Empirical Determinants of Bicameral Sequence in State Legislatures

In a previous article (Rogers 1998), I showed that the bicameral chamber that originates enacted legislation tends to realize policy outcomes closer to the preference of its median legislator than does the chamber that votes second on legislation. All things being equal, this “first‐mover advantage” implies that each chamber could be expected to originate roughly half of all enacted legislation. But all other things are not equal in U.S. state bicameral legislatures. Drawing on an expanded dataset, I innovate and test a number of additional hypotheses related to bicameral voting sequence. My results account for the effects of constitutional, institutional, and electoral variables on bicameral sequence.     

Structuring Committee Decision-Making: Rules and Procedures in US State Legislatures

The rediscovery of rules and procedures as an important element for understanding legislative decision-making has become very apparent in recent summaries of research on Congress and European Parliaments. Institutional factors are now seen as critical factors that structure and restrict how individual legislators can go about their decision-making responsibilities. The goal of this article is to provide a landscape of the evolution of committee system structure in US state legislatures so that future research will be able to test current theories of institutional change. The major conclusion of this research is that US state legislatures have formalised the structure of their committee systems over the course of the twentieth century and that many similarities and few differences exist in committee system structure between US state legislative upper and lower chambers. Further, this article discovers that four distinct dimensions - property rights, codification of basic structure, internal democracy and minority party rights - of committee system structures exist in US state legislative chambers.     

Interest Group Activists and the Polarization of State Legislatures

Theories in campaign finance research suggest that interest group contributions moderate, and individual contributions polarize, state legislators. However, interest groups are comprised of individuals, and public opinion data suggest that group-affiliated individual donors are more politically active and have especially extreme attitudes. This article investigates the relationship between group-affiliated donors and legislative polarization in the U.S. states. In recent elections, individual contributors have grown more closely affiliated with activist organizations, such as environmental and anti-abortion groups. Contributions from these group-affiliated contributors predict legislative extremism at least as well as overall contributions from interest groups, individual donors, party committees, and party-affiliated individuals. Using a novel data set of state legislative primary dates, results suggest that this relationship may be concentrated in the nomination process. Although the potential for endogeneity merits caution, the findings complicate theoretical firewalls between organizations and individuals in research on parties, interest groups, and campaign finance.     

The Effects of Term Limits on State Legislatures: A New Survey of the 50 States

Term limits on legislators were adopted in 21 states during the early 1990s. Beginning in 1996, the limits legally barred incumbents from reelection in 11 states, and they will do so in four more by 2010. In 2002, we conducted the only survey of legislators in all 50 states aimed at assessing the impact of term limits on state legislative representation. We found that term limits have virtually no effect on the types of people elected to office—whether measured by a range of demographic characteristics or by ideological predisposition—but they do have measurable impact on certain behaviors and priorities reported by legislators in the survey, and on the balance of power among various institutional actors in the arena of state politics. We characterize the biggest impact on behavior and priorities as a “Burkean shift,” whereby term‐limited legislators become less beholden to the constituents in their geographical districts and more attentive to other concerns. The reform also increases the power of the executive branch (governors and the bureaucracy) over legislative outcomes and weakens the influence of majority party leaders and committee chairs, albeit for different reasons.     

Much of Politics Is Still Local: Multi‐State Lobbying in State Interest Communities

Abstract We explore the nationalization of state lobbying communities by examining all lobbying registrations held by organizations in the 50 states in 1997, with special attention given to the frequency of multi‐state registrations. Following discussion of the meanings and sources of nationalization among state interest communities, we develop and analyze several measures of the level of localism, examining what factors drive variation in multiple state registrations across group types and states. Finally, we discuss the substantive and measurement implications of the nationalization of state interest communities. Our findings identify an interesting paradox of interest representation before state legislatures: although lobbying responses and techniques may have become more nationalized, the composition of state interest communities remains predominantly local.     

