Legislative term limits adopted in the 1990s are in effect in
fifteen states today. This reform is arguably the most significant
institutional change in American government of recent decades. Most
of the legislatures in these fifteen states have experienced a
complete turnover of their membership; hundreds of experienced
lawmakers have become ineligible for reelection, and their
replacements must learn and perform their jobs in as few as six
years.
Now that term limits have been in effect long enough for both
their electoral and institutional effects to become apparent, their
consequences can be gauged fully and with the benefit of hindsight.
In the most comprehensive study of the subject, editors Kurtz,
Cain, and Niemi and a team of experts offer their broad evaluation
of the effects term limits have had on the national political
landscape.
"The contributors to this excellent and comprehensive volume on
legislative term limits come neither to praise the idea nor to bury
it, but rather to speak dispassionately about its observed
consequences. What they find is neither the horror story of inept
legislators completely captive to strong governors and interest
groups anticipated by the harshest critics, nor the idyll of
renewed citizen democracy hypothesized by its more extreme
advocates. Rather, effects have varied across states, mattering
most in the states that were already most professionalized, but
with countervailing factors mitigating against extreme
consequences, such as a flight of former lower chamber members to
the upper chamber that enhances legislative continuity. This book
is must reading for anyone who wants to understand what happens to
major institutional reformsafter the dust has settled."
---Bernard Grofman, Professor of Political Science and Adjunct
Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of
California, Irvine
"A decade has passed since the first state legislators were term
limited. The contributors to this volume, all well-regarded
scholars, take full advantage of the distance afforded by this
passage of time to explore new survey data on the institutional
effects of term limits. Their book is the first major volume to
exploit this superb opportunity."
---Peverill Squire, Professor, Department of Political Science,
University of Iowa
Karl T. Kurtz is Director of the Trust for Representative
Democracy at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Bruce Cain is Heller Professor of Political Science and Director
of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of
California at Berkeley, and the Director of the University of
California Washington Center.
Richard G. Niemi is Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political
Science at the University of Rochester.
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