Informed Legislatures offers the first comprehensive examination of technical information and decisionmaking in state legislatures and recommends ways to improve science and technology support to legislatures through staff, state universities, and other groups. Megan Jones, David H. Guston, and Lewis M. Branscomb report on fieldwork from eleven state legislatures. While partisan analysis is necessary in the legislative process, non-partisan sources are vital to help legislatures triangulate among special interests. The book argues that maintaining internal expertise is effective in the ongoing struggle of state legislatures to be independent of governors and lobbyists. Practioners interested in state legislatures, professionals in state and local government, lobbyists, state legislators and staff, public university administratives and faculty, and scholars who focus on the role of scientific and technical information in political institutions will find Informed Legislatures to be an invaluable resource. Co-published with the Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University.

Every two years American voters turn out to elect several thousand representatives to state legislatures. Only now in Representation in State Legislatures do we have a detailed examination of how these officials perceive their jobs and how they attempt to do them. To provide answers to these questions, Malcolm E. Jewell conducted intensive interviews with 220 members of houses of representatives in nine selected states. He asked each legislator how he kept in touch with his constituents, how he resolved matters of policy, how he sought government resources for his district, and what services he provided for individual constituents. State legislatures differ greatly, and they are not institutionalized to the same degree as the national congress. It is difficult, therefore, to generalize on such effects as partisanship. Likewise it appears that past explanatory models do not adequately describe the complex relationships seen by most legislators in their work. The state legislature is changing. It is becoming more institutionalized. It is becoming more stable as fewer members retire and more are reelected. The trend is toward longer sessions, increased staff, and more activity. With this trend the legislator is becoming more visible; he can deal with lawmaking while having greater opportunities to provide services and to gain publicity for them. As the move, begun by the Reagan administration, to put more responsibility for programs on the states continues, the state legislatures will assume a place of greater importance in the governing of the United States. This pioneering study of representation will thereby gain significance both for the understanding it imparts and for the new questions it raises.

A troubling portrait of democracy in US state legislatures. State legislatures hold tremendous authority over key facets of our lives, ranging from healthcare to marriage to immigration policy. In theory, elections create incentives for state legislators to produce good policies. But do they? Drawing on wide-ranging quantitative and qualitative evidence, Steven Rogers offers the most comprehensive assessment of this question to date, testing different potential mechanisms of accountability. His findings are sobering: almost ninety percent of American voters do not know who their state legislator is; over one-third of incumbent legislators run unchallenged in both primary and general elections; and election outcomes have little relationship with legislators’ own behavior. Rogers’s analysis of state legislatures highlights the costs of our highly nationalized politics, challenging theories of democratic accountability and providing a troubling picture of democracy in the states.

Our interest in studying televised legislatures was kindled by two episodes. The first was a series of rejections by the U.S. Senate between 1984 and 1986 of resolutions to permit live television coverage of floor proceedings. The second was the 1984 "Camscam affair," the media label given to a partisan war over camera coverage of U.S. House proceedings. Each episode, if nothing else, made plain the intensity of the feelings that elected representatives feel about televised sessions. Legislative television was not taken lightly by those who had the most to gain or lose. Surveys indicate that legislative watchers, "C-SP AN junkies," number in the millions and penetration of cable access to televised sessions numbered nearly 40 million in 1986. In addition to the direct viewers, television news programs increasingly use excerpts from the televised sessions as enhancements and sources for political reporting. Televising legislatures, in short, has attracted much new attention to the process oflegislating. The innovation and diffusion of the electronic Acropolis has transformed politics in the U.S. Yet, its impact on the democratic process has attracted little notice except from a few political journalists. Our predilections as economists working in the public choice tradition led us into the analysis of several questions surrounding television: What do televised sessions provide for legislators? How are incumbent reelection bids affected? Do all incumbents benefit? How are legislative sessions changed? Has the enactment of laws been influenced? For the most part, these questions had received only cursory treatment.

Considers. S.J. Res. 2, to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to reserve to the people of each state power to determine the composition of its legislature and the apportionment of the membership thereof in accordance with law and the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. S.J. Res. 37 and S.J. Res. 38, to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to permit membership in one house of a state legislature composed of more than one house to be apportioned with the approval of the electorate upon a system other than that of equal representation. S.J. Res. 44, to amend the U.S. Constitution to permit any state to apportion one house of its legislature on factors other than population with the approval of a majority of its voters. Includes texts of Supreme Court decisions, p. 1025-1125.

The changing nature of conflict and the increase in intrastate conflict during the 1990s, followed by its slow decline since the turn of the century, have led to changing priorities in the field of conflict resolution. No longer is the international community solely concerned with resolving existing conflicts; it also is managing emerging conflicts to ensure that they do not flare into violent conflict. This book outlines some of the strategies parliaments and parliamentarians can adopt to reduce the incidence of conflict and effectively manage conflict when it does emerge. It is hoped that by.

“An excellent analysis of the complex dynamics of inclusion in post-conflict societies: theoretically grounded, empirically rich, and with a well-informed set of policy-relevant insights and recommendations with implications far beyond the cases of Kosovo and Northern Ireland.”Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham, UK “Does the promotion of political accommodation between the contending parties in an ethno-nationalist conflict disadvantage other groups in society? This important question is at the heart of Michael Potter's nuanced study of post-settlement parliaments in Kosovo and Northern Ireland, in which he probes their record of representativeness, focusing on gender and ethnicity. His meticulous research, drawing on extensive fieldwork, shows that the domination of the parliaments by parties aligned to the conflict does indeed tend to marginalise other identities. His findings provide plenty of food for thought for practitioners in the field of conflict resolution. In particular, they underline the need for care in the design of institutional arrangements for deeply divided societies, so as to minimise potentially negative consequences that priority for accommodation and reconciliation may have for other issues and for the practice of inclusion.”Adrian Guelke, Queen’s University Belfast, UK “Identity is a central organising principle of politics in the 21st century. In this impressive book Michael Potter shows that a focus on gender and minority ethnic identities in newly-formed post-conflict assemblies provides a unique litmus test of the robustness of democratic politics. He analyses the cases of Kosovo and Northern Ireland with rigour and considerable insight. This book makes a highly original and lasting contribution to theory and practice in post-conflict settings world-wide.”Yvonne Galligan, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland This book examines inclusion in post-conflict legislatures, using Northern Ireland and Kosovo as case studies and gender and minority ethnicity as indicators. The analysis uses an adapted framework developed by Yvonne Galligan and Sara Clavero to measure inclusion across a range of factors associated with deliberative democratic principles. The logic is that political systems designed to accommodate communities in conflict will prioritise certain identities over others. The aim of the book is to investigate how identities not directly associated with a conflict fare in a political system designed to manage identities in conflict. The book looks comparatively at the conflicts in Kosovo and Northern Ireland, then discusses approaches to conflict management, describing how political institutions were designed in those contexts. The themes of women and minority identities in those conflicts are then explored with a view to examining the extent of inclusion in the Northern Ireland and Kosovo Assemblies.