How does the age makeup of democratic institutions affect public evaluations of their legitimacy? This paper tests whether incorporating younger representatives into a bipartisan state legislative committee changes citizens’ views of procedure, trust and decisions. Using experimental variation and observational comparisons, the authors link age composition to shifts in perceived fairness and trust while assessing who responds most to youth representation.
Would state legislatures function differently if voters had access to more information about legislative politics? This article traces how variation in local newspaper coverage shapes voter behavior, election outcomes, and legislative behavior in statehouses.
This article introduces State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) for state legislators across 97 legislative chambers over recent decades, measuring who actually advances public policy in the American states.
Theoretical work predicts symbolic benefits when institutions are gender-inclusive, yet empirical findings are inconsistent. This article argues that a key reason for mixed results is that many Americans misperceive how well women are represented. By focusing on variation in citizens' beliefs about women's inclusion, the analysis links those perceptions to feelings about legislative institutions.
This paper asks whether parties in power can systematically win a slender majority of seats in close legislative elections — a pattern the authors call “precise control.” Using U.S. state assembly elections, the study tests for discontinuities at the 50% seat-share cutoff in outcomes that should be smooth if there is no deliberate manipulation: the density of seats won and which party previously held a majority. The central contribution is evidence that precise control exists, but primarily in high-stakes state elections that determine control over congressional redistricting, suggesting it is a strategic option used when stakes are large rather than a universal feature of state contests.
New research examines how electoral reforms influence legislative polarization through three distinct channels. The study employs a decision-theoretic framework with partial incumbent policy persistence and spatial voting to analyze the effects of reform implementation versus removal in state legislatures. Key findings reveal that reforms encouraging ideological moderation produce significantly larger polarization impacts when implemented compared to being removed, due to changes in electoral competition dynamics. Examining both reform implementation decisions by incumbents and subsequent electoral outcomes demonstrates how seemingly moderate policies can shape partisan divisions.
Recent attention to urban–rural gaps in American politics has outpaced clear agreement on who counts as rural. Conceptual ambiguity and inconsistent place-based measures can alter empirical conclusions and obscure the political role of rural identity.
A new field experiment investigates ethnic discrimination against Hispanics in US state legislative offices.
Does a growing Latino population change how state legislators vote on immigration policy? We find that it depends entirely on party.
Spatial voting theory, traditionally applied to national bodies like Congress and the Supreme Court, has yet to fully explore state legislatures.
Comparative ideal point estimation for state legislatures faces two major challenges: scarce longitudinal roll-call data, and inadequate scaling within individual states. These limitations prevent useful comparisons with congressional estimates or between different state assemblies. This paper provides a solution by creating a new comparative dataset of state legislative roll calls and employing an innovative method that uses bridge actors—legislators who transitioned to Congress—to align state legislative ideal points into the congressional common space for 11 states.