An illustration of this general neglect is the Encyclopedia of the American Legislative System, which was published in 1994.¹Included are 91 essays by political scientists and historians. Standards for evaluating Congress and state legislatures are suggested, but only implicitly, by a number of contributors. One essay does focus on reform and another focuses on state legislative reform. The former briefly reviews theories and standards of reform that emerge from the literature, pointing up the tension between the standards of responsibility and responsiveness. The latter explores the consequences of legislative reform for public policy, institutional capacity, governmental power, functional performance, and institution and process. ² But only about twelve of the 1,738 double-columned pages of the three volumes are on the subject under scrutiny here--what a legislature ought to be or what a good legislature is. 

At a personal level, I am embarrassed to have spent so many years observing legislatures, writing about them, and working with them on improvements--yet without ever directly addressing the issue of legislative quality or effectiveness. I have slid around the issue. On more occasions than I care to remember I have been asked to name the best legislature among the fifty in the nation; I have also been asked to name the worst ones. My response to questions such as these (typically coming from journalists) is to first hem and haw, and then finally come up with a few names in each category. Yet, it is difficult for me to explain why certain ones are in one category or the other or why some are better than others. As far as good legislatures are concerned, like art, I can tell you what I like, but not exactly why. As far as bad legislatures are concerned, like pornography, I know them when I see them even though I cannot define what they are.

Meaning and Measurement

To my knowledge, manifest attempts to come to grips with what constitutes a good legislature have been few and far between. Political scientists tend to ignore the subject. The press criticizes the legislature if it acts like this or acts like that, but without any overall standard of what a legislature should be. Members of Congress and state legislatures have their own notions, which are seldom joined or articulated in public terms. Lobbyists have a sense of what a good legislature is or is not, but it probably depends on the treatment they and their clients receive. The public also has its views, but they vary with the nature and wording of the question asked on a poll and with the state of the economy. Legislative reformers, who are in the business of offering recommendations for change and improvement, have probably gotten as near to defining the good legislature as anyone.

The most explicit attempt to conceptualize and also measure the quality of state legislatures was carried out in 1969-1971 by a reformist organization, the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures (CCSL). The declared aim of its Ford-funded study was to develop specific criteria for the evaluation of the technical capabilities of the legislature and to collect data in order to score and rank the fifty legislatures on these criteria. According to CCSL's criteria, referred to as the FAIIR evaluation scheme, legislatures were supposed to be functional, accountable, informed, independent, and representative.³

My main quarrel with the CCSL effort concerns not so much the general criteria, but rather the subcriteria, the operational indicators, and the measurement procedures used.⁴ While it is difficult to specify and secure agreement on the principal elements of a good legislature, it is even harder to measure them. Measures that are available or obtainable are usually too indirect to represent the element under consideration. Getting to functionality, independence, or representativeness is much more judgmental than CCSL's quantitative evaluation suggests. 

Social science research tends to make use of a linear measurement model, with each successive unit higher than the previous one. Such measurement, however, would be inappropriate if applied to legislative goodness. For example, if some professional staff can be considered good for a legislature, that does not mean that (beyond a certain point) more staff can be considered better. If strong leadership is thought to be desirable for a legislature, stronger and even stronger leadership may not be. With respect to legislative quality, "the more, the more" method of assessment does not apply.

Measurement is further impeded by the substantial differences among the states in their size, development, and political culture. The California and New Hampshire legislatures cannot be rated on precisely the same scale; nor can the Michigan and New Mexico legislatures; nor can legislatures in most states, for that matter. The nature of the specific states in which legislatures exist and function has to be taken into account. 

All of this may seem to make an enterprise such as the present one dubious at best. But I think that even with qualifications and limitations, trying to figure out what characterizes a good legislature is a very worthwhile pursuit. It is worthwhile because the subject is such an important one, not only for political scientists who study legislatures, but also for legislators themselves and legislative staff, as well as members of the press and the public. The formulation I am offering here is intended as a first step in the exploration of legislative performance. Ideally, I would hope that we might reach agreement on the elements I propose, even though we cannot be as precise as we would like to be. Agreement or not, we as political scientists ought to be able to clarify in our own minds, and in the research and teaching we do, just what a legislature is or is expected to be. The value of this goes beyond the political science profession to legislators and legislative staff, the press, and the public. A discussion of the criteria by which to assess their institutions should help in orienting new members of state legislatures, and reorienting older ones. Such a discussion would also be useful in the development of a civic education program on representative democracy, a program that is sorely needed.

