Annurev Polisci 9 070704 PDF

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10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.070704.170315
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2006. 9:1944

doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.070704.170315
c 2006 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
Copyright
First published online as a Review in Advance on Nov. 28, 2005
HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF LEGISLATURES

IN THE UNITED STATES
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2006.9:19-44. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org
by Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Minas Gerais on 04/02/09. For personal use only.
Peverill Squire
Department of Political Science, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242;
email: peverill-squire@uiowa.edu
Key Words colonial assemblies, state legislatures, legislative organization, rules,

committees
Abstract This paper examines the evolution of legislatures in the United States
beginning with the establishment of the first assembly in Virginia in 1619. Drawing on
works by historians, it traces the development of the colonial assemblies as legislative
institutions. The transition of assemblies to state legislatures is investigated, as is the
underappreciated impact of the first state legislatures on the rules and structures given to
the U.S. Congress in the Constitution. The effects of legislative generations are revealed
by the state legislatures established during the nineteenth century, as newer legislatures
were equipped from their start with the rules and committee systems evolved only over
time by earlier legislatures. The continuing evolution of state legislatures after the
nineteenth century is linked to the concept of legislative professionalization. Finally,
the relationship between legislative evolution and membership turnover is examined,
as is the idea that legislatures move in both directions on the evolutionary dimension.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years political scientists have generated a substantial body of literature
examining how legislatures change over time. Most of these works exclusively
examine the U.S. House of Representatives. Although they have been enormously
profitable intellectually, their focus on a single institution has stunted the development of general theories of legislative evolution because the House represents
an unusual evolutionary process, which differs in important ways even from that
observed on the other side of the capitol in the Senate. Theories devised to explain
the development of an atypical, albeit important, case are by their nature limited.
To encourage the construction of broader theories of legislative evolution, political scientists should expand their understanding of such processes beyond that
witnessed in the U.S. House.
Fortunately, a body of historical literature exists on the colonial origins of
legislatures in the United States, and there is also a growing body of work on the
legislatures in the states. The evolutionary processes undergone by the 99 state
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legislative chambers can provide the raw material from which to fashion a more
comprehensive understanding of how legislatures evolve.
Beyond the obvious advantages of massively increasing both the number of
cases to be examined and the variance in evolutionary outcomes, studying state
legislatures offers several subtle benefits. First, the evolutionary time span in some
cases is considerably longer. The original 13 state legislatures are, of course,
more than a decade older than the U.S. Congress. More importantly, because the
original state legislatures are direct descendants of their colonial predecessors,
their organizational development began well over a century before Congress was
established.
Second, examination of the evolution of state legislatures reveals the existence
of what we might consider generational effects. History shows that new legislatures
are not created from scratch. There is an important but unexamined relationship
between legislative evolution and the point in time at which a legislature is established. This connection is critical to appreciate because the experiences of existing
legislatures are incorporated into the structures and procedures of new legislatures.
The creation of legislatures across several centuries of American history allows us
to assess the impact of legislative generations on organizational evolution.
THE COLONIAL ASSEMBLIES

Scattered scholarly work on the American colonial assemblies, the forerunners of
the state legislatures, has been published during the past century. Almost all of this
research has been done by historians, who are motivated by very large questions,
as suggested by the title of the most important and informative volume on the
assemblies, Quest for Power (Greene 1963). Historians have largely focused on
explaining how the fledgling legislatures became sufficiently powerful to trigger a
successful revolution (e.g., Andrews 1944, Bailyn 1968, Greene 1963). Reporting
on the development of the assemblies organizational rules and structures is usually
incidental to answering the larger questions these historians seek to address.
The historical work on the colonial legislatures also suffers from being heavily
skewed in favor of the assemblies in the South Atlantic colonies, with more limited
attention to the assemblies in the Mid Atlantic colonies and only scant notice of
the assemblies in New England. Thus, we can learn a great deal about the Virginia
House of Burgess, some about the Pennsylvania Assembly, and almost nothing
about the New Hampshire Assembly. This is a problem for the comparative study
of legislatures because little information on the assemblies is easily gathered from
original sources. For the most part, political scientists must rely on the labor
of historians, who devote years to ferreting out data from woefully incomplete
archival sources, particularly in regard to the assemblies early histories. In his
recent study of the Virginia General Assembly in the seventeenth century, for
example, Billings (2004, p. 33) acknowledges, Little direct testimony remains
for reconstructing the organization and procedures of the House of Burgesses
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EVOLUTION OF U.S. LEGISLATURES
21
before 1650. . . . How the House chose Speakers and clerks remains hazy too.
Some flavor of politics in the assemblies and insights into legislative procedures
can be gleaned from the handful of journals kept by members, notably those of
the first speaker in Virginia, John Pory (Powell 1977), Burgess Colonel Landon
Carter (Greene 1975), and Connecticut Assemblyman William Williams (Turner
1975). Overall, however, information limitations force almost all of the existing
work on colonial assemblies to be descriptivenot easily systematized, let alone
quantified.
It is, however, essential for political scientists to learn about the development of
colonial assemblies because all 13 of the colonies that became the original states
had legislatures, and the colonists experiences with them proved invaluable in
the design of the legislative branches in the states established following independence. In a very concrete way, the colonial assemblies morphed into the first state
legislatures. And in turn it was the original state legislatures, and not the Congress
under the Articles of Confederation, that influenced the structures and rules of the
Congress created by the Constitution (Lutz 1999, Squire & Hamm 2005).
Table 1 shows the basic organizational outlines of the colonial assemblies and
their successor lower houses in the original state legislatures. Because each of
the lower chambers in the original states developed out of its colonial-assembly
predecessor, the original 13 legislatures have evolved over much longer time frames
than either house of Congress. In Virginia, the most extreme case, the lower house
of the state legislature has been in continuous existence 170 years longer than
Congress.
Representative assemblies emerged in each of the colonies within a decade
or two of their coming under English controlexcept for New York, where the
process took considerably longereven though the colonies were settled and populated by different groups of people at different points in time for different reasons
(Greene 1994, p. 23; Kammen 1969, pp. 1112). But assemblies arose for many
reasons. In Virginia, for example, the assembly first met in 1619 because the
commercial directors of the colony hoped it would be a mechanism to promote
desperately needed economic and social stability (Billings 2004, p. 6; Kammen
1969, pp. 1315; Kukla 1985, p. 284.) Assemblies in Maryland, Massachusetts,
and Connecticut were rooted in their early charters, but the initiative for their development came from the colonists (Kammen 1969, p. 19). Assemblies founded
after the 1650s were established by proprietary boards that saw them as necessary
structures for the development of successful societies (Kammen 1969, p. 32).
It is important to recognize that the colonial assemblies were established
throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century. They were
not, in any simple sense, modeled on the English system of government that developed after the Glorious Revolution because many of them originated before
then, while the English system was in the process of change, particularly in regard
to Parliaments role (Kammen 1969, pp. 5455; Norton 1989). Arguably, the legislatures established in colonial America actually had more in common with the
English system of the Tudor period than with that of the time after the Glorious
1704
1755
New York
Delaware
Georgia
12
18
18
18
42
11
10
20
1691
1755
1691
1692
1672
1691
25
18
27
36
34
24
51
81
65
58
138
125
118
Unicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Unicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Bicameral
Cameral status
established in first
state constitution
90
21
70
78
Variable
39
199
70
55
80
200
Variable
126
1 year
1 year
1 year
1 year
1 year
1 year
2 years
1 year
6 months
1 year
6 months
1 year
1 year
Lower house
term of office
established in
first state
constitution
Maryland might have had an assembly as early as 1635 (Barker 1940, p. 155).
Pennsylvania was bicameral from its first assembly in 1682 until a new charter in 1701 instituted a unicameral system.
New Jersey was separated into East Jersey and West Jersey in 1676. The two parts were reunited in 1702, and the first reunited assembly met in 1703 with 24 representatives, 12 from each
region.
b
A few constitutions provided explicit membership sizes. Most have to be calculated using the number of counties in each state (or towns in the case of most New England states) at the time
the particular constitution was adopted.
a
Sources: For Delaware: Bushman et al. (1986), Conrad (1908, pp. 7879), and Munroe (1979, 72); for Georgia: Jones (1883, pp. 46365) and Gosnell & Anderson (1956, p. 14); for New
Jersey: Moran (1895, pp. 3334). On the colonies in general, see Kammen (1969, pp. 1112), Frothingham (1886, pp. 1821), and Greene (1981, p. 461). On the states see the constitutions;
also, for Connecticut, Purcell (1918, pp. 18889); for Rhode Island, Bartlett (1863) and Polishook (1969, pp. 2223).
1682
1683
Pennsylvaniae
1668
1680
New Hampshire
South Carolina
1696
1650
1698
1644
pre-1660
Assembly
member-ship
size 1770
Lower house
membership
size established
in first state
constitutionb
ANRV276-PL09-02.tex
New Jerseyd
1665
1671
North Carolina
1647
Rhode Island
24
24
1638c
Maryland
24
12
1634
1637
22
Connecticut
Virginia
Year assembly
became chamber
in bicameral
legislature
AR
Massachusetts
1619
Colony/state
Initial
assembly
membership
size
Evolutionary outlines of original legislatures in the United Statesa
22
Year assembly
established
TABLE 1

