Matt Grossmann is Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.
His new book, Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States, is from Cambridge University Press. He finds that while the Republican Party has gained substantial political control of state governments but has largely failed to enact policies that advance conservative goals.
Grossmann is also co-author of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, published by Oxford University Press in 2016 (with David A. Hopkins) and winner of the Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the American Political Science Association.
His previous books include Artists of the Possible: Governing Networks and American Policy Change Since 1945, published by Oxford University Press in 2014 and The Not-So-Special Interests: Interest Groups, Public Representation and American Governance, published by Stanford University Press in 2012. He is co-author of Campaigns & Elections, the leading elections textbook from W.W. Norton.
Grossmann’s a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, DC, host of The Science of Politics Podcast and a regular contributor to FiveThirtyEight’s online political analysis. He has also published op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
While on sabbatical from 2018-2019, he served as Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
Grossmann has authored numerous journal articles on such topics as policy change, political party networks, the legislative process and public opinion. His research appears in the Journal of Politics, Policy Studies Journal, Perspectives on Politics, American Politics Research and fifteen other outlets.
His research on “Asymmetric Parties in American Policy Debates” was supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. His research project, “How Do the Rich Rule? Public Opinion, Parties, and Interest Groups in Unequal Policy Influence,” was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation.
He was named IPPSR Director in January 2016. IPPSR is a policy, leadership and research unit within MSU’s College of Social Science, conducting more than $1.5 million in grant- or contract-funded research and raising more than $300,000 in donations annually.
Under Grossmann's leadership, IPPSR added more than 60 affiliated faculty members from 25 different departments and nine colleges. Bringing the first student cohort to IPPSR, Grossmann has built a Policy Fellows Program with 20 graduate and undergraduate students per year. He expanded the Institute’s outreach capabilities, doubling the number of Public Policy Forums at the state capitol and launching the State of the State Podcast and the Michigan Policy Wonk blog.
Grossmann also created a policy-relevant research search engine and the Correlates of State Policy online database (1,000 variables measured for all 50 states each year), designed a new online survey panel of political insiders, established a new training program for legislative staff, transformed an internship award into a leadership certification for legislative interns, and created an event series for training faculty to engage policymakers.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Claremont McKenna College, a master’s degree in political science in 2002 and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007.
Grossmann is available by phone at 517-355-6672, by email at grossm63@msu.edu, on Twitter @mattgrossmann and at www.mattg.org.