Term Limits Causes and Consequences
Term Limits Causes and Consequences
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EDWARD J. LOPEZ
Department of Economics, University of North Texas, P.O. Box 311457, Denton, TX
76203-1457, U.S.A.; e-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. This paper consults multiple literatures to specify and evaluate the economic
tionales for term limitation, particularly on Congress. I first consider theories that arose
explain, among related issues, why individual states might unilaterally self-impose term lim
on their own delegations to Congress. Next I consider two main lines of argument for univ
limits, both of which begin with the empirical phenomenon of high and rising congressi
tenure. First, supporters of term limits argue that higher tenure biases legislatures towa
inefficiency big government (high spending). Second, higher tenure creates inefficient (a
competitive) conditions in the legislative election market. Term limitation would remedy t
inefficiencies by virtue of decreasing average tenure. These claims are then evaluated in li
of the evidence amassed in the literature. Based on the literature reviewed, this paper finds th
while term limits will reduce average tenure, there is no evidence to suggest that term lim
will affect the underlying causes of these inefficiencies. Further research on a more gen
reform, which would strike deeper at these underlying causes, is implied.
1. Introduction
Research on term limits grew significantly in the 1990s and left a variet
of unresolved questions in its wake. This article brings together the variou
contributions of the term limits literature, summarizes what the body of work
has to say, and highlights areas of ongoing debate and remaining problem
Understanding term limitation in this way requires understanding its context,
which takes us into the related literatures of congressional tenure, government
growth, campaign finance, welfare economics, and others. Thus, the purpo
of this paper is to integrate the work on term limits into the economics liter-
ature at large, and thereby answer otherwise unresolved questions. Doing s
makes clear the lessons that term limits research has to offer, which until now
* Thanks to the referee at Public Choice, Bruce Bender, Lawrence W. Kenny, W. Robe
Reed, Noel D. Campbell, Alex Tabarrok, Bernard Grofman, William A. Niskanen, Gord
Tullock, James M. Buchanan, Tyler Cowen, and Randall G. Holcombe for their helpful com
ments. Thanks also to Hsiu-Ju Yang for her valuable research assistance. Thanks to the At
Economic Research Foundation and the Earhart Foundation for financial support. Spec
thanks to Robert D. Tollison. I am exclusively responsible for oversights and/or errors.
- a state, in particular - would desire term limits. This area of the literature
is closely tied to relative tenure among the states, whereas the support for
universal term limits draws more closely on high and rising average tenure.
In Section 3, I discuss the history of congressional tenure, specifically the
transition from low and stable tenure to high and increasing tenure. In Sec-
tion 4, I use the causes of this transition to present the two leading arguments
for term limits. In Section 5, term limits become an independent variable,
and I discuss their consequences on political and economic variables, paying
particular attention to the "causes" laid out thus far in the paper. Section 6
presents my evaluation of the arguments for term limits based on the literature
reviewed, and Section 7 briefly summarizes the results obtained in the paper.
1.1. The market for wealth transfers and economic vs. "political" efficiency
The literature on term limits has developed within the context of the interest
group theory of government.3 This is foremost a positive theory: the gov-
ernment's primary function is (as distinct from should be) to redistribute
wealth among private groups in the polity. Collective action costs increase
with group size and heterogeneity (Olson, 1965). Legislatures broker wealth
transfers from politically ineffective groups, those with high Olson-costs, to
politically effective groups, those with low Olson-costs. The particular mode
of legislation is not essential to achieving the transfer,4 but the one well-
known caveat is that the wealth transfer typically will not take the form of
a cash payment (Stigler, 1971: 4).