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Revolution (Huntington 1968, pp. 10921). Yet, despite emerging at different times
and for different reasons, the assemblies came to resemble one another in fundamental ways (Greene 1961, pp. 45354; Kammen 1969, pp. 58, 69). As Kammen
(1969, p. 58) observes, In all of them. . .the time-honored cliches about counsel
and consent, advice and assent, taxation and representation have astonishing validity. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the assemblies had developed
into recognizable legislative organizations (Kammen 1969, p. 57). They became,
in Polsbys (1975, p. 277) term, transformative bodies, capable of initiating and
substantially altering policy proposals in the law-making process.
The early assemblies began as rudimentary organizations with little or nothing in the way of the rules, organization, and facilities associated with modern
legislatures. Indeed, the first assemblies had to differentiate themselves from the
other entities of government in the most fundamental of ways. In simple terms,
the governmental form for the colonies consisted of a governor, a council, and a
general assembly (Morey 18931894, p. 204). The Crown or proprietor in all but
two casesConnecticut and Rhode Islandappointed the governor and councilors, and the general assembly consisted of all of the colonys freemen. Each
of these governing unitsthe governor, the councilors, and the assemblywas a
distinct entity. But in the earliest colonies, they were for all intents and purposes
undifferentiated in terms of power and made most policy decisions collectively
in what was typically called the General Court. The assemblies, however, rapidly
evolved into representative bodies as it became geographically impracticable for
all freemen to participate in their sessions (Haynes 1894, pp. 2223; Morey 1893
1894, pp. 2069; Young 1968, p. 154). Each town or county came to elect one,
two, or occasionally three representatives to speak on their behalf in the general
court (Klain 1955, pp. 111213).
The Rise of Bicameralism

Another institutional development involved the rise of bicameralism. Two house
legislatures emerged in the colonies from what were essentially unicameral bodies
as a result of the distinction between councilors (appointed agents of the Crown
or corporation) and representatives (elected agents of the colonies freemen). The
council and the general assembly apparently first became separate chambers in
Massachusetts in 1644 (Kammen 1969, pp. 2223; Morey 18931894, p. 212).
On this seemingly straightforward point, however, the frustrations of dealing with
limited historical information become apparent. It is not always clear from existing
records when bicameral systems emerged in each of the colonies. In Virginia, for
example, Walthoe (1910, p. 1) suggests the legislature became bicameral not long
after 1628; Kukla (1985, p. 289) claims the split occurred in 1643; and Frothingham
(1886, p. 19) and Miller (1907) conclude that separate chambers did not appear
until the 1680s. One author actually provides two answers, initially placing the
split around the 1680s (Billings 1974, p. 234) and later revising it to 1642 or 1643
(Billings 2004, pp. 2728).
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Even in Massachusetts, where scholars agree when the split occurred, the actual
process by which the legislature became bicameral is somewhat murky. Through
the early 1630s, the councilors and the elected members of the assembly developed conflicting interests and priorities. The highest-profile policy disagreement
concerned the disposition of a legal case involving a pig, leading Kammen (1969,
p. 22) to declare that a silly dispute over a stray sow produced a permanent separation and bicameralism. In 1636 a working arrangement was reached between
the council and the assembly, the language of which indicates the beginnings of a
bicameral legislature and even the advent of conference committees (Morey 1893
1894, pp. 21213). The division between the councilors and the representatives
became permanent in 1644, when it was agreed that the two would sit apart and
that bills proposed and passed by one body would be sent to the other body, and
both would have to consent for a bill to become law (Kammen 1969, pp. 2223;
Morey 18931894, p. 213).
The movement toward bicameralism in the other colonies did not follow the
same course of events as in Massachusetts. It took almost 50 years of agitation on
the part of Rhode Islands freemen to gain a bicameral legislature in that colony
(Moran 1895, pp. 2226). In Connecticut, a process of separate consideration of
legislation evolved over the last quarter of the seventeenth century even though few
issues divided the councilors and the representatives. In 1698 a law was passed
formally designating the council as the upper house and the assembly as the
lower house and requiring that all laws have the approval of both chambers
(Morey 18931894, pp. 21314). In Maryland, a formal separation of the two
bodies first occurred in 1650, but unicameralism returned briefly in the mid-1650s,
and only from 1660 on was the assembly permanently bicameral (Falb 1986,
pp. 4659; Jordan 1987, pp. 2633).
Overall, the evolutionary path to bicameral systems varied across the colonies,
and in many cases the process was inchoate. As documented in Table 1, bicameralism became the norm; but before concluding that the rise of bicameralism
was unidirectional, it is worth pointing out that Pennsylvania followed a contrary
course, starting with a bicameral legislature in 1682 and switching to a unicameral
system with its new charter in 1701. And the Delaware Assembly, which separated
from the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1704, was a unicameral body throughout its
colonial history.
The Development of Rules and Procedures

