Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures

Abstract

When do lawmakers craft broad policies, and when do they focus on narrow legislation tailored to a local interest? We investigate this question by exploring historical variation in the types of bills produced by American state legislatures. Drawing on a new database of 165,000 bills—covering sessions over 120 years in thirteen different states—we demonstrate the surprising prominence of particularistic bills affecting a specific legislator's district. We then develop and test a theory linking the goals of legislators to their propensity to introduce district bills rather than broad legislation. We find that, consistent with our predictions, politicians are more likely to craft policies targeted to a particular local interest when a legislature is dominated by one party or when it pays its members relatively high salaries. These findings provide empirical support for Key's (1949) thesis that one-party politics descends into factionalism and undermines the making of broad public policy.

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

“…This finding is in line with Gamm and Kousser's (2010) findings as well as the proposition by V. O. Key that one-party politics produces factionalism and leads to a parochialism.…”

“…Moreover, we do not find that the legislators' ideology-as measured by W-Nominate scoresinfluences the decision to sponsor local or targeted legislation. Additional controls in the individual-level equation for the level of district-level electoral competition, urbanization, as well as the gender, race, and Gamm and Kousser's (2010) finding that legislators from richer states can afford to have more of a statewide focus, we do not find evidence that the state's per capita income in constant dollars influences particularism. Like Gamm and Kousser (2010), we examined whether legislative turnover influenced the sponsorship of local and targeted bills.…”

No Strength in Numbers: The Failure of Big-City Bills in American State Legislatures, 1880–2000

“…When cities have complained about legislative interference in their affairs-when Boston's residents chafed at the fact that their police commissioner was appointed by the governor (Shefter 1970, 1), when "St. Louis was subjected to virtually annual charter revisions by the Missouri legislature" (Griffith 1974, 212)-the evidence has always come in the form of district bills. As we discuss elsewhere (Gamm and Kousser 2010), district bills include all bills that relate to a specific, identifiable place-including counties, towns, villages, cities, school districts, parks, airports, highways, churches, businesses, water districts, and local institutions. Because cities lack the powers to legislate in many areas on their own behalf (Frug 1999), they require positive legislation at the state level to pursue a wide range of initiatives.…”

Exploring Responsiveness in the U.S. House of Representatives

“…Roll call voting as discussed above, legislative particularism (Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2006), and constituent casework (Harden 2013) are all cases of responsiveness. For example, more moderate legislators representing more moderate constituencies may be less apt to respond to constituent preferences through targeted policy responsiveness (e.g., Gamm and Kousser 2010). Whether this is the case or not, is beyond the scope of this analysis.…”

“…While bill sponsorship is valuable to address the responsiveness of legislators to their constituents' preferences, past approaches analyzing bill sponsorship have often focused on agenda setting (Schiller 1995;Burstein, Bauldry, and Froese 2005;Rocca and Gordon 2010;Woon 2008), or on sub-group behavior in the legislative process (Barnello and Bratton 2007;Rocca and Sanchez 2008;Whitby 2002;Wilson 2010). And at the state level, Gamm and Kousser (2010) leveraged bill sponsorship to explore variance in district homogeneity as it relates to the targeted versus broad nature of bills.…”