editor's introduction: the state of u. s. state legislative research

Editor's Introduction: The State of U. S. State Legislative ResearchAuthor(s): Malcolm E. JewellSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1981), pp. 1-25Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439710 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 02:12

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Comparative Legislative Research Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto Legislative Studies Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:12:55 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=clrc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/439710?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


MALCOLM E. JEWELL University of Kentucky

Editor's Introduction: The State of U. S. State Legislative Research

This is an evaluation of recent literature on U.S. state legislatures, covering approximately the last two decades. The paper includes the following major topics: 1) legislative recruitment and elections, 2) career patterns, 3) legislative organization and structure, 4) roles and norms, 5) representing the constituency, 6) legislative decision making, 7) legislative budgeting and oversight. A major theme of the paper is that state legislative research should be more theoretical and more comparative, and that we should bridge the gap that still exists between congressional and state legislative research. Another underlying theme is that research has failed to keep pace with the changes that are occurring in state legislatures, and their consequences.

When the Legislative Studies Quarterly was established five years ago, one of our goals was to encourage better and more comparative research on American state legislatures. In the introductory essay to the first issue, I suggested several reasons for the shortcomings of state legislative research: the shortage of basic description and analysis in many states, the weakness of comparative research on state legislatures, and the failure of scholars in this area to test at the state level the hypotheses being developed and tested by congressional scholars. In the first five years of publication, we have published a number of articles on American state legislatures, some of which have been broadly comparative in scope, and studies of state legislatures, of course, have appeared in a number of other places.

This issue of the Quarterly is designed to arouse interest in state legislative research by calling attention to the work that is being done and, perhaps more importantly, to suggest priorities in the work that needs to be done. This introductory essay is an effort to appraise recent literature on state legislatures (roughly over the last decade or two) and to suggest some of the topics that deserve more attention and some of the research strategies that are desirable. An underlying theme of the paper is that state legislative research should be more theoretical and more comparative, and that we should bridge that gap that still exists between congressional and state legislative

Legislative Studies Quarterly, VI, 1, February, 1981 Copyright 1981 by the Comparative Legislative Research Center 0362-9805/81/0601-0001 $01.25



Malcolm E. Jewell

research. Another underlying theme is that state legislatures are changing, and we ought to be studying the causes and consequences of these changes.

Most of us who do research on state legislatures write primarily for other political scientists, and for students, and give relatively little attention to the research questions that might interest legislators and members of legislative staffs. However, a preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 1980 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, where a panel of three political scientists who currently serve in state legislatures offered their perspectives on the need for research in this field. In addition, four of the staff members of the National Conference of State Legislatures have written a comment that follows this paper, based on their experience in answering questions from legislators about the legislative process. Their comments suggest that legislators are asking many questions that ought to be of interest to political scientists but that have been largely neglected.

The remainder of this special issue of the Quarterly is devoted to six articles that illustrate some of the more interesting recent work that is being done on state legislatures. All of these articles either provide data drawn from several states or analyze state legislative developments from a comparative perspective. Several of the authors deal explicitly with methodological questions that are significant for legislative studies. An effort has been made to provide examples of significant work being done in a variety of legislative fields, but there are some obvious gaps-a fact that illustrates the weaknesses existing in comparative state legislative studies. The six papers in this issue will be related to other work in various legislative subfields at the appropriate places in this introductory essay.

During the 1970s, American state legislatures changed in a variety of ways: they became more professional, with longer sessions, better staffing, and better organization of committees; individual turnover declined and a larger proportion of members became more nearly full-time legislators; more legislatures developed the will and the techniques necessary for more effective oversight of the executive. During the period there does not seem to have been a comparable increase in the range and quality of research on state legislatures. A large proportion of studies are still focused on a single state, though they show greater awareness of comparable research in other states. State legislative studies are often only descriptive; others develop and test low-level theories. There are relatively few efforts to apply more recent research trends at the congressional level to state legislatures, even though the growing professionalization of legislatures makes a comparison with congressional research more valuable.

2



Editor's Introduction

Single-Legislature Studies

Our emphasis on the need for more and better comparative studies of legislatures should not be interpreted as downgrading the importance of well conceived and executed studies of a single legislature. In fact, one of the most serious gaps in the literature is at the level of individual state legislative studies. We ought to have a comprehensive study for each state legislature, one that is rich in descriptive detail and in political analysis. In fact, there are relatively few such studies. There are a number of states in which descriptive studies of the legislature have been prepared; but most of these are designed primarily for legislators and other participants in the legislative process, to acquaint them with the mechanics of the process and the basic facts of the legislative institution. The political scientist interested in comparative legislative studies will find little in most of them.

There are a few single-legislature studies that are more rewarding for political scientists. Gove, Carlson, and Carlson (1976) provide a well informed and reasonably detailed analysis of how the legislative process works in Illinois. Hevesi (1975) gives particular attention in New York to the role of the governor, nature of leadership, and the party system, which are the keys to understanding that legislature. Harder and Davis (1979) apply the techniques of organization theory to a study of the Kansas legislature. Kirkpatrick (1978) gives particular emphasis, in his study of the Oklahoma legislature, to the background, roles, and job perceptions of members; roll call voting; and legislative norms. McKee (1980) has edited a book on the Connecticut legislature that relies heavily on the perspectives of participants in the legislative process, who serve as authors of many of the chapters. Stolman (1978) gives particular attention to recruitment, the party and committee system, and legislative leadership in Michigan.

Legislative Recruitment and Elections

Many of the most obvious questions about the selection of legislators remain largely unanswered:

(1) Are the most legislative candidates self-starters, and if not, what groups play a recruiting role?

(2) How much competition is there in elections and primaries, and what causes variations in recruitment?

(3) What factors influence voters' choices in legislative elections? How do these differ from the factors identified in studies of congressional elections?

(4) What does it cost to be elected to the legislature, or run a serious race?

3



Malcolm E. Jewell

(5) What role does the party organization play in legislative elections? (6) How are legislative elections affected by structure: single-member

and multimember districting? By far the most thorough study of legislative recruitment is the

study of Oregon by Seligman, King, Kim, and Smith (1974). The study develops a model of the recruitment process and demonstrates its utility with a detailed analysis of recruitment in the 1966 Oregon legislative elections. The value of such a study, with its strong theoretical foundation, is that it can be replicated in other states. Unfortunately, it has not been; and we know very little about legislative recruitment in most other states. Because the role of party organizations, the degree of legislative professionalization, and the degree of primary and party competition vary among the states, we can assume that the patterns of recruitment also vary. But we lack detailed studies to support this assumption. One exception is Massachusetts, where a study of senatorial elections (Mileur and Sulzner, 1974) gives some attention to recruiting.

