Bruce I. Oppenheimer Vanderbilt University, USA

Bruce I. Oppenheimer is professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He has been a Brookings fellow in Governmental Studies (1970–1971) and an APSA congressional fellow (1974–1975). He is author of Oil and the Congressional Process: The Limits of Symbolic Politics (1974). His book Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999), cowritten with Frances Lee, was awarded the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation’s D. B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress. He is also the editor of U.S. Senate Exceptionalism (2002) and the author of numerous articles. His recent research focuses on Congress and energy policy and on variation in competition in open-seat House primaries.