Christopher Wlezien is Hogg Professor of Government. His primary, ongoing research develops a “thermostatic” model of public opinion and policy and examines the dynamic interrelationships between preferences for spending and budgetary policy in various domains. A cross-national investigation focusing on the US, the UK, and Canada is the subject of a book titled "Degrees of Democracy" (2009). Wlezien edited a related book on "Who Gets Represented?"(2011). His paper "Political Institutions and the Opinion–Policy Link" (2012) tests theories about the effects of federalism, executive-legislative imbalance, and the proportionality of electoral systems in 17 countries.

His other major area of research addresses the evolution of voter preferences expressed in pre-election polls over the course of the election cycle. It has been the subject of numerous articles on the US and a book "The Timeline of Presidential Elections" (2012). A related e-book "The 2012 Election and the Timeline of Presidential Elections" was published in 2014. His current work in the area undertakes cross-national analysis, the first paper on which examines how political institutions condition the structure and evolution of preferences in over 300 elections in 45 countries.

He joined the faculty in 2013 from Temple University in Philadelphia. Previously he taught at Oxford University, where he was Reader of Comparative Government and a Fellow of Nuffield College. While at Oxford, he co-founded the ESRC-funded Oxford Spring School in Quantitative Methods for Social Research. Before that, he taught at the University of Houston, where he was founding director of the Institute for the Study of Political Economy. He holds or has held visiting positions at Columbia University, European University Institute (Florence), Instituto Empresa (Madrid), Juan March Institute (Madrid), University of Mannheim (Germany), McGill University (Montreal), Sciences Po (Paris), and the University of Manchester (UK). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1989 and his B.A. from Saint Xavier College (Chicago) in 1984.