IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v94y2000i04p859-874_22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legislative Professionalism and Incumbent Reelection: The Development of Institutional Boundaries

Author

Listed:
  • Berry, William D.
  • Berkman, Michael B.
  • Schneiderman, Stuart

Abstract

It is well established that legislators from highly professionalized bodies are more likely to win reelection than members of less professionalized legislatures. We find that the effect of professionalization on incumbent electoral success is far more pervasive. As the level of professionalism of a legislature increases, the effects of external political and economic forces (such as coattails from higher level elections and national economic conditions) on a legislator's chances for reelection diminish in strength. This implies that legislative professionalization promotes institutionalization by establishing boundaries that insulate members from external shocks. We reach these conclusions by specifying and testing a district-level model of state legislative election outcomes, using as dependent variable the probability that an incumbent will win reelection. The model is estimated with probit using data for more than 42,000 state legislators from 1970 to 1989.

Suggested Citation

  • Berry, William D. & Berkman, Michael B. & Schneiderman, Stuart, 2000. "Legislative Professionalism and Incumbent Reelection: The Development of Institutional Boundaries," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(4), pages 859-874, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:94:y:2000:i:04:p:859-874_22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400223022/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. Thomas Carsey & William Berry, 2014. "What’s a losing party to do? The calculus of contesting state legislative elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 251-273, July.
    3. David Mitchell & Keith Willett, 2006. "Local Economic Performance and Election Outcomes," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 34(2), pages 219-232, June.
    4. Thomas Stratmann, 2006. "Contribution limits and the effectiveness of campaign spending," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 461-474, December.
    5. Robert E. Hogan, 2008. "Policy Responsiveness and Incumbent Reelection in State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 858-873, October.
    6. Uppal, Yogesh, 2008. "Estimation of the Incumbency Effects in the US State Legislatures: A Quasi-Experimental Approach," MPRA Paper 8575, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Richard Burke, 2021. "Nationalization and Its Consequences for State Legislatures," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(1), pages 269-280, January.
    8. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Matthew F. Mitchell & Andrea Moro, 2008. "Electoral Design and Voter Welfare from the U.S. Senate: Evidence from a Dynamic Selection Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, January.
    9. 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.
    10. Asger Lau Andersen & David Dreyer Lassen & Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen, 2020. "Irresponsible parties, responsible voters? Legislative gridlock and collective accountability," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, March.
    11. Stratmann, Thomas, 2005. "Ballot access restrictions and candidate entry in elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 59-71, March.
    12. Steven Rogers, 2016. "National Forces in State Legislative Elections," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 667(1), pages 207-225, September.
    13. Thomas Stratmann, 2003. "Tainted Money? Contribution Limits and the Effectiveness of Campaign Spending," CESifo Working Paper Series 1044, CESifo.
    14. Fedeli, Silvia & Forte, Francesco & Leonida, Leone, 2014. "The law of survival of the political class: An analysis of the Italian parliament (1946–2013)," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 102-121.
    15. Joel Slemrod, 2005. "The Etiology of Tax Complexity: Evidence from U.S. State Income Tax Systems," Public Finance Review, , vol. 33(3), pages 279-299, May.
    16. Yogesh Uppal & Amihai Glazer, 2015. "Legislative Turnover, Fiscal Policy, And Economic Growth: Evidence From U.S. State Legislatures," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 91-107, January.

    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:94:y:2000:i:04:p:859-874_22. 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.