Announcing the Release of the 68th North Dakota Legislative Assembly (2023-2024) and the 2023-2024 Rhode Island General Assembly Legislative Sessions State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES)
The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is proud to announce the release of our State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) for the 68th North Dakota Legislative Assembly (2023-2024) and the 2023-2024 Rhode Island General Assembly legislative sessions. This initiative is part of our broader effort to measure the lawmaking effectiveness of individual legislators in all 99 state legislative chambers in the United States.
These scores capture lawmaking effectiveness by tracking the number of bills legislators sponsor, how far those bills advance through the legislative process, and the substantive significance of the proposals.
With the release of North Dakota and Rhode Island, our state-level data initiative continues to grow—building on earlier reports from Montana and Georgia. Additional states will be added in the coming months as we work toward full national coverage.
Highlights from the North Dakota and Rhode Island SLES (2023–2024)
- Top Performers: We identify the top 10, top 5, top 3, and most effective lawmakers across both parties and chambers in both states, including legislators who have consistently ranked as highly effective lawmakers across multiple legislative sessions.
- Above Expectations: We highlight legislators who earned our prestigious Above Expectations designation for lawmaking effectiveness, including both experienced legislators with sustained records and first-term lawmakers who quickly distinguished themselves among their peers.
- Majority Party Advantage: Consistent with CEL research, majority-party legislators were generally more effective lawmakers, reflecting structural advantages such as agenda-setting power and committee leadership.
- North Dakota Findings: In terms of broader patterns, the number of Republicans in both the House and the Senate reached peaks in the 2023-2024 term. Of the 94 Representatives, only 12 were Democrats, while only 4 of the 47 Senators were Democrats. Despite these small numbers, however, individual Democrats contributed about equally to the lawmaking process as did individual Republicans. Whereas nationwide minority-party lawmakers scored an average SLES of about 0.6, in the North Dakota House and Senate Democratic averages were 0.8 and 1.3, respectively. In terms of bills becoming law, this pattern reflects about 2.3 laws coming from the bills sponsored by Democrats on average, compared to a 2.6 laws per legislator average among House Republicans. In the Senate, Democrats averaged 2.7 laws to 3.1 for Republicans. That said, these individual legislator similarities were swamped by the sheer numbers of Republicans in the chambers relative to Democrats. In the end, 350 of 389 laws produced in 2023-24 were proposed by Republicans.
- Rhode Island Findings: In terms of broader patterns, partisanship continues to be strongly associated with lawmaking in Rhode Island, with very few Republicans serving in the General Assembly and with their proposals facing difficulty becoming law. While the SLES of minority-party lawmakers across the country on the whole averages about 0.6, the scores for minority-party members in Rhode Island have been slightly lower, averaging around 0.5. While Republicans are disadvantaged in lawmaking in Rhode Island, they have not been completely shut out of the legislative process. For example, in the 2023-2024 term, Republican Senators each averaged about 5 of their bills becoming law, while the average number of laws per Democratic Senator was 13. In the House, a similar pattern emerged, with about 7 laws coming from an average majority-party lawmaker compared to under 3 for the average minority-party lawmaker.
You can explore the full report and detailed findings below:
Image by Kumar Appaiah, Wikipedia
