About

Gleason Judd is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. His research focuses on formal political theory and political economy, with a primary interest in how democratic political institutions influence executive and legislative policymaking. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 2019. Judd's work explores the dynamics of policymaking within democratic systems, contributing to the understanding of political institutions and their impact on legislative and executive actions.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Market economy
• Microeconomics
• World Wide Web
• Public administration
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Economics

Selected publications

• Essays on democratic institutions

  UR Research (University of Rochester)

  dissertationOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of Political Science, 2019.

  Publisher

• Representation in collective policymaking

  Games and Economic Behavior · 2026-03-22

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Learning by lobbying

  American Journal of Political Science · 2025-10-31 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Effective lobbying requires understanding politicians' preferences, while the act of lobbying itself can reveal those preferences. How does this link between lobbying and learning shape relationships between interest groups and politicians? We develop a game‐theoretic model where an interest group can lobby a politician while learning about their ideological alignment. Our analysis highlights strategic tensions where interest groups balance information‐gathering against policy influence in their lobbying, while forward‐looking politicians manage their reputations to shape future interactions. These forces shape dynamics: Policies and transfers shift over time as uncertainty resolves, with early‐career politicians showing greater policy variance and extracting larger benefits through reputation management than veterans. Politicians with secure positions receive more favorable treatment due to their stronger incentives to appear less aligned than they truly are. Our results address empirical regularities and provide a theoretical foundation for understanding how lobbying relationships evolve across political careers and institutional contexts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Learning by Lobbying

  2025-04-07

  preprintOpen access

  How do interest groups learn about and influence politicians over time? We develop a game-theoretic model where an interest group can lobby a politician while learning about their ideological alignment. Our analysis reveals a fundamental tradeoff: interest groups must balance gathering information against exerting immediate influence, while politicians strategically manage their reputations to shape future interactions. These strategic forces generate systematic dynamics: policies and transfers shift in tandem, with early-career politicians showing greater policy variance and extracting larger rents through reputation management than veterans. Uncertainty about alignment increases policy volatility as groups experiment with offers, while institutional features like committee power and revolving-door incentives systematically alter both learning incentives and influence strategies. Our results shed new light on how interest group influence evolves across political careers and varies with institutional context.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Representation in Collective Policymaking

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Policy Making and Appointments under Electoral and Judicial Constraints

  The Journal of Politics · 2024-02-16

  article

  Many democratic systems supplement periodic elections with checks and balances. Yet, elected executives typically have some influence on one important check, the judicial branch, through their power to nominate justices. How do electoral and judicial constraints influence which policies executives pursue and which justices they nominate? We study a game-theoretic model of electoral accountability in which an executive chooses policy and appoints a justice, who can overturn policy today and (potentially) after the election. We highlight how judicial appointments provide executives a tool for signaling and commitment and also affect their incentives to signal with policy. We characterize how executives combine policy and appointments differently depending on judicial turnover, polarization, office motivation, or ideologies of sitting justices. We find that elections can moderate appointments but can also polarize them, reforms increasing justice turnover can backfire and reduce voter welfare, and distinct forms of polarization can have critically different effects.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning by Lobbying

  2024-11-11

  preprintOpen access

  How do interest groups learn about and influence politicians over time? We develop a game-theoretic model where an interest group can lobby a politician while learning about their ideological alignment. Our analysis reveals a fundamental tradeoff: interest groups must balance gathering information against exerting immediate influence, while politicians strategically manage their reputations to shape future interactions. These strategic forces generate systematic dynamics: policies and transfers shift in tandem, with early-career politicians showing greater policy variance and extracting larger rents through reputation management than veterans. Uncertainty about alignment increases policy volatility as groups experiment with offers, while institutional features like committee power and revolving-door incentives systematically alter both learning incentives and influence strategies. Our results shed new light on how interest group influence evolves across political careers and varies with institutional context.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Access to Proposers and Influence in Collective Policy Making

  The Journal of Politics · 2023 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Public administration
  PublisherDOI

• Electoral Competition with Targeted Voting Costs

  2022-04-16

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How do voting laws impact elections? We highlight how laws targeting a specificgroup of citizens can have weak effects on turnout and vote shares but substantial effectson policy platforms, thereby influencing substantive representation even if there areno observable effects on participation. To parse these effects, we analyze a model ofelectoral competition with endogenous turnout and targeted voting costs. Each partyanticipates the direct effect of raising one side’s voting costs: discouraging targetedcitizens from voting. Consequently, both platforms shift towards the untargeted group.These platform adjustments mobilize targeted citizens and demobilize the untargeted,muting the net impact on turnout and vote shares—consistent with scant empiricalevidence of these electoral effects. Policy effects, however, hurt targeted citizens and theiraligned party. The targeted group’s size amplifies these effects. Our results address partycompetition, participation, representation, and normative and empirical evaluations ofvoting laws.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lobbying and policy extremism in repeated elections

  Journal of Economic Theory · 2021 · 10 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Microeconomics
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Peter Bils

  Vanderbilt University

  6 shared

• Bradley C. Smith

  Vanderbilt University

  4 shared

• Greg Sasso

  Emory University

  3 shared

• John Duggan

  University of Rochester

  1 shared

• Emiel Awad

  Princeton University

  1 shared

• Lawrence S. Rothenberg

  1 shared

• William Spaniel

  University of Pittsburgh

  1 shared

• Reilly Steel

  New York Law School

  1 shared