Legislators maximize their net political support rather than social wel-
fare. I use the term "politically efficient" throughout this paper to mean the
lowest-cost attainment of a given quantity of transfers. The election mar-
ket, to illustrate, ought to ensure that the lowest-cost candidate gets elected
to provide the transfers desired by constituents. But imperfections in the
election market may interfere, and higher cost candidates may acquire and
maintain office (which might manifest in, for example, "shirking"). Note
that "political" efficiency, as I am currently using the term, is distinct from
economic (e.g., Pareto) efficiency. The quantity of wealth transfers that max-
imizes net political support is, in a political sense, the efficient quantity. As in
economic markets where competition is equilibrating, political competition
among interest groups pushes the legislator to match marginal demanders
with marginal suppliers of wealth transfers, and the politically efficient quant-
ity of transfers is reached. In the economic (i.e., wealth-maximizing) sense
of efficiency, wealth transfers through legislation are inefficient due to both
deadweight and rent seeking costs (Tullock, 1967). The market for wealth
transfers tends toward political efficiency but away from economic efficiency.
Such being our foundation and such the principle from which we start,
the characteristics of democracy are as follows: the election of officers by
all out of all; and that all should rule over each, and each in his turn over
all; that the appointment to all offices, or to all but those which require
experience and skill, should be made by lot; that no property qualification
should be required for offices, or only a very low one; that a man should
not hold the same office twice, or not often, or in the case of few except
military offices; that the tenure of all offices, or of as many as possible,
should be brief...
In addition, the Greeks practices term limits in many forms. Oakley (1994:
14 ff.) shows that term limits were a feature in most of the Greek constitu-
tional regimes. Particularly in the democratic regimes, the term length and
maximum tenure in many public offices were specifically enumerated. Some
branches of the government, such as the 500-member Boule ("Council") were
subject to stringent limits of only one term.5
Term limits disappeared in practice until the American founding era, but
resurfaced in thought with the renaissance of republican theory, roughly in
16th century Italy and England. Continuing with the Levelers, Physiocrats,
and Enlightenment thinkers, this heritage was brought to the American found-
ing, where de jure term limits again came into practice under the Articles of
Confederation:6
Term limits were nearly included in the U.S. Constitution as well, but their ex-
clusion is not well understood. James Madison strongly favored de jure term
limits, and included them in his Virginia Plan. Similarly, George Mason wrote
term limits into the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which later informed the
Bill of Rights. Despite strong intellectual support from such respected figures
as Madison and Mason, and an apparently firm agrarian coalition of support
that included Washington himself, mandatory rotation of office was dropped
from the Constitutional debate with little episode. This is not to say the
framers deemed term limits an unworthy idea; some of them did, and others
did not.7 But when ideological, legal, and economic constraints were brought
to bear on the array of ideas proposed before the convention, term limits
did not survive. A systematic, rational choice explanation of exactly how
this played out eludes the literature.8 For now, we rely on the conventional
interpretation that the farmers considered term limits an unnecessary detail
due to their expectations that tenure problems would take care of themselves
through naturally (voluntary) rapid turnover of representation.
Term limits almost entirely disappeared until the 1990s, when a "term
limits movement" swept change throughout the political institutions of Amer-
ican democracy. Table 1 provides chronological detail of these institutional
changes. Beginning with the 1990 general elections, 23 states voted to im-
pose term limits on their delegations to the U.S. Congress. These laws were
contested, and ultimately deemed unconstitutional under a 5-4 U.S. Supreme
Court ruling (U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thorton, 115 S.Ct., 1995). In 1992,
term limits were a pillar in the platform of presidential candidate H. Ross
Perot. In 1996, term limits were an issue in the Republican presidential
Dick and Lott (1993) construct a model in order to address the apparent
paradox I alluded to just now: why do voters continually re-elect their own
members of Congress while strongly favoring term limit initiatives? The
answer, they claim, is to conceive of voting for legislators as troubled with
free-ridership, and term limits as providing the solution to the free-rider
problem.
The theory advanced by Dick and Lott (henceforth DL) is an application
of the interest group theory of government. Because legislators compete for
net transfers vis-t-vis one another, tenure is beneficial to a district both in ab-
solute terms and in relative terms. However, tenure also enables the legislator
3/94 AR State Supreme Court rules state's term limits law un-
constitutional.
5/94 NE State Supreme Court rules state's term limits law un-
constitutional - signature requirements.
10/94 OK Voters again pass term limits on congressional delega-
tion.
Table 1. Continued.