The development of decision-making rules and procedures in the assemblies provides evidence of the effects of older legislatures on newly established ones. For
the most part, the first assemblies imported legislative rules and procedures from
the British Parliament (Greene 1969, pp. 34547; Johnson 1987, pp. 35051;
Pargellis 1927a, p. 83, 1927b, p. 156). In Virginia, for example, Speaker Porys
previous service in the House of Commons greatly informed the Burgesses initial
set of rules (Billings 2004, pp.78). Over time, however, the assemblies adopted
increasingly sophisticated rules and procedures of their own devising, significantly
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different from those used in Parliament (Barker 1940, pp. 15760; Sirmans 1966,
p. 69). The rules devised in the older colonial assemblies became models for
those in the newer assemblies. Greene (1961, p. 458), for example, found a conscious borrowing of precedents and traditions. Younger bodies such as the Georgia
Commons. . .were particularly indebted to their more mature counterparts in South
Carolina and Massachusetts Bay.
Quorum rules are an example of this evolution. They were universally adopted
and over time became more complex. Most assemblies devised two quorums: a
higher standard for transacting business and a lower one for adjournment (Bassett
1894; Clarke 1943, p. 175; Sirmans 1966, p. 68). Additional quorum requirements
were concocted for specific issues. New Jersey, for example, imposed a higher
quorum when voting on taxes; in 1772 only 20 members needed to be present for
most business, but 24 members had to attend for anything having to do with raising
revenues (Luce 1922, p. 26). The opportunities for strategic mischief afforded by
quorum rules were well understood by colonial politicians. In 1748 the South
Carolina governor complained (Greene 1963, p. 217), A Party of pleasure made
by a few of the Members renders it often impossible for the rest to enter upon
Business, and sometimes I Have seen a Party made to go out of Town purposely
to break the House as they call it. . .and in this manner to prevent the Success of
what they could not otherwise oppose.
Other legislative procedures also became increasingly intricate. Rules in
Virginia evolved to the point that by 1750 four different devices existed by which
a Burgess could strategically delay consideration of a measure: moving to adjourn
during a debate, moving that the orders of the day be read, moving the previous
question, and offering amendments (Pargellis 1927b, pp. 15253). The use of a
rule to move the previous question in the House of Burgesses is particularly noteworthy because of the role that procedure plays in later party-based theories of
legislative evolution. And the rule did not just appear in Virginia; Leder (1963,
p. 679) refers to its use in New York.
The Development of Standing Committees

Initially, the assemblies relied exclusively on ad hoc committees. Eventually, however, most assemblies established standing committees to handle recurring matters
of importance (Bushman et al. 1986; Cook 1931, pp. 123, 266; Frakes 1970; Harlow
1917, pp. 123; Jameson 1894, pp. 26167; Leonard 1948, pp. 23738; Pargellis
1927a, pp. 8486, 1927b, pp. 14345; Ryerson 1986, p. 114). Subcommittees even
came into use in Pennsylvania and Virginia (Olson 1992, p. 560). Nowhere, however, did standing committees completely supplant ad hoc committees. This reform
is an example of the layering of a new process atop an existing one (Schickler 2001,
pp. 25254).
The standing committee system in Virginia became particularly well developed
and functioned much like those in modern American legislatures. The six standing
committees in the House of Burgesses were vigorous, hard-working groups, actively engaged in legislative work and empowered to frame and amend legislation
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before it was sent to the chambers floor (Harlow 1917, pp. 14, 1617). By 1750
procedures were so routinized that petitions presented to the House were quickly
referred to the appropriate standing committees (Bailey 1979, p. 29; Greene 1965,
p. 79; Harlow 1917, pp. 1415).
Although Virginias standing committee system was clearly the most elaborate
among the colonial assemblies, by 1770 all but Connecticut, New Hampshire, and
Rhode Island had at least one standing committee. North Carolina and Pennsylvania each had four. And even in South Carolina, which had only two standing
committees, they still became the primary centers of legislative power by the middle
of the eighteenth century (Frakes 1970, p. 84). That standing committees disappeared in Parliament while their numbers and importance grew in the assemblies is
compelling evidence that colonial legislative systems evolved independently from
that of the parent country (Jameson 1894, pp. 25961).
Variations in Procedures and Structures

Here again, however, the urge to see these general evolutionary processes as universal should be resisted. Not every colonial assembly adopted increasingly sophisticated rules and procedures. In Massachusetts, for example, legislative rules
were interpreted with great flexibility (Zemsky 1971, pp. 1521). And unusual
norms governed floor procedures in some chambers. For example, because Quakers dominated the Pennsylvania Assembly, its legislative sessions were strikingly
similar to Friends meetings. Perhaps as late as the 1770s (Tully 1977, p. 95), Silences were common as members waited for inspiration to speak, and when debate
was done the Speaker might simply declare the sense of the House rather than call
for a vote. Overall, however, Olsons (1992, p. 559) generalization holds: The
loose organization, informal procedure, and lax approach to law making that had
characterized [colonial] legislatures at the beginning of the [eighteenth] century
gradually gave way to tighter organization. . . .
It is worth emphasizing that the strategic calculations of political parties do
not explain the evolutionary patterns found in the assemblies. Organized political
parties did not exist during the colonial period, and the factions that did arise in
many assemblies were almost always ephemeral in nature. Only Rhode Island
developed anything akin to the modern American party system, with two ongoing
factions that drew up lists of candidates, circulated them, spent large sums of
money on campaigns. . .and rewarded the faithful with office (Main 1973, p. 5). At
the other extreme, Main (1973, p. 11) states, Far from producing parties, Virginia
scarcely produced factions. Greene (1979, p. 40) concurs, claiming Virginia had
no organized parties, factions, clientage system or bureaucracy. If parties drive
legislative evolution, Rhode Island ought to have produced the most developed
colonial assembly and Virginia the least developed. The historical record, however,
suggests the opposite relationship.
The literature reveals that by the time of the Revolution, colonial legislatures
had evolved into complex law-making bodies. They adopted increasingly complex
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rules, developed standing committee systems, and took on many other features
usually associated with modern legislatures. Indeed, the assemblies evolved much
like the U.S. House did more than a century later (Squire 2005).