In order to understand the levels of primary and general election competition and reasons why these vary, we need comprehensive information about competition. Instead we have a scattering of election returns that have been analyzed in a few states. The most comprehensive study is Grau's paper in this issue. It provides data on the level of primary competition for legislatures in 15 states for the 1972-1978 time period; it measures the success rate of incumbents and their effect on competition, and also measures other variables affecting competition, including party strength and urban-rural differences. Jewell (1967) analyzes data for primary and general election competition in eight southern and border states for the 1950s and early 1960s.

The lack of comprehensive aggregate data on legislative elections not only makes it difficult to explain levels of competition but also makes it difficult to explain the outcome of elections through aggregate analysis. Even in states where legislative election data are readily available, little analysis of such data has been undertaken. We cannot determine how much straight- ticket voting occurs, how strong the coattails of a governor or other statewide candidate may be, how safe incumbents usually are. While aggregate data is elusive in some states and remains unanalyzed in most, voting survey data on legislative elections are virtually nonexistent. If any article on state legislative elections based on survey data has ever been written, it has escaped our attention.

The lack of attention to state legislative elections is in sharp contrast to the recent revival of interest in congressional elections, including both the analysis of aggregate data and the development of a much more useful survey instrument for the 1978 election. Students of congressional elections

4




have recently focused attention on the advantage enjoyed by incumbents (in the House), and have sought to explain it. There is some reason to believe that incumbent state legislators are beginning to enjoy a similar advantage in some states; not only do they more often seek reelection, but they are less likely to be swept out of office by partisan tides or coattails. But the evidence to support this assumption remains rather thin. As state opinion polls continue to develop, we may anticipate greater attention to state legislative races.

There has been one case study of legislative elections in a single state. Mileur and Sulzner (1974) examined election campaigns for the Massachusetts Senate in 1968. They described the background of candidates, nomination processes, the organization and fiancing of campaigns, and campaign techniques. The book presents an excellent, concise picture of legislative campaigns in a single state, but, in the absence of other studies, we cannot tell how typical that pattern is or whether it is now out of date.

The costs of getting elected to the state legislature have obviously changed over time; equally obvious is the fact that it costs much more to get elected in large districts and those where expensive media campaigns are necessary. But no one has collected comparative data on legislative campaign costs for all or most states, and no one has recently examined in any detail in a single state what it costs to run and how the money is raised. One recent survey of about a dozen states (Jewell, 1980a) indicates that the median cost of winning election in a contested senate race ranges from $64,000 in California to $7,400 in Kentucky; in house races the range is from $44,000 in California to $3,000 or less in Connecticut, Kansas, and North Carolina.

The relatively few studies of state and local party organizations conducted in recent years have paid relatively little attention to the role of parties in legislative primaries and elections, perhaps because that role is seldom very strong. The study of recruitment in Oregon (Seligman et al., 1974) does pay attention to the role of party. Tobin and Keynes (1975) have demonstrated that party organizations play a larger role in recruitment and endorsing in states with relatively strong organizations (Connecticut and Pennsylvania) than in those where they are weaker (Minnesota and Washing- ton). Patterson and Boynton (1969) have studied the party's role in legislative recruitment in Iowa.

My impression from interviewing legislators in a number of states is that the task of running for the legislature is much different in single- member districts than it is for those running at large or in large multimember districts. In a single-member district it is much more feasible to conduct a personal, even a door-to-door campaign, with relatively low costs and with less dependence on support from organized groups. One goal of a more comprehensive study of election campaigns might be to document such

5



Malcolm E. Jewell

differences more precisely. More broadly, there are a number of questions about districting and gerrymandering, and their effects on minority groups and parties, that remain unanswered and that may attract more attention in the wake of the 1980 census. The judicially mandated reapportionments of the last two decades have inspired more attention to constitutional issues and judicial decisions than they have to political aspects of the problem. It would be valuable, for example, to calculate much more carefully the impact that gerrymandering has had on minority parties. There is one study of the effects of reapportionment on parties in California (Robeck, 1978).

Career Patterns

One aspect of legislative life that deserves more attention is the career patterns of members. Two phenomena are affecting legislative careers: the increasing demands on a member's time that result from longer sessions and/or more interim activity, and in many states a decline in the rate of turnover. It becomes more difficult for members to pursue nearly full-time private careers while they serve in the legislature, and there is some evidence that this fact has reduced some categories of legislators, including lawyers. Although these pressures might be expected to increase turnover, there is evidence of reduced turnover, particularly in the states where it used to be highest. Few legislators are serving a term or two and then returning to their primary professional or occupational interests. More of them see the legislature, or some type of public office, as a long-term career interest.

We need to study these changes, and find out what effects they have on the types of legislators who are being elected and the role that legislative office plays in the career ladder. A number of studies on individual states provide data on occupations, and there are some data over time on changes in occupations, but we do not have nationwide data on occupational trends. Relatively little attention has been paid to how legislators cope with the increasing demands of their job and increasing conflicts with private occupations. A few state studies indicate previous public offices held, but we have no comprehensive picture of legislative careers, even in a single state. What proportion of members have held previous political office? How many run several times for the legislature before winning? How many seek to move from the house to the senate, and how many succeed? How many run for other offices after leaving the legislature-and with what success? And what changes in these patterns are occurring?

These are some data on trends in turnover. Shin and Jackson (1979) have found that the average proportion of freshmen legislators in the lower houses of the fifty states has declined from 44.8 percent in the 1950s to 37.3 percent in the 1971-1976 period. (Comparable figures for senates were

6




40.2 and 32.3 percent.) Their data also show wide variations among states, with turnover least in many eastern states. Rosenthal (1974b) has examined in statistical terms some of the factors that are associated with variations in turnover among the states. Calvert (1979) has compiled some useful data on turnover in states that distinguish between those who were defeated for reelection and those who left voluntarily.

The article by Blair and Henry in this issue suggests that the importance of family factors has been underrated in previous studies as an explanation for turnover in state legislatures. The data come from the Arkansas legislature over a twelve-year period. The authors suggest that their findings have broader implications, that most previous studies of the correlates of turnover have been flawed because they have relied on aggregate and structural data that can be gathered relatively easily from fifty states. The importance of factors such as family emerge only from interviews or firsthand observation. They also suggest that the importance of family has been overlooked because of common cultural assumptions emphasizing the occupational rather than the familial roles of men-in contrast to studies of female legislators.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the increasing numbers of women and blacks in legislatures and their potential effectiveness. Diamond (1977) has explored the whole question of the role of women in legislatures, as of 1971, drawing many of her conclusions from questionnaires and interviews in several New England states. More current and comprehensive analysis is needed. Several case studies of black legislators in individual states have appeared in dissertation form (Colston, 1972; McGriggs, 1975; Perry, 1973), but there is little published material on the topic.

An important aspect of legislative careers is the socialization of new members into the legislature. As legislatures become more professional, and turnover declines, we would expect legislative norms to become better established and the socialization process to be more important. (In contrast, if freshmen outnumber veterans, it is difficult to see how much socialization can occur.) Most of our knowledge about socialization is impressionistic. One of the few detailed empirical studies is that done by Bell and Price (1975) on the freshmen elected to the California Assembly in 1966. It focuses on roles and norms, polarization of attitudes, and the agents of socialization; it is a model that should be followed in other states, and replicated in California today.

