The Consequences of Legislative Professionalism in U.S. State Legislatures: A Review

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X231167614
• Author: Michael S. Rocca,Timothy B. Krebs,Dylan McArthur
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Original Research General Interest Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X231167614

State and Local Government Review

2023, Vol. 55(3) 235 –258

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0160323X231167614

journals.sagepub.com/home/slg

Original Research General Interest Article

As polarization and gridlock continues to grip

national politics, Americans are increasingly

looking to states to remedy the nation’s most

significant challenges. The burden has fallen to

the states to address complex issues such as

health care, immigration, infrastructure, voting

rights, energy, and the environment. Indeed,

states’ responses to our most recent crisis—the

coronavirus pandemic—illustrates just how

consequential state-level policy making and

implementation are for the average American.

Attention on states has become even more rele-

vant in recent months as the Supreme Court’s

new conservative majority begins to assert its

influence on matters of federalism, such as in

the 2022 landmark decision Dobbs v. Jackson

Women’s Health Organization that turned abor-

tion policy over to the states.

But this was not always the case. In the

1960s, state governments—particularly their

legislatures—were in crisis. Few legislatures

had the capacity to address the daunting issues

that were creating massive political, social,

and economic unrest in American states and

cities. The New York Times Magazine famously

referred to them as a study in slow motion that

“lumber about their business with all the grace

and efficiency of a dinosaur” (Desmond 1955,

15). The Times was among the cacophony of

calls to reform legislatures’ many “obsolete

features” that result in sessions that are a

“recurrent, unavoidable public calamity” (p.

15). For example, professional organizations

1167614SLGXXX10.1177/0160323X231167614State and Local Government ReviewRocca et al.

research-article2023

1Department of Political Science, Albuquerque, NM, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael S. Rocca, Department of Political Science, 1

University of New Mexico, MSC05-3070, Albuquerque,

NM 87131-0001, USA.

Email: msrocca@unm.edu

The Consequences of Legislative

Professionalism in U.S. State

Legislatures: A Review

Michael S. Rocca1, Timothy B. Krebs1,

and Dylan McArthur1

Abstract

As polarization and gridlock continues to grip national politics, Americans are increasingly looking

to states to remedy the nation’s most significant challenges. But this was not always the case.

Americans are increasingly looking to states to remedy the nation’s most significant challenges. But

this was not always the case. In the 1960s, state governments—particularly their legislatures—were

in crisis. Few legislatures had the capacity to address the daunting issues that were creating massive

political, social, and economic unrest in American states and cities. After decades of reforms

to address these issues, and the studies of legislative reform that followed, we can make some

conclusions about the consequences of legislative professionalization. The purpose of this paper is

to present the key findings from work dedicated to the study of these consequences.

Keywords

legislative professionalism, state legislatures, legislative capacity

236 State and Local Government Review 55(3)

such as the Council of State Governments in

1946 (Council of State Governments 1946),

the American Political Science Association in

1954 (Zeller 1954), the National Legislative

Conference in 1961 (National Legislative

Conference 1961), and the Citizens Conference

on State Legislatures in 1971 were among

those who called for strengthening state legis-

latures (Citizens Conference on State

Legislatures, 1971).

While state scholars had long been interested

in the subject of legislative professionalism

(e.g., Caldwell 1947; Harris 1947; Perkins

1946), renewed interest in the subject emerged

in the 1970s after some states took up the call to

strengthen their legislature (e.g., Herzberg and

Rosenthal 1971; Kennedy 1970; Ritt 1973;

Rosenthal 1974; Smith and Lyons 1977; Sittig

1977). One of those states was California. In

what Kousser (2005) calls a “watershed moment

in the process of professionalization,” California

passed Proposition 1A in 1966 (Kousser 2005,

12). Legendary CA Assembly Speaker Jesse

Unruh (D-CA) championed the initiative that

gave the legislature control over its session cal-

endar and salaries. While not the first state to

attempt to modernize its legislature, California

provided a blueprint for other states to follow,

ushering in a wave of legislative reforms across

the country.1 But as Kousser (2005) also notes,

professionalization did not come in just one

burst; instead, the process was incremental with

varying timelines across states (see also King

2000). Furthermore, reforms did not follow a

linear path toward increasing professionalism.

Rather, some sets of reforms aimed to roll back

previous eras’ efforts to professionalize, often in

response to public criticism of overly entrenched

politicians. California’s adoption of term limits

through Proposition 140 in 1990 is an example

of one such rollback following years of increas-

ing professionalism in the CA legislature.2

After almost a century of reforms and analy-

ses from scholars of state legislatures that fol-

lowed, we can make some conclusions about the

consequences of legislative professionalization.

The purpose of this paper is to present the key

findings from work dedicated to the study of leg-

islative professionalization. We review decades

of scholarly work on the subject and are prepared

to offer some conclusions. Some consequences

are clear; others are less so. This paper is orga-

nized into three sections. First, we discuss the

definition and measures of legislative profession-

alism. Second, we present key findings from

decades of academic research on legislative pro-

fessionalism and its consequences. Finally, we

offer some concluding thoughts to guide any

future conversations about the merits of profes-

sionalizing state legislatures.

Measuring Professionalism

Legislative professionalism refers to the

“enhancement of the capacity of the legislature

to perform its role in the policy-making pro-

cess” (Mooney 1994, 70–71). Or, according to

political scientists Peverill Squire and Gary

Moncrief, legislative professionalism “assesses

the capacity of both legislator and legislatures

to generate and digest information in the policy-

making process” (Squire and Moncrief 2020,

62). While there is considerable agreement on

its definition and measures (discussed below),

the term “legislative professionalism” can cre-

ate confusion if not carefully applied. As Alan

Rosenthal, a prominent scholar of state legisla-

tures,3 details, “professionalism” can refer

either to the attributes of the legislative institu-

tion or the characteristics of the people who

serve in the legislature; frequently it refers to

both (Rosenthal 1998, 55). It should be noted

that “professionalism” is not meant to suggest a

degree of competency or skill. Rather, the term

is used to characterize the capacity of legisla-

tures and the degree to which legislators’ pri-

mary career is as a legislator.

In terms of a legislature’s level of profession-

alism, the key concept is “capacity.” A profes-

sional legislature is one that has the capacity to

legislate. The basic logic is that more profes-

sional legislatures are better equipped to play an

active role in policymaking than their less well-

equipped counterparts (Squire and Moncrief

2020). How do we identify professional legisla-

tures? While some scholars categorize state leg-

islatures into groups with different levels of

professionalism (e.g., Kurtz 1992), the most

common approach to measuring professional-

ism has been to use a single variable as a proxy