State Legislative Committees Research Articles

Re-examining Legislative Committee Representativeness in the States

AbstractI re-examine theories of legislative committee organization by using simulation to assess how representative state legislative committees are of their parent bodies. I find that clearly unrepresentative committees are rare and concentrated in a few chambers. I also find that comparing committee and chamber medians leads to very different conclusions about representativeness than does comparing means. My findings tend to confirm the informational model of committees and disconfirm the partisan model, but they cannot directly address the distributive model.

The Politics of Welfare and of Poverty Research

Soon after the 1996 Congressional passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (commonly known as "welfare reform," and hereafter referred to as PRWORA), thousands of researchers began to document the effects of this dramatic change in social welfare policy. Millions of grant dollars and hundreds of thousands of research hours later, there is a voluminous body of research on welfare restructuring. But at this writing I am stunned by the enormous gulf between the knowledge that has been generated and the narrow policy debate and legislative action that has taken place to date. Put simply: policies promoted by the Bush administration—already passed in the House, and pending in the Senate—would have grim consequences for millions of poor families in this country. These policies would undermine the efforts of poor families, state legislators, welfare administrators and workers, and community-based organizations to fulfill what is, arguably, the most important objective of social welfare policy: reducing poverty and enhancing economic security for vulnerable families. Moreover, the proposed changes in welfare policy fly in the face of what researchers have learned since welfare-to-work policies were implemented in the 1990s. [End Page 745] I am one of those researchers. Over the past four years, with my colleague Joan Acker, a sociologist, I have led a research team that explored the effects of welfare restructuring on both clients and welfare workers in Oregon. We disseminated our research findings to policy makers and the public at both the state and national levels through policy reports and briefs, invited testimony before state legislative committees, opinion pieces in newspapers, lectures and conferences. Additionally, I helped form an ad hoc group of anthropologists within the American Anthropological Association who worked together over several years to ensure that there were scientific and policy sessions on welfare at the annual meetings. We also produced a policy statement that was approved by the AAA Executive Committee and disseminated to policy makers and the media. In this piece I reflect on what I have experienced and seen, especially in recent months, in the national debate on welfare policy. I find it disturbing, if not surprising, how little research—especially anthropological research—appears to have influenced either the issues discussed or the legislative outcomes, at least to this point, in Congress. While I am sure that researchers could do more to communicate effectively with policy makers, the media and the public, this is not my main point here. I want to suggest that anthropologists have much to contribute to the much-needed task of challenging mainstream popular and academic assumptions and frameworks about poverty and the poor. The 1996 legislation profoundly altered welfare policy in replacing the long-standing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). AFDC, an entitlement program, provided a minimal subsistence income to families who met program eligibility criteria. TANF provides time-limited cash assistance (federal five-year life-time limits, with even shorter time limits in many states) but the primary objective of the program is to move recipients into paid employment. PRWORA also changed the nature of federal funding and regulation of welfare programs such that states now receive block grants (rather than matching payments) and have an unprecedented degree of discretion about welfare program design. Additionally, the 1996 legislation led to significant cuts in Food Stamps and the SSI (disability) and excluded most legal immigrants from eligibility for public assistance. Welfare became welfare-to-work, and each of the fifty states developed its own version of welfare-to-work within the broad parameters of the federal legislation. Under PRWORA, families who applied for cash assistance have to comply with stringent work requirements. States can use block grant funds to offer previously unavailable assistance with some of the costs of searching for work or being employed (childcare, transportation, etc.) or to expand Medicaid. Because [End Page 746] of the single-minded emphasis on...

Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century

What did politics and public affairs mean to those generations of Americans who first experienced democratic self-rule? Taking their cue from vibrant political campaigns and very high voter turnouts, historians have depicted the nineteenth century as an era of intense and widespread political enthusiasm. But rarely have these historians examined popular political engagement directly, or within the broader contexts of day-to-day life. In this bold and in-depth look at Americans and their politics, Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin argue for a more complex understanding of the space occupied by politics in nineteenth-century American society and culture. Mining such sources as diaries, letters, autobiographies, novels, cartoons, contested-election voter testimony to state legislative committees, and the partisan newspapers of representative American communities ranging from Massachusetts and Georgia to Texas and California, the authors explore a wide range of political actions and attitudes. They consider the enthusiastic commitment celebrated by historians together with various forms of skepticism, conflicted engagement, detachment, and hostility that rarely have been recognized as part of the American political landscape. Rude Republic sets the political parties and their noisy and attractive campaign spectacles, as well as the massive turnout of voters on election day, within the communal social structure and calendar, the local human landscape of farms, roads, and county towns, and the organizational capacities of emerging nineteenth-century institutions. Political action and engagement are set, too, within the tide of events: the construction of the mass-based party system, the gathering crisis over slavery and disunion, and the gradual expansion of government (and of cities) in the post-Civil War era. By placing the question of popular engagement within these broader social, cultural, and historical contexts, the authors bring new understanding to the complex trajectory of American democracy.