Legislative Organization and Structure

On the surface, most state legislatures appear to be organized along the same lines, with similar structures of leadership and committees and similar procedures. When we look more carefully, some differences begin to

7



Malcolm E. Jewell

appear in both the formal structure and the informal practices. There is not enough descriptive detail available about structure and practice, however, to measure these differences accurately or to assess their impact on decision making; neither has there been enough attention paid to changes in how legislatures are organized and how they operate. The Book of the States provides a large number of very useful tables on legislative organization, but of course these are not intended to provide descriptive details or analysis of how the legislatures actually operate. We can find such description and analysis in single-state studies, but, as indicated earlier, these are available in only a small number of the states. In the late 1960s, in connection with regional American Assemblies, several studies of regional legislative politics were issued (Stoiber, 1967; Patterson, 1967; Cornelius, 1967; Lacy, 1967). These provided some useful comparative analysis, but they were relatively brief and are now outdated.

Among the most neglected topics in state legislative studies is leadership. We know almost nothing about leadership selection and turnover (but see Jewell, 1980b; and Chaffey and Jewell, 1972), the tactics of leadership, or the styles and roles of leaders. We lack biographies of outstanding legislative leaders. Membership perceptions of the proper roles for leaders were studied in four states by Wahlke, Eulau, Buchanan, and Ferguson (1962), but there have been no efforts to replicate that study in other states. Hedlund and Wahner (1977) have used organizational theories to study leadership style and its influence on organizational change in legislatures.

Although the structure of legislative committees appears to be similar in most states, there are substantial differences among legislatures in the independent power exercised by committees, patterns of decision making within them, and the importance of party alignments within committees. Because these differences are great, because committees are crucial to decision making in some states, and because the role and influence of committees are changing in many states, the study of legislative committees deserves high priority and more attention than it has received. The only recent comparative study of committees is Rosenthal (1974a); it demonstrates how large the variations are in the power and effectiveness of committees and provides some clues to the reasons for the variation. That study relies heavily on the in-depth analysis of a few committee systems; it should have inspired more systematic study of committee roles in other states, but this is still lacking. There have been a few studies in recent years that have compared committee membership and chairmanship selection and turnover in several states (Porter and Leuthold, 1974; Rosen, 1975; Basehart, 1980); and there have been case studies on such topics in individual states (Clark and Lippitt, 1978; Sokolow, 1972; Bothun and Comer, 1975; Robeck, 1971).

8




Just as legislatures differ in the importance and the actual operation of committees, they differ in the extent to which legislative parties assume importance and the extent to which they are formally structured. In a few states party caucuses meet almost daily and are major arenas for decision making; in others caucuses meet occasionally and have some impact; in still others a caucus is held only for organizational purposes at the start of a session. We know that these differences exist, but there are no detailed studies of how caucuses operate in practice; and in the absence of such information, there have been no comparative efforts to assess the impact of caucuses in various states or to explain why caucuses wax and wane in importance in individual states. We also lack studies that would assess more broadly the impact of political parties on the legislature. Ironically, the only study that consciously seeks to do that is Buchanan (1963), which considers the consequences of the absence of party in the California legislature twenty years ago.

In a few state legislatures with relatively weak party systems other organizations have been developed that might be considered surrogates for party. In this issue Gary Keith describes and compares the study groups, modeled on the Democratic Study Group in the U.S. House, that have developed in Texas, Maryland, and Massachusetts. He finds that these groups serve two major functions: providing research staff support such as well staffed committees would provide and serving as a quasi-party opposition group. He also describes the obstacles that legislative leaders have contrived to the effective operation of these groups. The paper also illustrates some of the problems of doing comparative studies of legislative institutions that vary in function and importance over short periods of time.

One of the most obvious trends in legislative organization is the proliferation of staffing, and some attention has been paid to this trend in a number of recent studies. The most comprehensive work, edited by Heaphey and Balutis (1975), assesses some of these trends and provides some useful case studies from individual states. There have also been some efforts to describe and explain the different patterns of staff organization that have been followed in the various states (Simon, 1980). Perhaps the most important question that remains largely unexplored is the impact that staff has on decision making. That influence is implicit in a case study of decision making in California (BeVier, 1979).

The changes, or reforms, that have been occurring in legislative organization present scholars with the challenge of trying to assess the consequences of change, a task that is as difficult as it is important. There is a problem in timing because legislative change often occurs gradually and may have delayed effects. There is the almost impossible task of separating structural changes from other changes that occur simultaneously in the

9



Malcolm E. Jewell

legislature (such as a different partisan balance or a new governor using different tactics). Because the goals of reformers usually differ, it is difficult to judge reform in terms of whether the goals have been accomplished. The most ambitious efforts at measuring the consequences of change have included all of the states and have used aggregate data on budgetary and policy outputs as the dependent variable (Grumm, 1971; Ritt, 1973; Uslaner and Weber, 1976). One difficulty with such approaches is that there is no reason to expect the same change or reform in structure to have the same effect on policy in different states. Perhaps that is why the findings have generally been inconclusive.

It is probably more productive to look more carefully at a few states, to develop hypotheses about the immediate consequences of reform, and to test these carefully with empirical and not merely perceptual data. For example, one might test the hypothesis that a reform designed to strengthen a legislative committee would cause it to revise or reject a larger proportion of bills and would result in more of its decisions being sustained on the floor. Robinson (1973) includes a series of case studies of state reforms, but consequences are not systematically measured.

The most imaginative and useful work on legislative change has been done by Hedlund and his associates (Hedlund and Hamm, 1977, 1978; Hedlund and Freeman, 1977; Hedlund, Hamm, and Freeman, 1978). The complexity of their models and the rigor of their methodology inspire confidence in their findings, but may make it difficult for scholars with less skill, patience, and resources to replicate their research in other states. In their article in this issue Hedlund and Freeman use organization theory to develop a strategy for measuring legislative performance in processing decisions. They use this approach in two states over a twelve-year period to determine which organizational attributes are most closely related to legislative performance. They find that several aspects of reform have an effect on performance, though not always in the anticipated direction; among other things, these findings illustrate the difficulty of interpreting the goals of reform.

Roles and Norms

The importance of roles and norms for understanding legislatures was demonstrated by Wahlke, Eulau, Buchanan, and Ferguson (1962); their findings inspired a number of studies of roles and a few studies of norms in state legislatures and in national and local legislative bodies. I have summarized and commented on the research on roles elsewhere (Jewell, 1970a, 1970b). The study of legislative roles has been hampered by a number of methodological problems. Probably the most serious problem has been the attempt

10




to develop role stereotypes for members based on their answers to a few brief and often simplistic questions. Research on roles has often underestimated the complexity and subtlety of role as a tool of analysis. Comparative research has also been handicapped by the lack of consensus on the techniques that should be used in defining and analyzing roles.

