The Legislative Committee System in Arizona

Abstract

tions in practice among the governments of the several states. While the general outlines of the political systems in the states reflect national patterns, the differences in the party systems, the interest group relationships, and the historical trends have caused dramatic divergencies from the national pattern. In recent years, increased attention has been paid to state legislatures in particular in an attempt to develop a comparative understanding of the dynamics of the political systems at the two levels.1 The present study of the Arizona legislature is designed to test some commonly held ideas derived from studies of the Congress and other state legislatures about the structure of the committee system. The power structure of an American legislature involves a complex distribution of prerogatives among various participants: the presiding officers, the committee chairmen, important committees, party officials, etc. Each retains certain powers while deferring to the others in the operation of the legislature. While this distribution is comparatively well known in the Congress, little is known about the dynamics of the system at the state level. This study is an attempt to examine with more precision the relationships between factional alignments and the distribution of committee assignments and committee chairmanships in view of the existing party structure and the high rate of turnover found in Arizona. For an understanding of the internal legislative structure, however, it will be necessary to describe the existing political situation and the state's legislative structure. Arizona has a bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate of twenty-eight members and a House of Representatives of eighty members. The Senate provides two seats for each of the state's fourteen counties while the House membership is apportioned among the counties on the basis of population. Thus, the twelve sparsely settled counties have twenty-four, or 86 per cent, of the twenty-eight Senate seats, while they contain only 31 per cent of the population. The House reflects much more accurately the population of the state in that the two metropolitan counties, Maricopa (Phoenix) and Pima (Tucson), have 66 per cent of the voting strength in the House and 69 per cent of the population.2