State Legislative Leaders Research Articles

Don’t Take Away Our Licenses!

Don’t Take Away Our Licenses!

A Multi-level, Multi-Sector Oral Health Literacy Initiative to Reduce Oral Health Disparities and Achieve Health Equity: Early Lessons from the Maryland Model

The state of Maryland’s oral health literacy initiative experience serves as a case study. This experience was stimulated by the tragic death of Deamonte Driver in 2007 and highlights actions taken and lessons learned. It is a story of one state’s response, one that received strong support from state congressional and state legislative leaders, senior government leadership, multiple community and professional groups, foundations, and funding agencies. It is the hope that this experience can be used to inform other states that are working to enhance oral health promotion and disease prevention strategies, or other health conditions, for vulnerable populations.

Measuring State House Speakers' Formal Powers, 1981–2010

AbstractThe cross-sectional variation among state legislative leaders' formal powers provides a unique opportunity to test a variety of hypotheses of the American legislative process that involve the causes and effects of these powers. But to date, measures of these powers have been developed primarily for single years or biennia, limiting their applicability, especially for drawing causal conclusions. In this note, I develop an index of state House speakers' formal powers for each biennia from 1981 to 2010 (for even-year-election states) and from 1982 to 2009 (for odd-year-election states).

Measuring the Impact of Child Indicators

Despite a proliferation of initiatives using statistical indicators to promote better public understanding of child well-being around the world, little information has been generated about the impact of such projects. This paper provides readers with information about the impact of one such project in the United States, KIDS COUNT. A short overview of the history, rationale, and activity of the KIDS COUNT project is provided prior to presenting data regarding the impact of the project. The data show that KIDS COUNT Data Book receives extensive media attention when it is released each year. Among seven key audiences (Congressional staff, state legislators, state legislators’ staff, state legislative leaders, business leaders, county officials, and data users) half or more of each group said there were aware of the KIDS COUNT initiative. Most of those who are aware of KIDS COUNT have positive perceptions about it as being timely, clear, credible, useful, and relevant to policymakers and respected by people with differing political views. A large share of each group says they use the KIDS COUNT data for a variety of applications. Most respondents say they think KIDS COUNT has had an impact on public awareness of children’s issues and an impact on public policy.

The Legislative Party and Candidate Recruitment in the American States

Parties in the legislature have become central to the recruitment of candidates, overshadowing the role traditionally played by the local and state parties. In this article, I analyze original data from a recent national mail survey of state legislative leaders in order to understand why some legislative parties are more involved in recruitment than others, testing several competing theories of party activities. I find that legislative leaders are perceived to be more active in recruitment than either the state or local party. Where there is more competition between the two parties, the parties in the legislature are more actively engaged in recruitment. These results suggest that legislative leaders can use candidate recruitment as a strategy to build or maintain a majority. Meanwhile, I do not find support for the view that the legislative party recruits candidates where the state and local parties are not recruiting candidates. I also find that recruitment is not limited to the most professionalized legislatures.

State Legislative Leaders' Contacts with National Legislative Organizations: Differences in Cosmopolitanism, Resources, and Political Environments

This paper examines possible relationships between state legislative leaders' contacts with national professional organizations, such as the Council of State Governments, and indicators of differences in cosmopolitanism, in‐state information resources, and political environments. The findings suggest that leaders in states with unified party control of the executive and legislative institutions are more involved with national organizations than leaders from states with divided party control. However, there are no significant differences in involvement among leaders in terms of other party measures: whether they are Democrats or Republicans, majority or minority leaders, institutional or party leaders, or the degree of inter‐party competition in their legislative chambers. Additionally, leaders from small states with fewer in‐state information resources and those from more cosmopolitan urban or moralistic political culture states are more intensively involved with national organizations.

National Organizations as Sources of Information for State Legislative Leaders

National Organizations as Sources of Information for State Legislative Leaders

A view from the top: Gender differences in legislative priorities among state legislative leaders

A view from the top: Gender differences in legislative priorities among state legislative leaders

Richmond Award acceptance speech.

Richmond Award acceptance speech.

Legislative Privilege in Post-Revolutionary South Carolina

I N the decade after the Revolutionary War, American legislators found themselves in a position to define their own privileges and prerogatives. Schooled in the adversarial politics of the late colonial era that pitted the lower houses against the executive, state legislative leaders had become accustomed to equate the growth of their privileges with popular rights. With the collapse of royal power in America these old assumptions suddenly became obsolete, yet lawmakers were not always attuned to the new political realities. Those who failed to move with the times suddenly found themselves targets of harsh public criticism directed against their claims of special privilege. This is seen vividly in South Carolina, where the lower house was the arena for three important political battles between I784 and I794 that led to a major redefinition of legislative privilege in that state. The following account of the ways in which these cases were resolved not only fills a gap in our knowledge of legislative and legal history but also sheds light on the changing relationship of legislators to their constituents in post-Revolutionary America. Legislative privilege, an amorphous concept, refers to rights claimed and exercised by a legislative body. In Anglo-American tradition, these rights most commonly included freedom of speech on the legislature's floor, freedom of members from molestation by outsiders, the right of the legislature to determine its membership and select its officers, and its right to punish anyone, even nonmembers, who infringed its privileges. It was this last claim-the legislature's authority over nonmembers-that created a political uproar in South Carolina. In England, the rights of the House of Commons evolved to protect that body from undue influence by the crown as well as from other external pressures. Freedom of debate was formally claimed as early as I 54I, and freedom from arrest and molestation was won in i604, although during the Tudor and Stuart eras these privileges were not so well developed that they could not be challenged. As the Commons struggled to establish its position against the crown and the royal courts, it did whatever was