Craig Volden is co-director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. He is a professor of public policy and politics at UVA, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Politics. He studies the politics of public policy, with a focus on what policy choices arise within legislative institutions and within American federalism. 

His most recent book, "Why Bad Policies Spread (and Good Ones Don’t)," co-authored with Charles Shipan, explores the conditions under which governments learn from one another’s policy experiences and why that process goes awry. His previous work includes "Legislative Effectiveness in the United States Congress: The Lawmakers," co-authored with Alan Wiseman, which develops a methodology for scoring the lawmaking effectiveness of each member of Congress, identifying how lawmakers could better address the nation’s policy problems.