Suchergebnisse

Examines effects of institutional reforms on state governance; focus on legislative professionalism and careerism, formal powers and resources of governors, and divided government; late 1980s-early 1990s; US.

This article outlines and tests a spatial model of regulation that contends that federal regulatory officials fashion enforcement strategies that fit each state's political climate. A pooled cross-sectional, time series design is used to examine the influence of both national and state forces on the rate of federal surface mining regulation in 21 states over the period 1978 to 1982. Although the rate of federal regulation reflects national political changes, much of the variation in enforcement is accounted for by the states' political climates. State-level factors prove to be particularly important during the more politically vulnerable Carter administration. Those findings suggest that scholars need to attend to spatial influences in accounting for regulatory outcomes.

State governments have experienced considerable institutional change in the last several decades. None appeared at first glance to be as far‐reaching as the legislative term limits that were adopted by over 20 states in the 1990s. The evidence to date suggests that term limits have indeed changed the character of many of the states' legislatures, if not always as predicted by their advocates. We report data on veto dynamics over the period 1989–2008 to determine how term limits have impacted legislative‐executive relations. Our data both challenge and support what has become the conventional wisdom, i.e., that term limits will weaken legislatures relative to their governors. States with more stringent term limits experienced fewer gubernatorial vetoes but proved more likely to override those vetoes when they were issued. Taken together the evidence suggests that the relationship between governors and legislatures in the wake of term limits is more complex and variable than scholars and others had previously thought.