Legislative Influence and Policy Orientation in American State Legislatures

Abstract

The conventional wisdom on the acquisition of Congressional influence is that who go get along, that is, that the system favors responsible, moderate, deferential, accommodative legislators who place goals of institutional harmony above personal political or policy objectives. State legislative analysts have given the subject little attention, though the leading work seems to accept the Congressional view. This paper reports an empirical study of this proposition based on a questionnaire sent to legislators in four large industrial states. Respondents were divided into nonprogrammatics, those who basically comply with the conventional wisdom's requisites for success, and programmatics, those who place a higher priority on policy goals. The results basically confirm the conventional wisdom, but not nearly to the degree to which most students of legislative behavior would expect.