The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress today announced the appointment of Frances Lee, Princeton University professor of politics and public affairs, as the inaugural chair in congressional policymaking at the Library. The chair was made possible with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

While she is in residence, Lee will research legislative negotiation and bargaining processes in Congress, focusing on intraparty coalition building in the 115^th Congress. She will also work with an interdisciplinary team on a project reporting on the culture of Congress. The team will analyze conflict and cooperation through the lens of political science and organizational psychology.

Lee is the author of several books, including “Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign” (2016), “Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate” (2009) and co-author of “Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation” (1999). She is also co-author of a comprehensive textbook: “Congress and its Members.” Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. Lee served on the faculty of the University of Maryland at College Park from 2004 to 2019.

Lee was the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Richard F. Fenno Prize, the D.B. Hardeman Prize from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and the American Political Science Association’s E.E. Schattschneider award. She holds a doctorate in political science from Vanderbilt University.

The Kluge Center’s mission, as established in 2000, is to reinvigorate the interconnection between thought and action, bridging the gap between scholarship and policymaking. To that end, the Center brings some of the world’s great thinkers to the Library to make use of the its collections and engage in conversations addressing the challenges facing democracies in the 21^st century.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.