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Membership Stability in Three State Legislatures: 1893–1969*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

David Ray
David Ray*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Abstract

It is often asserted that state legislatures are characterized by low membership stability, attributed to low career commitment on the part of individual legislators. Such assertions are usually based on the high proportion of first-term members in most legislatures, even though the available data on this subject are limited and contradictory. Two better measures of career commitment and membership stability are: (a) the number of incumbents seeking reelection, and (b) average prior legislative service. Data for these variables are presented for 20 sessions of the Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin legislatures. The data show a gradual but substantial decline in the number of first-term legislators and a gradual but substantial increase in membership stability. The computation of such data is an essential first step in documenting the causes and consequences of membership stability.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 106 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

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Footnotes

*

The author is indebted to John F. Manley, Heinz Eulau, Robert Packenham, and Scott Richardson for their criticism of an earlier draft of this article.

References

1 Grant, Daniel R. and Nixon, H. C., State and Local Government in America, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968), p. 242 Google Scholar.

2 Lockard, Duane, “The Stale Legislator,” in The American Assembly, State Legislatures in American Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 103 Google Scholar.

3 Barber, James David, The Lawmakers: Recruitment and Adaptation to Legislative Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 8 Google Scholar.

4 For examples, see Grant and Nixon, p. 242; Dye, Thomas R., “State Legislative Politics,” in Politics in the American States, ed. Jacob, Herbert and Vines, Kenneth N. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), p. 170 Google Scholar; and Mitau, G. Theodore, State and Local Government: Politics and Processes (New York: Scribners, 1966), p. 63 Google Scholar.

5 Zeller, Belle, ed., American State Legislatures: Report of the Committee on American Legislatures, American Political Science Association (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1954), pp. 65–67 Google Scholar.

6 The computation is reported in Lockard, p. 103.

7 Ibid.

8 Hyneman, Charles S., “Tenure and Turnover of Legislative Personnel,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 195 (January, 1938), pp. 21–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Wahlke, John C., Eulau, Heinz, Buchanan, William, and Ferguson, LeRoy C., The Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962)Google Scholar.

10 The Lockard article presents data on the number of first-term legislators serving in all 50 states in 1963. The Legislative System includes similar data for four states in 1957. The Hyneman article presents length-of-service data on legislators in ten states during the period 1925–1935.

11 Jewell, Malcolm E. and Patterson, Samuel C., The Legislative Process in the United States (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 119–121 Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 120.

13 Lockard, pp. 103–106.

14 Ibid., p. 103.

15 Data Were taken from appropriate issues of the following documents: State of Connecticut, State Register and Manual (Hartford: Office of the Secretary of State, published annually)Google Scholar; State of Michigan, Michigan Manual (Lansing: Office of the Secretary of State, published biennially)Google ScholarPubMed; State of Wisconsin, The Wisconsin Blue Book (Madison: Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, published biennially)Google Scholar.

16 Jewell and Patterson, pp. 118–119.

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18 Such a procedure is discussed in generic terms in Firestone, Joseph M., “Remarks on Concept Formation: Theory Building and Theory Testing,” Philosophy of Science, 38 (December, 1971), 570–604 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Ibid.

20 The rationale behind this argument is summarized in Keefe, William J. and Ogul, Morris S., The American Legislative Process: Congress and the States (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 126–127 Google Scholar.

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24 Polsby, Nelson W., Gallaher, Miriam, and Rundquist, Barry Spencer, “The Growth of the Seniority System in the U. S. House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review, 63 (September, 1969), 787–807 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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