State Legislative Leaders’ Contacts with National Legislative Organizations:

Differences in Cosmopolitanism, Resources, and Political Environments

Jill Clark The University of Texas at Arlington

Thomas H. Little State Legislative Leaders Foundation

This paper examines possible relationships between state legislative leaders’ contacts with national professional organizations, such as the Council of State Governments, and indicators of diyferences in cosmopolitanism, in-state information resources, and political environments. Thefindings suggest that leaders in states with unifiedparty control of the executive and legislative institutions are more involved with national organizations than leaders from states with divided party control. However, there are no signiJicant differences in involvement among leaders in terms of other party measures: whether they are Democrats or Republicans, majority or minoriy leaders, institutional or party leaders, or the degree of inter-party competition in their legislative chambers. Additionally, leaders from small states with fewer in-state information resources and those from more cosmopolitan urban or moralistic poIitica1 culture states are more intensively involved with national organizations.

Several studies have demonstrated the importance of national organization contacts, or professional memberships and meetings, for state agency administrators (Gray 1973; Klase 1999). Chi and Grady (1990) find that innovative state officials preferred information from professional association publications and meetings rather than from in-state sources: interest groups, citizens, the media, or university research. Another survey suggests that half of all state agency innovators are members of professional organizations, and national organizations are more important than regional organizations (Chi 1996). The implication drawn from these studies, ofcourse, is that these professional contacts among staff are a venue for interstate policy diffusion.

Politics & Policy Volume 3 1 No. 2 June 2003

State Legislative Leaders’ Contacts 283

While there has been a good deal of interest by political scientists in staff contacts with professional organizations, there has been almost no attention given in the literature to legislative leaders’ memberships and meeting activity in professional organizations. There are a number of reasons why legislative leaders interact with professional organizations, such as the Council of State Governments (CSG) or the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). National organizations offer new ideas on policy options and leadership strategies. Leaders can use them to network with their peers, read about other leaders’ experiences in professional magazines, or simply socialize with other leaders. In other words, some leaders, like their staff, interact in professional organizations that facilitate information exchange among states. The issues we propose to deal with here are the extent of state legislative leaders’ involvements in these organizations and why some leaders are more active participants than others.

One earlier study examines state legislators’ contacts with national professional organizations in a single state: Freeman (1985) finds that individual- level factors, such as years of service, accounted for little of the variance in legislators’ contacts with professional organizations. She then suggests that state-level factors, such as political culture, be investigated in relationship to national organization contacts (see also Elazar 1994). The statewide and legislative environment, rather than the legislator’s background, may account for a legislator’s level of contact. Additionally, Freeman (1985) finds that legislative leaders are more active than members in professional associations. As a result, our analysis here focuses primarily on the possible relationships between state-level characteristics and leaders’ connections to national organizations. We also include several institutional-level, legislative, and two individual-level factors. In general, we expect three conditions to be associated with higher levels of contact with national organizations: positive, statewide attitudes toward change from external sources and the extent of in-state information resources for policy making, both of which are expanded on by Rogers (1 995), and the possibility that legislative leaders may have career goals in mind in participating in national organizations. That is, these organizations may represent additional sources of policy information or leadership strategies to enhance reelection and legislative accomplishments. Thus, national Organizations will be most attractive to leaders in highly politicized environments and in one-party dominant states in which the “in” party is held accountable by voters (Fiorina 1992).

The present study includes all state legislative leaders-comprised of speakers, senate presidents, majority and minority party leaders, party whips,

284 Politics 6 Policy Vol. 31 No. 2

and caucus leaders-in the 50 states. Information on professional memberships and meeting activities comes from a 1997 survey that we conducted in conjunction with the State Legislative Leaders’ Foundation (SLLF). In order to be included here, the organization was required to be accessible to all respondents regardless of position, ethnicity, or region. Those organizations are the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, the State Government Affairs Council, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Methodology

We developed a scale that added the number of self-designated memberships and the number of meetings attended annually in order to develap a more comprehensive measure of the level of affiliation leaders had with professional organizations. Membership alone provides a variety of publications from national organizations. Meeting attendance offers contacts with leaders from other states, as well as contacts with professional staff from these organizations. Some leaders belong to organizations and do not attend meetings; others are nonmembers, yet attend meetings. Still other leaders are both members and meeting participants.