THE FIRST AMERICAN STATE LEGISLATURES

Surprisingly, far less scholarly work has focused on the original state legislatures
than on the colonial assemblies. This is curious because they not only represent
a potentially new generation of legislatures but also were important precursors to
the Congress created by the Constitution. Yet, as Onufs (1994) review reveals,
virtually no attention has been given to the organization or procedures of these
legislatures. Most of what little we know is gathered directly from legislative
provisions contained in the revolutionary-era constitutions.
The lack of contextual information is unfortunate because in an important sense
the writing of constitutionsan activity in which all but Connecticut and Rhode
Island, which only lightly amended their colonial charters, engagedpresented
the states with the opportunity to start with clean slates in terms of governmental
institutions. That they apparently chose not to wipe the slates clean and instead
maintained many of their existing structures is, perhaps, to be expected. After all,
as colonies the states had enjoyed considerable experience with self-government,
and many of their institutions had evolved in response to local conditions and
demands. The states were comfortable with their existing institutions, particularly
their assemblies.
It is worth noting that nine of the eleven states that wrote constitutions opted for
bicameral legislatures. (In addition, both Connecticut and Rhode Island maintained
their bicameral systems.) In most states, there was little serious consideration
of the number of houses because they simply continued the existing bicameral
systems. Moreover, bicameralism was the prevailing institutional design theory of
the time (Selsam 1936, p. 184). The question of the proper number of houses had,
however, been raised in two significant revolutionary-era publications: Thomas
Paine favored unicameral legislatures in Common Sense, and John Adams defended
bicameral legislatures in Thoughts on Government. And the topic was debated in
a few states. Supporters of bicameral systems argued that unicameral legislatures
would be unchecked and therefore too powerful and that they would act without
sufficient deliberation (Adams 1980, pp. 26465). John Adams argument was
persuasive in most places, but in Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklins reasoning in
favor of maintaining unicameralism carried the day (Fisher 1897, p. 80; Selsam
1936, pp. 18586). Franklin said that a bicameral legislature was like hitching one
horse in front of a cart and hitching another horse behind it, so that the horses are
pulling in opposite directions (Selsam 1936, p. 186). Pennsylvanias constitution
influenced those subsequently adopted in Georgia and Vermont (the latter wrote a
constitution in 1777, but did not become the fourteenth state until 1791), both of
which also created unicameral legislatures (Moran 1895, p. 53).
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In terms of organizational evolution, the universal inclination at the moment of

independence was to maintain the structures of the existing assemblies more or
less as they were. The new constitutions made few changes to the lower houses, in
large part because their earlier colonial manifestations were already republican in
nature (Morey 18931894, p. 220). As Colvin (1913, p. 31) describes for the case
of New York and Beeman (1972, p. 44) describes for Virginia, the new generation
of legislatures greatly resembled the previous generation.
But there were some differences (Squire & Hamm, pp. 1928). Perhaps the
most noticeable change in most of the new lower houses in state legislatures was
an increase in the number of seats compared to their colonial predecessors, as
shown in Table 1 (Harlow 1917, p. 63; Main 1966; Lutz 1999, pp. 6566). The
increases were an effort to make the chambers more representative, and most
of the new seats came from previously unrepresented towns and inland areas
(Main 1966, p. 404; Zagarii 1987, pp. 4243). Seats were generally apportioned
on the basis of counties and cities as they had been in the colonial assemblies, and
consequently, membership sizes increased as states added new counties and cities.
But a few states, notably those with the largest populations, began to experiment
with representation based not on geographic unit but rather on equal population
(Zagarii 1987, pp. 3646). Because only a few constitutions provided explicit
membership sizes for their new legislative chambers, most have to be calculated
using the number of counties in the state at the time the constitution was adopted.
Thus, the exact membership size in some chambers is debatable. The smallest
chamber was Delawares with 21 members; the largest was South Carolinas with
200 members.
Changes in the new upper houses were, of course, more dramatic because
almost all of them had to be converted to elected bodies from appointed ones.
The upper house in each state had fewer seats than its lower house. Their sizes
ranged from nine members in Delaware to 40 members in Massachusetts. Most
were apportioned on the basis of counties, regardless of populations. Upper house
members in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia were to be elected from newly
designed electoral districts.
Unlike most of the upper houses in the other colonies, upper houses in New
Hampshire and in South Carolina in its interim 1776 constitution were elected by
the members of the lower house. Initially in South Carolina, lower house members
elected upper house members from their own ranks. The vacancies created in
the lower house were then, in turn, refilled through special elections (Green 1930,
p. 87). Massachusetts instituted a variation on that system. In Senate districts where
no candidate secured a majority, the members of the House and those senators who
won election selected the senator from among the top candidates who had run.
Maryland created a unique system. Upper house members were elected through
an electoral college. Voters elected electorstwo from each county and one each
from Annapolis and Baltimorewho then elected the 15 members of the Senate.
There is evidence that this electoral college was the inspiration for the system
adopted for presidential selection in the federal Constitution (Slonim 1986, p. 38).
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Overall, the smaller sizes and occasionally different electoral systems suggest that
the new upper houses were intended to retain some of the aristocratic qualities of
their colonial predecessors and not to be thoroughly democratic institutions (Main
1967, p. 188).
The new constitutions also set term lengths. Almost all of the lower houses
followed the colonial tradition of one-year terms. There were a few deviations.
Connecticut and Rhode Island maintained their six-month terms (Webster 1897,
p. 75), and South Carolina gave its lower house members two-year terms in both of
its revolutionary constitutions. According to Bryce (1906, p. 147), a one-year term
was maintained because it was [s]o essential to republicanism. . .that the maxim
where annual elections end tyranny begins had passed into a proverb. One-year
terms were justified by the belief that they would allow voters to keep elected
officials close to home and to replace them quickly if necessary (Adams 1980,
pp. 24344; Luce 1924, pp. 10910). The only term limits imposed on any state
legislature were in Pennsylvania, where members could serve only four one-year
terms in any seven-year period.
Terms in the upper houses were more variable. One-year terms were found in
four states. South Carolina gave its upper house members two-year terms, matching
those granted to members of its lower house. In four states, upper house members
were given longer tenures. Senators in Maryland were given the longest terms,
five years, all on the same electoral cycle. Upper house members in New York and
Virginia had four-year terms, and those in Delaware three-year terms. In each of
these three cases the terms were staggered, so that one quarter of the Senate seats
in New York and Virginia and one third of the council seats in Delaware were up
for election each year.
EVOLUTIONARY IMPACT OF STATE LEGISLATURES ON

