A Theory of Indirect Election

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy J. Schiller ◽  
Charles Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Legislative Choice ◽  
Key Participants ◽  
State Legislative

This chapter analyzes the indirect elections of U.S. senators in state legislatures within a broader theoretical framework of how parties interact with institutional and electoral settings to affect electoral and policy outcomes. It identifies key participants in Senate campaigns during this period—candidates for U.S. Senate, business interests, political party organizations, and state legislators—and constructs a model for how these stakeholders interacted with each other within the structure of legislative choice for U.S. senator along four dimensions—candidate identification, candidate nomination, election criteria, and system responsiveness. It also discusses how an anticipated indirect Senate election might have affected voter turnout in the preceding state legislative election.

U.S. State Legislative Committee Assignments and Encouragement of Party Loyalty: An Exploratory Analysis

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Kanthak
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Exploratory Analysis ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Committee Assignments ◽  
State Legislative

Although political parties in U.S. legislatures cannot compel discipline with the threat of expulsion from the legislature, they can encourage greater party loyalty by strategically bestowing benefits upon favored members. This article explores the use of plum committee assignments to encourage legislators' loyalty to their parties. I outline a theory of how party leaders can use committee assignments strategically to encourage more loyal legislative behavior. This occurs when legislative rules meet two criteria: (1) parties and their leaders can determine who serves on committees and (2) committees have real authority over policy outcomes. I test the theory using data from five state legislatures that differ on the relevant set of legislative rules, finding more party loyalty shown by legislators who receive plum committee assignments when rules meet both criteria and no effect when they do not.

State Conformity with Federal Tax Changes

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaele Morrow ◽  
Robert Ricketts
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Generalized Estimating Equations ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Estimating Equations ◽  
The State ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Tax Legislation ◽  
Tax Changes ◽  
State Legislative

ABSTRACT: We examine the decisions by state legislatures to conform to or decouple from federal tax legislation. We use a generalized estimating equations (GEE) approach to estimate the parameters of a model of factors associated with the state legislative decisions to conform their own tax systems to accommodate 11 federal tax reductions implemented between 2002 and 2008. Our model predicts that state legislators consider political, budgetary, and ease of compliance factors when considering whether to adopt federal tax changes into their own states’ tax codes. Our results are generally consistent with expectations, identifying several factors that are associated with the probability that a state will incorporate revenue-reducing tax changes implemented by the federal government. Our results also suggest that although state legislators appear to value conformity with the tax initiatives of the federal government, given rising budgetary pressures, state conformity with such legislation is likely to decrease in coming years.

State Legislative Process

2022 ◽  
pp. 24-51
Keyword(s):  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Party Control ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Change State ◽  
State Legislative

This chapter explores the history and operation of state legislatures. The urban-rural divide characterizes stark political and social differences that fuel legislative behavior. The content of public policies across the United States is influenced by these divisions and contributes to either the support of or opposition to social change. State legislators are on the front lines of these geographic ideological divides. These variations by region contribute to the increase in single-party control and have generated pronounced policy differences.

scholarly journals Institutional Variation and Political Career Patterns: A Look at the Influence of Chamber Size in State Legislatures

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Winburn
Keyword(s):  
State Legislatures ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
The State ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ambition ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
State Legislative ◽  
Chamber Size

State legislators routinely run for the state Senate after having served in the state House; however, this rarely occurs in the other order. Do members simply look to move up based on the conventional view of the political ambition ladder? Alternatively, do institutional reasons exist that make the Senate the preferred chamber? I examine the differences between the state legislative chambers and discuss institutional reasons why members may prefer the Senate to the House. Overall, I find chamber size is an important intra-institutional variable in explaining this variation along with the professionalism of the legislatures and term limits.

State Policy Outcomes and State Legislative Approval

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 929-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefani Langehennig ◽  
Joseph Zamadics ◽  
Jennifer Wolak
Keyword(s):  
State Government ◽  
State Policy ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
State Legislative ◽  
Legislative Approval

Does the public’s approval of their state legislature reflect their satisfaction with the outputs of state government? Using survey responses from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we consider the roots of public approval of state legislatures. We find that people are more likely to voice approval of their state legislature when it produces policy outcomes that correspond with their interests. Liberals view their state legislature more positively when policy outputs are liberal, while conservatives evaluate their state legislature more favorably when policy outcomes are conservative. These effects are the most pronounced among those who are the most knowledgeable about state politics. Using panel data from 2012 to 2014, we also show that changes in state policy liberalism are associated with changes in state legislative approval. Even though we have reasons to be pessimistic about the quality of citizens’ assessments of state government, our results demonstrate that citizens evaluate their state legislatures based on the policy outcomes they provide.

