This revisionism--the view that legislative professionalization has a distinct downside--has been with us now for some years. Charles Mahtesian's article, "The Sick Legislature Syndrome" is the latest in a growing line of journalistic accounts (see, e.g., Ehrenhalt 1991; Gurwitt 1991) and academic discourses (see, e.g., Loomis 1990; Rosenthal 1993, 1997; Moncrief and Thompson 1992) on the subject.² The basic argument in this body of work is that the trend toward state legislative professionalization has been accompanied by a "new breed" of career-minded legislator.³ For example, Rosenthal (1993:118) identified a trend of a "growing number of career politicians among the membership of many state legislatures. The careerist orientation of legislators is having an enormous impact on legislative life. It is largely responsible for the increasing political nature of legislatures and partly responsible for their greater fragmentation as well." 

Mr. Mahtesian's argument is quite similar. His premise is that professionalization of the legislature is accompanied by significant behavioral changes among those serving in the institution. He states the crux of the argument in this way, ". . . professionalism, partisanship, and incivility are linked to each other in some unholy way." 

Indeed, there is evidence that many legislators themselves recognize these changes. In a survey of "veteran" legislators (those who had served for at least 15 years), respondents from the more professional legislatures were particularly likely to perceive that their fellow-legislators increasingly (a) gave priority to their re-election, (b) campaigned against the legislature, (c) spent more time and effort raising campaign funds, (d) were more partisan in their actions, and (e) exhibited less commitment to the legislature itself (Thompson et al. 1996). 

But it is not enough to simply agree with Mahtesian and the revisionist argument, as I generally do. My concern is that the pendulum of legislative reform (a.k.a "modernization", "professionalization"), having reached its outer arc and begun its return path, not swing too far in the other direction. There is the fear that public opinion will embrace the notion of the "citizen legislature" blindly. In this regard, I want to emphasize the following points: 

• We should not forget why the legislative professionalization movement began in the first place. 

It is interesting to note that even today some of these charges are still heard in regard to the more part-time, "citizen" legislatures. For example, a recent article entitled, "Making Laws and a Living Challenges Legislators," noted the difficulties in serving in the Montana state legislature: 

Spending only about one-third of a year in Helena, every other year, Montana's 150 citizen legislators find it tough to keep up with increasingly complex workloads while managing professional and personal lives often hundreds of miles away. . . . Lawmakers aren't always well-versed in the issues on which they're voting. Many admit to only a vague familiarity with the laws. (Associated Press 1997). 

Or take the case of the recent article in The Wall Street Journal (a publication not known for supporting the concept of professional politician!). Focusing on the Georgia state legislature, the article reports, 

. . . torn between earning and governing, citizen legislators are finding it tough to keep up with their mushrooming workload. With few staffers and short sessions, many lawmakers feel overrun by better-equipped governors, bureaucrats, and lobbyists. ( Milbank 1997) 

The author concludes that on important and complex issues like welfare reform, "Georgia lawmakers will instead wind up tinkering with--and, most likely, rubber-stamping--whatever the governor suggests."⁵ 

• Not all the problems in professional legislatures today can be blamed on 'careerist' legislators. 

State legislatures must contend with a multiplicity of demands from numerous segments of society. They often must do so with constrained resources and a limited set of feasible policy options. Some state legislatures (including all the more professional ones), operate in a complex socio-economic environment. They often experience divided government (in the partisan sense). None of these things would disappear if we could magically wave away career politicians.⁶ 

Nor are all the characteristics identified with careerism found exclusively in careerist institutions. While I agree with Mahtesian that professional legislatures experience heightened partisanship and diminished civility, these features show up elsewhere as well. The rise in interpersonal discord which Mahtesian notes in professional legislatures he also finds in institutions which presumably are not careerist, such as the Cedar Rapids city council (Mahtesian 1997b). In the case of city councils, he attributes the lack of civility to the more open forum of today's politics (including televised proceedings), and to "the American political culture of the moment." Alan Ehrenhalt sounds a similar theme in The United States of Ambition, noting the lack of civility in many of our social institutions today. Indeed, the public shares this view that society generally is just nastier today than it once was; one recent survey reports that 80% of Americans think that people today are less civil now than they were ten years ago. (Roper Center 1997, 64) 

Increased partisanship, which is clearly a feature of many professional legislatures today, may be caused at least in part by the increasingly polarized ideologies of the two political parties. Partisanship is also likely to increase when the majority-minority status of the parties in the chamber is in doubt. Both of these factors can, and do, occur in part-time legislatures as well as in professional ones. 

• Our revisionist agenda will depend in part on how we view the causal arrows. 

