Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

We argue that state legislative politics is qualitatively different from national congressional politics in the extent to which it focuses on localized and geographically specific legislation salient to subconstituencies within a legislative district. Whereas congressional politics focuses on casewo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review 2016-08, Vol.110 (3), p.441-456
Main Authors: BAGASHKA, TANYA, CLARK, JENNIFER HAYES
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Candidates
Citizens
Collaboration
Competition
Congressional elections
Election results
Elections
Electoral reform
Individual Characteristics
Interest groups
Legislation
Legislators
Legislatures
Online voting
Particularism
Political geography
Political science
Politics
Preferences
Primaries & caucuses
Research Assistants
Rules
Selection procedures
State government
Term limitations
United States
Voters
Voting
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Summary:We argue that state legislative politics is qualitatively different from national congressional politics in the extent to which it focuses on localized and geographically specific legislation salient to subconstituencies within a legislative district. Whereas congressional politics focuses on casework benefits for individual constituents, state legislative politics is more oriented to the delivery of localized benefits for groups of citizens in specific areas within a district, fostering a geographically specific group connection. A primary way to build such targeted geographical support is for members to introduce particularistic legislation designed to aid their specific targeted geographical area within the district. We argue that this is primarily a function of electoral rules. Using original sponsorship data from U.S. state houses, we demonstrate that greater district magnitude and more inclusive selection procedures such as open primaries are associated with more particularism. Our findings provide strong support for a voter-group alignment model of electoral politics distinct from the personal vote/electoral connection model that characterizes U.S. congressional politics and is more akin to patterns of geographically specific group-oriented electoral politics found in Europe and throughout the world.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055416000228