Flexible law: the impact of legislative resources on policy adoption

Abstract

Legislators require knowledge to pass legislation. However, it is not always easy for legislators to become fully informed about bills on the docket. The complexity of modern government, the size of the legislative agenda, and the demands of running for re-election make it impossible for legislators to become experts on each issue on which the government makes policy. As a result, they take cues and guidance from lobbyists (Hall and Deardorff 2006), committees (Krehbiel 1991), constituents (Jones and Baumgartner 2005), and each other (Kingdon 1989) to make decisions on bills as if they were fully informed. Despite these resources, legislators are not always well-informed about every bill under consideration in their legislature. Therefore, legislatures sometimes add sunset provisions to bills to allow for a test period. Prior research has not thoroughly examined how the lack of legislative resources impacts public policy adoption -- specifically, under what circumstances do legislators decide to attach sunset provisions to legislation? Using original datasets, this study finds that sunset provisions are used during times of legislative uncertainty, such as when legislatures are not fully institutionalized.