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This article examines the influence of campaign election laws on patterns of candidacy in state legislative elections. Previous studies demonstrate that restrictions on campaign contributions affect levels of campaign spending and competition, but do such legal conditions influence the likelihood that incumbents running for reelection are even challenged? How important is this effect relative to other factors, such as ballot access laws and district political variables, in influencing rates of contestation in primary and general elections? Analyses of state- and district-level features in 1994, 1996, and 1998 show that low contribution limits increase challenger emergence in general elections. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the influence of campaign election laws on patterns of candidacy in state legislative elections. Previous studies demonstrate that restrictions on campaign contributions affect levels of campaign spending and competition, but do such legal conditions influence the likelihood that incumbents running for reelection are even challenged? How important is this effect relative to other factors, such as ballot access laws and district political variables, in influencing rates of contestation in primary and general elections? Analyses of state- and district-level features in 1994, 1996, and 1998 show that low contribution limits increase challenger emergence in general elections.

Debates over methodology have long occupied a prominent role in political science and its various empirical sub-fields. Recently, these debates and occasional dialogues seem to have intensified. The Perestroika movement within APSA protested the perceived hegemony of rational choice and quantitative methods in journal publications and graduate training (Kasza 2001). Renewed attention has focused on the types of methodologies employed by studies published in the discipline's leading journals (Garand and Giles 2003; Bennett, Barth, and Rutherford 2003; Braumoeller 2003). The kinds of concerns over methodological diversity that motivate these studies also inform discussions about graduate training (Alvarez 1992; Dyer 1992; Schwartz-Shea 2003; Morrow 2003; Smith 2003).