add contact to address book

Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies

• Affiliation(s)

  • Faculty Associate, Center for Political Studies
  • Olin Center for Law and Economics
  • Santa Fe Institute

• Fields of Study

  • Federalism
  • Foundations of Institutional Analysis
  • Formal Modeling
  • Constitutional Theory and Design

• About

  Professor Bednar's research is on the analysis of institutions, focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of the stability of federal states.  Her most recent book, The Robust Federation demonstrates how complementary institutions maintain and adjust the distribution of authority between national and state governments.  This book makes two theoretical contributions to the study of federalism's design.  First, it shows that distributions suggested by a constitution mean nothing if the governments have no incentive to abide by them, and intergovernmental retaliation tends to be inefficient.  The book's second contribution is that while no institutional safeguard is sufficient to improve the union's prosperity, institutions work together to improve compliance with the distribution of authority, thereby boosting the union's performance.

  Generally, her work seeks to answer questions such as:

  • Why does the federal government take advantage of state governments? 
  • Why are some federations stable, despite frequent episodes of intergovernmental tension?
  • Can the court effectively referee federalism disputes if it makes mistakes or is biased in favor of one government? 

  Professor Bednar is also interested in constitutions: specifically, the potential that constitutional design has to affect the behavior of heterogeneous populations with decentralized governmental structures. 

• Education

  • Stanford University, Ph.D. (Political Science)
  • Stanford University, M.A. (Political Science)
  • University of Michigan, B.A. Honors College (Political Science)

• Awards

  • National Science Foundation Research Highlight (2009)
  • Robert Eckles Swain National Fellow at the Hoover Institution (2007-2008)
  • Tronstein Award for Innovative Teaching (2006)

• Grants

  • Army Research Office Grant (2010-2013)
  • NSF Human & Social Dynamics Exploratory Research Grant (2005-2007)
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research MURI Grant (2005-2010)

• Presentations

  • The Safeguards of Federalism in Times of Fiscal Crisis (Harvard University, 2012)
  • Federal Constitutions and Cultural Evolution: Implications for Afghanistan (Stanford University, 2011)
  • Conditional Subsidiarity (NOMOS, 2011)