One difficulty in defining the qualities of a good legislature is that one model is not appropriate for every state. The people of Vermont do not need or want a legislature as professional as is needed (though not always wanted) in California. Another difficulty is that the criteria that are easiest to measure are not necessarily the ones most important for a good legislature. I will illustrate these problems in a discussion of the decision-making process and representation.

The Decision-Making Process

To function effectively, a legislature has to be able to make decisions. Its effectiveness cannot be measured by the number or percentage of bills passed, or by its passage of bills desired by a particular group of interests. But a legislature should be able to confront the major problems facing the state, rather than ignoring them. The legislature should be led and organized in such a way that compromises can be negotiated, a majority can be mobilized for or against a proposal, deadlock can be avoided, and decisions can be made. This is particularly important on the major issues and the tough choices the legislature faces. I would argue that, for a legislature to be an effective decision-making body, there are two prerequisites that are not easily measured: good leadership and a functioning two-party system. 

Most of us would agree on the tasks that are most important for a legislative leader, including setting priorities, building coalitions, and negotiating compromises. A successful leader must be able to exercise power and make skillful use of legislative rules; he or she must stay in touch with members and understand their needs. Increasingly, it is important for a leader to use the media skillfully. But there is no single model of the perfect legislative leader. Leaders have different goals, depending partly on their strategy and partly on the role they play (speaker or majority leader, or minority leader). 

Leaders also have different styles of leadership, depending partly on their personality, skills, and experience, and partly on the expectations of rank-and-file members. Some of the most powerful legislative leaders in the 1970s and 1980s relied heavily on rewards and punishments and discouraged broad participation in planning legislative strategy and tactics. In most legislatures in the 1990s, rank-and-file members expect their leaders to be accessible, to encourage participation, to understand their needs, and, very often, to raise campaign funds for them. These expectations may make the legislative leader's job more difficult, and may make it harder for him or her to exercise power and get the job done. In legislatures with relatively short and rigid term limits, it is not yet clear how relatively inexperienced leaders will be able to do their job well (Jewell and Whicker 1984). 

Most state legislatures are now organized along party lines. Most of those southern state legislatures that used to have a one-party (Democratic) system now have two functioning parties, and the last few elections have produced very close two-party balances in some southern states. I would argue that leaders who are operating in a two-party system have a better opportunity to build coalitions, negotiate compromises, and get decisions made than those working in a nonpartisan or one-party legislature. 

It takes more than leadership skills to make a legislative party cohesive; the members of the party must represent similar constituencies in their districts so that they can more easily reach agreement on issues. If the two parties represent two significantly different and relatively homogeneous groups of interests, partisanship is likely to have a major impact on a larger number of issues. [This is similar to the arguments made by Aldrich and Rohde (1998) about "conditional party government."] Some factors internal to the legislature also have an effect: the level of two-party balance and the strength of partisan tradition in the legislature, as well as the attitude of individual legislatures toward partisanship. In many legislatures today there is relatively little party discipline, but legislators have a considerable sense of party loyalty. 

Even if one believes that the decision-making process works best when there are two relatively cohesive parties, we cannot define this as a prerequisite for a good legislature because not every state has closely competitive parties representing distinctly different interests. 

A good argument can be made that in some legislatures partisanship is too strong. In a state with divided government, and particularly one with split control of the two houses, strong partisanship may contribute to deadlock. In a few state legislatures, such as New York, party leaders may have so much power and party discipline may be so strong that rank-and-file members have little opportunity to exercise initiative and use good judgment. If the norm of partisanship is too pervasive, even issues that are unrelated to the interests represented by the parties may become partisan (Rosenthal 1998, ch.5). 

Rosenthal (1998, ch.5) believes that the high priority that legislative leaders give to campaign fund raising has increased partisanship to an unhealthy level. He has also argued that in some legislatures strong partisanship has seriously eroded civility in the legislature, which in turn undermines the decision-making process. 

