The Applied Political Theory Lab (APTL) is a group of Caltech Social Science faculty, students, and alums who share the goal of theory-driven research in political science. Our work focuses on developing mathematical models of politics, using those models to analyze real-world political phenomena, and assessing the models' predictions and assumptions with empirical analyses.

Substantively, our work studies electoral politics, legislative organization, bureaucratic relations, legal institutions, and civil conflict. Methodologically, we use a range of tools from decision theory, game theory, structural estimation, and statistics.

Given that Political Science has become increasingly empirical over the last several decades, our group emphasizes the advantages of theoretical approaches to better understand and synthesize our field's new data and empirical results. Our research demonstrates that theory is complementary to new data, more credible estimates of causal effects, and laboratory experiments. Neither theoretical nor empirical work is a substitute for the other.

The group was founded in 2018 by Professor Alexander V. Hirsch and Professor Michael Gibilisco, and currently meets weekly over Zoom to present and discuss its members' ongoing research. We also participate in the Southern California Political Institutions and Political Economy working group and routinely host a summer workshop.

A list of our currently active members may be found here.