In a first line of research, I try to better understand how different institutions affect political behavior, with an emphasis on the mechanisms driving the behavior of individual politicians and parties. While institutions generate the incentives under which politicians enact policies, their personal attributes, including race and ethnicity, mediate these incentives and directly influence their political behavior. In a second line of research, I explore how voters perceptions of politicians and the policies that they enact is biased by the politician’s personal attributes. In a series of survey experiments I examine how different attributes, including race, ethnicity, background and personal wealth, interact and shape the perceptions and policy priorities of voters.