1AZ, AR, CA, FL, MI, MO, MT, NE, ND, OH, OR, SD, WA, and WY.
2AK, CO, ID, ME, MA, NE, NV.
3AK, AR, CO, ID, MO, ME, NE, NV, and SD.
However, this does not mean that each district is in a partial equilibrium at
the optimal balance between tenure and turnover (Adams and Kenny, 1986).
The DL free rider theory predicts that term limits will be adopted universally
- in all states/districts at once. But as discussed in Section 1.2 above, that
did not happen. On the contrary, 23 states unilaterally self-imposed term
limits, and 27 did not. It seems the literature has had difficulty explaining this
anomaly partly due to the dominance of the DL theory, which understates
the motivations behind voters' desires for term limits. Yes, voters want term
limits because their members become insulated over time as accumulated ten-
for universal term limits, ceteris paribus. But in the 105th vote, this ceteris
paribus difference in voting disappears, adding at most 0.7 probability points.
Moreover, using multivariate maximum likelihood, I demonstrate that the
probability (both joint and conditional) of voting 'yea' and then switching
to 'nay' was higher for members from unilaterally term-limited states. What
do these results suggest? Prior to the Court's ruling, members from states
that had unilaterally imposed term limits were at a relative disadvantage,
and they wanted to impose term limits on all other members as well. In
contrast, representatives from states without term limits were at a relative
advantage, and strongly opposed the amendment. It is not a free-rider result
per se, but certainly a similar calculus of strategic advantage produced it.
Moreover, the results are maintained whether the returning member or the
electing constituency is treated as the unit of choice. This would seem to
indicate a clear awareness, on the part of voters and representatives, of other
districts in deciding whether to support term limits.
The results from L6pez (2002) are akin to a states' voters placing their del-
egation into the low payoff of an off-diagonal cell in the simple prisoners
dilemma game. So it is still a mystery why a state/district would unilater-
ally impose term limits (or why 23 states did so while 27 did not). More
broadly, how can the DL free-rider theory argue that states will coordinate
their behavior in a way that belies the underlying model it employs?
Tabarrok (1994, 1994) takes up this question and is also concerned with
the DL paradox, focusing on the effect that term limits will have on the dis-
tribution of power among "conflictual coalitions" (such as political parties
or interest groups). Each coalition in a heterogeneous political jurisdiction
is risk averse to being exploited while another coalition is in power. Term
limits are desirable not because they will reduce tenure, but because they will
increase the number of open seat elections, and therefore accelerate the rota-
tion of power between these coalitions. Tabarrok cites statistics from House
elections between 1960 and 1990 in which open seat elections result in a
change of party between three and five times more frequently than incumbent-
challenger races (Tabarrok, 1996: 237). Therefore, term limits should result
in more frequent changes of coalition control, from which risk averse co-
alitions benefit. They prefer imposing term limits on themselves as a means
of ensuring that other coalitions would not remain in power long enough to
exploit them excessively. This model can be applied to predict unilateral term
limits by individual states. The more extreme the differences between groups
in the same political jurisdiction, the greater the benefits they derive from
rotating their opponents out of office routinely, and thus the more willing
they are to rotate themselves. Hence, the "conflict theory" predicts that states
with greater conflict will be more likely to pass term limits. Empirical work
on this prediction is limited to a logit model across states, but since there is
near perfect correlation between states that have term limits and states that
have initiatives and/or referenda, meaningful parameter estimates were not
produced.
By similar reasoning, Glaeser (1997) models voters as heterogeneous in
ideological views as well as risk averse. In districts where coalitions differ
greater (ideologically), each prefers even odds of being in power for con-
secutive periods to even odds of being in power permanently. Though rather
stylized, the model generates a welfare claim that term limits are more likely
to emerge from more risk averse districts so long as the costs of losing relative
tenure are not too great. The degree of heterogeneity also matters (though it is
not clear from the model whether more heterogeneous districts are necessarily
more risk averse). The model also predicts ideologues will support term limits
and Downsians will not. So states that take higher net transfers would, ceteris
paribus, not self-impose.
