Malcolm E. Jewell

Representation in State Legislatures

Every two years American voters turn out to elect several thousand representatives to state legislatures. Only now in this book do we have a detailed examination of how these officials perceive their jobs and how they attempt to do them. To provide answers to these questions Malcolm E. Jewell conducted intensive interviews with 220 members of houses of representatives in nine selected states. He asked each legislator how he kept in touch with his constituents how he resolved matters of policy, how he sought government resources for his district, and what services he provided for individual constituents. State legislatures differ greatly, and they are not institutionalized to the same degree as the national congress. It is difficult, therefore, to generalize on such effects as partisanship. Likewise it appears that past explanatory models do not adequately describe the complex relationships seen by most legislators in their work. The state legislature is changing. It is becoming more institutionalized. It is becoming more stable as fewer members retire and more are reelected. The trend is toward longer sessions, increased staff, and more activity. With this trend the legislator is becoming more visible; he can deal with lawmaking while having greater opportunities to provide services and to gain publicity for them. If the move by the Reagan administration to put more responsibility for programs on the states continue, then the state legislatures will assume a place of greater importance in the governing of the United States. This pioneering study of representation will thereby gain significance both for the understanding it imparts and for the new questions it raises.

Voting and Nonvoting: A Multi-Election Perspective

Prior attempts to differentiate between voters and nonvoters have focused on a single election, the implicit assumption being that voting or not voting in a particular election is indicative of a more general proclivity. This paper tests the impact of a number of factors that have emerged in earlier studies as predictors ofvoting participation, but uses participation over a series of 10 elections as the criterion. The model tested here demonstrates greater explanatory power than those previously tested, and follow-up analysis strongly suggests that this explanatory power is a function of the multi-election measurement of participation.

Voting in Primaries: the Impact of Intra- and Inter-Party Competition

RIOR STUDIES of voter participation conducted at both the agt-~ gregate (Caldeira and Patterson 1982; Patterson and Caldeira 1983) and the individual (Caldeira, Patterson, and Markko 1985) levels suggest that competition encourages voter turnout, but very little is known about the impact of competition in primary elections. In the primary context, both intraand inter-party competition must be taken into account. Our purpose in this note is to explore the effects of intraand inter-party competition on individual participation in primaries. Our expectations concerning the effects of intraand inter-party competition stem from an idea that underlies much previous work on electoral participation: that citizens are most motivated to vote when the potential stakes of voting are highest (Downs 1957). From this general proposition it follows, first, that a person will be more likely to vote in primaries. when the outcomes of these primaries are not a forgone conclusion. For example, a Democrat residing in a county where Democratic primaries are hotly contested should be nore likely to vote than

The 1978 Elections and American State Party Systems

Political observers looking for national voting trends have generally agreed that they have been harder to find in most recent elections. Senatorial and gubernatorial elections seem to be determined by the candidates and by state issues, while incumbent congressmen have become very difficult to defeat. The concept of presidential coattails has become an uncertain and sometimes meaningless one, and national trends in off-year elections have become more difficult to discern. With these