Despite these limitations, we have learned something about legislative roles in the last few years. The roles legislators choose are influenced by a wide variety of personal and situational variables (the findings are summarized in Jewell, 1970a). The most detailed examination of how role orientations change after members enter the legislature is a study of freshmen in the California Assembly (Bell and Price, 1975). Barber's study (1965) of the Connecticut legislature was the most detailed of several studies that have emphasized the importance of different purposive roles assumed by legislators.

There have been several efforts to use role orientations to explain legislative behavior; those efforts have been generally unsuccessful and have led some scholars to question the utility of role as a tool of analysis. An early effort to relate partisan roles to roll-call voting was quite inconclusive (Ferguson and Klein, 1967). Hadley (1977) found that in the Indiana House roll-call voting was related only rather weakly if at all to several role orientations. There has also been some evidence that legislators who profess to be delegates are less accurate in their perceptions of constituency opinion than are trustees (Friesema and Hedlund, 1974; Erikson, Luttbeg, and Holloway, 1975). However, a study of California legislators that utilizes referendum data suggests that delegates are more likely than trustees to vote in accordance with the district on issues that are salient to voters and on ones where the constituency provides adequate cues (Kuklinski and Elling, 1977; McCrone and Kuklinski, 1979).

Eulau and Wahlke (1978, pp. 14-15) have criticized the effort to predict roll-call behavior from role orientations, arguing that interview questions simply produce definitions of role, "and definitions certainly do not predict behavior." If we are going to use role orientations as independent variables, we must go beyond definitions or stereotypes based on brief interview questions to develop a most sophisticated and realistic understanding of roles. It is also necessary, as Kuklinski and his associates have done, to focus attention on those issues that are most salient to those groups (constituent, lobbyists, party leaders, etc.) that are the source of the voting cues to which legislators have indicated that they are responsive. In short, it is too early to give up on role analysis as a means of explaining legislative behavior.

Wahlke et al. (1962) also introduced the concept of state legislative norms, and a few others have followed their lead (Bell and Price, 1975; Hebert and McLemore, 1973; Leavitt, 1975; Hedlund, 1973; Kirkpatrick,

11



Malcolm E. Jewell

1978). We learn from these studies that certain norms are rather common in several different legislatures. Most of these are ones that we would expect to be important: courtesy, keeping one's word, reciprocity, self-restraint in debate, honesty, etc. It is easy enough to understand why these are considered important and how they are functional for the legislature. There are a few other norms, pertaining to legislative institutions, that may vary from one body to another, such as a sense of loyalty to party, a willingness to respect the judgment and expertise of committees, or norms pertaining to how lobbyists should be handled.

Despite the utility of these studies, there remain a number of unanswered questions, conceptual, methodological, and empirical. There is no agreement about how widely a norm must be shared before it can be labeled as a norm. There is no consensus about how to discover norms; do you ask legislators an open-ended question about the rules of the game, or do you read a list of potential norms and ask them which ones they recognize as pertinent in that legislature? Obviously the technique that is used will have enormous effect on the number of legislators who name or recognize a norm. It is reasonable to suppose that there is more consensus on norms in legislatures that are well institutionalized, a thesis that is hard to test in the absence of a consistent technique for asking about norms. There is reason to believe that some norms we describe as legislative are common to most organizations or at least are familiar to most political actors (Carroll and English, 1980). It would be useful to try to define which norms (if any) are unique to or particularly important in legislatures. The next step would be to discover whether certain norms (such as partisanship) are more evident in some state legislatures than in others. Finally, we need some evidence about whether and how the nonconformist or maverick is punished for not following the norms. This brings us back to the basic problem of definition. Can any principle be defined as a norm if it can be and is violated with impunity?

Representing the Constituency

Students of Congress in recent years have discovered the importance of the district and the role that the congressman plays in it. The most detailed and valuable study, by Fenno (1978), emphasizes the congressman's perception of the various subconstituencies in the district and the variety of homestyles used by the congressman in presenting himself to the constituents. A number of scholars have recently paid attention to constituency service and its political utility for the member (Fiorina, 1977; Macartney, 1975; Cover and Mayhew, 1977). It is generally agreed that one reason why most incumbents win by safe margins is that they have extensive opportunities to provide

12




services for constituents, to publicize their activities and improve their image, and to become relatively well-known-compared to potential opponents.

There is reason to believe that state legislators are developing some of the same political resources as congressmen, but their roles and activities in the district have been almost entirely overlooked by political scientists. A few exceptions are Macartney (1975), whose research on district offices in California extended to state legislative as well as congressional ones; Elling (1979), who has examined state legislative casework as a means of oversight; and Abney and Henderson (1979), who have studied how state legislators represent the interests of local officials.

What we need to know about how legislators represent their districts can be easily summarized. In order to represent a district, a legislator needs to become familiar with it, develop a pattern of communications, establish a "home style" (in Fenno's words); we need to learn how this is achieved and how it varies from one legislator to another. We know that the types of districts vary, from sprawling rural ones to compact metropolitan ones; there are also differences between single-member and multimember districts. In addition, there is a great deal of variation in the resources available to legislators: some have individual staff members, some have the resources and franking privileges that make newsletters possible; a few have district offices. The job of representing the district is much different for the full-time member than it is for the one who devotes half or less time to the job. We need to learn much more about the impact that growing professionalization has had on the role of the legislator within his district.

The sources cited above call attention to the importance of constituency service and providing district benefits as major responsibilities of state legislators. My experience in interviewing legislators reinforces that impression, but it also suggests that some legislators give much more time and priority to these functions than others do. Partly this is a matter of available staff and other resources; partly it results from the different demands made by various types of districts. But it is also obvious that some legislators are much more interested than others in performing these functions, because they enjoy them or consider them important or because they recognize the political utility of performing such functions well. Those who give high priority to service functions and advertise their availability are more likely to get many requests for assistance (Jewell, 1979). We need to know how important these functions have become in state legislatures, and what political effect they have. But we also need to know more about the consequences. Is legislative oversight an effective means of oversight? (Elling, 1979, suggests some of its limitations.) Does it result in favoritism or the unwise distribution of state resources? Does it increase the visibility of legislators and perhaps inspire

13



Malcolm E. Jewell

more confidence in government? The number of questions that deserve exploration is large, and the topic remains almost untouched by scholars.

Somewhat related to the question of both roles and norms are the public expectations concerning legislatures, and these in turn are related to the question of public support for the legislature. The classic work on support at the state legislative level is Patterson, Hedlund, and Boynton (1975); the authors also previewed their findings in a number of papers and articles. The study provided a number of insights into the public's attitude toward the legislature and sources of variation in the level of support for the legislature; it also explains some of the methodological problems of studying support, a particularly difficult enterprise. This study tells us more than some might want to know about support for the Iowa legislature; from the comparative perspective, of course, we would like to find out whether the levels of support in other states for the legislature are comparable, and if not, what causes the differences. This study provided very brief analysis of some support data from other states, but left most of the comparative questions unanswered. The Iowa study has not been replicated, and consequently we know very little about public expectations, perceptions, and support for the legislative bodies in other states.