Clearing Away Some Underbrush

In the earlier version of this paper, I suggested twenty standards that had been or might be used to figure out how good a legislature is. These standards were organized within five separate but overlapping categories, which I labeled resources, power, outputs, linkage, and process. The standards--all of which are more likely to be implicit than explicit--derive from political science, from the press, and even from practice. 

Discussion of these standards has led me to rethink and reorganize, and to formulate a model of how legislatures ought to be assessed.⁵The initial step in the refashioning process is to jettison those standards among the twenty that appear less than essential, or contradictory. 

The first to go is one that I call minimalist. This strain, which is reflected in the ranks of contemporary politicos, could not be ignored in any preliminary survey of characteristics. Those who advocate minimalism include, in particular, legislators who have held minority-party status for some time (as have Republicans in Congress and in the southern states) and are suspicious of a legislature that has been for so long under the control of their partisan opponents. People who advocate minimalist measures want to downsize the legislature, weaken it, and transfer its authority to the public or elsewhere. Minimalism runs contrary to the basic assumption underlying this exploration, which is that the legislative branch and legislative institution ought to be strong. This does not mean that the legislature must promote a larger role for government or endorse particular policy outputs, or that it has to be full-time and fully-staffed. It does mean that the legislature must carry out its required functions and has to have the capacity, authority, and strength to do so. A standard that runs in an entirely different direction has no place in my formulation. 

Related to minimalism, but less extreme in its thrust, is the standard, efficiency. Reformers and the press are proponents of efficiency and would not regard a legislature that is inefficient as good. Efficiency might be specified by a number of factors, but it would assume a high ratio of output to input. This might translate into: a high percentage of bill introductions that wind up as bill enactments; deadlines; running on time; and no logjams at the end of the session. Although some value should be given efficiency, it is not at the core of what a legislature ought to be or ought to be doing. It does not rank as an essential characteristic of a good legislature. 

Several output standards can also be discarded at the outset. One I have labeled benevolence. From the perspective of many citizens and interest groups, the outputs of import are those that benefit them, that serve their interests. For these people, the better they fare with their agendas, the better the legislature. Clearly different individuals and groups apply different standards in their evaluation, standards that are consonant with their own interests but not with someone else's. We cannot settle for benevolence as a standard. Productivity is a more objective standard, but it is biased in favor of activist, liberal legislatures. There is a disposition on the parts of some political scientists and some journalists to equate the number of bills passed or the percentage of introductions enacted into law with legislative performance. In the 1970s, students of state government focused on state expenditures and increases in expenditures, especially in the human services area, as measures of performance which they endeavored to explain. During the same period innovations, defined as the adoption of new policies and programs, were also examined as performance outputs. There is little reason, however, to equate enactments, expenditures, or innovations with effective legislatures. 

Facilitating Factors

Before suggesting what is absolutely required of the good legislature, and the standards by which it ought to be judged, we have to take into account two sets of factors that serve as facilitators. One can be called capacity, the other institutionalism. They contribute to the quality of a legislature, but are not essential in the way that the required characteristics are. 

Capacity has been emphasized by legislative reformers, at least since the 1960s. For the most part, overall capacity has not been lacking at the congressional level; it has always been more questionable at the state legislative level. 

In the broadest sense capacity constitutes the resources, the wherewithal for the legislature to do its job. In the parlance of legislative reform, the amount of time in session and in the interim period, the size of the professional staff, the adequacy of facilities and technology add up to legislative capacity. How much staff is needed? How ought it to be organized? Is a full-time legislature better than a part-time one? Questions like these deserve attention, although I doubt that the answers are the same in every place. Whether the legislature is more professional or more amateur may not be critical either. Just what combination of resources or how much of each type is optimum or enough probably varies from state to state.

A vital part of a legislature's capacity is the quality of the legislators themselves. In considering quality, we have to deal with the issue of professional versus citizen legislators--that is, those who are relatively full-time careerists on the one hand and those who are essentially part- and short-timers on the other. In just about every legislature, some of each type exist. But in some legislatures (for example, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) professionals predominate, while in others (for example, Montana, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Wyoming) citizens predominate. It is not possible for me to say that one or the other type of member is more desirable for a legislature, or just what mix works best. I personally like the idea of citizen legislators, especially (but not only) for the smaller states where the culture and the citizenry appear disposed to elected public officials who have occupational, as well as residential, ties to the district. 

Quality also applies to the personal characteristics of legislators, and especially of legislative leaders. The reputations of legislatures in California (during the late 1960s and early 1970s) and Florida and Minnesota (during the 1970s and 1980s) were based in large part on the substantial numbers of able, intelligent, energetic, dedicated, and politically skillful individuals who served at the time. These members made a marked difference as far as the performance of the legislature was concerned. Legislators with such characteristics clearly contribute to legislative performance everywhere. 