Konrad and Torsvik (1997) dynamically model bureaucratic incentives,
and the effect that political institutions have on efficient oversight by legis-
lators. The authors assume a model with asymmetric information between
bureaucrats and legislators (cf. Weingast, 1984; Weingast and Moran, 1983).
Bureaucrats generally have longer tenure and, relatedly, more specialized ex-
perience and knowledge of the cost/production functions underlying the tasks
assigned to the bureau. In contrast to conventional agency solutions such
as an efficiency wage, however, it is possible to overcome the information
asymmetry by letting legislators have longer tenure. Legislators would then
accumulate knowledge of the bureau's functions and can work to alleviate
agency inefficiencies. On the contrary, Konrad and Torsvik apply the "ratchet
effect" reasoning of the agency literature, which shows that agents bound by
long-term contracts will conceal information about their true productivity in
early periods to avoid the principal using (i.e., "ratcheting") that information
later on. What the principal needs is a time-consistent way to commit to a
short-term contract (or at least the strategies thereof). Term limits provide
such a commitment. A complication arises because the principal in their
model is himself an agent in the broader interest group model of the legislator.
But the authors show that the commitment problem reverts back to voters
under certain plausible assumptions.
that when played in supergames the dynamic equilibrium may reach the vol-
untary cooperative, globally optimal combination. Ferejohn (1986) develops
this results for political markets. The question then becomes whether voters
in the states that passed term limits perceived an effectively infinite horizon
to the game. One would also have to ask why voters in other states did not
perceive, or had not yet perceived, the same thing. These are questions that
the literature on term limits has not yet taken up. But clues to their answers
can be gleaned from the facts as they unfolded. First, direct democracy played
a key facilitating role in the passage of term limits: of the 23 states that passed
term limits, 22 did so via initiative; every initiative state passed term limits;
and none of the 27 states without term limits has an initiative. Second, the Su-
preme Court in the 1995 U.S. Term Limits v. Thorton rules that state-imposed
term limits on Congress were unconstitutional, halting any existing dynamic
process toward more states adopting them. Certainly the explanation that only
those states with direct democracy pass term limits is an unsatisfying explan-
ation. One possible alternative explanation is that direct democracy facilitates
institutional change more quickly, and states that would have imposed term
limits and had to do so through representative democracy (i.e., legislative state
constitutional amendment) did not have the opportunity to do so because of
Thorton (Tabarrok, 1996). This is a theoretical hunch, but it has some support
in that New Hampshire is both the only state to pass term limits via legislative
statute and the last to do so - just one month before Thorton. The argument
implies that more states would have passed term limits after New Hampshire,
but were disallowed by the Court.
Even so, this rationale only diverts attention away from the correlation
between direct democracy and self-imposed term limits. The underlying
question of the political-economic factors why a state - direct democracy
or not - would self-impose term limits still remains. One possibility is the
presence of Stackelberg-type leadership among the first movers in the game.
States unilaterally acted knowing the asymmetric losses they would incur,
but they did so with the expectation that other states would follow. Why the
others would follow is disputable. Certainly a state cannot penalize another
for not adopting term limits, so there would appear to have been no "stick"
with which to prod the other states to adopt. On the other hand, there is the
"carrot" of global efficiency (general equilibrium) gains to mutual coopera-
tion. But then there is the still bigger carrot of local (partial equilibrium) gains
to free riding. Even in the supergame construction of the prisoners dilemma,
the cooperative equilibrium is sensitive to large numbers of players, costs of
volunteering, and the magnitude of efficiency benefits of mutual cooperation.
One would have to argue that states looked away from all these hindrances
and still made the first move to self-impose term limits. It seems to stretch the
limits of plausibility. Still, it would benefit the argument greatly if one could
empirically show that the states that passed term limits conditioned their laws
on whether voters in other states also passed. Indeed, five of the 23 states that
passed term limits included "trigger clauses", by which their laws would only
take effect after one-half of the other states also self-imposed term limits. On
the other hand, 18 of those 23 states did not include such trigger clauses.
It would seem, therefore, that the dynamic prisoners dilemma applied to
term limits suggests numerous testable propositions. But we cannot be sure.
