Her work focuses on how elections, institutions, and policy are connected in the United States Congress. Her 2015 book (Is Bipartisanship Dead?) explored declining bipartisan cooperation in Congress, changes in party strategy and the ramifications of these changes for the responsiveness of members to their constituents and for policy formation. Her current research examines legislative inaction and partisan conflict in Congress and American politics. This research includes projects on legislators' rejection of compromises that give them some but not all of what they seek, and how legislators' respond to gridlock by passing the buck to others.