The integrity, or the ethics, of the legislature is an integral part of capacity. Although we do not define legislative goodness strictly in terms of the ethical behavior of members, the ethos of the capitol community, and the type and enforcement of ethics laws are among the factors that affect how legislatures function. Legislatures characterized by integrity are likely to do better than those where the ethical conduct of members is over the line or too near the line. Legislative integrity in deed and in spirit matters not only to the public, but to the overall ability of the legislature to fulfill its representational responsibilities. 

Institutionalism relates to a combination of factors that pertain to a legislator's identification with the senate or the house and with the legislature as a political institution. Three of the most important ones are concern, community, and continuity. 

Concern has to do with a sense of, identification with, or dedication to the legislature, all of which are likely to promote the performance of two of the three functions suggested below. For a legislature to be good, it is apt to require members who care about its well-being and who engage in institution-building activities (or at least do not engage in activities that are institutionally harmful or destructive). Members who are institutionally inclined will defend the legislature against criticism they believe unjust and will discourage colleagues from running against the institution in order to win office. 

Community encompasses the culture and norms of the legislature, and requires some level of agreement on the need for civility and some manifestation of collegiality. Informal socializing among legislators helps to build community. In most places such interaction has been in decline in recent years; nonetheless, it remains an element of institutionalism, and one that would seem to facilitate the performance of legislative functions.

Continuity is probably as important to institutionalism as anything else. Some continuity of membership, as well as of staff, not only provides for greater knowledge and skill on the parts of lawmakers, but it promotes institutional values as well. It takes a while for most new members to identify with and develop concern for the legislature as an institution that merits their support. Continuity does not require extremely low turnover of membership, but only that some members serve for a decent period of time. By requiring that everyone turn over with relatively brief regularity and by discouraging legislators from identifying with an institution they are passing through, term limits intentionally run counter to institutional continuity. The twenty states that currently limit terms are at a disadvantage when it comes to having a good legislature. The Performance of Requisite Functions

For legislatures to be good it is not necessary that they have great capacity nor that they have institutional commitment, although both help legislatures perform well. What is required is that legislatures carry out the functions expected of them in a political system based on representative democracy. Our approach here is not unlike that presented in traditional texts on Congress and state legislatures, such as those by Malcolm E. Jewell and Samuel C. Patterson or William J. Keefe and Morris S. Ogul.⁶Both approaches emphasize the performance of legislative functions, although here we specify three functions that differ somewhat from those noted earlier. These functions are: (1) balancing power; (2) representing constituencies; and (3) making law. In assessing legislatures, the chief questions to be addressed pertain to how well legislatures perform these three functions.

Balancing Power

Constitutionally, legislatures are separate, co-equal branches (indeed, the legislature is the first branch of government and the executive is second) that share governmental power. On such a constitutional foundation, it follows that legislatures must balance the power of governors and the executive branch. A good legislature, accordingly, has to be relatively independent of the executive. It must be insistent on participating in the initiation of policy and refusing to rubber-stamp executive proposals.

Legislative independence was a watchword of the legislative reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, it was believed that legislatures, except in about a dozen states, were dominated by governors. The increase in legislative capacity and in legislative institutionalism nourished a growing sense of legislative independence. 

Coequality may be requisite, but that does not mean that the greater the power imbalance in favor of the legislature, the better that legislature is. Rather, the legislature simply cannot permit the executive to dominate; it must share and serve as a balance. 

The constitutional powers of governors lend themselves to measurement and indexing.⁷ The constitutional powers of the legislature can also be calculated. But such measurements do not capture the actual exercise of power by governors and legislatures, which hinges as much on political factors and traditions as on constitutional and statutory ones. If we examine the initiation and enactment of legislation and budgets, it should be possible to see in a general way how well the legislature is fulfilling its balancing-power function. 

Representing Constituencies

One of the major functions performed by legislative bodies is that of representation--representing various constituencies, mainly people in each representative's electoral district, but also organized groups and individuals elsewhere in the state. This function links the legislature to the environment in a variety of ways. The question that has to be raised is, how well does the legislature perform the representational tasks listed below? 

First, the constitutional system and the legislature ought to provide for substantial political equality, that is "one person, one vote." This standard, enforced by state courts, is generally met, although political gerrymandering that accompanies decennial redistricting is often used to benefit one party or the other and to advantage incumbents in their reelection efforts. 