To my knowledge, no study either theoretically or experimentally shows the
supergame notion advanced here to hold. While we have some decent clues
and plausible theoretical hunches why states might self-impose, we are not
yet sure.
The empirical test of their theory was conducted using the vote on Califor-
nia Proposition 140 in 1990 that imposed term limits on the state legislature
(Friedman and Wittman, 1995). They find that Republican districts voted
more in favor of term limits, as did districts whose representatives were less
tenured. Also, districts whose legislators had been deemed more effective in
constituent surveys were less prone to vote in favor. Examining the Congres-
sional vote on the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms, the authors
also find those representatives/senators who were weak in executive relative
to congressional political power - Republicans and Southern Democrats -
voted consistently in favor of the amendment. Those who were strong in ex-
ecutive relative to congressional political power - highly populous states and
non-Southern Democrats - voted consistently against. Friedman and Wittman
(1995: 80) conclude:
3. Congressional tenure
In Section 1.2 I argued that the only explanation that exists for excluding
term limits from the Constitution is that the framers expected congressional
A
70
60
40
30
Percent Turnover in
20
House of Representatives
10
0
1789 1799 1809 1819 1829 1839 1849 1859 1869 1879 1889 1899 1909 1919 1929 1939 1949 1959 1969 1979 1989 1999
B
60
50
Linear Trendline:
y = 54.93 - 1.01x
40
Percent Turnover in R2 = 0.62
House of Representatives
30
20
10
50
Linear Trendline:
40
y = 53.69 - 2.07x
R2 = 0.68
Percent Turnover in
House of Representatives
30
20
10
C
0
Figure 1.
But his observations are casual. Gilmour and Rothstein (1996) offer more
rigorous insight. They develop a dynamic model of congressional tenure
that contrasts electoral defeat with retirement as reasons for turnover. They
examine cohorts of entering House members and their continuation (or suc-
cessful re-election) rates, which are strictly determined in their model by
voluntary quit (q) and electoral loss (1) rates. For any ith cohort, the con-
tinuation rate is r' = (1 - q - iP). Looking at these rates over time for
multiple cohorts, the model can derive the number and/or proportion of any
ith cohort in any tth House. For example, if N freshmen enter the House in
period 1, then their number in period t is simply the geometric progression:
Ni = N (rj) (r2) ... (r"_ ).14 This methodology is used to construct profiles
of the tenure and turnover structure of congresses over time. And since the
entire model is driven by q and 1, a given tenure profile can be explained
in terms of prior loss and voluntary retirement rates. Their findings are gen-
erally consistent with Kernell's story: declining retirement (i.e., increasing
ambition) accounts for three-fourths of the decline in turnover between 1870
and 1930. And fewer electoral losses explain the remaining 25%. The shares
vary within decades, however. Gilmour and Rothstein find, for example, that
losses began to have an impact in the 1880s (whereas Kernell said it was the
1890s). Similarly, while many scholars point to the 1896 election as a turning
point, Gilmour and Rothstein (1996: 63) conclude it was "a culmination of
a long process" due largely to declining retirement. Among Kernell's (1977:
671) three factors, ambition was the key to the transition to high and increas-
ing tenure; in the broader context, the changes within and around Congress
created a situation in which:
investing one's life work in the House became safer as automatic rules
replaced the Speaker's discretion in determining committee advancement.
If the environment suggested a complex division of labor and the party
system made change possible, the increasingly careerist orientation of
its members can be viewed as providing the House with the necessary
impetus for structural change.
Table 2. Increase in expected tenure post-1975 as calculated by Reed and Schansberg (1992).
Year entered
was followed by an upward trend with distinct "jumps" in the late 1890s, mid
1950s, and early 1970s. The causes of increasing tenure are a combination of
internal and external factors. Most of the early increases in tenure are attribut-
able to Congress attracting increasingly career-minded individuals to office,
possibly due to the increasing role of Congress. Once there, legislators began
a gradual, incremental process of insulating the value of incumbency through
policies and institutions that dissuade challengers. High and increasing tenure
is a combined result of ambition and barriers to entry, and also serves as the
chief purpose for desiring term limitation, the arguments for which I now
discuss.
