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

Abstract

We argue that state legislative politics is qualitatively different from national congressional politics in the extent to which it focuses on localized and geographically specific legislation salient to subconstituencies within a legislative district. Whereas congressional politics focuses on casework benefits for individual constituents, state legislative politics is more oriented to the delivery of localized benefits for groups of citizens in specific areas within a district, fostering a geographically specific group connection. A primary way to build such targeted geographical support is for members to introduce particularistic legislation designed to aid their specific targeted geographical area within the district. We argue that this is primarily a function of electoral rules. Using original sponsorship data from U.S. state houses, we demonstrate that greater district magnitude and more inclusive selection procedures such as open primaries are associated with more particularism. Our findings provide strong support for a voter-group alignment model of electoral politics distinct from the personal vote/electoral connection model that characterizes U.S. congressional politics and is more akin to patterns of geographically specific group-oriented electoral politics found in Europe and throughout the world.

Electoral Accountability and Particularistic Legislation: Evidence from an Electoral Reform in Mexico

“…Results suggest that the estimates are face valid and the specification has discovered substantively meaningful topics. After the topic model was estimated, validated, and interpreted, the author proceeded to classify topics into types of legislation following Bagashka and Clark (2016). To implement the classification, I first classified the 450 topics into either policy or procedural.…”

“…Therefore, being able to run for reelection is critical in shaping legislative incentives to pursue particularism. When legislators do not have this option, usually because they have reached the end of their term or they are retiring members of Congress, their enthusiasm for particularism recedes unless they are seeking another elective office (Bagashka and Clark 2016;Carey, Niemi, and Powell 1998;Herron and Shotts 2006).…”

States Testing the Legal Limits: The Effect of Electoral Competition on the Constitutionality of State Statutes

“…The first theoretical mechanism connecting electoral competition to the invalidation of state enactments by the Supreme Court rests on the assumption that securing reelection is a key motivation of legislators (Fenno 1978; Mayhew 1974), and they engage in various activities that they believe may help their reelection prospects. Some of these activities include closely monitoring their constituents’ preferences (Maestas 2003) and providing localized benefits to their district (Bagashka and Clark 2016). Germane to our research, state legislators also tend to sponsor and support legislation that they believe might please their constituents and help their reelection prospects (Barrilleaux, Holbrook, and Langer 2002; Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993).…”

The Impact of District Magnitude on the Legislative Behavior of State Representatives

“…Studies of district magnitude in the United States adopt a number of approaches. Some studies compare the behavior of legislators across states (Bagashka and Clark 2016; Cox and Morgenstern 1995; Richardson, Russell, and Cooper 2004). Others compare the behaviors of legislators within one state or legislative chamber across time (Kirkland 2012).…”

“…Ten state legislatures, more than two-thirds of all municipal governments, and a multitude of county councils, school boards, and other special governments use MMDs. A substantial body of research finds that district magnitude influences electoral competition (Cox and Morgenstern 1995; Niemi, Jackman, and Winsky 1991), the diversity of lawmaking bodies (Trounstine and Valdini 2008), the types of policies pursued (Bagashka and Clark 2016), and more. However, little is known about the impact of district magnitude on participation of legislators in basic policymaking activities.…”