Second, a variety of groups who earlier lacked membership should be present in the ranks of legislators today. Women, African-Americans, and Hispanics most notably need opportunities to serve as well as to be represented. The problem with such descriptive representation, as it is called, is that it can be applied to all types of groups (and not just those specified above), so it is not easy to know just where to draw the line. Nor is it easy to know just how close the percentages of minorities in the legislature should come to the percentages of minorities in the population of the state.

Third, as part of its representational function, the legislature must provide service to constituencies and constituents. Such constituent service is normally the job of individual members, who appreciate the importance for their reelection of doing a good job in this area. Service includes responding to constituents' requests for information, help, and case work, as well as taking care of the district's interests with respect to state-aid formulas, local projects, and public expenditures. 

Fourth, the legislature has to furnish citizens, as well as groups, access--to members, committees, and the process generally. This requires that the legislature be open and that information on agendas and proceedings be available. Outreach efforts by legislatures, including C-Span, help in this regard. If its representational role is to be performed properly, the legislature must be accessible as most are today. 

Fifth, the legislature also has responsibility for tasks of civic education, in particular on the subject of representative democracy and the legislative institution and legislative process. In order to perform such tasks, legislatures have to communicate to the public, groups, and students about the legislature's job representing diverse constituencies, various interests, and differing values and about the legislature's role engaging in conflict, building consensus, and achieving settlements. If citizens are to participate and advocate responsibly, they ought to have a sense of what representative democracy entails. It is up to the legislature to provide them with such a sense. 

Sixth, the legislature has to be responsive, at least to some degree, to what citizens want, as well as to what the legislature determines they need. Assuming that responsiveness is part of the representational function, we have to figure out how legislative enactments--at least on major issues--square with public demands. This appears most difficult to estimate, but three political scientists recently conducted a study comparing policy making to public opinion in the American states, concluding that there was a strong connection between the two.⁸

Making Law

While the representational function deals with the linkage between the legislature and its outside environment, the lawmaking function is internally focused. It relates to the processes by which laws (and policies) are fashioned.

Encompassed by lawmaking for purposes of this discussion are several related legislative activities. The legislative role in the formulation, review, and adoption of a state budget must be considered of special significance here. The budget is probably the most important bill that a legislature passes at its session. A legislature that performs poorly on the budget is likely to be an ineffective legislature overall. Also worth considering is the legislature's oversight role; that is, how and to what extent the legislature monitors the implementation and impact of the laws it has previously enacted. Finally, some attention should be paid to legislative foresight; that is, how and to what extent the legislature looks ahead in order to develop policies to meet the future needs of the state. 

What ought we to expect of legislative performance with respect to lawmaking?

First, it is important that individuals and groups have an opportunity to participate in the lawmaking enterprise as it takes place within the legislature. Diverse perspectives and issue positions from both organized groups and unorganized individuals should be welcomed as input. Lobbyists, accordingly, are an integral part of the process. The importance of participation, however, is not meant to suggest that direct democracy, by means of the initiative and referendum, is a desirable feature of the lawmaking process. Frequent resort to initiatives is more an indication of faulty legislative performance than of commendable public participation. 

Second, the participation that counts most is that by legislators themselves. If a legislature is to perform its lawmaking function well, members must have the opportunity to play a role. Not every member, however, will choose to be active on every issue, and some will be better equipped and better positioned than others. Internal democracy requires that within the senate and house power be relatively dispersed. Still, standing committees are key agencies and some legislators play larger legislative roles by virtue of their committee assignments. Not only do chairpersons exercise leadership, but rank and file of both the majority and minority parties also may have influence at the committee stage of the process. Another locus of member influence in a number of states is the party caucus, where issues are hashed out and party positions on legislation are developed. Internal democracy also requires that members have basic parliamentary rights. 

Third, although legislatures are essentially democratic bodies, with members substantially equal to one another, some members are delegated special responsibilities. These are normally the elected and appointed leaders. Strong leadership, particularly at the level of the presiding officer, is essential if the legislative process is to work well. This requires individuals with strategic, problem-solving, and consensus-building abilities--people who exercise primary responsibility for the functioning of the legislative process and the maintenance of the institution. 

Fourth, the processes of legislative decision making may be more or less partisan in nature. If the legislative parties are cohesive, the majority probably will play the decisive role on key issues, such as the budget. The majority party caucus will be a principal forum for deciding key issues. But the minority must also be accorded parliamentary rights. If the majority lacks cohesion, or has tended to dominate as in essentially one-party states, decisions on key issues probably will be made on a more bipartisan basis. Either system can work, depending on the political culture of the state. The danger is that if partisanship is too heavily weighted in the process, minority members may find themselves almost completely shut out, their only legislative role being to campaign from within in order to undermine the majority in the hope of gaining seats at the next election. Unrestrained partisanship can damage civility and undermine the legislature as a working institution, further eroding the trust and confidence the public has in it. The conduct of the legislative parties, therefore, merits close scrutiny. 

