Measuring “Term Limitedness” in U.S. Multi-State Research

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AbstractBy measuring U.S. term limits dichotomously, investigators ignore the vast differences among laws limiting state legislative service. Furthermore, this measurement problem increases the risk of false negatives and confounds the effects of term limits with those of the citizen initiative. To address this, I propose two sets of continuous measures of term-limitedness. The first set compares mandated turnover after term limits to turnover in the 1980s, the decade before term limits began sweeping elected officials from office. A second set adjusts the first set to reflect the potential for legislators to cycle repeatedly between legislative chambers when only their consecutive years of service are limited. These continuous measures outperformed a dichotomous designation of term limits in two tests, suggesting that the proposed measures can reduce the risk of false negatives about term limits in U.S. multi-state research and that they are more robust in the face of confounding effects from the citizen initiative.