Policymaker Community

Since 2006, the Tobin Project has built a robust network of policymakers in Congress, the Administration, and state governments. This network collaborates and exchanges ideas with scholars at various stages of the research process, sharing their insights into important policy challenges. By offering their first-hand experience, policymakers help ground and motivate scholars’ research, while also pointing toward key, unanswered questions in public policy.   

The Tobin Project policymaker network includes U.S. Representatives and Senators, legislative and executive branch staff, administration officials, practitioners at administrative agencies, and members of state government. Continuously innovating on our research model, the Tobin Project works to maximize the practical relevance of our research and ensure that it is rooted in important real-world problems by including policymakers and practitioners at our workshops and large conferences and soliciting their input at crucial points in the research process. In the past, we have also facilitated evening roundtable discussions and policy-focused gatherings and supported one-on-one meetings that bring academics and practitioners together around new research inquiries and ideas. By focusing on long-term research agendas, these interactions helped orient scholars’ work toward enduring and pressing questions with important real-world relevance. Ongoing engagement with policymakers and practitioners positions Tobin Project scholars to identify the most pressing challenges facing the United States and to pursue meaningful research that advances public understanding of these important issues.

Three case studies of past engagement with the policymaker community help illustrate the value of this feature of the Tobin Project model:

Regulatory Policy »
The Democracy Index »
Preventing Regulatory Capture »