Gender Styles in State Legislative Committees

Abstract This research focuses on the gendered nature of legislative institutions by examining the conflict resolution styles of state legislative committee chairs. Based on a survey of 285 state legislative committee chairs, focus groups and individual interviews, the study examines a sizeable cohort of men and women engaged in fundamentally similar leadership tasks but under varying institutional circumstances and in more than a single state. The research finds that women committee chairs raise their voices to resolve conflicts in a different way from their male colleagues. More importantly, the study shows how gender composition of the membership, the distribution of gender power, and the extent of professionalization influence conflict resolution style. These data challenge the predominant view of legislative leadership as transactional behavior and suggest the need to consider whether masculine behavior and institutional norms have been conflated.

Gender styles in state legislative committees: Raising their voices in resolving conflict

Gender styles in state legislative committees: Raising their voices in resolving conflict

Nurse practitioners and the problem of discounting.

Nurse practitioners (NPs) are key primary care providers in health care reform. The purpose of this paper is to discuss discounting, a social problem for NPs discovered in this grounded theory study. Discounting refers to behaviours directed towards NPs that they perceived as degrading. Data collection included open-ended, in-depth interviews on the nature of NP practice with 23 NPs, and 10 key members representing the Florida State Board of Nursing, Florida Nurses Association, American Nurses Association, and National Council of State Boards of Nursing. Excerpts that illuminated discounting were obtained from field notes about organizational documents, state legislative committee hearings, and professional NP association meetings. Data analysis using the grounded theory method revealed that NPs in this study struggled to establish their roles from a position of marginality in a context of conflict and negativity. NPs were subjected to social psychological and social structural discounting. This research serves to raise the consciousness of NPs with the hope that such awareness will facilitate personal and group action to combat discounting in their daily work and at local, state and national levels.

Determinants of Collaborative Leadership: Civic Engagement, Gender or Organizational Norms?

This analysis attempts to unravel competing explanations of collaborative leadership styles of state legislative committee chairs. Specifically, the paper considers the influence of community or volunteer experience, gender, and institutional variables. The data show that women chairs are more likely than their male peers to cite as valuable the leadership skills and experiences that they gain through community and volunteer experience. Compared to their male colleagues, women committee chairs on average also report a greater reliance on collaborative strategies in the management of their committees. Prior community or volunteer experience has little or no direct effect on collaborative styles. In contrast, institutional factors have a much stronger and countervailing influence. Legislative professionalization produces a strong negative effect on collaborative style. Results suggest that conformity to institutional norms may be a more compelling influence than prior community experience. The analysis also points to the gendered nature of organizational leadership with men's and women's styles showing different associations to style depending on the number and power of women in a legislature.

A View of Their Own: Women's Committee Leadership Styles and State Legislatures

Analysis of survey data from 291 state legislative committee chairs suggests that professionalization has important gender implications not previously explored. Legislatures are gendered in the sense that culturally masculine and feminine committee management styles are more at home in some legislatures than in others. “Citizen” legislatures seem to be more hospitable to “feminine” behaviors of inclusion and a motivation focused on people‐oriented concerns. Professionalized legislatures–promoted in large part on the basis of a masculine vocabulary of independence, rationality, expertise, and competition with the executive–discourage inclusive or collegial committee strategies and public‐minded motives. Professional legislatures may be positive environments in which to nurture policy leadership, but their committee leaders eschew public participation.

Design of a Survey to Inform State Health Decision Making: A Collaborative Effort

The North Carolina Health Profile (NCHP), a statewide telephone survey, was introduced as part of the state's Health Policy Information Project aimed at enhancing the use of health data for state policy decision making and program management. A key factor in the creation of the NCHP was a collaboration between the State Center for Health Statistics and the Survey Research Unit at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The purpose of this article is to describe our partnership, the development of the survey design, and the dissemination of survey results. Three designs were considered during the planning and development of the survey. The final design consisted of a random digit dialing sample of 2,400 households in the state's noninstitutionalized population. The questionnaire was comprised of an adult module (addressing adult health care use and insurance coverage), a child module (addressing health care use and insurance coverage of children ages 0-17 years), and a young child module (addressing child development and safety for children ages 0-5 years). Several statistical briefs, a report, a public dataset, and accompanying public use documentation were prepared for a variety of audiences, including state legislative committees and commissions, state agencies, and advocacy groups. We learned several lessons in our research and practice partnership including the need for collaboration between data creators and users, for addressing obstacles in soliciting policy information needs, and for prioritization in meeting information needs.

