Vol. 15 No.6 (June 2005), pp.475-477

TERM LIMITS AND THE DISMANTLING OF STATE LEGISLATIVE PROFESSIONALISM, by Thad Kousser.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.  286 pp.  Paperback:  $29.99 / £17.99.  ISBN:  052154873X.  Hardcover:  $70.00 / £45.00.  ISBN:  0521839858

Reviewed by Ashlyn Kuersten, Department of Political Science, Western Michigan University.  Email:  kuersten@wmich.edu .

Do term limits affect the behavior of legislators and how they organize themselves?  Do term limits affect legislator’s roles in the political process and the policies they produce?  Thad Kousser’s TERM LIMITS AND THE DISMANTLING OF STATE LEGISLATIVE PROFESSIONALISM answers these questions concisely and clearly in an exceptionally well-written book.  Not only is the book accessible to an undergraduate audience but it would also be useful to graduate students.  Complicated regression tables are available in the technical appendices to each chapter, but students with a weak grasp of statistical models would find the book thorough and reachable.

Kousser begins by showing how state legislatures in the US are remarkably similar, making comparisons between the states possible.  All states have three branches of government, use candidate-based elections, all but two have bicameral legislatures (with Oklahoma and Nebraska the exceptions), all allow candidates to declare an official party affiliation, and the largest gap between Bush’s and Gore’s portions of the 2000 presidential vote was forty percentage points.  In the last ten years, twenty-one states have adopted limits on legislative terms (these limits were ultimately overturned in five) and those limits have only recently taken effect.  The similarities between the states make it possible for Kousser to isolate the effects of a legislature’s professionalism and its term limits to determine the impact of a legislature’s design on its form and function.

Any law that prevents legislators from serving for more than a given number of terms or years constitutes a legislative term limit.  State legislative term limits are clearly constitutional, despite an overturned federal appeals court ruling striking down lifetime limits in California, and various state decisions invalidating specific initiatives.  Federal term limits, of course, were held unconstitutional in the Supreme Court’s 1995 THORNTON decision.  The populist idea of term limits can now be labeled as a movement.  Lawmakers, of course, have been reluctant to curtail their own careers, so term limit advocates have been forced to work through the initiative process.  Surprisingly, term limit laws that have been passed are not uniform across the states.  “Laws do not guarantee that politicians will again become ordinary citizens in the rotation of authority that Aristotle promoted . . . state political systems provide many opportunities to run for other offices” (p.8).  Lengths of careers allowed in each house range from six to twelve years.  Limits can ban future runs for a legislative seat for life, [*476] or simply restrict consecutive years of service.  Though originally advocated as a way of preventing legislators from running for additional offices, this has not happened.  For example, 50 to 69 percent of termed-out California assembly members ran for another office at the federal or local level.  Thus, although term limits were advocated as a way to remove election incentives, limits have not been successful.

Kousser categorizes term limits as a simply dichotomy.  That is, while there are differences in state laws, comparisons of the impact that term limits have had on various states is an all-or-nothing characteristic of a state.  Variation in individual term limit laws can largely be ignored.  Laws that have gone into effect are the shorter ones, and sufficient time has not passed since the “implementation of most consecutive-service bans to see many termed-out members return to a house and to gauge their impact” (p.10).

Kousser begins with anecdotal sketches of how various legislatures have changed since the implementation of term limits.  Specifically, the similarities and differences between comparable sessions in the California and New Mexico legislatures before and after term limits are identified.  The remaining chapters of the book demonstrate how a legislature’s form (e.g., stability of leadership, role of committees and legislative achievement) and function (e.g., bargaining within the governmental structure) change with limitations on member tenure.  His conclusions?  Redesigning legislatures alters their policies but little else.  Professional legislatures have larger staffs that allow for more knowledge of issues.  As a result, professional legislatures tend to be more productive.  In essence, professional legislatures have more time to perform tasks, and their increased salaries make up for the opportunity costs of not performing private sphere duties.

Advocates of term limits argue that limitations on legislators’ service would alter the institutions dramatically; new types of legislators would be drawn into office, bringing qualities not previously found in state legislatures.  As George Will predicted, term limits “would increase the likelihood that people who come to Congress would anticipate returning to careers in the private sector and therefore would, as they legislate, think about what it is like to live under the laws they make” (1992, at 201).  But Kousser did not find this to be the case.  The numbers of women and minority members, for example, did not change.  Many termed out legislators go on to run for another office, gain positions in the governor’s office or join political lobbies.  Nor was there much change in the experiences that new members brought to statehouses.  New legislators tend to come from the same occupational backgrounds as before, and most continue to come from local government.  Shorter terms reduce incentives for seasoned members to specialize in a particular policy area, so legislators under term limits tend to be “generalists.”  There is no difference in the percentage of introduced bills that subsequently become law, and term limited legislatures play a diminished role in crafting state budgets than had been hoped by advocates.

Most interesting is Kousser’s finding that term limits produce less innovative [*477] policies.  Professional legislatures have more time to craft innovative solutions to policy challenges.  In essence, when term limits replace veterans with less knowledgeable new members, policy innovation declines significantly.

A thorough analysis of the impact term limits have had on the functions of state legislatures, Kousser’s book is exceptionally well written.

REFERENCES:

Will, George.  1992.  RESTORATION: CONGRESS, TERM LIMITS AND THE RECOVERY OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY.  New York: Free Press.

CASE REFERENCES:

US TERM LIMITS, INC. v. THORNTON, 514 US 779 (1995).

*************************************************

© Copyright 2005 by the author, Ashlyn Kuersten.