Representation in State Legislatures

Malcolm E. Jewell

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813114637
• eBook ISBN: 9780813156163
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Every two years American voters turn out to elect several thousand representatives to state legislatures. Only now in Representation in State Legislatures do we have a detailed examination of how these officials perceive their jobs and how they attempt to do them. To provide answers to these questions, Malcolm E. Jewell conducted intensive interviews with 220 members of houses of representatives in nine selected states. He asked each legislator how he kept in touch with his constituents, how he resolved matters of policy, how he sought government resources for his district, and what services he provided for individual constituents.

State legislatures differ greatly, and they are not institutionalized to the same degree as the national congress. It is difficult, therefore, to generalize on such effects as partisanship. Likewise it appears that past explanatory models do not adequately describe the complex relationships seen by most legislators in their work. The state legislature is changing. It is becoming more institutionalized. It is becoming more stable as fewer members retire and more are reelected. The trend is toward longer sessions, increased staff, and more activity. With this trend the legislator is becoming more visible; he can deal with lawmaking while having greater opportunities to provide services and to gain publicity for them.

As the move, begun by the Reagan administration, to put more responsibility for programs on the states continues, the state legislatures will assume a place of greater importance in the governing of the United States. This pioneering study of representation will thereby gain significance both for the understanding it imparts and for the new questions it raises.

1.Representation in State Legislatures

In late 1978 and early 1979 I spent many weeks in the capitals of nine American states talking to legislators about how they represent their constituents. The question may appear to be a simple one, but the answers I received show that representation has many dimensions and that legislators approach it differently, depending on the state and the particular district they represent as well as their own perceptions and political styles. I found that there is no average legislator and no set of answers to the questions about representation that might be considered typical. But examples of a couple of interviews will suggest the range of meanings that are associated with the term representation.

Late one afternoon, after the Ohio House had adjourned for the day, I found a legislator who was prepared to talk at some length about his job. A thirty-nine-year-old Republican lawyer, he was just starting his fourth term in the House. When I began asking him about his district, he described it as “a microcosm of the state.” At the center of the district is a small but heavily industrialized city, surrounded by small towns and rural areas. His district includes almost all the county, but one rural township has been lopped off to achieve population equality. He would prefer to represent the whole county: “Splitting up counties is damaging because people think in terms of counties. I’m unusually lucky to have a district that is almost identical to the county, but those persons who live in the part of the county attached to another district really don’t have any influence on that district.”

Noting that he was elected without opposition in 1978 and won with over 60 percent in each of the three previous elections, I suggest that the district appears to be very secure for Republican candidates. He quickly replies: “That is deceptive.” The success of Republican candidates, including himself, is due to an unusually hard-working Republican organization that seeks and gets support from groups—such as union members and blacks—whom the Republicans usually fail to contact. “Even though I ran unopposed, I spent ten days after the election at the factory gates, thanking people for voting for me.”

I ask him how he develops visibility and how he maintains contact with constituents.

Anything I say is news, being the only representative in the county, like members in most rural counties. But I have the advantage of a more sophisticated media than most rural legislators have, including a newspaper, two radio stations, and a TV station.

Every other week I have a press conference in the city, and then repeat it in a couple of the small towns. These are open to the press and the public, but mostly just the press comes. I report on bills that have been passed, and my stand on them, and on my activities in the legislature and in the district.

How difficult is it to represent a district that is heterogeneous, with different and often conflicting interests?

It is not hard to represent this district. When it is that diverse, no single interest can kill you. You can’t suit everyone—someone will be mad no matter what you do, so you can make an informed judgment. It gives you a great deal of freedom.

If you explain your vote to people, and sound well informed, and report back often to them, they will forgive a few votes that they might not agree with. I tend to get into trouble with the right-wing Republicans, but the local chairman of the party says, “Even if we don’t always agree with you, at least give us reasons for your votes.”

Do you have trouble with single-issue groups?

Not very much. The two toughest are the anti-gun control people and the antiabortion people. They are very organized and they don’t agree with me—I am too moderate for them. What has saved me is that in this county there is so much diversity that these small groups are swallowed up—they just are not that numerous.

How do you define the job of being a legislator—what are the most important parts of it, or the things you wish you could spend more time on?

Everyone here faces a problem: There are two competing job descriptions that are irreconcilable (at least in terms of the time available). You must choose between being an ombudsman or being a legislator or lawmaker. Everyone here makes a conscious or unconscious choice about how much time to spend on each. I tend to be oriented toward legislation. If I didn’t devote so much attention to the media in my district, I would probably be hurt politically because I have not given that much attention to constituency service.

The young Massachusetts legislator is serving his third term, representing a safely Democratic, middle-income district in the suburbs of Boston. He enjoys talking about his job and seems to enjoy being a representative and a politician. How does he stay in contact with constituents?

I return every phone call I get. I answer every letter. I speak every chance I get. When I go to the market to shop, I see people who know me. Friday when I go to the law office, there will be people who want to talk to me about problems and who know that I will be available to them.

The job of representing the district on policy matters appears to be quite simple from his perspective.

