Gerald Gamm

Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures

When do lawmakers craft broad policies, and when do they focus on narrow legislation tailored to a local interest? We investigate this question by exploring historical variation in the types of bills produced by American state legislatures. Drawing on a new database of 165,000 bills—covering sessions over 120 years in thirteen different states—we demonstrate the surprising prominence of particularistic bills affecting a specific legislators district. We then develop and test a theory linking the goals of legislators to their propensity to introduce district bills rather than broad legislation. We find that, consistent with our predictions, politicians are more likely to craft policies targeted to a particular local interest when a legislature is dominated by one party or when it pays its members relatively high salaries. These findings provide empirical support for Keys (1949) thesis that one-party politics descends into factionalism and undermines the making of broad public policy.

Creatures of the State State Politics and Local Government, 1871-1921

Local politics is not self-contained. The authors break with existing scholarship to argue that the study of local politics requires the systematic study of state legislative politics. The state-local relationship cannot be easily characterized in terms of either interference or deference. Rather, U.S. local government and state politics appear to have been thoroughly intertwined in the period they examine. For evidence, they present a new and systematic data set consisting of all bills affecting local places-6,415 bills-considered by the legislatures of Alabama, Massachusetts, and Michigan for certain years in the period 1871 to 1921.

No Strength in Numbers: The Failure of Big-City Bills in American State Legislatures, 1880–2000

Do big cities exert more power than less populous ones in American state legislatures? In many political systems, greater representation leads to more policy gains, yet for most of the nations history, urban advocates have argued that big cities face systematic discrimination in statehouses. Drawing on a new historical dataset spanning 120 years and 13 states, we find clear evidence that there is no strength in numbers for big-city delegations in state legislatures. District bills affecting large metropolises fail at much higher rates than bills affecting small cities, counties, and villages. Big cities lose so often because size leads to damaging divisions. We demonstrate that the cities with the largest delegations—which are more likely to be internally divided—are the most frustrated in the legislative process. Demographic differences also matter, with district bills for cities that have many foreign-born residents, compared with the state as a whole, failing at especially high rates.

Pockets of Expertise: Institutional Capacity in Twentieth-Century State Legislatures

We examine the development of legislative capacity in U.S. state legislatures in the twentieth century. This capacity can be derived from the legislators themselves, or from institutions and practices. We consider both sources as we provide an account of the ragged and piecemeal development of legislative capacity in the states. We argue that most state legislatures have been neither entirely professional nor amateur, but rather have existed somewhere in between, in a place where pockets of expertise fill in for professional capacity.

Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed

Across the country, white ethnics have fled cities for suburbs. But many stayed in their old neighbourhoods. When the busing crisis erupted in Boston in the 1970s, Catholics were in the forefront of resistance. Jews, 70,000 of whom has lived in Roxbury and Dorchester in the early 1950s, were invisible during the crisis. They were silent because they departed the city more quickly and more thoroughly than Bostons Catholics. Only scattered Jews remained in Dorchester and Roxbury by the mid-1970s. In telling the story of why the Jews left and the Catholics stayed in 1970s Boston, Gerald Gamm places neighbourhood institutions - churches, synagogues, community centres, schools - at its centre. He challenges the assumption that bankers an real estate agents were responsible for the rapid Jewish exodus. Rather, basic institutional rules explain the strength of Catholic attachments to neighbourhood and the weakness of Jewish attachments. Gamm argues that the transformation of urban neighbourhoods began not in the 1950s or 1960s but in the 1920s.