Alex Garlick’s research focuses on legislative institutions in the United States, namely Congress and the state legislatures. He investigates the impact of interest group lobbying on political and policy outcomes, ranging from political polarization to the cost of health care. He specializes in quantitative research methods, and has produced datasets on interest group lobbying in the states, state legislative policy agendas and state legislative histories that are publicly available.

Professor Garlick’s work has been published in a number of journals, including Interest Groups and Advocacy, Political Research Quarterly, Political Science Research and Methods and State Politics and Policy Quarterly. He has provided commentary to several outlets, including the US News and World Report and Mischiefs of Factions blog, and spends too much time on Twitter. He teaches courses on Congress, American politics, and health politics.

Before joining the UVM political science department, Professor Garlick was a faculty member at The College of New Jersey, and a 2016/17 American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working in the office of Congressman Joe Kennedy, III. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and his B.A. from Middlebury College. He has also worked on local and national electoral campaigns and is originally from Needham, Massachusetts where he was an elected member of Town Meeting.