Keith Krehbiel

Who is Keith Krehbiel?

Keith Krehbiel’s research is on political parties, lobbying, and governmental processes (legislative, executive, and judicial). He addresses these topics by developing and testing game-theoretic models of collective choice. Krehbiel has published over 50 research articles and two award-winning books: Information and Legislative Organization (Univ. of Michigan Press), and Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking (Univ. of Chicago Press). He is also cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Quarterly Journal of Political Science.

Keith Krehbiel is Edward B. Rust Professor of Political Science at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where he has taught courses on foundations of political economy, legislative behavior, business-government relations, and ethics since 1986. He specializes in American politics and has published two books and dozens of articles on U.S. politics and governmental processes.

Krehbiel’s first book, Information and Legislative Organization (University of Michigan Press, 1991) presents a comprehensive game-theoretic account of legislative behavior in the presence of uncertainty about the consequences of laws. The book also reports on a variety of novel empirical tests of the theory. The book received the American Political Science Association's Richard F. Fenno Prize for best book on legislative studies.

Krehbiel’s second book, Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking (University of Chicago Press, 1998) studies the strategic interaction of the U.S. President and Congress. This book received both the Fenno Prize (for best book on legislative politics) and the Neustadt Prize (for best book on the presidency).

In addition to serving several terms on editorial boards of leading political science journals, Krehbiel has been a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Guest Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Congressional Fellow in the Senate Republican Leader's Office, and twice a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and he received the Sloan Award for Teaching Excellence in 2000. In 2005, with Nolan McCarty, Krehbiel cofounded the Quarterly Journal of Political Science for which he and McCarty are Editors-in-Chief.