Legislative Effectiveness in the American States (Published Paper)

The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is excited to announce that our “Legislative Effectiveness in the American States” paper has been published by the American Political Science Review. This paper, written by CEL Co-Directors Craig Volden (UVA Frank Batten School) and Alan Wiseman (Vanderbilt University), and research consultant Peter Bucchianeri, serves as the basis of our State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) used to analyze state legislators across 97 legislative chambers over recent decades, based on the number of bills that they sponsor, how far those bills move through the lawmaking process, and their substantive importance. They assess the scores through criterion and construct validation and reveal new insights into effective lawmaking across legislators.

The authors present two illustrations of the immense opportunities these scores provide for new scholarship on legislative behavior. First, they show that majority-party lawmaking influence is linked to ideological polarization and to electoral competition for chamber control. Second, they show how institutional design choices – from legislative rules to the scope of professionalization – affect the distribution of policymaking powers across the states.

The CEL is proud to have this paper published and the role it will play in expanding our scholarly work into the state level to identify effective lawmaking. To learn more, read the full report here.