The Institutionalization of State Legislatures: a Comparative Study

• Published date: 01 March 1970
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297002300111
• Date: 01 March 1970
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF STATE
LEGISLATURES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
DOUGLAS C. CHAFFEY
Chatham College
ELSON
POLSBY has added a new and exciting dimension to our under-
standing of the concomitants of increasing legislative professionalization.
JL ~ In his recent article, &dquo;The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives,&dquo; Polsby demonstrates changes in the U.S. House throughout its history,
in membership continuity and leadership recruitment, internal complexity and
specification of roles, and in use of automatic as opposed to discretionary methods
of conducting internal business.’ He concludes that the history of the U.S. House
can be seen as a process of increasing institutionalization over time. This institu-
tionalization is evident in several ways: (1) greatly increased membership con-
tinuity from session to session, and increased apprenticeship periods for leaders; 2
(2) increased autonomy and importance of committees, growth of specialized party
leadership, and increases in aids and salaries for members; (3) increased use of
such automatic methods of handling affairs as use of seniority in determining
committee positions.4
4
To what extent are Polsby’s findings limited to the U.S. House of Representa-
tives ? Would other legislative bodies exhibit the same institutionalization of struc-
tures and patterns of decision-making over time? This paper will examine two
state legislative bodies which differ greatly in structural institutionalization: in
length and frequency of session, membership continuity, legislative salaries and staff
aids and facilities. It will determine whether the two bodies exhibit the same direc-
tional differences in ( 1 ) autonomy and importance of committees, and (2) the
use of such automatic methods of conducting internal affairs as seniority for deter-
mining committee positions, and institutionalized and automatic devices for sched-
uling bills for floor debate. To avoid taking up space by referring to a &dquo;structurally
institutionalized&dquo; or &dquo;structurally non-institutionalized&dquo; legislature, the terms &dquo;pro-
fessional&dquo; and &dquo;amateur&dquo; will be used in this paper. An amateur legislature will
be a legislature featuring short length of session, high turnover in membership, low
salaries and minimal staff and facilities; a professional legislature will have the
opposite characteristics.
NoTE : This study was undertaken under a Knapp Fellowship grant from the University of
Wisconsin. I would especially like to thank Professors Herbert Jacob, Austin Ranney,
and John Manley of that institution for the invaluable direction which they gave to this
study, and for the same reason I am especially grateful for assistance given by Professor
Ellis Waldron and Mrs. Emilie Loring of the Bureau of Government Research, Univer-
sity of Montana, who contributed much time and many valuable suggestions to an earlier
draft of the paper. My greatest debt is to the leaders, committee chairmen, and mem-
bers of the 1967 Montana House and Wisconsin Assembly; many gave much more time
than they could afford to this project.
1
Nelson W. Polsby, "The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives," American
Political Science Review, 62 (March 1968), 145.
2

