Exchange. 10(4).
- Wilkerson, John. "Social Choice: Implications for the fairness of voting methods in general and proposal evaluation methods in particular.” (2004) Prepared for Washington State Department of Public Lands/ Interagency Commission. CAPP Working Paper.
- Wilkerson, John. “The Political Economy of Health in the United States” (2003) Annual Review of Political Science, 6: 327-43.
- Wilkerson, John. "Studying Policy Dynamics." (2002) (with Bryan D. Jones and Frank Baumgartner) in Frank Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones eds, Policy Dynamics (University of Chicago, 2002)
- Wilkerson, John. "Studying Policy Dynamics." (2002) (with Bryan D. Jones and Frank Baumgartner) in Frank Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones eds, Policy Dynamics (University of Chicago, 2002)
- Wilkerson, John, and Bryan Jones. "Que Le Bien Triomphe: Le Proces en Destitution Du President Clinton.” (1999) Pouvoirs, (Fall 1999).
- Wilkerson, John, and David Carrell. “Money and Medicine: The American Medical PAC’s Strategy of Giving in House Races.” (1999) Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 24(2): 235-55.
- Wilkerson, John, and David Carrell. “Money and Medicine: The American Medical PAC’s Strategy of Giving in House Races.” (1999) Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 24(2): 235-55.
- Wilkerson, John. “Killer Amendments in Congress.” (1999) American Political Science Review, 93(3): 1-18.
- "Competing Principals: Committees, Parties and the Organization of Congress.” (Book Review) (1997) Congress and the Presidency, 24: 229-30.
- "National Health Care Reform, 103rd Congress: A Description of the Activities and Influence of Public Health Activists.” (1997) American Journal of Public Health, 87(7): 1107-12. (with Helen Halpin)
- Book. Competitive Managed Care: The Emerging Health Care System (1997) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley. (with Kelly Devers and Ruth Givens)
- "The Electoral Connection in the Early Congress: The Case of the Compensation Act of 1816.” (1996) American Journal of Political Science, 40(1): 145-171. (with William Bianco and David Spence).
- "Congressional Procedure and Practice: A Reference, Research, and Legislative Guide.” (book review) (1991) American Political Science Review, 85(1): 303-4.
- "The Analysis of Committee Power: A Critique.” (1991) American Journal of Political Science, 35(3): 613-23.
- "Compactness and the 1980s Districts in the Indiana State House: Evidence of Political Gerrymandering?” (1990) in Political Gerrymandering and the Courts. New York: Agathon Press. Pp. 255-65. (with Richard Niemi)
- "Compactness and the 1980s Districts in the Indiana State House: Evidence of Political Gerrymandering?” (1990) in Political Gerrymandering and the Courts. New York: Agathon Press. Pp. 255-65. (with Richard Niemi)
- "Reelection and Representation in Conflict: The Case of Agenda Manipulation.” (1990) Legislative Studies Quarterly, 15(2): 263-282.
- Measuring State Party Ideology (Development of the National Elections Study (NES) party ideology variable). (1989) University of Rochester Public Policy Analysis Series, #8911. (with Larry Bartels)
- LegSim: Legislative Simulation (www.legsim.org). A course-specific virtual legislature used by thousands of college and high school students across the nation every academic year. Best Educational Website, American Political Science Association ITP Section
- Congressional Bills Project (www.congressionalbills.org). A relational database for researchers that provide extensive information about the topics, progress and sponsors of congressional bills introduced from 1947-present. Collaborator: E. Scott Adler (U. Colorado)
- LegEx: Legislative Explorer (www.legex.org) Data-driven visualization of congressional lawmaking (1973-present). Enables researchers and the public to explore the lawmaking activities of Congress from 1973 to yesterday. 2015 Communication Arts Excellence Award.
- "Governor Partisanship explains the adoption of statewide mask mandates in response to COVID-19.” forthcoming State Politics and Policy Quarterly. (with Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, Nancy Fullman, Beatrice Magistro, Grace Reinke)
Research Advised: Graduate Dissertations
- Nora Webb Williams. 2019. "Colonial Policy, Social Trust, and Economic Resilience: The Long-term Impacts of Imperial Russian Settlement in Southern Kazakhstan"
- Andreu Casas Salleras. 2018. "Affective Action in Organizations: Social Media, Personalized Communication and Advocacy in the European Union"
- Julianna Rig. 2011. "If only Noah would have killed those two : Saving children from malaria, one politician at a time." Diss., U of Washington.