Political Parties as Vehicles for Organizing U. S. State Legislative Committees

In this paper we assess the role of political parties in organizing state legislative committees. This research is guided by an explanation found in Malcolm E. Jewell's early work on responsible political parties in U.S. state legislatures and in his more recent assessment of the conditions associated with state legislative control by strong political parties. We evaluate majority party representation (MPR) on the membership of all standing committees in 10 state legislative chambers for the last two sessions in each decade of the twentieth century. Findings from two of our earlier studies of majority party representation on committees are also included.

New Party or Campaign Bank Account? Explaining the Rise of State Legislative Campaign Committees

State legislative caucus campaign committees have emerged in the 1980s as an important party adaptation in state politics. This study explores the factors associated with the existence of these new party organizations and with their levels of contributions to party candidates. To explain these phenomena, five hypotheses are investigated concerning the strength of state parties, the cost of state campaigns, the level of legislative professionalism, the degree of party competition, and the regulation of campaign contributions in states where these committees have emerged. Legislative professionalism and party competition are associated with the existence of the caucus committees. Legislative professionalization, party competition, and laws restricting campaign contributions are powerful explanations of the level of expenditure of these committees. Leadership stability and spending by the opposing party also help explain the activity of caucus campaign committees.

Power and Influence in State Legislative Policymaking: The Interaction of Gender and Position in Committee Hearing Debates

There is an implicit assumption behind advocating for more minorities or women in elected office, namely, that these officials will bring a new power and influence to their underrepresented groups. However, for women, this idealized viewpoint ignores the social dynamics that subordinate women's words and actions even in “well-balanced” male and female group interactions. Using transcribed verbatim transcripts of 12 state legislative committee hearings, this research analyzes the conversational dynamics of committee members, witnesses, chairs, and sponsors. Sex differences among committee members are highly significant, even after accounting for political factors and structural features of the hearing. In addition, male and female chairs do not conduct hearings in the same way, and these differences affect the behavior of witnesses and committee members. The findings suggest that as the proportion of women increases in a legislative body, men become more verbally aggressive and controlling of the hearing. Women legislators may be seriously disadvantaged and unable to participate equally in legislative policymaking in committee hearings.

The Electoral Antecedents of State Legislative Committee Assignments

The Electoral Antecedents of State Legislative Committee Assignments

Accounting for Change in the Number of State Legislative Committee Positions

Accounting for Change in the Number of State Legislative Committee Positions

Preparing Leaders for Influencing Policy

This paper describes a simulation which is designed to provide students with experiential learning relative to influencing policy. Students are required to research selected populations and become familiar with related issues and needs. They are then required to be an advocate for that population as they provide testimony to a local funding board or a state legislative committee. Peer learning, experience in influencing policy, and inclusion of content on at-risk groups in society within an easily adpated framework are benefits of this simulation. Adaptation to both undergraduate and graduate levels is possible as well as adaptation to inclusion in several different content courses simultaneously, e.g., policy, practice, and research.

Assessing the Performance of State Legislative Committees: a Case Study and a Proposed Research Agenda

HIS PAPER has three immediate objectives: (1) it describes the structure and procedures used by standing committees in the New Hampshire House of Representatives; (2) using two measures of committee effectiveness suggested by the scholarly literature (committee permissiveness and committee floor success), it assesses the performance of all twenty-two standing committees in the New Hampshire House during the regular legislative session of 1977; and (3) it examines other committee characteristics and seeks to determine the extent to which variations

Assessing the Performance of State Legislative Committees: A Case Study and a Proposed Research Agenda

Assessing the Performance of State Legislative Committees: A Case Study and a Proposed Research Agenda

U. S. State Legislative Committees: Structure, Procedural Efficiency, and Party Control

U. S. State Legislative Committees: Structure, Procedural Efficiency, and Party Control

House-Senate Conference Committees: A Comparative-State Perspective

At the congressional level, the question, who wins in House-Senate conferences? has been answered. Almost all the evidence indicates that Senate conferees win more often than House conferees. This paper focuses on the question, Who wins in state legislative conference committees? I begin by briefly reviewing the explanations of why Senate conferees tend to win more often in congressional conference committees. Analyzing conference-committee behavior in ten state legislatures, I show that, as in the case of the United States Congress, conferees from the upper chambers of state legislatures tend to win more often than those from the lower chambers. Of the numerous explanations previously developed to explain this trend, that of Strom and Rundquist appears to conform best with the general tendencies within the states. Two partisanship variables, however, are shown to be related to specific inter-state variations from the general principles laid down by Strom and Rundquist's hypothesis.

The Effect of Membership Stability on Continuity and Experience in U. S. State Legislative Committees

This paper investigates the relationship between membership stability in state legislatures and the extent to which the committees have members and chairmen who, because of continuous service on the same committees, have some experience in dealing with the issues that come before them. Data were collected on eight lower houses and seven upper houses covering the 1963-1977 time period. Findings indicate that three of the four indicators are affected by membership stability. The number of partisan changes in control of the legislature weakens the relationship.