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Formal and Perceived Leadership Power in U.S. State Legislatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

James Coleman Battista
James Coleman Battista*
Affiliation:
University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA
*
James Coleman Battista, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Department of Political Science, 520 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 Email: jbattist@buffalo.edu
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Abstract

While there is a growing literature on the factors linked to the power held by leaders in state legislatures, the complexity of leadership power as a concept makes assessing it difficult. The author demonstrates that measures of formal leadership power derived from the written rules are uncorrelated with survey measures capturing legislators' own assessments of their leader's strength. These differences have practical importance, with each type of measure yielding different substantive findings in models predicting leadership power.

Keywords

legislaturepartyleaderpowersurveymeasurement
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 102 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011

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