What explains public confidence in the leadership of government institutions at the state level? The authors explore how political processes, the nature of representation, and economic and policy performance in the states translate into citizen confidence in state institutions. Using a multilevel modeling approach, the authors consider the sources of public confidence in the people who lead state legislatures, offices of the governor, and state courts. While the explanations for government confidence at the state level resemble, in part, those of the national government, the authors also observe notable differences, with each branch of state government drawing on distinct sources of public satisfaction.

Research concerning the impact of metropolitan political structures on political participation has generated a wide range of conflicting findings. This failure to solve this puzzle results from a failure to fully characterize the many dimensions of metropolitan institutional context that bear on citizens’ political behaviors. The authors provide such a characterization and test its implications with data on turnout in local legislative elections in 336 municipalities in 12 metropolitan areas. They examine the complex debate over the role of metropolitan political contexts in fostering political participation and identify four dimensions of contextual influence on turnout. They find that these contextual influences interact in significant ways that generate surprising results. Overall, however, the results lend far greater support to those favoring the consolidation of urban political institutions than those supporting further fragmentation of local government.

Trends of female access to and presence in responsible governmental positions have gained substantial attention. The research reported here assesses and seeks convergence on several issues associated with gender representation. It extends the research by focusing on top executive posts in American state governments. In particular, the presence of women agency heads in all 50 states is examined from 1970 through 2000 using the lenses of passive representativeness and active representation. The authors find, first, that women face fewer blockages in securing top posts—the glass ceilings are cracking. Second, women’s access to peak executive positions springs from more solid educational, career, and organizational foundations or “floors.” Third, lateral career movements are penetrating the “walls” surrounding traditionally male‐dominated agency types. The essay concludes with a framework for understanding relationships involving passive representativeness, active representation, and representative results. That framework assists in shifting attention toward the consequences of both passive and active representation.

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Despite decades of research, our understanding of how institutional contexts influence urban political participation remains muddled. It is argued here that this confusion arises from the diversity of competing hypotheses, failures to conceptualize the causal processes underlying these hypotheses thoroughly, and the use of inadequate controls for rival hypotheses. A more comprehensive specification of the relationship between metropolitan jurisdictional contexts and two modes of participation is provided. After a presentation of a theoretical framework organizing the many extant hypotheses, these are tested, using survey data collected by the Knight Foundation from 2002 in twenty-five urban counties. Contrary to prior work, it is found that the size of local governments is positively associated with participation, while governmental fragmentation diminishes the propensity for political action.