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Bicameral Distinctiveness in American State Legislatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Todd Makse Open the ORCID record for Todd Makse [Opens in a new window]
Todd Makse*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
*
Email: tmakse@fiu.edu
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Abstract

Many important traits of state legislatures vary across chambers within a state. Yet according to existing typologies in the comparative study of bicameralism, the 49 bicameral American state legislatures would be deemed quite homogeneous. To resolve this disjuncture, I identify a novel dimension of bicameralism that distinguishes among state legislatures by capturing the extent to which the two chambers serve as meaningfully different venues for influence. Based on this framework, I develop an index of bicameral “distinctiveness” rooted in three traits that speak to policy influence across chambers: the ratio of seats, bipartisan representation, and constituency dissimilarity. This measure reveals sizable variation across states and a conspicuous geographic pattern, with considerably greater bicameral distinctiveness in the Eastern United States. In turn, I assess the construct validity of this measure, showing how patterns of second chamber bill amendment vary systematically with the level of bicameral distinctiveness.

Keywords

bicameralismstate legislaturesrepresentationpolicy influence
Type
Original Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 270 - 288
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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