IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v104y2010i01p151-170_99.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures

Author

Listed:
  • GAMM, GERALD
  • KOUSSER, THAD

Abstract

When do lawmakers craft broad policies, and when do they focus on narrow legislation tailored to a local interest? We investigate this question by exploring historical variation in the types of bills produced by American state legislatures. Drawing on a new database of 165,000 bills—covering sessions over 120 years in thirteen different states—we demonstrate the surprising prominence of particularistic bills affecting a specific legislator's district. We then develop and test a theory linking the goals of legislators to their propensity to introduce district bills rather than broad legislation. We find that, consistent with our predictions, politicians are more likely to craft policies targeted to a particular local interest when a legislature is dominated by one party or when it pays its members relatively high salaries. These findings provide empirical support for Key's (1949) thesis that one-party politics descends into factionalism and undermines the making of broad public policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Gamm, Gerald & Kousser, Thad, 2010. "Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(1), pages 151-170, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:104:y:2010:i:01:p:151-170_99
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000305540999030X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yakovlev, Pavel & Tosun, Mehmet S. & Lewis, William P., 2012. "Legislative Term Limits and State Aid to Local Governments," IZA Discussion Papers 6456, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Goodman, Christopher B, 2019. "State Legislative Ideology & the Preemption of City Ordinances: The Case of Worker Rights Laws," SocArXiv 2mnws, Center for Open Science.
    3. Goodman, Christopher B & Hatch, Megan E. & McDonald, Bruce D. III, 2020. "State Preemption of Local Laws: Origins and Modern Trends," SocArXiv u2f4x, Center for Open Science.
    4. Troncone, Massimo, 2024. "Poverty, Competition, and Mass Patronage: Evidence from Southern Italy," OSF Preprints rgz9t, Center for Open Science.
    5. Yakovlev, Pavel A. & Tosun, Mehmet S. & Lewis, William P., 2018. "The Fiscal Consequences of State Legislative Term Limits," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 48(3), January.
    6. Matsuda, Yasuhiko, 2011. "Ripe for a big bang ? assessing the political feasibility of legislative reforms in the Philippines'local government code," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5792, The World Bank.
    7. Richard C. Witmer & Joshua Johnson & Frederick J. Boehmke, 2014. "American Indian Policy in the States," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1043-1063, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:104:y:2010:i:01:p:151-170_99. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.