Stop,Collaborate, and Listen: Women's Collaboration in US State Legislatures

Collaboration plays a key role in crafting good public policy. We use a novel data set of over 140,000 pieces of legislation considered in US state legislatures in 2015 to examine the factors associated with women's collaboration with each other. We articulate a theory that women's collaboration arises from opportunity structures, dictated by an interaction of individual and institutional characteristics. Examining the effect of a combination of characteristics, we find support for an interactive view of institutions, where women's caucuses accelerate collaboration in Democratic‐controlled bodies and as the share of women increases. Collaboration between women also continues in the face of increased polarization in the presence of a caucus, but not absent one. Our findings speak to the long‐term consequences of electing women to political office, the importance of institutions and organizations in shaping legislative behavior, and the institutionalization of gender in politics.     

Reexamining the Institutional Effects of Term Limits in U.S. State Legislatures

Research on term limits suggests that they have substantial consequences for the power of legislatures vis‐à‐vis the executive and interest groups and for the relationship between leaders and rank‐and‐file members within a chamber. Existing work, however, has not accounted for the actual power of relevant state actors. We contribute to this research by examining the effect of term limits on the influence of institutional actors conditional on the existing political power structure in a state. The inclusion of controls for the direct and moderating effect of actual institutional power suggests some significant extensions of previous findings regarding the institutional effects of term limits.     

Targeting the Treatment: The Strategy behind Lyndon Johnson's Lobbying

Lyndon Johnson woke up studying whip counts, went to bed reading the Congressional Record, and invested countless hours in between translating that political intelligence into a lobbying offensive. The result, famously christened “The Johnson Treatment,” remains the archetype practitioners and political scientists cite when appraising presidential leadership on Capitol Hill. Yet Beltway folklore aside, we know little about how LBJ helped forge winning legislative coalitions. Stepping back from the (countless) colorful anecdotes, this study offers a new and systematic look at Lyndon Johnson's lobbying. Specifically, after exploring theoretical models of presidential coalition building, we then investigate their operational tenets using original data on all President Johnson's contacts, with each member of Congress, in both chambers, for every day he was president.     

Time,Term Limits,and Turnover: Trends in Membership Stability in U.S. State Legislatures

Increases in legislative professionalization along with the implementation of term limits in about one‐third of the American states raise significant questions about the path of state house and senate turnover. We first update turnover figures for all states, by chamber, from the mid‐1980s through 2002. We then compare turnover rates in states with and without term limits. We find that turnover rates, overall, continued to decline through the 1980s but that the long downward trend abated in the 1990s as a result of term limits. The effects of term limits vary depending on the length of the term limit and the opportunity structure in the state. There is also a strong relationship between the presence of term limits and interchamber movement. In addition to term limits, professionalization levels, redistricting, the presence of multi‐member districts, and partisan swings explain differences in turnover rates between states.     

The Incoherence of the Unified Bar Concept: Generalizing from the Wisconsin Case

Many of the unified bars—public bodies to which all lawyers must belong and pay dues in order to practice—have been embroiled in legal and political disputes recently. Focusing on the history of the unified bar in Wisconsin, this article accounts for these disputes in terms of contradictions inherent in the very concept of a unified bar. Across a wide range of issues, the author argues, decision makers have been unsure whether to treat a unified bar as a public agency, a compulsory membership organization, or a private voluntary association, and thus unable to determine when public accountability, the protection of dissident members, or associational autonomy should be the dominant policy in unified bar affairs. The author concludes that disputes over questions of unified bar governance are unlikely to subside and that the unified bars should therefore be terminated in favor of a combination of private voluntary state bar associations and administrative agencies independent of the organized bar.     

Multicountry Studies of Latin American Legislatures: A Review Article

Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies. By Mark P. Jones. (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Pp. 246). Legislative Politics in Latin America. Edited by Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 503). Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Centroamérica, Mexico, y República Dominicana. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 776). Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Cono Sur. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 628). Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Paises Andinos. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 680). Patterns of Legislative Politics: Roll Call Voting in Latin America and the U.S. By Scott Morgenstern. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 224).¹ Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies. By Kent Eaton. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Pp. 351).¹ Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Edited by Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. 493). Term Limits and Legislative Representation. By John M. Carey. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 216).     

