Legislative term limits are reshaping the political landscape in numerous states; however, few of the effects are consistent across all states. Everything from the political environment to the level of legislative professionalism within a state influences the trends that are often attributed to term limits. To cut through these many trends and isolate the ones most likely created by term limits, this volume develops comparisons of states with term limits to similar states without term limits....
Legislating Without Experience provides an in-depth analysis of individual states experiencing state legislative term limits as well as apples-to-apples comparisons with states that are untermed. It is a valuable description of the legislative process in each state and a quasi-experimental study of term limits.
List of Tables and Figures viiPreface xiIntroduction: Accelerating Change with Term Limits Rick Farmer John C. Green 1Professionalized State LegislaturesInstitutional Imbalance: The Effect of Six-year Limits in California Bruce Cain Thad Kousser Karl T. Kurtz 17Legislative Power in the Buckeye State: The Revenge of Term Limits Rick Farmer Thomas H. Little 43Truncated Careers in Professionalized State Legislatures Christopher Z. Mooney 55Semi-Professionalized State LegislaturesThe Effects of Legislative Term Limits in Arizona: More Churning, More Chaos, and a Diminished Institutional Role for Legislators David R. Berman 75Colorado Legislative Term Limits: The Worst of Both Worlds John A. Straayer 99Out with the Old Heads and in with the Young Turks: The Effects of Term Limits in Semi-Professionalized State Legislatures Christopher Z. Mooney Jason Wood Gerald C. Wright 121Citizen LegislaturesTerm Limits in the Arkansas General Assembly: A Citizen Legislature Responds Art English Brian Weberg 145Institutional Change and Legislative Term Limits in Maine Richard J. Powell Rich Jones 169It's All About the Turnover: Term Limits in Citizen Legislatures Michael Smith 187Living with Term Limits Alan Rosenthal 207Bibliography 225Index 235About the Contributors 243
\ June 2008 CHOICEThis volume provides a thorough and sophisticated assessment of the impact of term limits....Recommended.\ \