Courses Taught
Winter 2025
Autumn 2024
Winter 2023
Spring 2018
Winter 2018
Resources & Related Links
Resources and Related Links:
Related News
Related News
- Letter from the Chair, Spring 2023 - March 14, 2023
- Letter from the Chair, Winter 2023 - January 3, 2023
- Winter 2023 Faculty Panel, February 27th: The Politics of Artificial Intelligence - December 19, 2022
- Autumn Faculty Panel: The 2022 Midterm Election Results & Implications for 2024 - November 16, 2022
- Prof. Christopher Adolph in UW News, "Republican-led states lifted pandemic restrictions earlier, study finds" - October 1, 2021
- Biden Faces the World: American Foreign Policy in a post Trump era - March 11, 2021
- The COVID-19 State Policy Project - December 31, 2020
- CAPPP Fellows Program- Celebrating 23 Years - December 9, 2020
- Polisci Profs. in UW The Daily, "States with Republican governors implemented mask mandates nearly a month slower, UW study finds " - October 5, 2020
- "Wear a Mask. If Only It Were That Simple.": Political Science Research Highlighted in Kaiser Health News - October 5, 2020
- Profs. Christopher Adolph and Jake Grumbach in the UW News: Vote by Mail and Mask Mandates - September 4, 2020
- Letter From The Chair - August 27, 2020
- Prof. Adolph and Ph.D. Student Bang-Jensen Address Population Health Colloquium, "Health Politics and Policy in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic" - July 16, 2020
- UW Politcal Science Researchers Featured on UW News, "Republican governors delayed key COVID-19 social distancing measures" - April 3, 2020
- Letter from the Chair, Spring 2020 - April 2, 2020
- Prof. John Wilkerson's LegEx Data Tool in UW News: New, UW-developed data tool tracks state legislative process, from first draft to final law - February 21, 2020
- Prof. John Wilkerson and Political Science Graduate Andreu Casas Win CQ Press Award - October 11, 2019
- Letter from the Chair - September 6, 2019
- Letter from the Chair, Spring 2019 - March 25, 2019
- Letter from the Chair - January 9, 2019
- Letter from the Chair - October 15, 2018
- Prof. John Wilkerson on Legbranch site, "Machine learning improves our understanding of how laws are made and who deserves credit for them" - October 5, 2018
- Prof. John Wilkerson in The Washington Post Magazine, "Can big data predict which bills will pass Congress?" - February 8, 2018
- Prof. Wilkerson and Grad Andreu Casas quoted in The Washington Post, "Congress can easily avoid shutdowns. Here’s why it doesn’t" - January 22, 2018
- Three Faculty Panels address the impact of the 2016 Presidential Election in the US and Around the World - June 29, 2017
- The Department in the News - June 28, 2017
- What Now? Faculty Panel Discusses the 2016 Election & Its Aftermath - December 3, 2016
- FIUTS Lecture: Making Sense of the US Election - November 10, 2016
- Two Innovative Courses Added to the Political Science Department - November 17, 2015
- Beyond “I’m Just a Bill On Capitol Hill”: Meet the Award-Winning Legislative Explorer - November 17, 2015
- Prof. John Wilkerson published article in the American Journal of Political Science, "Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach" - October 8, 2015
- John Wilkerson's "Legislative Explorer" highlighted in Washington Post's Monkey Cage - March 6, 2015
- Prof. John Wilkerson's LegSim Project featured in Provost eTrends newsletter - November 15, 2014
- Prof. John Wilkerson and CAPPP featured in UW Today - April 25, 2014
- Prof. John Wilkerson on The Washington Post's The Monkey Cage blog, "Why bill success is a lousy way to keep score in Congress" - February 16, 2014
- 2013 Political Science News Summary - December 31, 2013
- A Catalyst for Careers in Politics and Public Policy: The Washington State Legislative Internship Program - April 3, 2013