Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism

Kousser, Thad

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511614088

Cited by 102 publications

(149 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Next, term limits may reduce the capacity of lawmakers to assess and respond to opinion by reducing experience (Kousser 2005) and may reduce incentives to respond to public opinion by limiting the value of a legislative seat. On the other hand, as proponents of term limits argue, to the extent term limits induce greater turnover, they might lead to legislators who better reflect current constituents' preferences directly and might reduce the extent to which legislators are "captured" by interest groups or political insiders.…”

Section: Explaining Variation In Responsiveness and Congruencementioning

confidence: 99%

The Democratic Deficit in the States

Lax

Phillips

2011

American J Political Sci

393

454

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One might worry, however, that this test is too lenient. The ideology-policy correlation is the dominant approach in studies of state responsiveness, and it has been the most fruitful approach to date. However, problems of inference arise because researchers cannot know exactly how diffuse preference measures ought to translate into policy. That is, policy and ideology lack a common metric (Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993, 93;Matsusaka 2001 but without knowing the mapping of ideology to voter policy preferences, we cannot tell if policy is over-or underresponsive to preferences.Most existing work, by focusing on the ideologypolicy correlation, also does not assess how responsive states are to voter preferences on specific policies. Nor does it tell us how effective state political systems are at translating opinion majorities into public policy. If a majority of voters in a state wants to adopt a lottery or impose an abortion restriction, how likely is the state to do so? In other words, is policy usually congruent with majority will?Both responsiveness and congruence are forms of policy representation, but they capture different dimensions of democratic performance. To be clear, by responsiveness, we mean a positive correlation between opinion and policy; by congruence, we mean that policy actually matches majority opinion. Where majority will is truly sovereign, you would expect both strong responsiveness and a high level of congruence. Policy adoption may increase with higher public support (suggesting responsiveness), but policy may still often be inconsistent with majority opinion (suggesting a lack of congruence),

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Section: Explaining Variation In Responsiveness and Congruencementioning

confidence: 99%

The Democratic Deficit in the States

Lax

Phillips

2011

American J Political Sci

393

454

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“…We assume that incompetent politicians never achieve this and that competent politicians who choose high effort do so with certainty, while competent politicians choosing low effort achieve H with probability g , 1, so that effort (or foregone rents) increases the probability of a good outcome for competent types. We also assume that the voter prefers an incumbent who is competent for certain but who 2 A few recent studies examine the impact of the introduction of legislative term limits on the composition of state legislatures and the behavior of term-limited legislators and find mixed results (Carey et al 2006;Kousser 2005; Kurtz, Cain, and Niemi 2007 This specification has generated some confusion in the literature. For example, Johnson and Crain state that ''Besley and Case (1995a) find evidence of cyclical activity in policy variables for two-term limit states .…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from U.S. Term Limits

Alt

Mesquita²,

Rose³

2011

The Journal of Politics

197

127

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We exploit variation in U.S. gubernatorial term limits across states and time to empirically estimate two separate effects of elections on government performance. Holding tenure in office constant, differences in performance by reelectioneligible and term-limited incumbents identify an accountability effect: reelection-eligible governors have greater incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of voters. Holding term-limit status constant, differences in performance by incumbents in different terms identify a competence effect: later-term incumbents are more likely to be competent both because they have survived reelection and because they have experience in office. We show that economic growth is higher and taxes, spending, and borrowing costs are lower under reelection-eligible incumbents than under term-limited incumbents (accountability), and under reelected incumbents than under first-term incumbents (competence), all else equal. In addition to improving our understanding of the role of elections in representative democracy, these findings resolve an empirical puzzle about the disappearance of the effect of term limits on gubernatorial performance over time.E lections play two potential roles in representative democracy. First, elections may mitigate moral hazard by creating accountability; that is, politicians may take costly actions on behalf of voters because they know that they will only be reelected if their performance exceeds some standard (e.g., Barro 1973;Ferejohn 1986). Second, elections may mitigate adverse selection by allowing voters to select competent types who perform better, in expectation, than an unknown challenger. Moreover, in the absence of term limits, elections allow voters to retain incumbents whose competence has increased through experience (Padro i Miquel and Snyder 2006). Thus, over time elections may help voters weed out bad types and retain good types (e.g., Ashworth 2005; Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2008;Fearon 1999;Gordon, Huber, and Landa 2007;Gowrisankaran, Mitchell, and Moro 2008;Zaller 1998). 1 Empirically distinguishing the accountability and competence effects of elections has proven difficult. While Fearon (1999) emphasizes a trade-off between accountability and competence (or selecting good types), in many theoretical models, both effects operate in the same direction (Ashworth 2005;Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2006;Banks and Sundaram 1998;Besley 2006;Duggan 2000). Voters' threat to reelect only incumbents believed to be good types gives politicians an incentive to exert effort in order to try to convince voters that they are ''good'' (that is, more competent than they really are). For this reason, behavior by voters that alleviates adverse selection simultaneously alleviates moral hazard.We devise an empirical strategy to isolate the two effects by exploiting variation in the length of gubernatorial term limits. The basic argument is as follows. The relative performance of incumbents in the same term, some of whom are eligible to run again and some of whom a...

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“…As the nation's largest state, studying term limits in California may serve as a model for term limits on a national scale (Price 1992). California also ranks extremely highly in professionalization, ranking number one in both total compensation for its elected officials and in total number of staff per legislator, and number two in session length (Kousser 2005). Additionally, exploring the impact of term limits on staff in one state may serve as a launching pad for studies about the changing role of staff in other states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Illinois, too, boasts a highly professionalized state legislature, ranking fifth in member compensation and eighth in staffers per legislator. However, unlike California the state has never passed term limits legislation (Kousser 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting Power in Sacramento: The Effects of Term Limits on Legislative Staff

Robinson¹

2011

CJPP

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Does legislative staff become more powerful when state legislators are term limited? This article explores the impact of term limits on the power and duties of staff. Staff play an important role in today's politics, and this study seeks to contribute qualitative and quantitative data on the changes in California's legislative staff since the passage of term limits in 1990. I obtained data through interviews with senior staff in Sacramento, an online survey created for the study, and staff salary and staff turnover data from both the California and Illinois state legislatures.I find that term limits have changed the duties of staff, made staff jobs less stable, and affected the relationship between legislators and staff. Levels of staff experience have gone down in the State Senate and risen slightly in the Assembly, but do not vary considerably from staff levels of experience in the Illinois State Legislature in 2009 and 2010. Staff salaries increased at a faster rate in the California Legislature than in the Illinois Legislature between 2006 and 2009. I conclude that term limits have made staff potentially more powerful, but less competent.

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Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism

Cited by 102 publications

References 74 publications

The Democratic Deficit in the States

The Democratic Deficit in the States

Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from U.S. Term Limits

Shifting Power in Sacramento: The Effects of Term Limits on Legislative Staff

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