One hundred sixty-eight leaders completed some portion of the SLLF survey for a response rate of 50.5 percent. However, only 159 of the surveys were complete enough to be used for this analysis, for a response rate of 47.8 percent. A comparison between those who responded and all legislative leaders in 1997 reveals that the sample is a remarkably accurate reflection of the population of leaders. No significant differences in party affiliation, gender, chamber, or position are present, and there is at least one respondent for every state. For those states that do not have party leaders, the respondent is an institutional oficer.

Expectations regarding the effects on cosmopolitanism, in-state resources, and politics are discussed next. Then, the frequency and types of professional contacts are reported, and an analysis of relationships between indicators of leaders’ environments and participation levels is presented.

Why Leaders Make Professional Contacts

Cosmopolitanism If a state context is more amenable to external ideas for change, leaders

will be more likely to join and attend the meetings of national professional

-~~ ~

State LeEislative Leaders’ Contacts 285

organizations (Freeman 1985; Rogers 1995). Certain states develop a pattern of embracing change (Walker 1969), and this precedent may encourage legislative leaders to seek external contacts. One of the indicators of a state’s attitude towards change used here is a state’s rank on the Council of State Governments (CSG) innovation measure (Chi and Grady 1990). The CSG surveyed 160 state officials they identified as innovators. These officials cited states they considered innovators. A state’s rank is the number of times it was cited. Other statewide indicators of cosmopolitanism are political culture and the percent of a state that is urban. Freeman (1985) suggests that future research consider political culture as a measure of state-level cosmopolitanism. Only moralistic political cultures embrace an active government sector promoting change; individualistic political cultures seek limited government, and rely on the private sector for change, and traditionalistic cultures want to preserve the status quo and resist change (Gray, Hanson, and Jacob 1999). As a result, we expect that leaders fiom states with moralistic political cultures will exhibit the most attachment to national professional organizations.

Freeman (1985) uses an additional indicator for orientation towards change: whether a legislator’s district is urban or rural. She expects representatives from urban areas to have more cosmopolitan attitudes and to be more change-oriented than rural representatives. In this study, this indicator is employed at the state level, rather than at the district level. Leading a legislature in an urban state means working in a more cosmopolitan one. As a result, we expect that leaders from the most urban states will make the most contacts with national organizations.

In-S tate Resources Legislators from states with fewer in-state information resources will

interact more frequently with professional organizations (Guston, Jones, and Branscomb 1997). One key indicator of in-state resources is the size of the legislative staff, since staff may provide information similar to that from national organizations. Legislative staff is indicated here by the number of staff divided by the number of legislators (Council of State Governments 1997). The expectation is that leaders from states with fewer staff resources will be the most likely to interact with national organizations.

Another indicator of in-state resources is the stability of the membership. A more experienced legislative membership is more capable of handling the increasingly complex public policy issues associated with the modem legislature (Squire 1992). Therefore, leaders in institutions with the highest turnover will seek information from sources outside of the membership, including

national organizations, Membership turnover is measured as the percent of institutional turnover from 1987 to 1997 (National Conference of State Legislatures 1997).

While adequate legislative staff and stable memberships may be institutional resources for leaders, there are many in-state information sources, including interest groups, political parties, the media, think tanks, universities, and constituents. Indicators of interstate differences in the levels of these information sources are not readily available, yet the size of the state functions as an indirect indicator of state resources. Walker’s (1969) study of state policy innovation finds that large states are more innovative. Our expectation, then, is that leaders from small states with fewer in-state resources will make the most connections with professional organizations.

Politics An emphasis on career goals, reelection, and party control motivates

legislative leaders to search for policy ideas or leadership strategies. While fund raising and constituency services are considered crucial to reelection, campaigns also require “messages,” past legislative accomplishments, or proposals for the future in order to succeed. Van Horn (1989), for example, underscores the relevance of policy agendas, among other strategies, to reelection activities when he asserts that, “Because legislators are obsessed with keeping their jobs, they must constantly deliver benefits, claim credit for accomplishments, and attack opponents in the executive branch or elsewhere” (2 1 5) .