Legislative Decision Making

Legislative decision making covers a variety of specific topics; some have been the subject of considerable research, but most have been covered very slightly at the state level. The role of interest groups is a generally neglected topic in political science; at the state legislative level there has been no major study since Zeigler and Baer (1969). In most states the governor plays a major role in the legislative process; in some he plays a much more limited role. We lack any comprehensive study of the American governor as a legislative leader, a study that would explain variations in the role from state to state and describe tactics and sources of influence. We even lack good case studies describing in some detail how individual governors have operated as legislative leaders. One exception is Connery and Benjamin (1979), a study that devotes one chapter to Nelson Rockefeller's legislative leadership.

There are descriptions of some aspects of the governor's role in Beyle and Williams (1972). Beyle (1978) has used questionnaires and interviews to collect information from a number of states on several aspects of gubernatorial-legislative relations, including gubernatorial tactics and the development of liaison staff. Several researchers have tried to measure the success of the governor in getting programs passed, or bills defeated, or vetoes

14




upheld in the legislature (Morehouse, 1966, 1975; Bernick, 1976, 1978). These findings suggest that the political power of the governor and particularly his ability to win support from his own legislative party are crucial to legislative success. This research also demonstrates the difficulties of measuring gubernatorial influence with any precision, because of variations in the number of measures that governors propose and the intensity of their commitment to bills, as well as the problems of trying to measure outputs that include various kinds of compromise.

The scarcity of research on state legislative committees is not surprising, but it is unfortunate because in many legislatures the committees are major areas of decision making and because we know very little about the variations among committees in power and patterns of decision making. Palmer's unpublished work (1964) on committees in Pennsylvania is virtually the only full-length work on committees in a single legislature. Most books on a single legislature give only brief, descriptive attention to committees. Hamm (1980) has used statistical analysis to compare the variables associated with committee passage of bills in two states, Wisconsin and Texas; there are enough differences in results between the two states to suggest the value of extending such a study to many others. Rosenthal's (1974a) comparative study of committee systems, cited earlier, is primarily concerned with the power and effectiveness of committee systems and factors affecting these, but it provides valuable perspective and background for anyone undertaking a study of committee decision making.

The topic of decision making in state committees provides a good illustration of one of the problems inherent in studying state legislatures. Hundreds of legislative committees are making over a hundred thousand decisions on legislation every biennium, and almost none of these decisions is being observed or analyzed by political scientists. In other words, we lack basic descriptive information or the most elementary case studies. At the same time we lack an analytical framework for studying legislative committees, partly because we know so little about how they make decisions. In a few states data are available on the proportion of bills passed or amended or even the pace of committee activity, but manipulating such data is not very enlightening in the absence of information about how committee decisions are made.

If there is any aspect of state legislative studies that has been well explored in the last two decades, it is probably roll-call voting patterns in state legislatures. Among the most useful and more recent studies are several comparative ones (LeBlanc, 1969; Bernick, 1976; Broach, 1972), and others that cover a single state-often for more than one session (Friedman and Stokes, 1965; Bryan, 1974; Welch and Carlson, 1973; Flinn, 1973; Goldman,

15



Malcolm E. Jewell

1968; Wiggins, 1967; and Robeck, 1972). These findings lead to several clear conclusions (summarized in Jewell and Patterson, 1977, ch. 16): party voting is most common in the more urban, industrialized states, where each party represents a rather clearly defined constituency; it occurs most often on the major social and economic issues on which the parties have traditionally taken stands, on issues on which the governor takes a stand, and on issues directly affecting the parties; in the absence of strong partisanship in voting, other variables-such as region, faction, or urban-rural differences-are only intermittently and inconsistently important. Findings on the voting of individual legislators representing different types of districts have been rather inconsistent.

Despite the relatively large body of work on roll-call voting, there are some gaps in the data and some unanswered questions. In only a few states, including Ohio, Iowa, and Vermont, have data been collected over a number of years. There are also very few reports on roll-call voting in the 1970s. No one has ever collected data on roll-call voting at one time from all fifty states. Consequently we lack a truly comparative study of roll-call voting in the fifty states. Obviously the cost of collecting and analyzing roll-call votes in all of the states, even for only one or two sessions, would be very substantial; but it remains an important piece of unfinished business.

There are important substantive questions about roll-call voting that remain unanswered. Two-party competition has developed in many of the state legislatures that were dominated by a single party a few years ago, but we have evidence from only a few states about how this has affected partisan voting (see Wiggins, 1967). Except in California (Robeck, 1972, 1978), we have little evidence of the effect of reapportionment on voting patterns, partisan or otherwise. There is some reason to expect that party discipline may be breaking down in some state legislatures. One cause is the decline in the number of legislators who were hand picked by party organizations in the large industrial states. Another factor is the growing importance of "social issues," sometimes highly emotional, that cut across normal party alignments. A third factor could be the growing political independence of state legislators, who are less dependent on party for election and may be increasingly elected from districts that are not typical of others in the party. In order to assess the impact of these trends, we need studies of state legislative voting patterns that are current, longitudinal, and comparative.

There are, of course, many ways to study decision making in a legislative body, ranging from case studies to statistical and theoretical approaches. Congressional scholars have produced a number of case studies of major bills or issues, which have considerable utility despite their obvious limitations. The only recent example in a state legislature is a study by

16




BeVier (1979), which provides a number of insights into the legislative process in California in the course of describing a complicated housing issue. In addition to statistical analyses of legislative committees mentioned earlier, there have been some efforts to apply statistics to legislative decisions (Rakoff and Sarer, 1975; Samer, 1975). We do not have models or theories of legislative decision making designed specifically for understanding state legislatures, not surprisingly. Relatively few of those scholars who have approached legislative decision making in theoretical terms have tried to test these theories at the state level. (See, however, Francis, 1970; Koehler, 1972; Meltz, 1973; Gross, 1979; and the paper by Hedlund and Freeman in this issue.)

Probably the most ambitious approach to the study of decision making was undertaken by Francis (1967), who sent out questionnaires in 1963 to a sample of legislators in every state asking them about the major issues in the legislature. The replies (from 837 members) provided some clues to the factors affecting decision making in the various states. In 1974 a somewhat similar survey, with returns from 1,256 legislators in fifty states, was conducted by Uslaner and Weber, who have reported their findings in a book (1977a) and several papers (1977b, 1979). This second study also included an effort to link legislators' opinion and behavior to constituent opinion (1979). There are obvious limitations to any study that must rely on mail questionnaires for studying legislators, but these studies do provide a comparative perspective that is lacking in most state legislative research.