I can’t think of a time when I have voted contrary to what the district wants, because I vote the way they want me to. I am a representative—I represent my district. Partly this is because I am really typical of the district, and partly because if conflicts arose I would go along with the district. But I have never found such a conflict on issues when the constituents are well informed about them. I have never cast a vote different from what the district majority would cast if they were well informed about the issue.

How important is constituency service in your job?

About 98 percent of my job concerns casework. Mostly it is jobs that they want, sometimes food stamps or housing, but usually jobs. As long as you return the call or letter and try to do something, people will appreciate it, and it will help you politically. If I get a job for someone, sooner or later someone else in the family will call about a job. If you don’t do constituency work, you don’t help yourself. But if you do that work, you just create more work for yourself and the job gets too big to handle.

These legislators, like most I interviewed, come from districts that appear to be secure, but they attribute their success to hard work in the district. The Massachusetts member says, “I don’t have to campaign at election time because I campaign seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day.” They are conscious of the need to maintain contact with constituents, one relying heavily on press conferences, and the other stressing more informal, personal contacts. It would be difficult to stereotype either one as a delegate or a trustee in their responsiveness on policy issues, but the Ohio legislator seems to be more concerned about how to handle those constituents who disagree with him. The Ohio representative sees virtue in a heterogeneous district, while the Massachusetts member appears to enjoy a district that is homogeneous enough that he can typify its viewpoints. We will find both viewpoints common among legislators. The clearest difference between these two members concerns the priority they give to legislation or to casework. Legislators are generally divided over this question of what aspect of their job, which component of representation, is more important.

The purpose of this study is to understand the meaning of representation in the context of American legislatures. The principal method is interviewing—some 220 members of the House in nine states. This means, of course, that representation will be defined from the perspective of the legislator, not the constituent. Although most of these interviews were carried out in the state capital, the focus of the interviews is not on the decision-making process in the legislature but on the legislator’s district. The scope of my questions is well illustrated by the interviews that have beem summarized: perceptions of the district, techniques of communicating with constituents, policy responsiveness to the district, and serving the needs of groups and individuals in the district.

The study of representation in American state legislatures is a very large assignment. Ideally it would involve in-depth surveys and observations of 7,500 legislators in the legislatures and in their districts; even more ideally it would include surveys of their constituents. Although it is possible to use mail questionnaires to reach large numbers of members, I decided that the information needed for an understanding of representation could best be gained from personal interviews, and thus it was necessary to limit the study to a smaller number of states. The fact that I had an opportunity to travel for a number of months reinforced the decision to use personal interviews. The logistics of time and travel funds required that I conduct the interviews largely in state capitals and that I get information about district activities from interviews, rather than from personal observation, such as Fenno did in his study (1978). I conducted 221 interviews in nine states over a nine-month period from September 1978 to June 1979. The states were California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Colorado, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, and Kentucky. The criteria used in selecting these states, and the methods used in conducting the interviews are summarized in the Appendix.

The Research Setting: Nine State Legislatures

The goal of political scientists is to develop generalizations that are not limited to particular times and places. Most of what we know about legislative representation in the United States comes from studies of congressional representation. Within recent years the work of such scholars as Fenno (1978), Mayhew (1974), Fiorina (1974, 1977b), and Kingdon (1981) has significantly enhanced our understanding of congressional representation. We have learned more about how members evaluate input from constituents in making legislative decisions; we have become more aware of the multiple dimensions of representation and the growing importance of allocative and service functions; and we have discovered the importance of the congressman’s “home style”—how he relates to his district.

This renaissance of interest in congressional representation has not been matched, however, by studies at the state or local level. Most recent research on state legislatures has been confined to a single state, and very little of it has dealt with representation or specifically tested the hypotheses being developed by students of congressional representation. (See Gove, Carlson, and Carlson, 1976; Hevesi, 1975; and Kirkpatrick, 1978.) At the local level there is one major study by Eulau and Prewitt (1973), a comparative analysis of eighty-two city councils in the San Francisco Bay area. Although the data for that study were collected in the mid-1960s, before most of the research we have mentioned on congressional representation, the authors are concerned with similar questions about representation.

One purpose of this study is to determine whether some of the recent findings about congressional representation are applicable to representation in state legislatures. There are several reasons why state legislatures provide excellent arenas for examining the process of representation. Perhaps the most obvious fact is that there are almost 7,500 members in the ninety-nine legislative bodies in American states. Although these legislatures are smaller and less professional than Congress, their organization, structure, and functions resemble those of Congress in many ways. If we are seeking to broaden our understanding of representation by looking beyond Congress, a study of state legislatures is the next logical step.

Despite their similarities to each other and their resemblance to Congress, state legislatures vary along a number of dimensions that provide us with a chance to better understand the variables affecting representation. States vary in the balance between legislative parties and in the strength of party cohesion; a number of them developed much closer two-party balance during the 1960s and 1970s. There are variations among the states in political culture and among legislative institutions in traditions and norms. Some legislatures are much more professional than others, with longer sessions, better staffs, and more nearly full-time members. The trend in recent years has been toward greater professionalism and also to enhanced resources and staffing for the state legislatures, but large variations remain from state to state.

