The Veterans are All Gone: Evaluating Term Limits after Implementation

Abstract

After nearly 13 years of research and more than 400 interviews with state legislators in Michigan’s State House and State Senate, the authors present an initial look at the impact of term limits on Michigan’s state legislature. In Michigan legislators expelled from lower chambers often ran for a seat in the upper chamber. So for many years after term limits were initially implemented, the upper chamber in Michigan continued to be dominated by veterans who, although new to that chamber, had served for decades in the lower chamber. Now veteran legislators have been purged from both chambers in Michigan. And only now, we argue, can one evaluate the full impact of legislative term limits on state government. We found that there were more changes in the pre- and post-term-limits State Senate than there were in the pre- and post-term-limits House, to our surprise. Additionally we found that term limits interact in some unexpected and puzzling ways with political party, opposition party status, legislative chamber and sharing the Governor’s party.