CONGRESS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION
Current accounts of the development of the Congress created by the Constitution
tend to overemphasize contrasts with the Congress under the Articles of Confederation and neglect comparisons with the state legislatures (e.g., Stewart 2001,
pp. 6871). The design of the constitutional Congress owes much more to the
state legislatures it than to its predecessor Congress under the Articles (Lutz 1999,
Squire & Hamm 2005). That the founders drew on the state legislative experience
in writing the Constitution should not be surprising because of the 39 men who
signed it, 19 had served in colonial legislatures and 32 had served in state legislatures (Squire & Hamm 2005, p. 19). Yet, the similarity is somewhat ironic because
many of the men who wrote the Constitution, notably James Madison and George
Mason, held state legislatures in low regard, feeling they wielded too much power
(Riker 1984, pp. 24).
The most obvious similarity between the first state legislatures and Congress
was the number of houses. Like 11 of the 13 state legislatures, the constitutional
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Congress was bicameralthe Congress under the Articles had been unicameral.
Indeed, in Article 1, section 2, the Constitution implicitly accepts bicameralism
as the norm: and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite
for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. Additionally,
the two houses created by the Constitution were given the names most commonly
used in the states (Squire & Hamm 2005, pp. 2225).
The initial size of the U.S. House of Representatives was roughly in line with
many of the state lower houses, and its members were to be elected by the same
people allowed to vote for the lower state house representatives (Squire & Hamm
2005, p. 29). Its method of apportionment was much like that for the lower houses
in New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. The U.S. Senate was created
considerably smaller than the House, as were the state senates in comparison
to their lower houses. Equal representation of states was equivalent to the equal
representation of counties used in state senates in Delaware, New Jersey, and North
Carolina. Having the state legislatures elect the U.S. Senate was similar to indirect
elections for the upper house in Maryland, New Hampshire, and South Carolina
under its initial revolutionary constitution.
The U.S. Senate was given longer terms than the U.S. House; upper houses in
four states had longer terms than their lower houses (Squire & Hamm 2005, p. 29).
U. S. senators were to serve six-year terms, longer than any upper house terms in the
states. U.S. senators terms, however, were three times longer than representatives,
as were those for Delawares upper house members. And, although all but one state
legislature had only one-year terms for the members of their lower housesas the
Congress under the Articles didSouth Carolina gave its representatives the same
two-year terms that members of the U.S. House were granted.
Other significant provisions of the U.S. Constitution appear in earlier manifestations in the original state constitutions. One notable example is the provisions
allowing each house to adopt its own rules and to select its own leaders, a power that
is of considerable importance in current explanations of how the modern Congress
developed (Stewart 2001, pp. 6768). The constitutional powers governing the internal organization of Congress were grounded in the colonial and state legislative
experiences. Generally, the Crown allowed the colonial assemblies to develop their
own rules and procedures (Greene 1963, pp. 21619). And although control over
the selection of the speaker was occasionally a source of conflict, the assemblies
usually succeeded in getting their own candidates (Greene 1963, pp. 2067, 429
31; Wendel 1986, p. 173). State legislatures were given explicit authority to select
their own leaders in ten state constitutions and to devise their own rules in five
constitutions. The rule-making power was first incorporated in the Virginia constitution, although there is no record of why it was included (Castello 1986, p. 529).
The leadership-selection and rule-making provisions put in the U.S. Constitution
are like those in the state constitutions. Indeed, Hinds (1909, p. 156) states, There
was no debate whatever over the clause of the Constitution which provides that
the house shall choose its speaker and other officers. There was very good reason
for this. That clause was taken from the State constitutions adopted in 1776. . . .
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A second important provision involves the power to originate tax legislation.

The idea that money bills, as they were called, originate in the lower house was
well rooted in English parliamentary history (Taswell-Langmead 1946, pp. 208
9). Colonial assemblies made similar claims for exclusive origination privileges
early in their histories, and most achieved them without much resistance from
the governor or the council (Cook 1931, p. 121; Greene 1963, pp. 5171; Miller
1907, pp. 15759). The majority of the new state constitutions continued the tradition by granting the lower house exclusive rights to initiate tax legislation; New
Hampshires was the first to formally provide that authority (Fisher 1897, p. 73).
Most, but not all, states followed New Hampshires lead (Squire & Hamm 2005,
pp. 3132). During the national Constitutional Convention, there was considerable debate over the origination powers, and as part of the Great (or Connecticut)
Compromise, exclusive origination powers were granted to the House of Representatives (Galloway 1961, p. 3). The next question concerned the ability of the
Senate to amend tax bills passed by the House. Most state constitutions forbade
the upper house from amending tax bills. The Constitutional Convention, however,
opted for the process established in Delaware and Massachusetts, where tax bills
originated in the lower house but the upper house could amend them. Indeed, the
language in the U.S. Constitution is virtually identical to that in the Massachusetts
constitution.
Overall, the U.S. Congress and the original state legislatures were in many
ways more evolved institutions at their inception than were their predecessor colonial assemblies. Unlike the assemblies, many of Congress and the state legislatures essential characteristicsbeing bicameral and being a separate branch, for
examplewere granted at their outset. Similarly, many of the rules and structures
given to Congress and the original state legislatures by their constitutions had been
developed only over time by their predecessor assemblies. Thus, although this point
is not well recognized in the literature, Congress and the original state legislatures
did not start as primitive organizations; they were created well along in institutional development. But the fact that Congress and the original state legislatures
shared the same institutional roots and were so similar organizationally at their
start raises an interesting question. How and why did they evolve so differently
over the next two centuries?
LEGISLATIVE EVOLUTION IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY
As is the case with the original state legislatures, there is remarkably little scholarship on state legislatures in the nineteenth century. A spate of work by historians
appeared in the 1970s, almost all of it studies of legislative roll-call voting that
built on similar works in political science (Shade 1994, Silbey 1981, Thompson
& Silbey 1985). But, as Silbey (1983, p. 617) admits, historians [working on this
era] have not expended much effort on questions about the internal workings and
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structural influences of legislatures. . . . Thus, political scientists interested in the

organizational evolution of state legislatures in the nineteenth century are again left
to comb through historical studies on tangential topics or to slog through original
sources.
The number of American legislatures, of course, increased substantially during
the nineteenth century. Twenty-nine of them were created between 1803 and 1896.
All were established as bicameral bodies, because it was widely thought at the
time that a second house prevented, or at least slowed down, the passage of bad
legislation (Scalia 1999, p. 107). (The Georgia and Pennsylvania legislatures had
become bicameral when the states adopted new constitutions in 1789 and 1790
respectively. Vermont continued with its unicameral legislature until 1836.) Other
changes were forced on state legislatures from the outside, mostly by disaffected
political elites and electorates disgusted by the legislatures perceived abuse of
power. Thus, as state constitutions got revised or replaced, provisions were adopted
that required specific legislative procedures and constrained the policy-making
process (Squire & Hamm 2005, pp. 3539).
Most of the legislatures created in the nineteenth century originated as territorial bodies, established in primitive settings. In Roughing It, Mark Twain (1996
[1872], pp. 18788) provides an account of the facilities used by the first territorial assembly in Nevada: [a local businessman] offered his large stone building
just outside the capital limits. . . . He also furnished pine benches and chairs for
the legislature, and covered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and
spittoon combined. . . . A canvas petition to separate the Senate from the House
of Representatives was put up by the Secretary. And befitting their rudimentary
facilities, these new legislatures were often wild and woolly places. For example,
during the inaugural session of the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1837,
Speaker of the House John Wilson and Representative Joseph Anthony became so
enraged with each other during a banking-bill debate that Wilson left the speakers
chair and lunged for Anthony on the house floor. In the ensuing scuffle both men
drew hunting knives and Wilson stabbed Anthony to death (Whayne et al. 2002,
p. 113). And the first session of the California legislature in 1849 was labeled the
Legislature of a Thousand Drinks, because at the end of each daily session the
chair of the senate finance committee would encourage his colleagues to adjourn
to the whisky kegs he kept stashed just outside the legislative hall and to take a
thousand drinks. With only some hyperbole, it was said that Californias first legislators appeared in the legislative halls with revolvers and bowie knives fastened
to their belts and were drinking, rioting, and swearing nearly all the time (Ellison
1950, pp. 75, 76).
But legislative records reveal that even with primitive amenities and illmannered members, organizationally the new legislatures were anything but rudimentary. The designers of the new state legislatures in the nineteenth century
modeled their institutions on those that already existed. The generational impact
of older legislatures on newer ones can be demonstrated in two areas: committee
systems and rules of procedure.
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Standing Committee Systems as Standard Features