One expectation raised by this politicized atmosphere is that leaders seek new ideas, perhaps from contacts with national organizations. However, some differences among leaders’ contact levels may occur based on partisanship or party status. Freeman (1 985) argues that Democrats are typically more liberal and amenable to change; thus Democrats may be more likely to interact with organizations outside the state. Majority party and key leaders, those who control committee assignments and chairs, are in a better position than party leaders to claim the perks of national organization membership and meetings (Erickson 1998). Ifthere are advantages from national organization contact, then key leaders, especially those in the majority, may be in a position to pursue opportunities in national organizations. If there is a close balance of power between the two parties in a chamber, then leaders may be motivated to compete more effectively by seeking external, as well as internal, contacts for advice on policy making or leadership strategies. Party balance is defined as the difference between the proportion of Democrats and Republicans in

State Legislative Leaders’ Contacts 287

the chamber subtracted from one (National Conference of State Legislatures 1996).

Another factor, unified or divided party control of state institutions, the executive and legislative houses, could produce differences among leaders’ interactions with national organizations. Party control is defined as the number of institutions controlled by one party, ranging &om unified control of all three institutions to a complete split among them (National Conference of State Legislatures 1996). As a result, and unlike the other party measures, this indicator characterizes the pattern of party control of state government, not just party status within a legislative institution.

Leaders in unified party control states are in a strong position to make policy and cite successful policy accomplishments as part of an electoral strategy. The public will hold the leaders’ political party responsible for the performance of state government in the next election. Alternatively, an outside party’s fate will depend on their criticism of the status quo and their agenda for the future. As a result, these leaders may make more contacts with professional organizations, perhaps to search for workable policy solutions. If that is the case, then the career interests of leaders facing voter accountability could be a factor in promoting contacts with national organizations.

On the other hand, divided party control may be associated with lower levels of contact. In this context, responsibility for state government performance belongs to both parties. Furthermore, Assendelft (1 997) finds that governors are more likely to be policy leaders in the context of divided as opposed to unified party control. Governors tend to take their agendas directly to the public, rather than working with a legislature controlled wholly or partially by the opposition party. If leaders defer to the governor and the public, then they have less incentive to search for new policy solutions. Instead, it is possible for them to blame the opposition party for policy failures.

Findings

Membership and Meeting Attendance The average respondent claimed to be a member of 2.46 national

organizations. Table 1 shows that memberships are not evenly spread across the organizations. Almost 90 percent of the respondents indicate an affiliation with the National Conference of State Legislatures, while about two-thirds claim membership in the Council of State Governments. The State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council each attract just over 40 percent of the leaders. Just over five percent of the

288 Politice @ Policy Vol.31 No. 2

respondents indicate an affiliation with the State Government Affairs Council. Further, legislative leaders attend meetings of these organizations, although at a much lower rate than they claim membership. The highest percentage of leaders, 57.2 percent, attended meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures, The Council of State Governments and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation were the next most popular for meetings. However, in these cases, meeting attendance was about half that of the National Conference of State Legislatures meetings.

~ ~~~

Table 1. Legislative Leaders Indicating Participation in National Organizations

Organization Membership Attendance*

National Conference of State Legislatures 88.1% 57.2% Council of State Governments 66.0% 28.9% American Legislative Exchange Council 44.0% 18.9?/0 State Legislative Leaders Foundation 42.1% 24.5% State Government Affairs Council 5.7% 6.9%

n = 159; * refers to attendance of at least one meeting in 1997

Table 2 shows that over 70 percent of the respondents had attended a meeting of at least one of these organizations. About one-third of the respondents attended meetings of two or three of the groups. However, over a quarter of leaders attended no meetings. The average member attended meetings of 1.33 organizations.

Only six respondents, representing less than five percent, claimed no affiliation with national organizations in the list of five. Over two-thirds of the respondents were in two or three organizations. While most were in two or three organizations, about twelve percent identified with only one organization on the list, and 15 percent identified with four. Therefore, while most members join national organizations and attend meetings, some are more active than others. This variation in memberships and meeting attendance is examined next.

