College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item Representation in State Legislatures: Searching for Responsiveness in an Age of Polarization(2006-04-24) Bigelow, Nathan S.; Herrnson, Paul S; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this dissertation is to assess the degree to which state legislators are responsive to their various constituencies. The guiding research questions are: 1) Under what circumstances are state legislators most responsive to their districts, parties, and interest group supporters? 2) What drives certain legislators to take extreme issue positions? And 3) What explains and what are the consequences of state legislative polarization? I propose a theory of conditional responsiveness that specifies circumstances (issue type, electoral competition and legislative professionalism) under which responsiveness is most likely to occur. I systematically test my hypotheses using an original data set that includes information on over 4,000 state legislators and their districts in 30 different states. I find legislators to be most responsive to constituents on high salience social issues. On lower salience economic issues, state representatives are much more responsive to their interest group supporters. In addition, I find members from electorally safe districts to be most responsive to their districts as safe members are more likely to reflect their district's demographic and political homogeneity. Legislative professionalism if found to enhance responsiveness. This discovery supports the view of many scholars who saw the professionalization of state legislatures in the latter half of the 20th century as a healthy development. Across the country, I find a good deal of ideological extremism among state legislators. This legislative extremism, when aggregated, results in chamber level polarization. This polarization cuts into the productivity of the legislatures, making stalemate a more common legislative outcome. Policy responsiveness occurring in state legislatures is a reassuring finding; responsiveness, however, is conditional. Certain conditions influence the degree to which constituency opinion really matters. Perhaps the most important condition is the level of public interest on a given policy issue - when people care, legislators respond. This observation has practical implications for our democratic system of government. Representatives, without an informed or caring citizenry, can get away with straying from the wishes or needs of their constituents. As such, a necessary component of representative democracy must be an informed and vigilant citizenry.Item The Effects of Campaign Contributions on State Legislators(2005-04-11) hoffman, adam howard; Herrnson, Paul S; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tremendous increases in campaign contributions at the state legislative level, both from labor and business interests have led to suspicions regarding the influence of money on legislative voting. This study seeks to assess the degree to which campaign funds flowing from private interests to state legislators, influence how legislators vote on bills that affect those private interests. This study addresses the influence of money on roll call votes using campaign contribution data from 4,000 legislators in 22 states for the 1998 and 2000 election cycles. The analysis shows that in states with nonprofessional legislatures, campaign contributions from business interests do indeed influence how legislators vote on business-supported legislation. Unlike professionalized legislatures, where such factors as significant staff support, and stricter campaign finance laws mitigate the influence of lobbyists and campaign contributions, legislators in nonprofessional legislators are often overburdened with complex policy proposals along as well as numerous contributors and lobbyists ready to provide both campaign money and advice when it comes to voting for business-backed legislation. Disaggregating the analysis to the individual state level provides for a detailed examination of the political forces and policy environments, both historically and in the present that have shaped how and why the major players in state capitols maintain their influence over policy outputs. Findings that link the contributions of business interests to legislative voting raise important concerns including the declining representativeness of state legislators as well as the possibility of corrupt practices or the perceptions of corruption among the public when money is exchanged for votes.