The Impact of Term Limits on the Candidacy Decisions of State Legislators in U. S. House Elections

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Comparative Legislative Research Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Legislative Studies Quarterly.This study investigates the hypothesis that term limits at the state level increase electoral competition for seats in the U.S. House. With a greater number of ambitious state legislators being unwillingly turned out of office, we can expect that those individuals interested in legislative careers will increasingly turn their attention to Congress.In order to assess whether or not state legislators are more likely to run for Congress in states with legislative term limits, I specified and tested logistic regression models. The models were derived from our prior knowledge of the behavior of strategic politicians and included control variables for theoretically important nationaland district-level factors.The results presented in this study provide support for the hypothesis that state legislators are more likely to run for the House in states with legislative term limits. IntroductionThe decision to run for Congress is a complex one. It is particularly complex for would-be candidates currently serving in other elected positions. Although such "quality" candidates often have the best chances for electoral success relative to their less politically experienced opponents, they also have more to lose because running for Congress usually means they must give up their current positions (Jacobson 1989). The enormous advantage that incumbents enjoy in U.S. House elections renders the risk even greater for quality candidates thinking about opposing an incumbent.Spawned by Jacobson and Kerell (1983), a great deal of research in recent years has explored the strategic calculations made by these quality candidates (Abramowitz 1988; Biersack 1990). While much of this research has been aimed at finetuning the measurement of candidate quality, the primary focus has been on identifying the factors that influence the decision to run for office within broader models of strategic decision making. Understanding the emergence of quality candidates is critical to our knowledge of electoral competition for Congress because of the strong link between candidate quality and the likelihood of winning (Cox and Katz 1996; Jacobson 1990; Robeck 1982).This study examines the candidacy decisions made by a specific type of quality candidate-state legislator-in U.S. House elections between 1994 and 1998. In fact, prior research has suggested that state legislators may be among the most competitive types of quality candidates (Herrnson 1998). They can be formidable candidates for Congress because their state legislative districts often have considerable overlap with U.S. House...

Constituency Congruency and Candidate Competition in U.S. House Elections

“…Additionally, we control for other factors that vary by state such as the presence of term limits and the level of professionalism of the legislature. All else equal, we might expect state legislators from states with term limits to be more likely to run for a seat in the U.S. House if they are progressively ambitious (see, e.g., Lazarus 2006; Powell 2000; Steen 2006). Since the degree of legislative professionalism can influence career choices, we include a measure derived by Squire (2007) as a control variable.…”

Electoral Career Movements and the Flow of Political Power in the American Federal System

“…One possible complication might involve the employment of rotation in some states and districts in the nineteenth century, an informal term limit mechanism that likely truncated an unknown number of congressional careers in ways that could be relevant to this analysis (e.g., Kernell 1977). Along somewhat similar lines, in more recent years, it is possible that the introduction of legislative term limits changed the career calculations of politicians in some states that might, at the margins, influence the relationships found here (e.g., Birkhead, Uriarte, and Bianco 2010;Lazarus 2006;Powell 2000;Steen 2006).…”

Term Limits and Electoral Competition: An Analysis of California Legislative Races

“…It is also argued that the threat of looming term limits may prompt legislators to run for another offi ce when a seat is vacated, even if they would not be forced out of their current seat for a number of terms (Carey, Niemi, and Powell 2000;Powell 2000;Rosenthal 1998;Daniel and Lott 1997;Francis and Kenny 1997;Greene 1995;Jacobson 1995;Rausch 1993). This argument suggests that some legislators may choose to leave the safety of their current position to bid for an open seat elsewhere.…”