This book examines how legislature rules affect the behavior of its members and policies.

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 that are 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 allows the contributors to Legislating Without Experience to offer valuable insights into the legislative process in each of the specific states. They also illuminate 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 engaged nationally recognized scholars to collect and analyze comparable data in each state. The loss of major power brokers and their institutional memory 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, legislative process, and term limits.

The Test of Time brings together fifteen outstanding empirical studies, contributed by top political scientists and state policymakers. This volume offers both case studies of key states and cross-state comparisons that examine how legislatures, legislators, and political linkages such as lobbying and electoral competition have been affected by the imposition of legislative term limits. This essential source includes both a comprehensive annotated bibliography of term limits literature and a history of the term limits movement.

It has been predicted that term limits in state legislatures--soon to be in effect in eighteen states--will first affect the composition of the legislatures, next the behavior of legislators, and finally legislatures as institutions. The studies in Term Limits in State Legislatures demonstrate that term limits have had considerably less effect on state legislatures than proponents predicted. The term-limit movement--designed to limit the maximum time a legislator can serve in office--swept through the states like wildfire in the first half of the 1990s. By November 2000, state legislators will have been "term limited out" in eleven states. This book is based on a survey of nearly 3,000 legislators from all fifty states along with intensive interviews with twenty-two legislative leaders in four term-limited states. The data were collected as term limits were just beginning to take effect in order to capture anticipatory effects of the reform, which set in as soon as term limit laws were passed. In order to understand the effects of term limits on the broader electoral arena, the authors also examine data on advancement of legislators between houses of state legislatures and from the state legislatures to Congress. The results show that there are no systematic differences between term limit and non-term limit states in the composition of the legislature (e.g., professional backgrounds, demographics, ideology). Yet with respect to legislative behavior, term limits decrease the time legislators devote to securing pork and heighten the priority they place on the needs of the state and on the demands of conscience relative to district interests. At the same time, with respect to the legislature as an institution, term limits appear to be redistributing power away from majority party leaders and toward governors and possibly legislative staffers. This book will be of interest both to political scientists, policymakers, and activists involved in state politics. John M. Carey is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis. Richard G. Niemi is Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester. Lynda W. Powell is Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester.

Legislative term limits remain a controversial feature of the American political landscape. Term Limits and Their Consequences provides a clear, comprehensive, and nonpartisan look at all aspects of this contentious subject. Stanley M. Caress and Todd T. Kunioka trace the emergence of the grassroots movement that supported term limits and explain why the idea of term limits became popular with voters. At the same time, they put term limits into a broader historical context, illustrating how they are one of many examples of the public’s desire to reform government. Utilizing an impressive blend of quantitative data and interviews, Caress and Kunioka thoughtfully discuss the impact of term limits, focusing in particular on the nation’s largest state, California. They scrutinize voting data to determine if term limits have altered election outcomes or the electoral chances of women and minority candidates, and reveal how restricting a legislator’s time in office has changed political careers and ambitions. Designed to transform American politics, term limits did indeed bring change, but in ways ranging far beyond those anticipated by both their advocates and detractors.

A concise and provocative introduction to state legislative politics, State Legislatures Today is designed as a supplement for state and local government courses and upper level courses on legislative politics.

This book considers whether term limits help curb careerism in the US state legislatures. Term limits are popular among the public and have been overwhelmingly successful once on the ballot. Despite this, very little is known about the long-term effects of these institutional rules. If term limits were sold to the public to remove entrenched incumbents from office, how do they alter the careers of legislators and what are the implications? Butcher suggests that term limits do not end careers but instead, lawmakers have become more creative in their pursuits. She finds that the presence of term limits has created a new career system unique to those states that have limits. In each chapter, there is a quantitative analysis, followed by qualitative interviews to better understand the underlying motivations of members.