National Forces in State Legislative Elections

2016 ◽  
Vol 667 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Presidential Approval ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
White House ◽  
State Legislative Elections ◽  
The Impact ◽  
State Legislative

The race for the White House is at the top of the ticket, but voters will also choose more than 5,000 state legislators in November 2016. While voters elect and hold the president responsible for one job and state legislators for another, the outcomes of their elections are remarkably related. In analyses of elite and voter behavior in state legislative elections, I show that legislators affiliated with the president’s party—especially during unpopular presidencies—are the most likely to be challenged, and compared with individual assessments of the state legislature, changes in presidential approval have at least three times the impact on voters’ decision-making in state legislative elections. Thus, while state legislatures wield considerable policymaking power, legislators’ electoral fates appear to be largely out of their control.

scholarly journals What Happens When Insurers Make Insurance Laws? State Legislative Agendas and the Occupational Makeup of Government

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric R. Hansen ◽  
Nicholas Carnes ◽  
Virginia Gray
Keyword(s):  
Interest Group ◽  
Insurance Industry ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Original Data ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Agenda Control ◽  
Legislative Agendas ◽  
State Legislative

Do the occupational backgrounds of politicians affect the government’s agenda? Businesses have long thought so. The first occupational data on state legislators were collected by the Insurance Information Institute, an interest group representing major insurance companies. In this paper, we test one potential motive for these kinds of efforts: the idea that the occupational makeup of governments affects the agendas they pursue, an argument that has been largely neglected in research on politicians’ occupational backgrounds. We focus here on the insurance industry. Using original data, we find that state legislatures with more former insurers consider fewer bills regulating insurance (negative agenda control), that former insurers play a disproportionate role in drafting the insurance bills that are introduced (positive agenda control), and that the bills former insurers introduce tend to be more favorable to the industry than those that their colleagues introduce (positive agenda control). The occupational makeup of legislatures may indeed affect their agendas, as industry groups have long suspected.

scholarly journals Does direct democracy increase communicative responsiveness? A field experiment with Swiss politicians

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801770073 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anouk Lloren
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Quality Of Democracy

Many argue that direct democracy improves the quality of democracy. In particular, many scholars claim that it increases the representation of the public’s preferences by fostering communicative responsiveness between politicians and citizens. While studies have come to mixed conclusions about the effect of direct democracy on policy outcomes, little is known about how direct democratic processes affect politicians’ responsiveness. Using a field experiment, this study examines whether direct democracy increases the responsiveness of Swiss state legislators to citizen-initiated contacts on policy concerns. Contrary to popular belief, our results show that direct democracy does not enhance politicians’ responsiveness to policy requests.

scholarly journals Disrupting Regulation, Regulating Disruption: The Politics of Uber in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Berins Collier ◽  
V.B. Dubal ◽  
Christopher L. Carter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Labor Issues ◽  
Regulatory Regimes

Platform companies disrupt not only the economic sectors they enter, but also the regulatory regimes that govern those sectors. We examine Uber in the United States as a case of regulating this disruption in different arenas: cities, state legislatures, and judicial venues. We find that the politics of Uber regulation does not conform to existing models of regulation. We describe instead a pattern of “disruptive regulation”, characterized by a challenger-incumbent cleavage, in two steps. First, an existing regulatory regime is not deregulated but successfully disregarded by a new entrant. Second, the politics of subsequently regulating the challenger leads to a dual regulatory regime. In the case of Uber, disruptive regulation takes the form of challenger capture, an elite-driven pattern, in which the challenger has largely prevailed. It is further characterized by the surrogate representation of dispersed actors—customers and drivers—who do not have autonomous power and who rely instead on shifting alignments with the challenger and incumbent. In its surrogate capacity in city and state regulation, Uber has frequently mobilized large numbers of customers and drivers to lobby for policy outcomes that allow it to continue to provide service on terms it finds acceptable. Because drivers have reaped less advantage from these alignments, labor issues have been taken up in judicial venues, again primarily by surrogates (usually plaintiffs’ attorneys) but to date have not been successful.

scholarly journals Levels and Determinants of Youth Political Participation: Regional Inequalities and Northeastern Slovenia

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2018) (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrej Kirbiš
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Scientific Paper ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Regional Inequalities ◽  
Post Communism

Category: 1.01 Original scientific paper Language: Original in English (Abstract in English and Slovenian, Summary in Slovenian) Key words: political participation, determinants, youth, Slovenia, regional inequalities, democracy, civic participation, democratization, democratic consolidation, post-communism Abstract: The main purpose of our study was 1) to analyse previously unexamined regional inequalities in four dimensions of political participation among Slovenian youth (self-reported voter turnout, non-electoral conventional participation, protest participation and civic participation); 2) to examine macro-determinants of regional inequalities in political participation; and 3) to examine regional variation in individual-level determinants of political participation. We found several substantial regional inequalities in youth political participation, although the extent of inequalities differed depending on examined participation dimension. Regional inequalities exist particularly in voter turnout and civic participation, while at the same time, regions that score higher on one dimension in some cases score lower on other dimensions.

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