Relatively little has been written about the development of committee systems in
state legislatures. The available scraps of information suggest their development
generally parallels that in Congress, or even precedes it in a few cases. It is not
clear, however, to what extent standing committee systems carried over to the new
state legislatures from the colonial period, and some evolutionary gaps appear. According to Harlow (1917, p. 66), in Massachusetts standing committees appeared
in 1777, and a fairly elaborate system had developed by 1790. Standing committees were a prominent part of the South Carolina legislative system by 1791,
and they were also found in Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. Dodds
(1918, pp. 3637) reports that in 1800 there were seven standing committees in the
New York Assembly, a number that increased to 29 by 1830 as committees were
given the authority to introduce legislation. In Pennsylvania, standing committees
were in existence by 1813 and institutionalized in the rules by 1827 (Dodds 1918,
p. 37).
The experience in New Jersey may have been typical of the original state legislatures. By 1830, the New Jersey Assembly operated with five standing committees:
Incidental Expenses, Rules, Support, Taxes, and Unfinished Business. Within ten
years, additional standing committees were created to handle legislative matters
on agriculture, corporations, education, elections, judicial proceedings, the militia,
military pensions, and finances. The majority party almost always held the greater
part of the seats on the standing committees, and the committees chair was usually
an Assembly veteran. Such experience was useful, because committees played an
important role in the legislative process. Although they did not have gatekeeping
powersall bills were brought to the floorevery bill had to go to a committee,
and once it was brought to the full chamber, committee members reported their
findings (Levine 1977, pp. 4650).
Importantly for the evolutionary story, state legislatures established after the
revolutionary era appear to have adopted a standing committee system either at
their inception or quickly thereafter. Legislative journals provide no evidence of
standing committees in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1815, but by 1832
they reveal 14 standing committees. Even newer legislatures took less time to
institute the practice. Standing committees appeared in Illinois by the second
assembly (Davis 1988, p. 104), and they were introduced early in the Indiana
legislatures history (Walsh 1987, p. 93).
State legislatures created in the middle of the nineteenth century instituted
standing committee systems from their start. In Iowa, for example, there were 15
standing committees in the House and 16 in the Senate during the legislatures first
session in 1846 (Briggs 1916, pp. 8889; Horack 1916). Moreover, the standing
committee system was actually a continuation of the system established in the
first Iowa territorial legislature in 18381839 (Briggs 1916, pp. 3637). Standing
committees also were part of the California legislatures initial session in 1849
(Bancroft 1888, pp. 31517; Goodwin 1914, p. 262), as well as the first session
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of the Texas Senate in 1845 (Spaw 1990, pp. 170). Clearly, standing committee
systems had become standard in American legislatures by the 1840s.

Complex Rules and Procedures as Standard Features

The lineage of rules and procedures is somewhat more complicated to determine,
but the evidence suggests that newer legislatures got them from older legislatures.
As noted earlier, for example, the initial colonial assemblies imported their procedures from the British House of Commons, and assemblies that were established
later tended to rely on their older counterparts for rules. Among state legislatures created in the nineteenth century, figuring out the development of rules is
challenging. According to McConachie (1898, p. 367), for example, in Illinois:
In 1818, the backwoodsmen of French Kaskaskia had small store of experience, and maybe but one exemplar in the way of books, the journals and annals
of Congress. Appended to the former they fortunatelyor unfortunately
found the rules of the national House, from which both chambers clipped out
blocks of regulations almost word for word.
An examination of the rules in the Indiana legislature provides a more complex,
yet consistent story (Walsh 1987, p. 92): The first general assemblies drew their
rules from those adopted by the House of Representatives during the first territorial
assembly in Indiana in 1805. These were in turn based upon rules adopted by the
first session of the House of Representatives of the Northwest Territory in 1799.
The rules of the Northwest Territory House were direct descendents of the rules
developed during the first session of the U.S. House.
Several decades later, legislative procedures in the newly established Iowa territorial legislature were again rooted in the rules used by other legislatures. In the
Councilthe upper house of the territorial legislaturemembers used Jeffersons
Manual, written when Thomas Jefferson was president of the Senate and based on
British precedents, as the source for legislative rules and procedures in their first
session. The Council members formally recognized those rules as governing their
procedures in their second session (Briggs 1916, p. 40). In both the first territorial
House and Council, committees were appointed to devise the rules under which
they would operate. After the initial sessions, committees in each chamber simply
revised the rules used in the previous session, often making few or no changes
(Briggs 1916, p. 41).
During Iowas transition from territory to state, legislative procedure essentially
carried over unchanged. On the third day of the first meeting of the state House
of Representatives, the Committee on Rules of Order recommended adoption
of the rules of the territorial House, with the simple change of striking out the
word territorial where it appeared and replacing it with the word state. The
Committee also recommended the use of Jeffersons Manual for parliamentary
rules. All of the Committees recommendations were adopted the following day.
Similarly, in the new state Senate, the territorial rules of procedure were adopted
with few modifications. And, of course, over time the rules continued to change.
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The Iowa House replaced Jeffersons Manual with Cushings Manual in 1888, and
then began using Roberts Rules of Order in 1913 (Briggs 1916, p. 96).1
Not all rules and procedures are hard to trace. The rules for both houses of
the Confederate Congress, for example, were lifted almost completely from the
rules governing the U.S. Congress (Jenkins 1999, pp. 114950). But the important
point in regard to the evolution of committee systems and rules and procedures
is that more recent generations of legislatures come prepackaged with them. The
evolutionary processes undergone by earlier legislatures in these areas are skipped.
STATE LEGISLATIVE EVOLUTION IN THE TWENTIETH