State Lepistative Leaders’ Contacts 289

Table 2. The Distribution of Organizational Memberships and Program Attendance Among State Legislative Leaders

Number of Organizations

No Organizations One Organization Two Organizations Three Organizations Four Organizations Five Organizations

YO Indicating %Attending Membership Meeting in 1997

4.5 11.9 33.3 34.6 15.1 0.6

26.3 353 192 17.3 1.9 0.0

n = 159

Cosmopolitanism, Resources, Politics, and Professional Activity In order to see which conditions have the greatest effect on leaders,

indicators of cosmopolitanism, resources, and political conditions were regressed on the participation scale, the dependent variable. This method is used since leaders experience these conditions simultaneously. A check for multicollinearity showed no correlations among independent variables that reached an unacceptable level. Furthermore, each of the three independent variables-attitudes toward change, resources, and politics-was run separately, and the results were consistent with those for the model incorporating the three environmental components. Since there are no previous studies of leaders’ contacts, our major interest is to discover which factors are significantly related to organizational affiliation and which are not.

The results of the regression analysis are presented in Table 3. An ordinary least squares regression is employed. The results show that all of the variables explain a statistically significant yet small amount of the total variance. The standardized b (beta) shows the amount of change in the dependent variable produced by changes in a standardized independent variable. The t-statistic indicates that four of the independent variables show a statistically significant relationship at the .05 level or better. These relationships are the focus of interest here.

Four variables are significantly related, p = .05, to levels of professional activity in the predicted direction: moralistic political culture, percent urban population, state population size, and united party control. These variables are all state-level factors, and none of the individual or institutional variables show

290 Politics @ Policy Vol. 31 No. 2

Table 3. The Effect of the Integrated Environment on Legislative Leaders’ Participation in National Organizations

Environmental Characteristics

Political Environment Legislative Competition Majority Status Party Identification United Party Control Key Leader

Resource Environment Staff per Legislator State Population (1,000’s) Membership Turnover

Attitude Environment Moralistic. Culture Percent Urban Population Innovation History

n = 159 R2= 0.17 SigofF= .0034 *p < 0.05, **p CO.01

b

-.lo1 .629 .ow .596 .626

.m -.001 -.011

.799

.034 -.0357

beta

-.m .I56 .005 .I56 .133

.042 -21 1 -.053

.178 .334 -.073

t statistic

-.I0 159 .07

1.96* 1.66

.464 -2.02* -.6 1

1.96* 3.39** -.77

significant associations with levels of professional activity. Furthermore, at least one of the indicators of each dimension-cosmopolitanism, resources, and politics-shows a statistically significant relationship with involvement in national organizations.

Leaders from moralistic political culture states and those from the most urbanized states are more active in professional organizations. Statewide conditions encouraging positive attitudes toward change are related to more involvement with national organizations. Leaders from small states are also more likely to show higher levels of contact. The measure of the overall level of in-state information resources, not indicators of the size of legislative staff or the experience of legislators, is relevant to levels of contact with professional organizations. The CSG innovation measure, however, is not related to participation levels. Perhaps previous innovative activity resulted from staff contacts and not from leaders’ contacts with national organizations. As a

State Legislative Leaders’ Contacts 291

result, this measure is not as useful in accounting for differences in external contact levels as more direct indicators of cosmopolitanism.

The state-level measure of party control between the executive and legislative houses is significantly associated with levels of contact with national organizations, as expected. Leaders from states with unified party control show higher levels of contact than those from states with divided party control. When a single party is more likely to be held accountable by the public for policy accomplishments, then leaders are more active in joining professional associations and attending meetings.

Other party measures are not related to participation levels. All leaders may be seeking comparative advantage, regardless of party identification, institutional position, party status, or the balance of power between parties. As a result, no difference is apparent in terms of leaders’ propensities to interact with national organizations in terms of these institutional or individual situations. This argument follows the notion that policy entrepreneurs seek advantage, regardless of their position (Landy and Levin 1995). Furthermore, Freeman (1 985) finds no significant relationship between party identification and national organization contacts in one state.

The indicators of cosmopolitanism, resources, and politics leave much of the variance in professional activity unexplained. It could be that conference participation is strictly a social activity or a job benefit for some leaders. Memberships in professional organizations in some cases may be automatic for the legislative leadership. Individual characteristics such as educational level may account for some of the remaining variance. Given these realities, it is surprising that four state-level factors are significantly related to participation levels.