Fifth, deliberation is an important feature of the legislative process. It necessitates a give-and-take among participants in which information and ideas get exchanged. Deliberation provides for the possibility that a number of legislators will be influenced by the discussion that takes place. The deliberative process is not restricted to the debate (or lack thereof) that goes on at the second-reading stage on the senate and house floor. It is also a vital element of committee activity, and goes on in the frequent and unstructured exchanges in members' offices, leadership conferences, at lunch, and in the corridors of the state house or legislative office building. Deliberation, as a standard by which to judge legislatures, may be difficult to nail down, let alone measure; but it is central to the very idea of a legislature. 

Sixth, while deliberation involves the exchange of ideas, building consensus involves a more material exchange. It depends on the willingness of opposing sides to sit down at a table together and negotiate their differences. Generally, that means dealing, trading, and compromise, so that as many participants as possible buy into a settlement. The overwhelming majority of laws enacted by a legislature are settled by some process of consensus building. On relatively few (but nonetheless important) issues are lines so firmly drawn that negotiating is fruitless and battling it out is the only way to arrive at a decision. There is little doubt that one of the major tasks of the legislature is to build consensus; a legislature that is effective in this regard is likely to be an effective legislature. 

Seventh, the processes specified above not only work in the service of lawmaking, they are also intended to address problems facing the state. If legislative processes are not related to state-needs, they cannot entirely fulfill the expected lawmaking function. Ideally, we expect legislative enactments to solve problems and improve conditions in the state; at the very least, they have to address them. This standard cannot be ignored in assessing state legislatures.

Assessing Legislatures

The model of the good legislature suggested here is based on three principal legislative functions--balancing power, representing constituencies, and lawmaking. The factors that facilitate effective performance of these functions are capacity and institutionalism. These elements have been touched on earlier in the literature on legislatures and legislative reform. Leading political science texts emphasize representation and lawmaking, among various legislative functions. The CCSL study selected functionality, independence, and representativeness among their criteria. 

Some might suggest a different conceptualization, but on the basis of what I have read and observed with respect to legislatures, I think that is as good as any place to start. The real difficulties, of course, arise when we confront the challenge of operationalization. Whether a legislature effectively balances executive power is relatively easy to measure. The various aspects of representation, however, are much more difficult. The elements of lawmaking, such as deliberation, negotiation, and consensus building may be almost impossible to operationalize. 

Unfortunately, perhaps, what is most measurable is probably least significant and what is most significant is probably least measurable. It is my purpose here to take a first step toward assessment--that is, to come as close conceptually as possible to identifying the key elements of the good legislature. The next step should be to look at legislatures with a more vigorous evaluative eye and start figuring out how and how well these key legislative functions are performed.

Notes

1. Joel H. Silbey, ed. Encyclopedia of the American Legislative System, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994). 

2. Leroy N. Riesebach, "Congressional Reform," and Alan Rosenthal, "Reform in State Legislatures," in Silbey, Encyclopedia, 815-835, 837-854. 

3. Citizens Conference on State Legislatures, The Sometime Governments: A Critical Study of the 50 American Legislatures (New York: Bantam Books, 1971); and State Legislatures: An Evaluation of Their Effectiveness(New York: Praeger, 1971). 

4. Whatever its measurement procedures, the objective of the CCSL evaluation was political and not methodological: to spur state legislatures to adopt prescribed reforms, and in particular those that would bolster legislative capacity. The study served its purpose and CCSL chalked up considerable success in having its recommendations adopted. 

5. The earlier version of this paper was discussed at a meeting of political scientists on the subject of "The Good Legislature." Burdett Loomis of the University of Kansas organized the session which was held in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1998. I am indebted to Loomis and the participants, who helped shape this version: Malcolm Jewell, University of Kentucky; Keith Krehbiel, Stanford University Business School; Larry Evans, William and Mary University; Walter Oleszek, Congressional Research Service; and William Pound, Carl Tubbesing, and Karl Kurtz, all with the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

6. The Legislative Process in the United States, 2d ed. (New York: Random House, 1973), 3-32; The American Legislative Process: Congress and the States, 6th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 1-36. 

7. See Thad Beyle, "Governors: The Middlemen and Women in Our Political System," in Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 6th ed., ed. Virginia Gray and Herbert Jacob (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1996), 221-238. 

8. Robert S. Erickson, Gerald C. Wright, and John P. McIver, Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).