Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University. He served as director of the Institute from 1974-1994.

He has collaborated in activities with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the Council of State Governments (CSG), and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation (SLLF). He has supervised comprehensive studies of legislative organization and procedures commissioned by the legislatures of Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, and Wisconsin and has worked with legislatures in 30 other states. He has consulted with the legislatures of California, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Washington on the subject of legislative ethics and has participated in legislative orientation sessions in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Vermont, Tennessee, and Virginia. Currently, he is working with NCSL, the American Political Science Association, and the Center for Civic Education on the development and communication throughout the states of a new public perspective on representative democracy.

In New Jersey he chaired the Ad Hoc Commission on Legislative Ethics and Campaign Finance, which in 1990 was appointed by the Speaker of the Assembly and President of the Senate. In 1992 and 2001 he was selected to be the independent member and to chair the New Jersey Congressional Redistricting Commission, which had responsibility for Congressional redistricting. In 1993 he received the Governor's Award for Public Service in New Jersey. He also assisted the New Jersey Legislature on the development of the Council of Academic Policy Advisors.

In 1995 he received the American Political Science Association's Charles E. Merriam Award which honors a person whose published work and career represent a significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research. He served also as a Fellow in Harvard's Program on Ethics and the Professions and as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School. His Ph.D. is from Princeton.

His writing on state legislatures and state politics includes Legislative Life (Harper and Row, 1981); Governors and Legislatures (CQ Press, 1990); The Third House: Lobbyists and Lobbying in the States, 2d edition (CQ Press, 2001); Drawing the Line: Legislative Ethics in the States (University of Nebraska Press, 1996); and The Decline of Representative Democracy (CQ Press 1998). His monograph, The Ethics Process in State Legislatures: Disciplining Members in a Public Forum, was published by NCSL and SLLF in 1999 and his The Case for Representative Democracy was published by NCSL in 2001. His latest book is Republic on Trial: The Case for Representative Democracy (CQ Press, 2003, with John Hibbing, Burdett Loomis, and Karl Kurtz as co-authors).