Conclusion

Legislative leaders join national organizations and they attend meetings. In fact, their levels of participation are similar to those of state bureaucrats who have received awards for innovation from the CSG. National organizations may represent a source of new ideas to leaders from states with more cosmopolitan perspectives, or where supplementary information resources for those whose in-state resources are limited. If state-level differences are salient in accounting for leaders’ participation in professional networks, leaders’ attention may be focused on how their state compares with other states. National organizations may be a useful vehicle for information exchange among leaders.

~ ~

292 Politics 43 Policy Vol.31 No.2

When there is unified party control in a state, both majority and minority party leaders interact with national organizations more frequently. Unified party control means there is much at stake, particularly for the majority party and the careers of legislative leaders. If leaders see a career advantage to be gained by having national contacts, they are similar to professionals in other fields. For leaders, participation in national networks may be more than a search for solutions to problems or the adequacy of resources for addressing problems in a state. If that is the case, then some interstate policy diffusion may result from the ambitions of legislative leaders.

On the other hand, divided party control, a common outcome in the American states, is associated with leaders who show less activity in national organizations. In fact, Morris Fiorina (1 992) argues that voters prefer a division of party power in state institutions. His argument is that the voters trust neither party, so the division of power between them is an intentional result of voter choices. One result of the division of power is that the governors have a greater incentive to take their policy agendas to the public, rather than formulate compromises with the opposition party in the legislature (Assendelft 1997). Legislative leaders may defer to the governor’s policy leadership, and thus have less motivation to search for policy information from national organizations. Instead, they can blame the opposition party for policy failures.

State Legislative Leaders’ Contacts 293

References

Assendelft, Laura A. 1997. Governors, Agenda Setting and Divided Government. Latham, MD: University Press of America.

Chi, Keon S . 1996. “Innovations in State Government.” In The Book of the States, 1996-1997, edited by The Council of State Governments. Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments. 537-46.

Chi, Keon S . , and Dennis 0. Grady. 1990. “Innovators in State Government: Their Organizational and Professional Environment.” In The Book of the States, 1990-1991, edited by The Council of State Governments. Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments. 382-404.

Council of State Governments. 1997. The Book of the States. Lexington, K Y Council of State Governments.

Elazar, Daniel. 1994. The American Mosiac. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Erickson, Brenda M. 1998. “Appointing Committee Chairs.” NCSL Legislative Brief 6 (4): 2.

Fiorina, Morris. 1992. Divided Government. New York: Macmillan.

Freeman, Patricia K. 1985. “Interstate Communication among State Legislators.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 15 (4): 99-1 12.

Gray, Virginia. 1973. “Innovation in the States: A Diffusion Study.” American Political Science Review 67 (4): 1174-85.

Gray, Virginia, Russell L. Hanson, and Herbert Jacob, eds. 1999. Politics in the American States. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Guston, David H., Megan Jones, and Lewis M. Branscornb. 1997. “The Demand for and the Supply of Technical Information and Analysis in State Legislatures.” Policy Studies Journal 25 (3): 45 1-69.

294 Politics 6 Policy Vol. 31 No. 2

Klase, Rebecca Tatman. 1999. “Professional Communication Networks among State Bureaucracies.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia. September 1-5.

Landy, Marc K., and Martin A. Levin. 1995. “The New Politics of Public Policy.” In The New Politics of Public Policy, edited by Marc K. Landy and Martin A. Levin. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 277-97.

National Conference of State Legislatures. 1996. State Legislatures. Denver, CO: National Conference of State Legislatures.

. 1997. “Turnover in State Legislatures,” In State Legislatures. Denver, CO: National Conference of State Legislatures. 18.

Rogers, Everett M. 1995. Dzflusion of Innovations. fourth edition. New York: Free Press.

Squire, Peverill. 1992. “Legislative Professionalism and Membership Diversity.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 17 (1): 69-79.

Van Horn, Carl E. 1989. “The Quiet Revolution.” In The State of the States, edited by Carl E. Van Horn. Washington, DC: CQ Press. 1-15.

Walker, Jack L. 1969. “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States.” American Political Science Review 63 (3): 880-99.