Evaluating Changes in Florida's Legislative Process: Innovative Rules and Conservative Norms

Abstract

During the past decade many state legislatures have undergone reform in an attempt to become more efficient, open, representative and fair, but relatively little research has been done to evaluate these changes. When Republicans took control of the Florida House in 1997, they reorganized the legislature, changed many formal rules, and fostered a new informal norm related to passing laws. The major stated goal of the new formal rules is to “flatten the pyramid of power” and allow all “good ideas” to be heard while fostering a conservative norm. To evaluate the rule changes, a survey of Florida House members concerning rule satisfaction is analyzed, regressions of bill passage rates for 1995 and 1997 are compared, and several other rule effects are examined. Overall the rules receive support although rule satisfaction is lower among Democrats and liberals. The major goal is realized to some degree when comparing the determinants of individual legislative passage rates. Analysis also suggests that a conservative norm is established, the end‐of‐session logjam is reduced, and legislative trains are derailed.

Does Radical-Right Success Make the Political Debate More Negative?

“…In the first place, the social norms regulating the political debate are, in many ways, similar to the ones regulating other realms of social life (Bernick and Wiggins 1983), and hence one might expect them to change through similar mechanisms. In the second place, changes in the balance of power within legislative bodies have been shown to be predictive of changes in the norms regulating behavior in those bodies (Jewett 2002). For these reasons, one might expect that, like voters, politicians can take radical right success as a cue that the kind of discourse that characterizes the radical right has become normalized.…”