Legislatures and their past: The History of Parliament project and the significance of history

Using interviews with Conservative MPs, three aspects of the Poll Tax not covered by the extant literature are examined. Conservative backbenchers are shown to be more supportive of the tax than in previous accounts. The nature and effect of both the legal and non‐legal protests against the Poll Tax are discussed. The effect of petitioning is found to be minor, but the amount and (especially) the nature of post which MPs received had more impact. Other than the quantity, five characteristics are identified which contributed to making this post more significant than other ‘issue’ post received by MPs. The extra‐parliamentary action is also shown to have had a surprisingly strong effect on Conservative MPs.     

Population Heterogeneity and State Dependence: State of the Evidence and Directions for Future Research

Criminological research has consistently uncovered a positive correlationbetween past and current criminal behavior. Continuity in offending overtime can be attributed to at least two processes—populationheterogeneity and state dependence. A population heterogeneity processattributes stability in offending over time to differences in ananti-social characteristic (self-control, impulsivity, psychopathicpersonality) across persons that is established early in life andtime-stable thereafter. An implication of a population heterogeneityexplanation for continuity in offending over time is that the anti-socialcharacteristic is likely to have reverberations throughout life, takingmany manifestations later in life (unemployment, drug addiction, maritalinstability). Any observed correlation between these later life events andcriminality, therefore, is spurious rather than causal, due to the factthat they are all the effects of a common cause. A state dependenceexplanation, in contrast, attributes observed stability in criminaloffending to a process of contagion. That is, criminal behavior has agenuine causal effect on subsequent criminality by eroding constraintsand strengthening incentives to crime. The implication of a statedependence process is that criminal conduct may be influenced by laterlife events. In this paper, we draw a connection between populationheterogeneity and state dependence processes and extant criminologicaltheory. We also review the literature that has investigated theplausibility of these two processes. Finally, concluding that weknow very little about them we make recommendations for future researchon population heterogeneity and state dependence.     

Bicameralism and Minority-Party Influence on Legislative Development: Evidence from House Standing Committee Votes

The ability of the minority party to influence legislation in Congress is debated. Most bills are passed with large bipartisan majorities, yet the House, where most legislation is developed, is seen as a majority-party-dominated institution. I develop a theory of House minority-party influence at the committee markup stage as a result of the Senate’s institutional rules. An original data set of congressional committee votes shows that minority-party support in House committees predicts House and Senate passage. During unified party control of the chambers, an increase in Senate majority-party seats results in lower minority-party support for the legislation in the House committee, while during divided party control of Congress, the House majority passes more extreme bills as the chambers polarize. Even in the majority-party-dominated House, the minority’s preferences are incorporated into legislation, and the Senate’s institutional rules moderate bills to a significant degree.     

Taking Disagreement Seriously: Courts, Legislatures and the Reform of Tort Law

This article explores the relevance of disagreement about valuesand about the functions and effects of law to debates concerningthe appropriate relationship between courts and legislatures,common law and statute. Recent developments in tort law providea context for the discussion. The argument is that in general,political processes of law-making should be preferred judicialprocesses.     

Strength of Evidence,Extraevidentiary Influence,and the Liberation Hypothesis: Data from the Field

To examine relationships between strength of evidence (SOE) and extraevidentiary variables in the context of Kalven and Zeisel’s (The American Jury, 1966) liberation hypothesis, post-trial questionnaire data were collected from judges, attorneys, and jurors associated with 179 criminal jury trials. SOE ratings were strongly correlated with jury verdicts on the three most serious charges against the defendant, and several extraevidentiary variables (i.e., pretrial publicity, trial complexity, charge severity, and foreperson demographics) were moderately correlated with verdicts. Extraevidentiary-verdict relationships remained significant when SOE was controlled, although extraevidentiary variables yielded only modest improvement in classification accuracy beyond SOE. In partial support of the liberation hypothesis, several case-related extraevidentiary variables were significantly related to jury verdicts only when the prosecution’s evidence was rated as moderately strong.