Legislating Without Experience

Legislative term limits are reshaping the political landscape in numerous states; however, few of the effects are consistent across all states. Everything from the political environment to the level of legislative professionalism within a state influences the trends that are often attributed to term limits. To cut through these many trends and isolate the ones most likely created by term limits, this volume develops comparisons of states with term limits to similar states without term limits. The comparisons are organized by levels of legislative professionalism. The richness of the case study approach allows the contributors to Legislating Without Experience to offer valuable insights into the legislative process in each of the specific states. They also illuminate the individual idiosyncrasies that enhance or dilute the effects of term limits in a given state. Rarely does a case study book with multiple contributors offer apples-to-apples data comparisons. This project engaged nationally recognized scholars to collect and analyze comparable data in each state. The loss of major power brokers and their institutional memory makes the legislature a more chaotic place. Legislating Without Experience argues that on the whole, the legislature as an institution has been weakened by term limits. However, these effects vary from state to state based on the specifics of the limit and the degree of legislative professionalism. Importantly, legislative actors are adapting to the limits and making the best of a difficult situation. This book will be an excellent reference for students and scholars of state politics, legislative process, and term limits.

Rick Farmer is director of committee staff at the Oklahoma House of Representatives and a fellow at the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. Christopher Z. Mooney is professor of Political Studies with the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at University of Illinois at Springfield. Richard J. Powell is associate professor of Political Science at the University of Maine. John C. Green is director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron.

Chapter 1 1. Introduction: Accelerating Change with Term Limits
Chapter 2 I: Professionalized State Legislatures
Chapter 3 2. Institutional Imbalance: The Effect of Six Year Limits in California
Chapter 4 3. Legislative Power in the Buckeye State: The Revenge of Term Limits
Chapter 5 4. Truncated Careers in Professionalized State Legislatures
Chapter 6 II: Semi-Professionalized State Legislatures
Chapter 7 5. The Effects of Legislative Term Limits in Arizona: More Churning, More Chaos, and a Diminished Institutional Role for Legislators
Chapter 8 6. Colorado Legislative Term Limits: The Worst of Both Worlds
Chapter 9 7. Out with the Old-Heads and in with the Young Turks: The Effects of Term Limits on Semi-Professionalized State Legislatures
Chapter 10 III: Citizen Legislatures
Chapter 11 8. Term Limits in the Arkansas General Assembly: A Citizen Legislature Responds
Chapter 12 9. Institutional Change and Legislative Term Limits in Maine
Chapter 13 10. It's All About the Turnover: Term Limits in Citizen Legislatures
Chapter 14 11. Living with Term Limits