Drutman

Lee Drutman

Senior Fellow, New America
Chapter Member: Maryland-Washington, D.C. SSN
Areas of Expertise:

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About Lee

Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America; the author of The Business of America is Lobbying; and winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association's Robert A. Dahl Award. He also teaches in the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. Drutman's research interests include lobbying; influence; money in politics; electoral systems; and polarization.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

America Needs a Federal Elections Agency

    Charlotte Hill
Memo,

How Ranked Choice Voting Could Improve American Politics

Basic Facts Brief,

No Jargon Podcast

Episode 215:
Polarization in a Pandemic

In the News

Opinion: "Why Bipartisanship In The Senate Is Dying," Lee Drutman, Five Thirty Eight, October 27, 2021.
Opinion: "America Votes by 50 Sets of Rules. We Need a Federal Elections Agency.," Lee Drutman (with Charlotte Hill), The New York Times, November 5, 2020.
Opinion: "Ranked-choice Voting Faces its Biggest Test Yet in New York City," Lee Drutman, Vox Media, November 5, 2019.
Opinion: "Ranked-Choice Voting Faces Its Biggest Test Yet in New York City," Lee Drutman, Vox, November 5, 2019.
Research discussed by Thomas Edsall, in "How Radical Is Too Radical for 2020 Democrats?," The New York Times, April 10, 2019.
Opinion: "Almost Everyone Got 2016 Wrong. We Should Try to Predict 2020 Anyway.," Lee Drutman, Vox, April 1, 2019.
Research discussed by Thomas B. Edsall, in "The Lobbyists Blocking Nancy Pelosi and Her New Majority," The New York Times, January 10, 2019.
Opinion: "Why Filling the Vacant Supreme Court Seat is Bad for the Country," Lee Drutman, The Washington Post, July 10, 2018.
Quoted by Eric Levitz in "New Study: Trump’s Immigration Agenda May Have Hurt Him in 2016," NY Magazine, July 2, 2018.
Opinion: "It's Time for Time Limits for Supreme Court Justices," Lee Drutman, Vox, June 27, 2018.
Quoted by in "Democrats Have Plenty of Anger, but Few Good Ideas," The Economist, May 17, 2018.
Quoted by Todd Shields and Bill Alison in "AT&T’s Top Washington Official out over Hiring of Trump’s Lawyer," Bloomberg View, May 11, 2018.
Quoted by Henry Grabar in "Is It Normal for the President’s Lawyer to Run a Political Consulting Firm?," Slate, May 9, 2018.
Quoted by Derek Kravitz & Alex Mierjeski in "How Former Members of the Trump Administration are Working Around a Non-Lobbying Pledge," Pacific Standard, May 4, 2018.
Quoted by Clio Chang in "Was It Worth It for Democrats to Vote for Mike Pompeo?," Splinter News, April 26, 2018.
Opinion: "Is There a Case for Political Optimism?," Lee Drutman (with Hollie Russon Gilman, Chayenne Polimedio, Heather Hurlburt, Mark Schmitt, Elena Souris, and Christian Hosam), Vox, April 23, 2018.
Quoted by Lindsey Rupp and Mark Niquette in "Rare Coalition Bands Together to Fight Trump Tariffs," Bloomberg Politics, April 11, 2018.
Quoted by Kate Irby in "Why Twitter and Google aren’t Supporting the Honest Ads Act as Facebook Endorses It," The News & Observer, April 9, 2018.
Quoted by Peter Overby in "Lobbyists, Campaign Cash and Think Tanks: How Silicon Valley Tackled Politics," NPR, April 9, 2018.
Opinion: "Will Trump Break American Democracy?," Lee Drutman, Vox, March 20, 2018.
Quoted by Matthew Rozsa in "More Than 1 in 4 Americans Show Some Support for Authoritarianism," Salon, March 16, 2018.
Quoted by John Sides in "New Study Finds Increase in Support for Democracy — but Weaker Support among Politically Disengaged and Conservatives," The Washington Post, March 13, 2018.
Opinion: "The Looming Legitimacy Crisis of the 2018 Midterms," Lee Drutman, Vox, March 9, 2018.
Quoted by Justin Talbot-Zorn in "How to Reverse the Trump-Era Brain Drain," The American Prospect, March 7, 2018.
Interviewed in "‘The NRA Has Basically Become Part of the Republican Party’," FAIR's CounterSpin, March 1, 2018.
Opinion: "Why Parkland Could be a Turning Point for Gun Control," Lee Drutman, Vox, February 21, 2018.
Quoted by Yamily Habib in "The NRA and the Republican Party, A Limitless Romance," AL DÍA News Media, February 19, 2018.
Quoted by Jake Novak in "Stop Blaming the NRA for Failed Gun Control Efforts," CNBC, February 16, 2018.
Quoted by Monica Hunter-Hart in "Trump’s Speeches to the NRA Promised He’d Never Let Gun Owners Down," Bustle , February 15, 2018.
Quoted by Ed Kilgore in "Joe Manchin is Right: Washington Sucks," New York Magazine, February 2, 2018.
Opinion: "Why so Many Members of Congress are Retiring," Lee Drutman, Vox, February 1, 2018.
Opinion: "Dear Jeff Flake: Time to Start a Third Party," Lee Drutman, January 16, 2018.
Research discussed by John Harwoood, in "Trump's Racial Provocations, So Shocking in the White House, Helped Get Him There," CNBC, January 12, 2018.
Opinion: "Virginia Clarifies the Case against Winner-Take-All Democracy," Lee Drutman, Vox, January 4, 2018.
Opinion: "There is No Separation of Powers Without Divided Government," Lee Drutman, Vox, January 3, 2018.
Opinion: "How Democrats Can Extend the Winning Streak into 2018," Lee Drutman, New York Times, November 13, 2017.
Regular contributions by Lee Drutman to The Atlantic.
Regular contributions by Lee Drutman to Vox.
Quoted by in "Lobbyists Go Underground," The Economist, August 31, 2017.
Opinion: "The Real Civil War in the Democratic Party," Lee Drutman, New York Times, July 26, 2017.
Quoted by Isaac Chotiner in "Can This Donkey be Saved?," Slate, June 27, 2017.
Opinion: "What We Get Wrong about Lobbying and Corruption," Lee Drutman, The Washington Post, April 16, 2015.

Publications

"Congressional Staff and the Revolving Door: The Impact of Regulatory Change" (with Bruce E. Cain). Election Law Journal 13, no. 1 (2014): 27-44.

Discusses the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLGOA) which attempted to slow the revolving door between Congress and the Washington lobbying industry with one year bans on contacts between ex-staffers and their former colleagues in Congress. Explains the effects of HLGOA on various offices in the House and Senate.

"The Inside View: Using the Enron Email Archive to Understand Business Lobbying" (with Daniel J. Hopkins). Legislative Studies Quarterly 38, no. 1 (2013): 5-30.

Presents new methods and data that enable us to consider the internal processes of corporate political attention. 

"The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate" (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Provides a fascinating and detailed picture of what corporations do in Washington, why they do it, and why it matters. Argues that proactive and aggressive engagement could help companies' bottom lines. Discusses reforms in lobbying.

"The Complexities of Lobbying: Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Profession" Political Science & Politics 43, no. 4 (2010): 834-837.

Argues that it is not easy to define lobbying. Focuses on demystifying the theories and application of lobbying.