The topic of legislative decision making can also be approached from the perspective of the individual legislator. An example would be the study of information sources used by members (Wissel, O'Connor, and King, 1976). The whole question of how accurately legislators perceive the opinions of their constituents and how adequately they reflect these opinions has attracted considerable scholarly interest in recent years. (Some pertinent sources have been cited above in the section on roles and norms.) These topics were covered at length in the November, 1979 issue of the Legislative Studies Quarterly; the question of perceptual accuracy was discussed by Clausen (1977). Among the articles that deal with these topics specifically at the state legislative level are Erikson, Luttbeg, and Holloway (1975); Hedlund and Friesema (1972); Kuklinski and Elling (1977); and Uslaner and Weber (1979).

Legislative Budgeting and Oversight

One of the most important changes occurring in state legislatures over the last two decades is the greatly enhanced capacity and determination to make budgetary decisions and carry out oversight of the executive. Longer sessions, more professional members, and better staff are among the changes

17



Malcolm E. Jewell

that have affected both budgeting and oversight. It is probably fair to conclude that political scientists have not paid enough attention to these trends, either in describing them or in trying to explain their causes and consequences. Most of the work has been done by organizations such as the National Conference of State Legislatures or by political scientists at institutions with close linkages to the legislative world, such as the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers or the Comparative Development Studies Center at SUNY-Albany.

A book edited by Balutis and Butler (1975) provides a good descriptive introduction to the legislature's role in budgeting, with some useful case studies from states where the legislature has been most effective. There is also some descriptive detail in a Council of State Governments publication (1975). A couple of earlier studies in individual states, California (Doubleday, 1967) and Illinois (Anton, 1966) are also useful. For the most part, the difficult job of explaining and assessing the legislator's growing role in the budgetary process remains to be done.

As the process of program review and evaluation has grown more sophisticated and as legislative capabilities have increased, more state legislatures have become heavily involved in oversight. A good introduction to this trend is provided in a brief volume edited by Brown (1979), which includes specific state case studies. Lyons and Thomas (1978) provide a useful comparison in three states; other sets of case studies are found in Chadwin (1974) and Craft (1977).

As legislative oversight becomes both more widespread and more sophisticated, there is an obvious need to study its development, implications, and consequences. What are the incentives that lead some individual legislators and committees to devote more attention to oversight, and what are the constraints on such activity? One such study, the article by Hamm and Robertson in this issue, uses statistical techniques to determine what charac- teristics of state legislatures and political systems explain the adoption of two recent innovations, the legislative review of administrative regulations and the passage of sunset laws.

The other article in this issue on oversight, by Alan Rosenthal, is based on extensive interviews with professional staff members in a number of states. He describes the factors that motivate the purposive activity of legislators and that very often discourage them from engaging in oversight. He also describes a number of institutional incentives that encourage the legislature to undertake oversight, and seeks to explain why some individual legislators devote more time than others to oversight. Rosenthal argues that effective performance of the oversight function (unlike the law-making and service roles) does not require the active participation of a majority of legislators. Consequently a study of oversight activity that is based on interviews

18




with individuals about their attitudes and behavior may seriously underestimate the effectiveness of oversight by the legislature as an institution.

Strategies for Research

The articles in this issue, though a small sample of recent research, illustrate both the range of research strategies currently being employed and some of the problems inherent in various strategies. The Grau paper, which offers our first extensive collection of data on primary competition and tests some elementary hypotheses about the causes of variations, is a good illustration of how little basic factual data we have had until very recently on some aspects of state legislatures. The Hamm and Robertson paper is a good illustration of the approach commonly taken by those who are trying to make comparisons across fifty states. They attempt to explain legislative results by measuring relationships with several broad structural variables, but they cannot demonstrate how these relationships occur or why some are stronger than others. Those with first-hand experience in a legislature tend to disparage such broad, comparative explanations. Hedlund and Freeman show that it is possible, by narrowing the focus to very few states, to collect a massive amount of quantitative data to explain how the legislative process works, though the explanatory power of even this vast array of data is quite modest. The discouraging aspect of this approach is the cost in time and resources of multiplying it by 25 to examine all of the 50 states.

Blair and Henry challenge multistate explanations of the legislative process using those types of aggregate data that are available. They suggest that turnover, and by implication many other legislative phenomena, cannot be explained without personal observation and/or interviews. More specifically they demonstrate the utility of personal observation in one legislature over a twelve-year period. One may ask, however, how such extensive, first-hand observations can be organized in 49 other states. Keith's article is a good example of what can be acco: plished by careful observation and interviewing in three states, but if legislative study groups had been operating in fifteen or twenty states it would have been difficult for one scholar to provide an equally comprehensive analysis. My own experience in spending most of an academic year interviewing over 200 legislators in nine states leads to the conclusion that it is difficult for any single scholar to mobilize the resources and spend the time and energy necessary to study any legislative topic in any depth across a substantial number of states. Rosenthal, who has had extensive experience in both personal observation and interviewing, warns us that if we concentrate on interviewing individual legislators about their attitudes and behavior we may fail to understand legislative institutions and how they are performing.

19



Malcolm E. Jewell

What conclusions can be drawn about strategies of comparative state legislative research? Perhaps we need to be reminded again that the questions we ask and the methods we use help to determine the answers we get, and if the questions or methods are inadequate we may get the wrong answers. Perhaps we should give more attention to using multiple methods in legislative research. However difficult it may be to accomplish, part of the answer may lie in more cooperative research, so that those who are most knowledge- able about each state legislature would ask common questions and examine the same topics, and so that we would not be so heavily dependent on findings from single-state studies. Finally, as the comments in the next paper suggest, we need to perceive legislative members and staff not only as vital sources of information but as sources of questions and hypotheses that we need to examine.

Malcolm E. Jewell is Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506.

REFERENCES

Abney, Glen, and Thomas A. Henderson. 1979. "Representation of Local Officials by U.S. State Legislators," Legislative Studies Quarterly 4: 63-78.

Anton, Thomas J. 1966. The Politics of State Expenditure in Illinois. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Balutis, Alan, and Daron Butler, eds. 1975. The Political Pursestrings: The Role of the Legislature in the Budgetary Process. New York: John Wiley.

Barber, James D. 1965. The Lawmakers. New Haven: Yale University Press. Basehart, Hubert H. 1980. "The Effect of Membership Stability on Continuity and

Experience in U.S. State Legislative Committees," Legislative Studies Quarterly 5: 55-68.

Bell, Charles G. and Charles M. Price. 1975. The First Term. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications.

Bernick, E. Lee. 1976. '"The Role of the Governor in the Legislative Process: A Com- parative Analysis," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oklahoma.

.1978. 'The Impact of U.S. Governors on Party Voting in One-Party Dominated Legislatures," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3:431-444.

BeVier, Michael J. 1979 .Politics Backstage: Inside the California Legislature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Beyle, Thad. 1978. "The Governor as Chief Legislator," State Government 51: 2-10. Beyle, Thad, and J. Oliver Williams, eds. 1972. The American Governor in Behavioral

Perspective. New York: Harper and Row. Bothun, Douglas, and John Comer. 1975. "Correlates of Committee Assignments in the

Nebraska Unicameral." Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association convention.

