Legislating Without Experience
Rick Farmer, Richard J. Powell (Editor), Christopher Z. MooneyBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Legislative term limits are reshaping the political landscape in numerous states; however, few of the effects are consistent across all states. Everything from the political environment to the level of legislative professionalism within a state influences the trends often attributed to term limits. To cut through these many trends and isolate the ones most likely created by term limits, this volume develops comparisons of states with term limits to similar states without term limits. The comparisons are organized by levels of legislative professionalism.The richness of the case study approach of Legislating Without Experience allows the contributors to offer valuable insights into the legislative process in each of the specific states. It also illuminates the individual idiosyncrasies that enhance or dilute the effects of term limits in a given state. Rarely does a case study book with multiple contributors offer apples-to-apples data comparisons. This project engages nationally recognized scholars to collect and analyze comparable data from each state.
The loss of major power brokers and their institutional memories makes the legislature a more chaotic place. Legislating Without Experience argues that on the whole, the legislature as an institution has been weakened by term limits. However, these effects vary from state to state based on the specifics of the limit and the degree of legislative professionalism. Importantly, legislative actors are adapting to the limits and making the best of a difficult situation. This book will be an excellent reference for students and scholars of state politics, the legislative process, and term limits.
Synopsis
Legislating Without Experience provides an in-depth analysis of individual states experiencing state legislative term limits as well as apples-to-apples comparisons with states that are untermed. It is a valuable description of the legislative process in each state and a quasi-experimental study of term limits.