Policy Crisis and Political Leadership: Election Law Reform in the States after the 2000 Presidential Election

Abstract

AbstractWhat effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymakers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leadership variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commissions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.