Charles D. Elder

The Politics of Agenda-Building: An Alternative Perspective for Modern Democratic Theory

The fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi and fascist movements in the first half of the twentieth century sent out tremors that were to shake the very foundations of democratic thought. As a simple act of faith, democratic theorists had assumed that the common man had both the right and the ability to participate in his own governance. If given the opportunity, the overwhelming majority of people in any polity would presumedly be reasonable, relatively rational, and responsible political actors. Hitlers rise to political power in a constitutional system that had been scrupulously constructed to be a showpiece of democracy, coupled with the historically unparalleled rise of mass movements hroughout the world, called this traditional democratic faith and trust in the common man seriously into question.

Life span civic development and voting participation

Although a variety of age-related processes are known to affect rates of political participation over the adult life span, little is known about their interrelationships and relative impact. We set out a theory of life span civic development that focuses on how age-related changes in community attachment, strength of partisanship, church attendance, government responsiveness, family income, and civic competence impinge on voting participation. To test the theory, we estimated the coefficients of a structural equation model using data from nine National Election Studies combined into a large, cross-sectional time series data set. The model specifies the age-related processes and also controls for the effects of a large number of other variables. Overall, about one-half of the age-related increases in voting participation were attributable to these processes.

Democracy among Strangers: Term Limits' Effects on Relationships between State Legislators in Michigan

By truncating service, term limits create massive turnover in some state legislatures where they exist, bringing flocks of newcomers into office. With less time to get to know each other and to develop expertise and influence, how do legislators know who to consult and whose advice to rely on? We explore this and other questions about three relationships (influence, friendship, and policy consultation) with a longitudinal study of the Michigan House of Representatives, a highly professionalized body with stringent limits on legislative terms. We found that term limits lead to a more pronounced regional component of friendship, greater concentration of influence among caucus leaders, consulting networks with more prominent hubs that could control the flow of information, and a decline in relationships across party lines. We argue that these effects of term limits bode poorly for bipartisan negotiation and consensus-building among legislators representing diverse constituencies.

A Naturally Occurring Quasi-Experiment in the States: Research on Term Limits in Michigan

Term limits provide a rare opportunity to employ pre- and post-intervention research designs to investigate the effects of turnover in legislatures. This article describes a study of term limits in Michigan that takes advantage of this opportunity. With eight states implementing term limits in 2002 or soon thereafter, there are opportunities for other scholars to replicate all or parts of the study described here. The payoffs for such projects in terms of generating systematic answers to the impacts of legislative turnover and term limits are considerable.

Checks and Balances: Intragovernmental Relationships and Outside Influences

The notion of “checks and balance” is a fundamental tenet of American democracy that assumes that each branch of our government has powers that allow it to limit—check—the power of the other two branches. This system is based on the assumption that power is balanced between the three branches of government, and this balance prevents one branch from dominating policymaking. In part because of its highly professionalized legislature, Michigan’s government closely resembles the national system based on three co-equal branches of government. But under term limits, its highly professionalized legislature could be overshadowed by its professional bureaucracy headed by a strong governor.

Conclusions: Term Limits’ Report Card

Term limits illustrate the potential for seemingly simple changes in a political system to have far-reaching, unintended, and unanticipated impacts. Hence our discussion of their impacts has ranged over many facets of state politics. Before we begin to synthesize and integrate these findings, we summarize them briefly.

Career Paths of Term-Limited State Legislators

Term limits advocates envisioned a legislature populated by elected officials who would look like “mom and pop from the corner grocery store,” and would want to “put in a couple of years of public service and then return to the private sector” (California Journal, 1991, p. 490). These citizen legislators they reasoned would neither be driven by reelection concerns nor beholden to special interests. They would be a more representative cross-section of people (Detroit Free Press, October 12, 1992). Term limits opponents feared that instead of rectifying the ills of special interest influence and creating greater representation, high turnover and lack of experience would rob the legislature of expertise needed to counteract the power of the executive branch, lobbyists, and others in the political system (Detroit Free Press, April 2, 1992 and Milliken, 1992). So while both sides anticipated that term limits would attract amateur legislators, some saw this as an asset and others as a liability.

The New Breed of Term-Limited State Legislators

Many people, both those supportive of and opposed to term limits, assumed that once entrenched white, male incumbents— the good ol’ boys—were termed out of office, women and ethnic minority group members would win more elections (Bell, 1992). Additionally, some scholars (Petracca, 1996) believed that reducing the length of service would discourage middle-aged males from abandoning established careers to run for the state legislature. Thus, some opponents of term limits consoled themselves that at least term-limited state legislatures would become more diverse.

Deciding How to Vote: Sources Legislators Rely On

Legislators cannot be experts on everything, so they rely on each other or on sources outside the chamber for information and guidance about legislation (Porter, 1974; Kingdon, 1989). Knowing when to do this and who to rely on is a crucial part of a legislator’s job. With term limits, there are so many new colleagues that it may be more difficult to know which of them to turn for advice or to ask questions. With less time and fewer opportunities to establish one’s reputation for candor and honesty, colleagues, especially those seeking different viewpoints, may not know whom to trust. Hence, we speculated that term limits would affect the sources of information that representatives rely on to learn about issues. Specifically we expected that after term limits, newly elected representatives would consult fewer colleagues within the legislative chamber. We further speculated that term limits would affect the level of consulting and the range of sources consulted outside the chamber. Here we assumed that newly elected representatives would turn to familiar local sources whose opinions they trusted, but those sources might also be less likely to represent the broad range of interests affected by a bill. Newly elected representatives may have a difficult time learning when and how to rely on information from lobbyists and representatives of organized groups.

Funding Campaigns in a Term-Limited House

Legislative term limits are likely to affect the costs of state legislative campaigns in opposing ways. On the one hand, they might increase the cost of elections because there will be more open seat contests, which tend to be more expensive (Gierzynski, 1998). On the other hand, they might reduce the cost of elections in two ways. First, with shorter terms of service, a legislative seat might be a less valuable commodity, so candidates and their patrons might not be willing to spend as much money to win the office (Mitchell, 1991). From the point of view of an organized group, there may be little point in using campaign contributions to establish an ongoing relationship with a state legislator who will be expelled from a given chamber of the legislature in a few years.