Government Growth and Professionalism in U.S. State Legislatures

Author: Malhotra, Neil

Source: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Volume 31, Number 4, November 2006 , pp. 563-584(22)

Publisher: Comparative Legislative Research Center, The University of Iowa

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The Center's principal activity is publishing the Legislative Studies Quarterly, an international refereed journal devoted to research on representative assemblies. The Quarterly is the official journal of the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association. It was founded in 1976 by faculty members at The University of Iowa but today its editors and the members of its editorial board are drawn from major research universities throughout the United States and abroad.
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Abstract:

This article analyzes the professionalization of American state legislatures since the 1960s and expands on previous studies by considering the strategic incentives of members. Fiorina and Noll's (1978a, 1978b) theory that reelection-minded legislators serve as "ombudsmen to the bureaucracy" on behalf of their constituents suggests that legislatures have professionalized in response to growth in public spending in order to strengthen members' abilities to handle increased facilitation duties. I used longitudinal analysis and instrumental variables regression to test this hypothesis and disentangle causal directionality, since professional legislators may have the means and incentive to spend more than their citizen counterparts. Both methods revealed empirical support for the Fiorina and Noll hypothesis that spending increases caused legislators to become more professional.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.3162/036298006X201931