For example, supply-siders might argue that the solution to growing careerism is to alter the incentive structure in the legislature, perhaps by reducing staff and salary. A few years ago, California's Proposition 140 reduced the size of the legislative staff by about one-third, and there is some talk in California about limiting sessions to six months.⁸ On the other hand, term-limit advocates appear to me to take a demand-side view. 

Regardless of which particular perspective one holds, I think it quite likely that we will witness efforts in many states--particularly those states in which the initiative ballot process exists--to find ways to alter the particular dynamics found today in many state legislatures, professional or otherwise. 

Notes  

1. The Ninth Annual Envisioning California Conference, hosted by The Center for California Studies, California State University, Sacramento and the California State Library, 25-27 September 1997, Sacramento, California. 

2. Nor is observance of this phenomenon limited to American legislatures. A particularly good earlier account is provided by Anthony King, "The Rise of the Career Politician in Britain--And Its Consequences,"British Journal of Political Science (1981) 11:249-85. 

3. The term "professionalization" is a concept used in somewhat different ways by different analysts. I try to use the term to refer to attributes of the legislative institution itself, and to use the term "careerist" to refer to attributes of the individual legislator. For a more detailed view of the ways in which these and related terms have been used, see Mooney 1995; Squire 1992 or 1997; Moncrief 1994; or Rosenthal 1997 (especially 54-67). 

4. It is occasionally instructive to return to some of the publications of that reform period. In addition to the standard The Sometime Government by John Burns (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), I especially recommend Donald Herzberg and Alan Rosenthal, ed. Strengthening The States: Essays on Legislative Reform (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1971). 

5. See also, Alan Ehrenhalt, "Legislatures and the Salary-Mismatch Syndrome," Governing (August 1997); and Karen Hansen, "Legislator Pay: Baseball It Ain't," State Legislatures (July/August 1997). 

6. See Elizabeth Capell's excellent essay on this situation in the context of California: "Partisan Realignment and The Myth of the Golden Age: the California Legislature in the 1990s," paper presented at the 1996 annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association. 

7. Some of these points are raised, although not necessarily in the manner presented here, by Richard Clucas in "Legislative Professionalism and Careerism: Determining the Causal Order," unpublished manuscript, Portland State University, November 1997. 

8. Jon Mathews, "Full-time Capitol Called a Failure: Critics Urge Return to Part-Time Legislature," Sacramento Bee, 2 November 1997. 

References  

Associated Press. 1997. "Making Laws and Living Challenges Legislators." Billings Gazette, 21 April. 

Ehrenhalt, Alan. 1991. The United States of Ambition. New York: Random House. 

Gurwitt, Rob. 1991. "California Here We Come: The Professional Legislature and Its Discontents." Governing August. 

Keefe, William. 1971. "Reform and the American Legislature." in Donald Herzberg and Alan Rosenthal, ed. Strengthening the States: Essays on Legislative Reform. New York: Doubleday & Co. 

Loomis, Burdett. 1990. "Political Careers and American State Legislatures." Paper presented at the Symposium on the Legislature in the Twenty-First Century. Williamsburg, VA 

Mahtesian, Charles. 1997a. "The Sick Legislature Syndrome: And How To Avoid It." Governing February. 

Mahtesian, Charles. 1997b. "The Politics of Ugliness." Governing June. 

Milbank, Fana. 1997. "Part-Time Legislators Ask: Should We Make Laws or Make A Living?" Wall Street Journal January. 

Moncrief, Gary. 1994. "Professionalization and Careerism in Canadian Provincial Assemblies." Legislative Studies Quarterly 19:33-48. 

Moncrief, Gary; and J.A. Thompson, ed. 1992. Changing Patterns in State Legislative Careers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 

Mooney, Christopher. 1995. "Citizens, Structures, and Sister States: Influences on State Legislative Professionalism." Legislative Studies Quarterly 20:47-67. 

Roper Center. 1997. The Public Perspective 8, No. 1. 

Rosenthal, Alan. 1993. "The Legislative Institution--In Transition and At Risk." in Carl Van Horn, ed. The State of the States, 2d ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press. 

Rosenthal, Alan. 1997. The Decline of Representative Government. Washington, DC: CQ Press. 

Squire, Peverill. 1992. "Legislative Professionalization and Membership Diversity in State Legislatures." Legislative Studies Quarterly 17:69-79. 

Squire, Peverill. 1997. "Another Look at Legislative Professionalization and Divided Government in the States." Legislative Studies Quarterly 22:417-30. 

Thompson, Joel; K. Kurtz, and G. Moncrief. 1996. "We've Lost That Family feeling: The Changing Norms of the New Breed of State Legislators." Social Science Quarterly 77:344-61.