Instant Credibility: The Conditional Role of Professional Background in Policymaking Success

• Author: Todd Makse
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920983917
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 75(1) 118 –133

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920983917

Political Research Quarterly

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In legislatures that consider hundreds or thousands of

bills every legislative session, the credibility of a bill’s

author can be vital to achieving success. Typically, schol-

ars of legislative politics think about such credibility

through the lens of committee specialization, since the

norm of specialization is crafted for that very purpose and

is a near-universal trait of legislatures. Legislators, how-

ever, pursue individual legislative agendas driven by per-

sonal considerations (Burden 2007) and not all of one’s

legislative agenda overlaps with one’s committee service

(Swift 2020). Moreover, specialization isn’t fully devel-

oped on the first day of legislative service, but expertise

derived from a legislator’s professional background can

convey a form of “instant credibility” that merits study in

understanding legislative outcomes.

Several recent studies in Congress have highlighted

the importance of occupational background, with respect

to both shaping policy agendas (Carnes 2012) and bill

introductions (Miler 2017) and influencing the success of

individual legislators (Francis and Bramlett 2017).

Volden and Wiseman (2014, 168) also link background to

legislative effectiveness, contending that one of the habits

of highly effective legislators is “develop[ing] a legisla-

tive agenda rooted in personal background, previous

experiences, and policy expertise.” Even first-term legis-

lators can gain credibility by referencing professional

experience, which can lead to deference by other legisla-

tors (Francis and Bramlett 2017).

Broaching this topic in the context of the state legisla-

tures, however, offers the additional benefit of gaining

insight into legislators’ initial forays into policymaking.

Unlike in Congress, where many members have held other

legislative positions, nearly all state legislators come to the

state capitol with no prior legislative service (Kurtz 2015;

Makse 2019). Understanding the formative moments of

legislative careers is especially important in an era when

wave elections are common and in states where legislative

turnover is high, whether due to electoral competition,

redistricting, or term limits. At the same time, these insights

are still important in legislatures with no term limits or low

turnover, if for no other reason than the simple tautology

that every legislator is a first-term legislator at some point.

983917

PRQXXX10.1177/1065912920983917Political Research QuarterlyMakse

research-article2020

1Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Todd Makse, Florida International University, Modesto A. Maidique,

SIPA 405, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL 33199, USA.

Email: tmakse@fiu.edu

Instant Credibility: The Conditional

Role of Professional Background in

Policymaking Success

Todd Makse1

Abstract

For legislators without legislative experience, credibility can be vital to achieving legislative success, and expertise from

one’s professional background is a highly plausible source of such credibility. For example, when legislating in policy

areas directly related to one’s previous occupation, a legislator’s colleagues may perceive policy instruments as more

informed by expertise rather than ideological preferences. In this paper, I focus on several questions related to the

linkage between professional background and legislative success, and specifically, the ability to guide authored bills

through the legislative process. First, does a match between a legislator’s professional background and the topic of

legislation make that legislation more likely to advance in the legislative process? Second, if so, does the importance of

professional background dissipate as length of legislative service increases? Third, does the relevance of professional

background systematically differ across types of legislators and legislatures? I find strong evidence that having a relevant

professional background does lead to legislative success for new members, but that this pattern persists later in the

legislative career too. Moreover, I find that these patterns are especially strong for minority party legislators and in

legislatures with higher levels of membership turnover.

Keywords

expertise, state legislatures, legislative productivity, occupations, seniority, turnover

Article

Makse 119

2 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)

Early periods of legislative careers set the stage for intra-

institutional and progressive ambition (Francis and

Bramlett 2017) and result in “positive sorting” (Padró i

Miquel and Snyder 2006), whereby initial legislative apti-

tude affects electoral success and institutional positioning.

Finally, understanding whether the same factors predict

legislative success for inexperienced and more seasoned

members gives us a richer understanding of legislative

careers in general.