Broach, Glen T. 1972. "A Comparative Dimensional Analysis of Partisan and Urban- Rural Voting in State Legislatures," Journal of Politics 34: 905-921.

Brown, Richard, ed. 1979. The Effectiveness of Legislative Program Review. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.

20




Bryan, Frank M. 1974. Yankee Politics in Rural Vermont. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England.

Buchanan, William, 1963. Legislative Partisanship: The Deviant Case of California. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Calvert, Jerry. 1979. "Revolving Doors: Volunteerism in State Legislatures." State Government 52: 174-181.

Carroll, John J. and Arthur English. 1980. "Rules of the Game in Ephemeral Institutions: Evidence from Six Constitutional Conventions." Unpublished manuscript.

Chadwin, Mark L., ed. 1974. Legislative Program Evaluation in the United States. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University-Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Chaffey, Douglas C. and Malcolm E. Jewell. 1972. "Selection and Tenure of State Legislative Party Leaders: A Comparative Analysis," Journal of Politics 34: 1278-1286.

Clark, Wesley D., Jr. and David W. Lippitt. 1978. "Committee Assignment Preferences in a State Legislature." Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Associa- tion convention.

Clausen, Aage. 1977. "The Accuracy of Leader Perceptions of Constituency Views," Legislative Studies Quarterly 2: 361-384.

Colston, Freddie. 1972. "The Influence of Black Legislators on the Ohio House of Representatives." Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University.

Cornelius, William G. 1967. Southeastern State Legislatures. Atlanta: Emory University. Council of State Governments. 1975. State Legislative Appropriations Process. Lexing-

ton, Kentucky. Cover, Albert and David R. Mayhew. 1977. "One Good Term Deserves Another: The

Advantage of Incumbency in Congressional Elections," American Journal of Political Science 21: 523-542.

Craft, Ralph. 1977. Legislative Follow-Through: Profile of Oversight in Five States. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University-Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Diamond, Irene. 1977. Sex Roles in the State House. New Haven: Yale University Press. Doubleday, D.J. 1967. Legislative Review of the Budget in California. Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press. Elling, Richard. 1979. 'The Utility of State Legislative Casework as a Means of Over-

sight," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3: 35 3-380. Erikson, Robert S., Norman R. Luttbeg, and William V. Holloway. 1975. "Knowing

One's District: How Legislators Predict Referendum Voting," American Journal of Political Science 19: 231-246.

Eulau, Heinz and John C. Wahlke. 1978. The Politics of Representation. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications.

Fenno, Richard F., Jr. 1978. Homestyle: House Members in Their Districts. Boston: Little, Brown.

Ferguson, LeRoy C. and Bernard W. Klein. 1967. "An Attempt to Correlate the Voting Records of Legislators with Attitudes Toward Party," Public Opinion Quarterly 31: 422-426.

Fiorina, Morris P. 1977. Congress-Keystone of the Washington Establishment. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Flinn, Thomas A. 1973. "The Ohio General Assembly: A Developmental Analysis," in James A. Robinson, ed., State Legislative Innovation. New York: Praeger, pp. 226-278.

Francis, Wayne L. 1967. Legislative Issues in the Fifty States. Chicago: Rand McNally.

21



22 Malcolm E. Jewell

Francis, Wayne L. 1970. "Coalitions in American State Legislatures," in Sven Groennings, E.W. Kelley, and Michael Leiserson, eds. The Study of Coalition Behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, pp. 409423.

Friedman, Robert S. and S.L. Stokes. 1965. "The Role of Constitution-Maker as Repre- sentative," Midwest Journal of Political Science 9: 148-166.

Friesema, H. Paul and Ronald D. Hedlund. 1974. "The Reality of Representational Roles," in Norman R. Luttbeg, ed., Public Opinion and Public Policy (rev. ed.). Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, pp. 413-417.

Goldman, Sheldon. 1968. Roll Call Behavior in the Massachusetts House of Representa- tives. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Gove, Samuel K., Richard W. Carlson, and Richard J. Carlson. 1976. The Illinois Legis- lature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Gross, Donald A. 1979. "Conference Committees, Sophisticated Voting, and Cyclical Majorities," Legislative Studies Quarterly 4: 79-94.

Grumm, John G. 1971. "The Effects of Legislative Structure on Legislative Performance," in Richard I. Hofferbert and Ira Sharkansky, eds., State and Urban Politics. Boston: Little, Brown, pp. 298-322.

Hadley, David J. 1977. "Legislative Role Orientations and Support for Party and Chief Executive in the Indiana House," Legislative Studies Quarterly 2: 309-335.

Hamm, Keith E. 1980. "U.S. State Legislative Committee Decisions: Similar Results in Different Settings," Legislative Studies Quarterly 5: 31-54.

Harder, Marvin A. and Raymond G. Davis. 1979. The Legislature as an Organization: A Study of the Kansas Legislature. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas.

Heaphey, James C. and Alan Balutis, eds. 1975. Legislative Staffing: A Comparative Perspective. New York: Halstead Press.

Hebert, F. Ted and Leland E. McLemore. 1973. "Character and Structure of Legislative Norms," American Journal of Political Science 17: 506-5 27.

Hedlund, Ronald D. 1973. "Legislative Norms and Legislative Behavior." Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association convention.

Hedlund, Ronald D. and Patricia K. Freeman. 1977. 'The Applicability of Management Science Leadership Models to Legislative Change." Paper presented at the Southern Political Science Association convention.

Hedlund, Ronald D. and Keith E. Hamm. 1977. "Institutional Development and Legis- lative Effectiveness: Rules Change in the Wisconsin Assembly," in Abdo Baaklini and James Heaphey, eds., Comparative Legislative Reforms and Innovations. New York: State University of New York Press, pp. 173-213.

.1978. "Institutional Innovation and Performance Effectiveness in Public Policy Making," in Leroy N. Rieselbach, ed., Legislative Reform: The Policy Impact. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington-Heath.

Hedlund, Ronald D., Keith E. Hamm, and Patricia K. Freeman. 1978. "An Organization Theory View of Legislative Change." Paper presented at the American Political Science Association convention.

Hevesi, Alan G. 1975. Legislative Politics in New York. New York: Praeger. Jewell, Malcolm E. 1967.LegislativeRepresentation in the Contemporary South. Durham,

N.C.: Duke University Press. .1970a. "Attitudinal Determinants of Legislative Behavior: The Utility of

Role Analysis," in Allan Kornberg and Lloyd D. Musolf, eds., Legislatures in Developmental Perspective. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, pp. 460-500.

. 1970b. "A Reappraisal of 'The Legislative System'." Paper presented at the American Political Science Association convention.



