Understanding public preferences for governing processes is an understudied area of research. In this paper, I evaluate a set of critical assumptions relating to process preferences that the literature has thus far not addressed. I specifically address the claims made by John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse in their seminal book, Stealth Democracy, which suggests that people prefer political decisions to be made via expert-based governing arrangements to promote a level of efficiency and effectiveness within the government that elected officials cannot provide. Using original questions from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I find concurring evidence that citizens are not strongly attached to standard participatory processes found in democracy. However, upon using more precise measurements and placing expert processes into contemporary context, preferences weaken and appear to be shallow in nature. In an era where process preferences are receiving more attention as trust in government wanes, it is important to understand the depth of these preferences and their potential to change politics. These results suggest it is imperative for future scholars to approach the study of process preferences with care.

Scholars have argued that female legislators are more prone to collaborate than their male counterparts. Though collaboration may be more or less evident in particular situations, we seek to more clearly establish the mechanism behind women’s collaborative activity using the framework of marginalization. In this paper, we use cosponsorship data from 74 state legislative chambers from 2011–2014 to analyze collaborative patterns and mobilizing institutions. We find female legislators are more collaborative than men, and that their collaborative advantage strengthens in chambers where women are systematically excluded from leadership positions. The advantage also extends to bipartisan collaboration, but only in less polarized settings with women’s caucuses. Furthermore, our findings imply that as women are integrated into leadership collaboration will actually decline, especially within their own party. We believe these results are important for understanding both the roots of collaborative behavior among female legislators and consequences of chambers that marginalize women from leadership positions.

As members of democratic institutions, state legislators must frequently collaborate with each other to achieve their varied goals. Given the increased attention to questions of polarization and gridlock, scholars should be particularly interested in understanding legislator decisions to collaborate across party lines. This article is primarily concerned with how institutional arrangements—specifically term limits—structure legislators' decisions to cosponsor bills with partisan opponents. Using data on bill cosponsorship from 41 states (82 chambers), we demonstrate that term limits reduce bipartisan cosponsorship even when controlling for average legislative tenure. We argue that term limits accomplish this by altering the incentives that legislators face. In addition, we demonstrate that the effect of term limits depends on the level of legislative professionalization. When professionalization is high, the negative effect of term limits on bipartisan cosponsorship is particularly pronounced.

This study examines the determinants of public confidence in the honesty and integrity of state redistricting processes by analyzing responses to the 2011 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies. Individual opinions about the redistricting process are matched to several state characteristics, including the presence of independent redistricting commissions, state legislative polarization, and legislative professionalism. Contrary to popular wisdom, the analysis reveals that neither partisan redistricting procedures nor political polarization reduce confidence in the redistricting process. Rather, public attitudes are determined more so by distaste for legislative professionalism and affinity for the party in control of state government.

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Non-elected persons, such as political appointees and civil servants, are critical to the functioning of American government. Commonly referred to as the "fourth branch", the bureaucracy poses a democratic accountability problem with its staff of non-elected individuals carrying out public policy. Though it opposes classic democratic norms, a burgeoning literature on political processes suggests that, in fact, non-elected processes may be exactly what the people want. This dissertation project questions the role and importance of bureaucratic offcials, mechanisms, and processes to citizens in the United States. As the ultimate source of a democracy's power, the people, it is critical to understand their perceptions of such a large part of a democracy that does not operate democratically. Investigating these process-based preferences speaks to many fundamental questions and concepts regarding the presence of non-elected entities within a democracy, such as bureaucratic legitimacy, expertise, and neutral competence. I use a unique survey I placed on the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) as the primary source of data, and supplement my analyses with additional process-based questions from the 2009 California Field Poll. I find that non-elected process preferences follow distinct patterns of diffuse and specific support (Easton 1975). A process preference can reflect short-term, partisan and incumbent considerations rather than an entrenched distaste for democracy, depending on the proposal at hand. I move the process literature forward by digging deeper into what others have uncritically accepted as non-elected process preferences, and highlight the importance of distinguishing between proposals that have differing bases of support.