Seth Warner, a fourth-year student in our graduate program, was recognized by the Center for Effective Lawmaking as part of its annual small grants award program. The award will support Seth’s work on his dissertation, which studies the origins and consequences of partisan polarization in the American public. Specifically, the grant is tied to his project, “Affective Polarization and Legislative Behavior: Does Citizen Heat Meet with Elite Red Meat?,” which hypothesizes a vicious cycle in which legislative gridlock leads to citizen polarization, encouraging elites to prioritize messaging over lawmaking, and resulting in more gridlock yet.