Editor's Introduction 23

Jewell, Malcolm E. 1979. "Legislative Casework: Serving Constituents, One at a Time," State Legislatures 5: 14-18.

. 1980a. "Comparison of Legislative Campaign Costs," Comparative State Politics Newsletter 1: 16-20.

. 1980b. "Survey on Selection of State Legislative Leaders," Comparative State Politics Newsletter 1: 7-21.

Jewell, Malcolm E. and Samuel C. Patterson. 1977. The Legislative Process in the United States (3rd ed.). New York: Random House.

Kirkpatrick, Samuel A. 1978. The Legislative Process in Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Koehler, David H. 1972. "Coalition Formation in Selected State Legislatures." Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association convention.

Kuklinski, James H. and Richard C. Elling. 1977. "Representational Role, Constituency Opinion, and Legislative Roll-Call Behavior," American Journal of Political Science 21: 135-147.

Lacy, Alex B., Jr. 1967. Power in American State Legislatures. New Orleans: Tulane Studies in Political Science.

Leavitt, Donald. 1975. "Changing Rules and Norms in the Minnesota Legislature." Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association convention.

LeBlanc, Hugh L. 1969. "Voting in State Senates: Party and Constituency Influences," Midwest Journal of Political Science 13: 33-57.

Lyons, William and Larry W. Thomas. 1978. Legislative Oversight: A Three State Study. Knoxville: University of Tennessee-Bureau of Public Administration.

Macartney, John D. 1975. 'Political Staffing: A View From the District." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

McCrone, Donald J. and James H. Kuklinski. 1979. "The Delegate Theory of Represen- tation," American Journal of Political Science 23: 278-300.

McGriggs, Lee. 1975. "Black Legislative Politics in Illinois." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois.

McKee, Clyde D., Jr., ed. 1980. Perspectives of a State Legislature (2nd ed.). Meltz, David B. 1973. "Legislative Party Cohesion: A Model of the Bargaining Process

in State Legislatures," Journal of Politics 35: 647-681. Mileur, Jerome M. and George T. Sulzner. 1974. Campaigning for the Massachusetts

Senate. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Morehouse, Sarah McNally. 1966. "The Governor and His Legislative Party,"American

Political Science Review 60: 923-942. . 1975. "The Impact of the Governor on Legislative Policy Output." Paper

presented at the American Political Science Association convention. Palmer, Kenneth T. 1964. 'The Legislative Committee System in Pennsylvania." Ph.D.

dissertation, Pennsylvania State University. Patterson, Samuel C., ed. 1967. Midwest Legislative Politics. Iowa City: University of

Iowa Institute of Public Affairs. Patterson, Samuel C. and G.R. Boynton. 1969. "Legislative Recruitment in a Civic

Culture," Social Science Quarterly 50: 243-263. Patterson, Samuel C., Ronald D. Hedlund, and G.R. Boynton. 1975. Representatives and

the Represented. New York: John Wiley. Perry, Robert. 1973. "The Black Legislator: A Case Study of the House of Represent-

atives in the 75th Missouri General Assembly." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Missouri.



24 Malcolm E. Jewell

Porter, H. Owen and David A. Leuthold. 1974. "Acquiring Legislative Expertise: Appoint- ments to Standing Committees in the States." Paper presented at the American Political Science Association convention.

Rakoff, Stuart H. and Ronald Sarner. 1975. "Bill History Analysis: A Probability Model of the State Legislative Process," Polity 7: 402-414.

Ritt, Leonard. 1977. "The Policy Impact of Legislative Reform," in Susan Welch and John G. Peters, eds., Legislative Reform and Public Policy. New York: Praeger, pp. 189-200.

Robeck, Bruce W. 1971. "Committee Assignments in the California Senate," Western Political Quarterly 24: 527-539.

. 1972. "Legislative Partisanship, Constituency and Malappointment: The Case of California," American Political Science Review 66: 1234-1245.

. 1978. Legislators and Party Loyalty: The Impact of Reapportionment in California. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.

Robinson, James A., ed. 1973. State Legislative Innovation. New York: Praeger. Rosen, Corey. 1975. "Seniority and the Selection of Committee Chairmen in American

State Legislatures." Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association convention.

Rosenthal, Alan. 1974a. Legislative Performance in the States: Explorations of Committee Behavior. New York: The Free Press.

. 1974b. "Turnover in State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science 18: 609-616.

Sarner, Ronald. 1975. "Predicting Legislative Outcomes: An Analysis of Three Sessions of the New York State Senate." Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton.

Seligman, Lester G., Michael R. King, Chong Lim Kim, and Roland E. Smith. 1974. Patterns of Recruitment. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Shin, Kwang S. and John S. Jackson, III. 1979. "Membership Turnover in U.S. State Legislatures: 1931-1976," Legislative Studies Quarterly 4: 95-104.

Simon, Lucinda. 1980. A Legislator's Guide to Staffing Patterns. Denver: National Conference of State Legislatures.

Sokilow, Alvin D. and Richard W. Brandsma. 1971. "Partisanship and Seniority in Legislative Committee Assignments: California After Reapportionment," Western Political Quarterly 24: 527-5 39.

Stoiber, Susanne A. 1967. Legislative Politics in the Rocky Mountain West. Boulder: University of Colorado Bureau of Government Research and Service.

Stolman, Gerald H. 1978. Michigan: State Legislators and Their Work. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.

Tobin, Richard J. and Edward Keynes. 1975. "Institutional Differences in the Recruitment Process: A Four State Study," American Journal of Political Science 19: 667-682.

Uslaner, Eric S. and Ronald J. Weber. 1976. "Legislative Professionalism and Legislative Reform: A Reconsideration." Paper presented at the American Political Science Association convention.

197 7a. Patterns of Decision Making in State Legislatures. New York: Praeger. 1977b. "Public Opinion and Linkage Politics in the American States:

Which 'Elite' is Most Representative." Paper presented at the American Political Science Association convention.



Editor's Introduction 25

Uslaner, Eric S. and Ronald J. Weber. 1979. "U.S. Legislators' Opinions and Perceptions of Constituency Attitudes," Legislative Studies Quarterly 4: 563-586.

WahLke, John C., Heinz Eulau, William Buchanan, and Leroy C. Ferguson. 1962. The Legislative System. New York: John Wiley.

Welch, Susan and Eric H. Carlson. 1973. "The Impact of Party on Voting Behavior in a Nonpartisan Legislature," American Political Science Review 67: 854-867.

Wiggins, Charles W. 1967. "Party Politics in the Iowa Legislature," Midwest Journal of Political Science 11: 86-97.

Wissel, Peter, Robert O'Connor, and Michael King. 1976. "The Hunting of the Legislative Snark: Information Searches and Reforms in U.S. State Legislatures," Legis- lative Studies Quarterly 1: 251-26 7.

Zeigler, Harmon and Michael A. Baer. 1969. Lobbying: Interaction and Influence in American State Legislatures. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.



editor's introduction: the state of u. s. state legislative research

Documents