The purpose of this assignment is to make a presentation on the institutional characteristics of your states' legislatures and how they affect the politics of your region's states.
5. Are there term limits and if so when were they enacted and how are they applied? (see here for status of term limits in various states)
Think about whether it makes more sense to show your data as a single state on a slide, or 4 states on a slide (ie Session Length in the Deep South). Don't spend a lot of time on this 1 1/2 minutes max. Show us the data, tell us professional, hybrid, or citizen and what kind of term limits if any.
What are the Consequences of the Legislatures' Institutional Design on its politicial behavior?
1 . the turnover rate for the legislature or reelection rates for incumbents (see here)
2. Estimated percentage of time spent working as a legislator (see survey results here)
2. Percentage of women legislators (see here) and African American legislators (see here)
4. What is the level of legislative competition? To answer this question, go to Follow the Money's Mc50 Map - http://www.followthemoney.org/database/graphs/competitive/index.phtml -and click on the state and go the most recent election year.
First, how many of their legislative seats are contested. You can answer this in two ways. You could either use their pie charts on the percentage of legislative races that are competitive, not competitive, or uncontested in the most recent election year. Or you could look at the percentage of seats that are competitive from the previous election cycles. By changing the year on the left, you can find the percentage of competitive seats going back to 1990.
Second, how much money does it take to win a legislative race in a competitive seat. On the box on the left, click on the competitive districts box and Sort by Total $ above it. What is the median amount that the winning senate and house candidates spent? The median is the number in the middle- for example, if there were 5 competitive house seats, the 3rd highest amount is the median. You might also want to include the highest $ amount as well. (NJ and AL are missing from their data, so use RI and NC instead)
Think about whether it makes more sense to show your data as a single state on a slide, or 4 states on a slide (ie Session Length in the Deep South). Don't spend a lot of time on this, 3 minutes max.
What are the Consequences of the Legislatures' Institutional Design for Political Outcomes
(6-7 minutes)
You can choose to explore one of 2 questions:
Question #1 The Sick Legislature Syndrome
--Choose a single state, or maybe a pair if that works better to examine
whether the legislature suffering from the Sick Legislature Syndrome described
by Mahtesian? What is your impression about the relationship between the professionalization
of your legislature and its effectiveness or sickness? Is it the institutional
characteristics of the legislature that is causing the “excessive conflict”
and “partisan bickering” or is there a more plausible explanation?
(Make sure you think hard about what constitutes effectiveness and excessive
conflict for a representative institution
Question #1a The Healthy State Syndrome
--If you have non professional, non term limited states, look to see if they are as productive or successful as Tennessee. Do a lexus nexus search on "legislative success" or legislative record to see what comes up.
Question #2 Consequence of Term Limits
--If one of your states has adopted term limits, what have been the impacts
of them? How do the outcomes compare with what is happening in Michigan according
the article we will read on Wednesday by Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson et al, Impacts
of Term Limits in Michigan?
To find out this information, you can either do a Lexus-Nexus search in your state’s main newspaper or search the political blogs on your state (See the bottom right of The 13th Floor From Governing http://governing.typepad.com/13thfloor/ for state specific political blogs.
Presentation Suggestions
1. make sure you get the correct name of both legislative bodies
2. including a picture of the states' Capital buildings might be nice