CENTURY AND AFTER
Not surprisingly, considerably more work on state legislatures in the last century
has appeared than on earlier periods. Almost all of it has been done by political
scientists, and most has concentrated on the period after the reform era of the
1960s and 1970s. This literature is well documented in surveys by Jewell (1981),
Moncrief et al. (1996), and Clucas (2003). But although there has been a wide
range of studies, relatively few have examined legislative evolution from a dynamic perspective. We can, however, gather relevant information on legislative
development from a prominent line of research on the states: professionalization.
Legislative Professionalization
Professionalization measures are intended to assess legislative capacity to generate and digest information in the policy-making process. Legislatures deemed
professional meet in unlimited sessions, provide superior staff resources, and pay
members well enough to allow them to pursue service as their vocation. It is important to note that a professionalized body does not have to be a career body,
whose members want and expect to serve for many years. Even when professionalization standards are met, members may opt to serve for only short periods, as
in California even before the imposition of term limits (Squire 1988a,b, 1992a).
Over the past three decades, a number of professionalization measures have
been developed (e.g., Berry et al. 2000; Carey et al. 2000; Citizens Conference on
State Legislatures 1971; Grumm 1971; King 2000; Squire 1992b, 2000). In general,
these indices are composed of three components: level of member remuneration,
staff support, and time demands of service. Despite some differences in the details,
1
Luther Cushing was a clerk for the Massachusetts House. His manual, first published in
1845, was designed to be useful for the nations burgeoning voluntary associations. A similar
motive prompted Henry Martyn Robert, an Army officer, to publish his manual in 1876
(Doyle 1980, Levmore 1989). Today the majority of state legislatures, including Iowas, use
Masons Manual of Legislative Procedure, first compiled in 1931 by Paul Mason for the
California state Senate and designed for state legislatures, to resolve situations not covered
by the rules that each has accumulated over the years.
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these measures produce consistent state rankings (Berkman 2001, p. 675; Maestas
2003, p. 448; Mooney 1994) and match up well with qualitative assessments
(Hamm & Moncrief 2004, p. 158).
The evolution of state legislatures is linked to professionalization. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of state legislatures were very
similar to each other, with low levels of professionalization. They paid their members little, met for relatively few days, and had no staff. Over the next century,
substantial differences emerged across the states (Squire & Hamm 2005). A few
states, all with large populations, made their legislatures well-paid, full-time bodies with large staffs, much like the U.S. Congress. Most legislatures improved their
lot, at least a little, but some failed to change much at all (King 2000; Mooney
1995; Squire 1992b, 2000).
The process of professionalization has a profound impact on the internal arrangements adopted by legislatures. As bodies become more professionalized, for
example, committee systems change more frequently (Freeman & Hedlund 1993),
power becomes less centralized in the hands of leaders (Squire 1988a,b, 1992a),
and the efficiency of bill processing increases (Squire 1998). Leadership styles are
less collaborative (Rosenthal 1998) and career paths to the speakership are less
well defined (Freeman 1995) in more professionalized chambers.
STATE LEGISLATURES AND INSIGHTS ON LEGISLATIVE

EVOLUTION
The possibility that over time legislatures travel both directions on the evolutionary
path is suggested by Hibbing (1999, p. 156). The deprofessionalization of state
legislatures over the past two decades (Brace & Ward 1999, Rosenthal 1996) may
be a recent example of this phenomenon, and there are others. Norms governing
member floor behavior, for example, developed in the colonial assemblies (Squire
& Hamm 2005, p. 18), then largely disappeared in the early U.S. House, only
to reemerge again in the late nineteenth century (Polsby 1968). And in Georgia
(DeBats 1990, p. 438) and New York (Gunn 1988, p. 76)the two state legislatures
for which such data have been collectedby the time of the Civil War speakers of
the house had considerably less experience in the chamber before taking the post
and served much shorter tenures once ensconced than their predecessors had in
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Membership Turnover
Changes in membership turnover rates may account for the observed changes in
the direction of evolution. We know interesting bits and pieces about the contours
of legislative careers from a historical perspective. Turnover in the colonial assemblies generally declined over time; most chambers experienced very high turnover
rates at the end of the seventeenth century, but they were dramatically lower in
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most by the 1770s (Greene 1981). State legislative career patterns in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, were very different. In Connecticut (Deming 1889; Luce 1924, pp. 35556), Georgia (DeBats 1990, p. 430), and
New York (Gunn 1988, p. 75), for example, legislative turnover increased spectacularly during the first half of the nineteenth century from very low levels at
the end of the eighteenth century. And legislatures created in the first decades of
the nineteenth century experienced very high turnover rates from their beginning.
In Arkansas, for example, 93% of lower house members between 1836 and 1861
served only a single term (Wooster 1975, p. 43). Thus, state legislatures had relatively stable memberships at the end of the eighteenth century, but the trend changed
to extremely high levels of turnover by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Turnover rates did not begin to decline in most states until well into the twentieth
century. Between 1886 and 1895, for example, first-term members composed 68%
of the lower house in Illinois, 62% of the lower house in Iowa, and 75% of the
lower house in Wisconsin (Campbell 1980, p. 228). Differences in turnover rates
at this time had consequences for legislative organization. Committee membership
retention rates, for example, increased as chamber turnover rates decreased (Squire
et al. 2005). State legislative memberships became considerably more stable only
during the twentieth century, with turnover rates falling substantially from the
1930s through the 1980s and leveling off or perhaps rising just slightly in the
1990s (Hyneman 1938, Moncrief et al. 2004, Ray 1974, Shin & Jackson 1979).
It should be noted that state legislatures have two sources of turnover that
Congress does not experience. Some state legislatures qualify as springboard bodies, where members have exceptional opportunities to use their current position
to move to higher elective office (Squire 1988a,b, 1992a). Turnover is higher than
might otherwise be expected in these chambers because members regularly seize
the chance to move up. Being a springboard has consequences for legislative organization, with seniority mattering less and committee memberships being more
fluid (Squire 1988b).
The other distinct source of turnover is more obvious: term limits. The uptick
in turnover rates in the 1990s is partly the result of term limits in a few states
forcing out members who would otherwise continue to serve (Moncrief et al.
2004). According to Carey et al. (1998), term limits have not changed the sort of
people who get elected, but they reorder policy priorities, and they increase the
influence of the executive branch relative to legislative leaders in policy making.
Perhaps more importantly, term-limited legislatures may turn into springboard
bodies, organized to meet the needs of ambitious politicians en route to other
offices (Powell 2000).
Overall, organizational developments in the state legislatures track well with
changes in membership stability. But, as Hibbing (1999, pp. 15759) points out,
legislatures can be highly developed even with substantial membership turnover.
Indeed, it seems easy to argue that although some state legislatures with term
limits have much higher turnover rates than before the reform was imposed, most
of the indices of their development levels have not changed much at all. Leaders
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are still typically drawn from the more experienced ranks (though that experience
is now truncated), and the ways these chambers organize and make decisions are
overwhelmingly the same. Committee systems, for example, continue as before,
and the same rules and precedents are still observed.
What is the relationship between membership stability and legislative evolution? Perhaps the linkage is determined by when in a legislatures history it is being
assessed. The relationship may be very pronounced in newly established legislatures. Once highly developed, organizational inertia or stickiness (Pierson &
Skocpol 2002, p. 700) may exert a strong enough pull on a legislature that it does
not quickly decay organizationally, even in the face of rapidly increasing turnover
rates.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF

LEGISLATURES IN THE UNITED STATES
The literature examined here supports a simple but important conclusion about the
evolution of legislatures. New legislatures typically begin with the structures and
rules that were evolved over time by older legislatures. This unpretentious finding
may actually challenge the way we understand legislative evolution. Take, for example, the concept of institutionalization as advanced by Polsby (1968). One of the
main components of institutionalization is an increase in internal complexity over
time. Looking at the experiences of the colonial assemblies and state legislatures
proves, however, that newer legislatures are created with considerable internal
complexity; they do not have to evolve it. Procedural rules, committee systems,
leadership structures and the like are typically in place from the beginning. Thus,
newer legislatures start farther along the evolutionary path than their predecessors,
limiting the utility of the institutionalization approach.
A close reading of the literature also suggests that legislatures do not necessarily
evolve in a monotonic fashion. Looking at the full sweep of legislative evolution
from 1619 to the present suggests periods of increasing organizational development
and periods of organizational regression. For example, in some chambers, standing
committee systems developed, disappeared, and then reemerged. Further research
may well reveal the power of seniority norms has ebbed and flowed as well.
Finally, the literature makes clear the obvious but still significant point that although the original state legislatures and Congress share common roots, they have
evolved into different institutions. Consequently, tracing how the U.S. House of
Representatives has changed over time is not an appropriate model for understanding how most legislatures evolve. We should assess the historical record to see, for
example, how different sorts of legislative career paths impact the way legislatures
organize. And because we know that the role of political parties has changed over
time, we need to investigate its possible links with legislative organization. Finally,
legislatures are embedded in different social and economic contexts, with some
operating in large, wealthy, and heterogeneous polities and others in small, poor,
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and homogeneous polities, which is apt to influence the way legislatures evolve.
The trick for political scientists will be to figure out how to exploit the extensive
history of legislatures in the United States to enrich our understanding of legislative
evolution.
The Annual Review of Political Science is online at
http://polisci.annualreviews.org

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Annual Reviews
AR276-FM
Annual Review of Political Science

Volume 9, 2006

CONTENTS
BENTLEY, TRUMAN, AND THE STUDY OF GROUPS, Mika LaVaque-Manty
HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF LEGISLATURES IN THE UNITED STATES,
Peverill Squire
RESPONDING TO SURPRISE, James J. Wirtz

POLITICAL ISSUES AND PARTY ALIGNMENTS: ASSESSING THE ISSUE
EVOLUTION PERSPECTIVE, Edward G. Carmines and Michael W. Wagner
PARTY POLARIZATION IN AMERICAN POLITICS: CHARACTERISTICS,
CAUSES, AND CONSEQUENCES, Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey,
and Juliana Menasce Horowitz
WHAT AFFECTS VOTER TURNOUT? Andre Blais

PLATONIC QUANDARIES: RECENT SCHOLARSHIP ON PLATO,
Danielle Allen
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND ITS POLITICAL DISCONTENTS IN

CHINA: AUTHORITARIANISM, UNEQUAL GROWTH, AND THE
DILEMMAS OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT, Dali L. Yang
MADISON IN BAGHDAD? DECENTRALIZATION AND FEDERALISM IN
COMPARATIVE POLITICS, Erik Wibbels
SEARCHING WHERE THE LIGHT SHINES: STUDYING
DEMOCRATIZATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST, Lisa Anderson
POLITICAL ISLAM: ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS? Yahya Sadowski
RETHINKING THE RESOURCE CURSE: OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE,
INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY, AND DOMESTIC CONSTRAINTS,
Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal
A CLOSER LOOK AT OIL, DIAMONDS, AND CIVIL WAR, Michael Ross

THE HEART OF THE AFRICAN CONFLICT ZONE: DEMOCRATIZATION,
ETHNICITY, CIVIL CONFLICT, AND THE GREAT LAKES CRISIS,
Crawford Young
1
19
45
67
83
111
127
143
165
189
215
241
265
301
PARTY IDENTIFICATION: UNMOVED MOVER OR SUM OF PREFERENCES?

Richard Johnston
REGULATING INFORMATION FLOWS: STATES, PRIVATE ACTORS,

AND E-COMMERCE, Henry Farrell
329
353
vii
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April 5, 2006
viii
20:54
Annual Reviews
AR276-FM
CONTENTS
COMPARATIVE ETHNIC POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES: BEYOND

BLACK AND WHITE, Gary M. Segura and Helena Alves Rodrigues
WHAT IS ETHNIC IDENTITY AND DOES IT MATTER? Kanchan Chandra
NEW MACROECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, Torben Iversen
and David Soskice

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN CASE STUDY

METHODS, Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman
FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ELECTORAL CONNECTION, John H. Aldrich,
Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, Jason Reifler,
and Kristin Thompson Sharp
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY, James A. Robinson
375
397
425
455
477
503
INDEXES
Subject Index
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 19
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 19
ERRATA
An online log of corrections Annual Review of Political Science chapters
(if any, 1997 to the present) may be found at http://polisci.annualreviews.org/
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HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF LEGISLATURES

Key Words colonial assemblies, state legislatures, legislative organization, rules,

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THE COLONIAL ASSEMBLIES

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EVOLUTION OF U.S. LEGISLATURES

Evolutionary outlines of original legislatures in the United Statesa

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EVOLUTION OF U.S. LEGISLATURES

The Rise of Bicameralism

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The Development of Rules and Procedures

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EVOLUTION OF U.S. LEGISLATURES

The Development of Standing Committees

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Variations in Procedures and Structures

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THE FIRST AMERICAN STATE LEGISLATURES

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In terms of organizational evolution, the universal inclination at the moment of

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EVOLUTION OF U.S. LEGISLATURES

EVOLUTIONARY IMPACT OF STATE LEGISLATURES ON

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EVOLUTION OF U.S. LEGISLATURES

A second important provision involves the power to originate tax legislation.

LEGISLATIVE EVOLUTION IN THE

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structural influences of legislatures. . . . Thus, political scientists interested in the

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Standing Committee Systems as Standard Features

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Complex Rules and Procedures as Standard Features

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STATE LEGISLATIVE EVOLUTION IN THE TWENTIETH

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STATE LEGISLATURES AND INSIGHTS ON LEGISLATIVE