IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v88y1994i02p304-316_09.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Divided Government in the American States: A Byproduct of Legislative Professionalism?

Author

Listed:
  • Fiorina, Morris P.

Abstract

Since World War II, divided government has become increasingly common in the American states. A significant component of the increase is the deterioration of Republican fortunes in state legislatures: after the 1990 and 1992 elections, for example, only five state legislatures were controlled by the Republicans. I shall examine the hypothesis that the professionalization of state legislatures makes legislative service more attractive to Democratic candidates and less attractive to Republican candidates, because full-time legislative service is incompatible with another career, and Democrats, on average, have less lucrative career opportunities than Republicans. Statistical analysis of post-World War II legislative elections outside the South is consistent with the argument: other things being equal, every ten-thousand-dollar increase in real biennial legislative compensation is associated with approximately a 1% increase in Democratic legislators.

Suggested Citation

  • Fiorina, Morris P., 1994. "Divided Government in the American States: A Byproduct of Legislative Professionalism?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(2), pages 304-316, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:88:y:1994:i:02:p:304-316_09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400092741/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. Scott Gehlbach & Konstantin Sonin & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2010. "Businessman Candidates," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 718-736, July.
    2. Auerbach, Jan, 2022. "Productive Office and Political Elitism," MPRA Paper 114582, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Jason Poulos, 2019. "Land lotteries, long-term wealth, and political selection," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 217-230, January.
    4. 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.
    5. Gagliarducci, Stefano & Nannicini, Tommaso & Naticchioni, Paolo, 2010. "Moonlighting politicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 688-699, October.
    6. Kotakorpi, Kaisa & Poutvaara, Panu, 2011. "Pay for politicians and candidate selection: An empirical analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 877-885.
    7. Eggers, Andy & Hainmueller, Jens, 2008. "MPs for Sale? Estimating Returns to Office in Post-War British Politics," MPRA Paper 7892, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Stratmann, Thomas, 2005. "Ballot access restrictions and candidate entry in elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 59-71, March.
    9. King, David & Zeckhauser, Richard & Kim, Mark, 2004. "The Management Performance of the U.S. States," Working Paper Series rwp04-028, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    10. Thomas Stratmann, 2003. "Tainted Money? Contribution Limits and the Effectiveness of Campaign Spending," CESifo Working Paper Series 1044, CESifo.
    11. Becker, Johannes & Peichl, Andreas & Rincke, Johannes, 2008. "Politicians' Outside Earnings and Political Competition," IZA Discussion Papers 3902, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Johannes Becker & Andreas Peichl & Johannes Rincke, 2009. "Politicians’ outside earnings and electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 379-394, September.
    13. 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.
    14. Stefano Gagliarducci & Tommaso Nannicini & Paolo Naticchioni, 2007. "Outside Income and Moral Hazard: The Elusive Quest for Good Politicians," Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series dp-164, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    15. James E. Alt & David D. Lassen, 2008. "Political And Judicial Checks On Corruption: Evidence From American State Governments," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 33-61, March.
    16. Gary W. Cox, 1999. "The Empirical Content of Rational Choice Theory," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 11(2), pages 147-169, April.
    17. Peter Calcagno & Edward Lopez, 2012. "Divided we vote," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 517-536, June.
    18. Stephanie Owings & Rainald Borck, 2000. "Legislative Professionalism and Government Spending: Do Citizen Legislators Really Spend Less?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 28(3), pages 210-225, May.
    19. Thomas Stratmann, 2006. "Contribution limits and the effectiveness of campaign spending," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 461-474, December.
    20. John E. Owens & Scot Schraufnagel & Quan Li, 2016. "Assessing the Effects of Personal Characteristics and Context on U.S. House Speakers’ Leadership Styles, 1789-2006," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(2), pages 21582440166, April.
    21. 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.
    22. Mitchell Hoffman & Elizabeth Lyons, 2020. "A time to make laws and a time to fundraise? On the relation between salaries and time use for state politicians," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(3), pages 1318-1358, August.
    23. Keith Krehbiel, 1996. "Institutional and Partisan Sources of Gridlock," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 8(1), pages 7-40, 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:88:y:1994:i:02:p:304-316_09. 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.