These changes have had some interesting consequences for an examination of representation. The state legislator today devotes more time to the job and has more staff assistance than was the case ten or fifteen years ago; at the same time the demands on him for legislative action and district and constituency service are much greater than in the past. In short, the job of being a representative is more complex and demanding than it used to be, and thus more interesting to study. And yet the state legislator’s office has not yet become institutionalized, like that of a congressman. It is still possible, in studying a state legislator, to examine an individual. The state legislator has greater freedom to choose his role than a congressman, and that role is often still evolving. He is closer to his constituents and still lives among them much of the time; he has greater opportunities for firsthand contact and knowledge than most congressmen have.

A brief summary of the more important variations among state legislatures will provide some perspective for our study of representation. One of the most important dimensions along which states differ is the strength of two-party competition, although there has been a trend toward greater competition in many of the states. In our sample of nine states, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky are examples of state legislatures dominated by the Democratic party, although the Republican minority has been a significant force in all except Texas. All have had brief periods of Republican gubernatorial control during the last two decades. Democrats have dominated the legislature but not the governorship in Massachusetts. In California Democrats have held modest legislative majorities and the governorship has been closely contested. Indiana, Ohio, and Colorado are closely competitive states with Republican majorities most of the time, although Democrats in Ohio have benefited from a favorable districting plan they passed. (A table in the Appendix summarizes legislative and gubernatorial control in these states from 1961 through 1980.)

The closer the two-party competition, the greater the likelihood that party norms will be strong, but those norms vary even in states with strong competition. Party discipline is likely to be greater in states where each party represents a relatively homogeneous set of interests and where there are clear differences between the two sets. An obvious example is a state where the Democrats represent the major cities and the Republicans represent suburbs, small towns, and rural areas. (See Jewell and Patterson, 1977, pp. 381-88.)

In a state legislature with a strong norm of party regularity, the legislator must weigh this norm and the demands of his party’s leaders against the interests of his district, if and when they conflict. He may find that the legislative party provides him some protection against the demands of single-issue groups in the district. There are also differences in impact of party norms on those in the majority party and in the minority party. A minority legislator may find it difficult to pass legislation or to gain benefits that will help the district—unless he is willing to make compromises or deals with the majority party.

There are a number of other norms that prevail in legislatures, which the freshman soon learns about. Some of them may have little to do with representing the district; an example would be a norm to discourage extensive participation in debate. Others may be more pertinent for representation. The new legislator must learn the norm of reciprocity; for example, he must be willing to go along with local legislation proposed by another member if he wants his own local bills to pass without difficulty. He learns how far he can go in trying to amend budget bills to help his district. He learns from other members how much importance they attach to constituency service, and how often he can miss meetings or sessions in the capitol to attend to appointments back in his district. In addition to learning norms, of course, he may learn some techniques for representing his district better: how to write a newsletter, where to get information about highway projects planned for the district, how to get the media to cover his activities. It is likely that many of the norms that are familiar in one legislature are common to most others, but there are also some significant differences. Local legislation is handled differently in different bodies, for example. It was my judgment, after evaluating constituency service in nine legislatures, that there was a much stronger consensus about the importance of such work in some legislatures than in others.

The state legislatures vary substantially in their level of professionalization: the length of sessions, frequency of turnover, salaries, the availability of staff and resources such as office space and free postage. As I explain in the Appendix, and illustrate in Table A.1, the nine states selected for this study were chosen to provide a range of legislatures from the more professional to the less. California, Massachusetts, and Ohio rank near the top; Colorado, Tennessee, and North Carolina are in the middle; Texas, Indiana, and Kentucky are among the least professionalized.

Perhaps the most important ingredient of professionalization is the length of the session. At one extreme are the legislatures that meet for several days a week during most of the year, with occasional breaks for election campaigns and vacations. At the other extreme are the legislatures that are restricted by the constitution to a regular session every two years that is limited to three months or less. In some of the latter states special sessions are frequent enough to guarantee an average of at least one session a year. Some of these states with restricted regular sessions make much use of interim committees. As a consequence of these trends there are few states where the legislators are totally inactive for twenty months out of twenty-four. Nevertheless, there are significant differences among the states in the amount of time devoted to legislative work and the demands made on legislators. During the four years from 1973 through 1976, seven states averaged fifteen to twenty-four months in regular sessions in a biennium, including Ohio, Massachusetts, and California. Twenty-four states averaged six to thirteen months in session, including Colorado, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Nineteen states averaged two to five and a half months in session...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Representation in State Legislatures
• 2. Legislative Elections
• 3. Communicating with Constituents
• 4. Policy Responsiveness: The Ingredients
• 5. Policy Responsiveness: How Choices Are Made
• 6. Allocation and Service Responsiveness
• 7. Representation: Public Perspectives and Conclusions
• Appendix: Criteria for Selection of States and Methodology
• Notes
• References
• Index