Welcome! I am a political scientist who writes about federalism, presidential politics, and geographic inequality. I teach American politics and research methods in the Department of Government at Colby College. 

​My scholarly work has appeared or is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Studies in American Political Development, Journal of Policy History, Education and Urban Society, and The Forum. 

I study political institutions: their historical origins, how they develop policy, and their feedback on public opinion. For example: 

1. My work on the institutional presidency and book manuscript, Managing Chaos, argues that presidents were essential political actors in redefining intergovernmental relationships in the 20th century; presidents built new administrative capacities and rearranged existing institutional commitments through the Executive Office of the Presidency, which allow them to leverage state and local power for their own partisan ends (e.g., waiving Medicaid requirements, penalizing "sanctuary cities"). 
2. My ongoing work on the public dynamics of "fiscal federalism" studies how the politics of intergovernmental finance and policy are tied to questions of distributive injustice within a nationalized, polarized institutional context.   
3. Through experimental and survey-based methods, I have authored multiple studies on how geography and the structure of public policy matter for political attitudes, particularly those related to federalism and the distribution of policy responsibility in non-centralized systems. 

You can find working papers and an extended discussion of my current research under the "research" tab. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about my work or my classes.  

Nicholas Frederick Jacobs
Government Department
Colby College
Waterville, Maine 04901 
Diamond Hall 265
(207) – 859 – 5315 • nfjacobs@colby.edu
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