State Legislatures – Center for Effective Lawmaking

The Center for Effective Lawmaking Attends the 2026 NCSL Summit

The Center for Effective Lawmaking Attends the 2026 NCSL Summit Chicago, IL – Last week, thousands of state lawmakers, legislative staff, researchers, and advocates were in Chicago for the 2026 National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Summit, and the Center for Effective Lawmaking was excited to attend for the first time. The Summit provided the opportunity to connect directly with lawmakers and their staff who can apply our research to improve legislative effectiveness in their chamber. We shared information about the CEL’s mission and research and handed out our newly-published…

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August 13, 2026

Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research / State Legislatures

Colleagues and Neighbors? Geographic Patterns of Collaboration and Legislative Effectiveness

Colleagues and Neighbors? Geographic Patterns of Collaboration and Legislative Effectiveness Tuesday, August 11, 2026Geography plays a role in shaping American legislatures, but while there is often a focus on the importance of constituency representation, its role as a source of division does not always receive as much attention. Legislative politics scholarship increasingly recognizes the importance of social relationships and networks in shaping outcomes, and within this literature, one important observation is that collaboration across difference can be especially impactful. In state legislatures, within-state regional divisions are often common knowledge but…

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August 11, 2026

Policy Agendas, Effective Lawmaking, and Women’s Issues in State Legislatures

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Center Affiliates / Faculty Affiliates / Interest & Legislative Effectiveness Scores / Legislative Anaylsis / Legislative Research / Policy Scores / State Legislative Effectiveness Scores / State Legislatures

Policy Agendas, Effective Lawmaking, and Women’s Issues in State Legislatures

Policy Agendas, Effective Lawmaking, and Women’s Issues in State Legislatures Tuesday, August 4, 2026 State legislatures introduce roughly 100,000 bills a year, far outpacing Congress, yet scholars have long lacked a reliable way to sort that volume into policy areas, making it hard to ask basic questions about which issues get attention, which stall, and who succeeds where. In this Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) working paper, the authors take on that challenge directly. It was written by Andrew M.O. Ballard, Associate Professor at Florida State University (and CEL Faculty…

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August 3, 2026

Blog / Legislative Research / State Legislatures

How Do Women and Men Respond to More Women in the Legislature? A Study of Bill Introductions and Effectiveness

Wednesday, July 8, 2026 In this newly published paper in Political Research Quarterly, Emma Schroeder (Texas Christian University) examines how increasing numbers of women in state legislatures influence the legislative behavior of women and men, using bill introduction data and legislative effectiveness scores from 49 U.S. state legislatures. She finds that in upper chambers with more women, women serve as the primary sponsors of fewer bills than men. However, when both primary sponsorship and cosponsorship are considered, women contribute to more bills than men in both chambers. This relationship varies…

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July 8, 2026

Blog / Legislative Research / State Legislatures

Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success

Legislative Effectiveness, Progressive Ambition, and Electoral Success Wednesday, May 6, 2026In this newly published paper in the American Political Science Review, Co-Directors Craig Volden (University of Virginia) and Alan Wiseman (Vanderbilt University), and Faculty Affiliates Danielle Thomsen (University of California-Irvine) and Sarah Treul (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) examine the question of whether effective state lawmakers are more likely than ineffective state lawmakers to be elected to Congress. The authors draw on the CEL’s dataset of State Legislative Effectiveness Scores from 1993 to 2018 to examine the relationship between lawmaker effectiveness…

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May 6, 2026

Events / Legislative Research / State Legislatures

Building Effective Legislation in the Commonwealth

Building Effective Legislation in the Commonwealth On Friday, March 27, 2026, the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) co-hosted a seminar along with the Virginia chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN) titled “Building Effective Legislation in the Commonwealth.” Scholars from the University of Virginia (UVA) and across the state enjoyed a day of discussion and skill-building, focused on how to strengthen their policy engagement and impact. The event was held at Garrett Hall, which houses the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVA.The seminar opened with an introduction…

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April 7, 2026

Blog / Conference / Events / Legislative Research

From Statehouses to Scholarship: The Effective Lawmaking in American State Legislatures Second Annual Conference

From Statehouses to Scholarship: The Effective Lawmaking in American State Legislatures Second Annual Conference Nashville, TN – On Friday, February 27th, the Center for Effective Lawmaking hosted its second annual Effective Lawmaking in American State Legislatures conference at Vanderbilt University. As part of the Center for Effective Lawmaking’s mission to generate and advance research in legislative effectiveness in American state legislatures, thirty-one practitioners and researchers from institutions around the country were invited to Vanderbilt University to discuss timely topics in state legislative effectiveness. Topics included:The development and impact of party…

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March 10, 2026

Announcing the Release of the 2020-2023 Louisiana State Legislatures State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES)

The Louisiana State Capital in Baton Rouge..Art Deco Architecture by Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth and completed in 1932.

State Highlights / State Legislative Effectiveness Scores / State Legislatures

Announcing the Release of the 2020-2023 Louisiana State Legislatures State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES)

Announcing the Release of the 2020-2023 Louisiana State Legislatures 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 2020-2023 Louisiana legislative session. 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…

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February 12, 2026

State Highlights / State Legislative Effectiveness Scores / State Legislatures

Announcing the Release of the 2020-2023 Mississippi State Legislature State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES)

Announcing the Release of the 2020-2023 Mississippi State Legislature 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 2020-2023 Mississippi legislative session. 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…

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February 5, 2026

State Highlights / State Legislative Effectiveness Scores / State Legislatures

Announcing the Release of the 2019-2022 Maryland and Alabama State Legislatures State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES)

Announcing the Release of the 2019-2022 Maryland and Alabama State Legislatures 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 2019-2022 Maryland and Alabama 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…

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January 22, 2026