In a legislature organized along party lines, the rules and procedures are written by the majority party and are designed to facilitate legislative decision making. The majority leadership usually controls the agenda, a majority can cut off debate, and the presiding officer has the power to recognize members to speak. The majority leadership picks its party's members of committees and often has some influence over the choice of minority committee members. 

State legislatures vary in the opportunity minority party members have to bring their own bills to the floor, offer amendments to majority party bills, and publicize their position on issues through extended debate. In general, the closer the balance of party power, and thus the greater the chance that the majority may become a minority in the next few years, the greater the likelihood that the minority party will be treated equitably in the decision-making process. 

Representation

In the 1940s and 1950s, most legislatures in southern states consisted almost entirely of white, rural, Democratic men. The legislatures were unrepresentative in both a descriptive and a substantive sense, for several different reasons. There were few, if any, female legislators because very few women were running for any political office and even fewer were being elected. The norms, not the laws, in southern states were the obstacle. There were few Republicans in most southern legislatures because the state Republican party lacked the organizational strength to recruit them and the loyal voters to elect them. 

There was an acute shortage of legislators from the larger cities because of the serious underrepresentation of these cities that was written into the constitution and laws of southern (and many northern) states. The shortage of black legislators resulted from legislative and administrative obstacles to black voting in some southern states and political and social pressures keeping blacks from being elected in all states. 

In theory, a good legislature should be representative of the people in a state in both a descriptive and a substantive sense. In practice, this is not easy to achieve. The legal underrepresentation of city voters and disenfranchisement of black citizens are, of course, things of the past. But, as these examples from an earlier period in the South suggest, there are many possible causes of malrepresentation, some legal and some political. 

The electoral and districting system should not have the effect of minimizing the political influence of racial and ethnic minority groups in the legislature, through such devices as at-large plurality districts and gerrymandering. We know that single-member district systems are imperfect methods of translating votes into seats (Guinier 1994). We have found that "equitable" districting for minorities is hard to define or achieve. In his dissent to Baker v. Carr, Justice Felix Frankfurter asserted that the Supreme Court was being asked "to choose between competing bases of representation--ultimately, really among competing theories of political philosophy." 

It can be argued that partisans of the minority party should not be underrepresented by gerrymandering. But the decline of voter loyalty to parties not only makes it harder to gerrymander but harder to measure what would be perfect partisan representation in the legislature. We can say that the growth of Republican strength in southern states has increased the proportion of state legislatures with relatively close partisan balance.

There is another component of representation that I would argue deserves more attention. Voters should have a choice among legislative candidates. At the very least, there should be two or more candidates on the ballot; ideally, these should be viable candidates with the skills and resources to makes their views and qualifications known to the voters. In reality, there is evidence of a decline in the number of races in which both of the major parties run legislative candidates (Weber, Tucker, and Brace 1991). There are several possible explanations for this decline: legislators like to draw districts lines so as to maximize the number of safe seats; even in unsafe districts there are more entrenched incumbents who scare away serious opposition; and political parties have either failed to recruit candidates or have recruited only for races they considered to be winnable. Growing two-party competition in the states does not necessarily translate into a decline in uncontested races. 

I conclude that an effective decision-making process and a system that is representative in practice and not just in theory are two of the most important characteristics of a "good legislature." But there is no blueprint for achieving these goals that will work in all states. The crucial ingredients include the quality of legislative leadership, the nature of the state and legislative party systems, and other characteristics of the political process, such as norms and traditions.

References

Aldrich, John, and David W. Rohde. 1998. "Measuring Conditional Party Government." Presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. 

Guinier, Lani. 1994. The Tyranny of the Majority. New York: The Free Press. 

Jewell, Malcolm E.; and Marcia Lynn Whicker. 1994. Legislative Leadership in the American States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 

Rosenthal, Alan. 1998. The Decline of Representative Democracy. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. 

Weber, Ronald E.; Harvey J. Tucker; and Paul Brace. 1991. "Vanishing Marginals in State Legislative Elections." Legislative Studies Quarterly 16:29-47.