Legislators and Administrators: Complex Relationships Complicated by Term Limits

Abstract

State legislators' relationships with administrators have received scant attention in the literature despite the importance of these relationships for delivery of public services. We explored whether or not the legislator‐administrator relationship in one professional state legislature resembles Congress's oversight of federal agencies. We also assessed whether or not term limits changed this relationship. Our findings indicate that monitoring state agencies was a low priority for this legislature, and it dropped even lower after term limits were implemented. More specifically, we found some institutional roles to be associated with legislators placing a higher priority on monitoring, especially before term limits, whereas some individual motives were associated with a lower priority, especially after term limits. Legislators exhibited more confusion about the process of monitoring after term limits.

Constraining Bureaucrats Today Knowing You'll Be Gone Tomorrow: The Effect of Legislative Term Limits on Statutory Discretion

“…Cain and Kousser () and Cain et al (), in their study of California's term limits, show that term‐limited legislators are less likely to pursue budget supplemental requests and state audits from state agencies. In their case study of Michigan's term limits, Sarbaugh‐Thompson et al () claim that term limits decrease the extent to which legislators monitor the bureaucracy. Similar findings are found in other term‐limited states such as Arizona, Ohio, and Maine (Berman, ; Farmer & Little, ; Moen et al, ).…”

“…Second, term limits incentivize legislators to incur the cost of enacting more detailed legislation to ensure that their preferences will be implemented by the executive branch after the legislators complete their terms . Third, term‐limited legislators' finite terms prevent legislators from using ex post monitoring to ensure that their policies are enacted in accordance with legislative intent over the long run (Berman, ; Cain & Kousser, ; Cain et al, ; Farmer & Green, ; Farmer & Little, ; Kurtz et al, ; Moen et al, ; Sarbaugh‐Thompson et al, ). By granting less statutory discretion to the bureaucracy, term‐limited legislators can maximize productivity, minimize agency loss, and maximize favorable policy outcomes.…”

“…Previous works have shown that term‐limited legislatures are less likely to enact complex legislation (Kousser, ) and are less likely to use monitoring and other ex post means of bureaucratic control (Berman, ; Cain & Kousser, ; Cain, Kousser, & Kurtz, 2007; Farmer & Green, ; Farmer & Little, ; Kurtz, Cain, & Niemi, ; Moen, Palmer, & Powell, ; Sarbaugh‐Thompson et al, ). However, Woods and Baranowski () provide a counterintuitive finding that legislator turnover increases perceived legislative influence according to state agency leaders.…”

Strategic oversight and the institutional determinants of legislative policy control

“…More recently, Potoski and Woods (2000) and Woods and Baranowski (2006) show that more professional legislatures have more influence over policy outcomes than their less capable counterparts. In addition to legislative professionalism, recent studies have argued that legislative term limits have made state legislatures less willing and able to monitor state agencies (Carey, Niemi and Powell, 2000;Berman, 2004;Farmer and Little, 2004;Carey et al, 2006;Kousser, 2005;Kurtz, Cain and Niemi, 2007;Sarbaugh-Thompson et al, 2010).…”

“…In fact, there is a dearth of empirical legislative-executive relation studies at the state level in general. What we do know is that legislative capacity varies across the states and this has predictable effects on legislative control of state bureaucracies (Elling, 1979;Hamm and Robertson, 1981;Potoski and Woods, 2000;Woods and Baranowski, 2006) and that institutional change, such as the imposition of legislative term limits (Berman, 2004;Carey, Niemi and Powell, 2000;Carey et al, 2006;Farmer and Little, 2004;Kousser, 2005;Kurtz, Cain and Niemi, 2007;Sarbaugh-Thompson et al, 2010), can potentially change the nature of state legislative-executive relationships. The current chapter adds to this literature by incorporating insights from a cross-institutional theory of statutory control of bureaucracy into a cross-sectional empirical model at the level of the U.S. states.…”