The Logic of Legislative Leadership: Preferences, Challenges, and the Speaker's Powers

Abstract

Principal agent theory implies that legislators will delegate power to a leader only when they need the leader's help and the leader can be expected to provide satisfactory help if granted power. This study is the first to evaluate the implied interaction between legislators' need for help and the degree to which legislators and leaders have similar preferences. By analyzing the Speaker's powers in the U.S. states, I arrived at three key conclusions. First, institutional leadership power responds to the interaction between preference alignment and policymaking challenges. Traditionally expected effects only appear when both alignment and challenges are relatively high. Second, professionalization causes weaker leadership powers. Finally, electoral competition correlates with stronger appointment, committee, and resource powers, but weaker procedural powers.

Measuring State House Speakers' Formal Powers, 1981–2010

“…Thus, this index covered the range of dimensions of legislative leadership powers commonly discussed in the literature. Scholars have used it or its components successfully as both a dependent (Richman 2010) and an independent (Burden 2005;Hedlund et al 2009;S. M. Miller, Nicholson-Crotty, and Nicholson-Crotty 2011;Overby, Kazee, and Prince 2004) variable, further demonstrating its criterion-related validity.…”

“…At the same time, the average score for the 49 state speakers changes very little over this period, suggesting little in the way of a national trend. Thus, these within-state, overtime changes justify both the use of this variable ' Formal Powers Index, 1981-2010: States with Odd-Numbered-Year Legislative Elections. States 1982-83 1984-85 1986-87 1988-89 1990-91 1992-93 1994-95 1996-97 1998-99 2000-01 2002-03 2004-05 2006-07 2008 Note: This index is developed as discussed in the appendix with data drawn from The Book of the States (Council of State Governments, various years).…”

Party Pressure in the U.S. State Legislatures

“…We then exploit the cross‐state comparative leverage of our dataset to test theories that attempt to explain variation in party strength. We find substantial evidence that party influence is explained by state socioeconomic diversity, by careerism, and conditionally by variables drawn from the conditional party government literature (Aldrich and Battista 2002; Rohde 1991) along the lines suggested by Richman (2010).…”

“…Martorano (2004) examined a sample of 23 chambers from 1955 to 1995 and found that larger majorities are associated with fewer minority rights, and that party strength responded to the use of joint rules but not to professionalism. Richman (2010) reanalyzed Clucas' (2001) data, showing that the effects of preference polarization on leadership power depend upon the extent to which legislators faced substantial challenges.…”

“…State legislatures provide a natural testing ground for theories aimed at explaining variation in party power because they contain much greater variation in leadership power and other institutions than does the U.S. House. Some of these works analyze formal rules, either cross‐sectionally (Clucas 2001; Richman 2010) or in time‐series cross‐section (Martorano 2004). Others analyze roll‐call votes (Shannon Jenkins 2006, 2008; Wright and Schaffner 2002).…”