David Raymond Mayhew

Professor David R. Mayhew is the Sterling Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Yale University. His research centers on American politics. He has written on roll call behavior in Congress, the elective incentive as an underpinning to congressional structure and policy-making, the role of incumbency advantage in U.S. House elections, traditional party organizations at the state and local level, and the effects of divided party control on policy-making in the national government. He has authored works on Congress, political parties, elections, and policymaking that include Congress: The Electoral Connection (1974, 2004), Divided We Govern (1991, 2005), America’s Congress (2000), Electoral Realignments (2002), Parties and Policies (2008), and Partisan Balance (2011). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the James Madison and Samuel J. Eldersveld awards for career contributions.  Long at Yale, he has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, Oxford University, and Harvard University.  His work has been translated into Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, and is used in Latin America.   More recently, he has addressed actions by members of Congress since 1789, U.S. electoral realignments, wars and U.S. politics, incumbency advantage in presidential elections, partisan balance in U.S. politics, and the imprint of Congress on U.S. society since 1789.