Professor Dougherty studies institutional design, largely with respect to American politics. Part of his research addresses the implications of various institutions from a rational choice perspective. For example, he has studied the probability that various voting rules, assembly sizes, and quorum requirements adhere to a normative criterion, or sets of criteria, when individual preferences are unknown. The other part of his research focuses on why various institutions have been adopted. For example, he has studied the framers' motivation for adopting specific clauses in the U.S. Constitution and has founded the Constitutional Convention Research Group (CCRG) to recover delegate positions on all substantive votes at the convention. The results have been published by Cambridge University Press and in journals such as American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, and Economic Inquiry, to name a few.

Mailing Address
Department of Political Science
Baldwin Hall
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602

Phone (706) 542-2989
Fax  (706) 542-4421
E-mail: dougherk@uga.edu

Last Modified: 6/1/09