In this paper, I focus on the linkage between profes-

sional background and legislative success, and more

specifically, the ability to guide authored bills through

the legislative process. Drawing on a sample of more

than 68,000 bills from 42 state legislatures during the

2013–2014 and 2015–2016 biennia, I examine whether

bills are favorably reported from committee and whether

they pass the chamber of origin. I then match the profes-

sional background of the bill’s author with the policy

content of the bill across six substantive policy areas:

agriculture, education, financial services, health, law,

and transportation.

With these data, I examine several questions regarding

expertise and legislative success. First, does a match

between a legislator’s professional background and the

topic of legislation make that legislation more likely to

advance in the legislative process? Second, if so, does the

importance of professional background dissipate as

length of legislative service increases? Third, does the

relevance of professional background systematically dif-

fer across types of legislators and legislatures? I find

strong evidence that having a relevant professional back-

ground does lead to legislative success for new members,

but that this pattern persists later in the legislative career

too. Moreover, I find that these patterns are especially

strong for bills introduced by minority party legislators

and in legislatures with higher levels of membership

turnover.

Professional Background and

Information in the Legislative

Process

Among theories of legislative organization, expertise

plays the most prominent role in information theory (e.g.,

Krehbiel 1991). At its core, information theory asserts

that legislative committees expend effort to learn what

would happen if a bill were enacted, which leads to a

pressure toward ideologically unbiased committees.

While information theory often emphasizes the principal-

agent relationship between legislative parties and com-

mittees, committee expertise also shapes interpersonal

influence (Curry 2019) with nonexperts taking cues from

experts.

Several studies of state legislatures find support for

information theory’s key assumption of ideologically

representative committees (Battista 2006; Overby, Kazee,

and Prince 2004); other work has emphasized that the

degree of informativeness can vary across committees

and chambers (Battista 2009; Lin 2015). When commit-

tees are informative (Lin 2015) and stable (Makse 2017),

legislative productivity and efficiency are enhanced by

committee expertise. Another key piece of support for

information theory can be found in Martorano (2006),

who identifies committee autonomy as a crucial aspect of

committee organization. The level of committee auton-

omy helps determine whether floor proposals reflect the

committee’s expertise.

Information theory, however, does not require that

committee specialization be the source of expertise, as

some legislators’ interests reduce the cost of specializa-

tion (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1990). Legislators bring their

own experiences to the legislature and these experiences,

especially those related to occupation, can influence both

individual-level behavior (Francis and Bramlett 2017;

Miler 2017) and aggregate-level outcomes (Barnes,

Beall, and Holman 2020; Hansen, Carnes, and Gray

2019). Institutional decision-makers also recognize this

alternative source of expertise: Hamm, Hedlund, and Post

(2011) find that committee assignments are made with an

eye toward leveraging the expertise that legislators bring

with them from past experiences. In doing so, leaders are

signaling that these individuals possess relevant exper-

tise. I argue that this premise—that legislators with rele-

vant backgrounds possess valuable expertise—will be

internalized by most legislators, providing credibility to

legislators when they choose to legislate in policy areas

relevant to their background. In turn, this credibility will

give these legislators a leg up in their efforts to advance

bills through the legislative process.1

There may be reasons to question whether profes-

sional background will result in legislative successes. For

example, colleagues may harbor skepticism that a legisla-

tor’s proposals in that policy area are driven by self-inter-

est or the interest of one’s profession, broadly. Second,

legislators writing bills in their area of expertise may suf-

fer a legislative version of the expert-novice problem,

producing legislation that is too technical or narrow, or

advocating for legislation in a rhetorically unconvincing

manner. Third, legislators with a relevant professional

background may over-legislate in that area, spreading

efforts too thinly and reducing the chances that any single

proposal advances.

On balance, however, extant findings are consistent

with the idea that professional background confers credi-

bility. For example, Sarbaugh-Thompson and Thompson

(2017) find that professional expertise plays a role in

determining which members other members seek out for