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A Squire Index Update: Stability and Change in Legislative Professionalization, 1979–2021

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2023

Peverill Squire Open the ORCID record for Peverill Squire [Opens in a new window]
Peverill Squire*
Affiliation:
Truman School of Government and Public Affairs, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
*
Email: SquireP@missouri.edu
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Abstract

The Squire Index measuring the professionalization levels of American state legislatures was created three decades ago. In this note, I explain how the 2021 update was compiled. I then document the index’s stability over the years for which it has been measured, present alternative measures to explore a problematic aspect of the index, and finally examine how each of the index’s three components has moved relative to Congress between 1979 and 2021.

Keywords

legislative professionalismlegislative behaviorfederal/statecomparative legislaturesSquire Index
Type
Short Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 110 - 119
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association

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Supplementary material: Link

Squire Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/2VORBN
Link