Ibid., p. 146.
3

Ibid., p. 153.
4

Ibid., p. 160.
180

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181
Malcolm Jewell and Samuel Patterson have recently stated that the amateur
or professional nature of a legislature is likely to have profound effects on the legis-
lature. They stress that &dquo;no single factor has a greater effect on the legislative
environment than the constitutional restriction on length of session.&dquo; 5 Such limita-
tions, the authors state, &dquo;limit not only the legislature’s opportunities for delibera-
tion but the effectiveness of its committees, and the ability of less senior members
to develop experience and to become acquainted with legislative norms.&dquo; 6 Despite
the acknowledged significance of such structural characteristics as session length,
little use has been made of the amateur-professional distinction in studying legis-
lative behavior. This is partly true, no doubt, because most students of legislative
bodies have thus far confined their attention to a single body, whether Congress
or a state legislature. If we are to consider the degree of professionalism as a
variable influencing behavior, it would be necessary either to study one legislature
over a period of time, as it moves toward increased professionalization, or to com-
pare two or more legislatures which are presently at different degrees of profession-
alization. Nelson Polsby has explored the first approach; this paper proposes to
test Polsby’s finding using the second approach.
To test Polsby’s hypotheses, I engaged in a comparative study of the Montana
House of Representatives and the Wisconsin Assembly (the lower house in each
state). The two bodies, which are of nearly equal size (Montana with 104 Repre-
sentatives, Wisconsin with 100 Assemblymen) can be readily used to test the Polsby
hypotheses. The Montana House of Representatives may be labeled an amateur
legislative body, and the Wisconsin Assembly a professional body. Table 1 indi-
cates that the Wisconsin Assembly exhibits a much greater professionalism (struc-
tural institutionalization) than does the Montana House in terms of length and
frequency of session, turnover in membership, staff and facilities, and salary and
compensation. Wisconsin would rank somewhere near the professional end of a
state legislative continuum, Montana toward the amateur end.
If the hypotheses Polsby has employed in the U.S. House of Representatives
have any great applicability to other legislative bodies, the Wisconsin Assembly will
be more likely to exhibit several characteristics of institutionalization than will the
Montana House.7 The hypothesis to be tested is as follows: The greater the pro-
fessionalization of a legislative body (a) the more likely we are to find use of auto-
matic rather than optional or discretionary methods of conducting internal affairs,
and (b) the greater the internal complexity and specialization of roles is likely to be.
Part (a) will be tested by examining the use of seniority as a criterion for com-
mittee appointments in the two legislative bodies, and the discretion enjoyed by
majority party leaders in both bodies in scheduling bills for floor debate. Part (b)
will be tested by examining the authority which committees and committee chair-
men are perceived by members of their house to exercise.
5
Malcolm E. Jewell and Samuel C. Patterson, The Legislative Process in the States (New
York: Random House, 1966), p. 138.
6

Ibid.
7
We must, of course, be aware of the major differences between the two states in population,
economy, political culture, interest group strength, gubernatorial strength, and party
competition. As to the last point, Montana is more competitive over its history than
is Wisconsin. However, since 1958 Wisconsin has become a highly competitive state.

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182
I conducted structured interviews with present majority and minority party
leaders and committee chairmen in the Montana House and Wisconsin Assembly
TABLE 1
PROFESSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MONTANA AND WISCONSIN LEGISLATURES
during their 1967 sessions.
8
In addition, I sent a mail questionnaire to all members
not interviewed in the two bodies, receiving a 57 percent return from Montana
Representatives and a 51 percent return from Wisconsin Assemblymen.9 Finally,
each legislature was traced back to 1945 to examine patterns of leadership recruit-
ment and succession (not discussed in this paper), as well as committee appoint-
ments and seniority averages for the twelve regular sessions in that period in each
state. It is only fair to note, before passing on to the results of the study, that any
results must be viewed as suggestive rather than conclusive, since only two legisla-
tive bodies were examined.
CALENDAR CONTROL
Whether the process of scheduling legislation for floor debate is done more or
less automatically in the two legislatures must be seen against the backdrop of what
the speakers may or may not optionally do under chamber rules. The task is to
compare what the speakers of both bodies may theoretically do in the scheduling
process with what norms exist to restrict their options or make scheduling largely
8
In both states, Republicans controlled the lower houses, by five votes in Wisconsin, and by
24 votes in the Montana House. Both states had Republican governors, but the Mon-
tana Senate was controlled by the Democratic party.
9
Returns were proportionate to the balanced party strength in the two bodies and reflected
quite accurately seniority levels in each chamber.

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183
non-discretionary. The formal rules give both the Montana and Wisconsin speak-
ers broad powers in theory. Both appoint members to all committees and chairman-
ships, determine the size of each committee (up to eighteen in Montana) and the
ratio of majority to minority committee members, and both have formal authority
through their chief clerks to time committee reports and structure floor debate.1’°
Majority party leaders in the Montana House exercise a relatively broad con-
trol over scheduling of bills for floor debate.’-1 This is principally the speaker’s
prerogative, but at least in 1967 the majority leader and whip were consulted. The
speaker reads all committee reports before they are reported to the floor. He may
hold certain reports...