Postdoctoral Scholars

Postdoctoral Scholar

Lauren Futter studies American politics and political economy with a substantive focus on federalism, legislatures, and executive branch politics. Her work uses a combination of formal models and empirical analysis to examine how federalism influences public policy design and implementation. Projects within this agenda explore the circumstances under which the federal government delegates discretion over welfare programs to the states and how interactions between public and private actors shape the design of welfare policy. In other work, she assesses the circumstances under which legislatures delegate authority to the executive branch and how legislatures bargain over emergency preparedness. She earned her PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 2025. 

Research Interests: Legislatures,  Executive Branch, State Politics, Federalism

View Lauren's Personal Website