What are the adverse consequences of high and increased tenure that would
support arguments for term limits? Proponents of term limits uphold two
related efficiency arguments. First, since federal spending increases with
tenure and term limits would unambiguously decrease average tenure, then
term limits should reduce federal spending. Thus, term limits would en-
hance economic efficiency. Second, since competition for congressional seats
diminishes with tenure and term limits would regularly nullify incumbent ad-
vantage, then term limits would then make the congressional election market
more competitive. Thus term limits would enhance political efficiency. My
purpose in this section is to carefully lay out these two parallel arguments in
order to evaluate them.
$Trilons
$Trilons
120 10 80 40 20 0
120 10 40 20 60
80 60 0
RealFdrSpnig
RealFdrSpnig
PercntTuoviHs ofReprsntaiv
TenuradRlFSpig1947-
TurnoveadRlFSpig1947-
AveragTnuiHosf Reprsntaiv
1947568
1953678
5 0
25- 20 15 10 5 3 2 0
35- 30- 7 6 4
Turnove TermsinOfc
Spendig
Spendig
PercntTuoviHs ofReprsntaiv
FedralSpnigs PercntofGD
Figure2.Thtn-spdaovl:USHWI
FedralSpnigs PercntofGD
AveragTnuiHosf Reprsntaiv
TenuradPctGDSpig1953-7
TurnoveadPctGDSpig1947-
1947568
1953678
5 0
15 10 7 6- 5- 4 3- 2- 0
35 30 25 20
TermsinOfc
Turnove
income, and finds that lower income locales are significantly more likely to
feature longer tenures among their delegations. Scully interprets this to mean
the marginal value of a wealth transfer increases the marginal value of tenure
in office. In other words, Scully argues, poorer districts are willing to sacrifice
the benefits of greater rotation in office to obtain the greater income redistri-
bution that higher tenured representatives could acquire. Moore and Hibbing
(1996) present a more straightforward finding. Using data on federal outlays
by district and state from 1983 to 1990, the authors find that higher tenure in
the House does not necessarily increase spending within individual districts.
However, higher House and Senate tenure increases spending within the state.
Moreover, it is the House portion of the state's delegation that produces the
results - Senate tenure alone is insignificant.
The above studies are either cross-sectional or point-to-point intertem-
poral comparisons, Stronger evidence based on panel data is provided by
Aka et al. (1996) and Reed et al. (1998). Both studies examine NTU scores
(a spending measure based on roll call voting) of representatives and senators
entering office between 1975 and 1992. Reed et al. find only a weak rela-
tionship between attained tenure and spending. In certain sub-samples, the
relationship is actually negative. The culture of spending hypothesis gains
support in the data only with House Republicans entering between 1975 and
1982. The logrolling hypothesis holds only within the senate model. And the
shirking hypothesis receives no support in the their data. The authors con-
clude that their results do not support a clear relationship between tenure and
spending, nor can they explain why tenure might be related to spending. Aka
et al. (1996) pay particular attention to the variables that measure member-
specific variation over time (most importantly tenure) versus variables that are
member-constant but vary by observation in each cross-section (e.g., party,
race, gender, age at first election). They find that isolated, longitudinal tenure
effects are generally not statistically significant and are of tiny magnitude:
20 years in office increases a senator's NTU score by one-third of a standard
deviation, and decreases a representative's score by less than half a stand-
ard deviation. Instead, the member-constant variables explain far more of
the differences in spending. An advantage of their approach is the ability
to discriminate between members' own tenure effects and the effects that are
due to sample attrition. Assuming members who exit office earlier than their
cohort have lower spending preferences, then those who remain will increase
the average spending measure. The explanatory power of their cross-sectional
variables relative to their longitudinal variables suggests the sample-attrition
effect dominates. This also explains why simple cross-sectional studies might
find a positive and significant tenure effect.
be no problem because the challenger would purchase it, so long as Cc < C1,
for a price greater than the incumbent's present discounted value of holding
office but less than or equal to his own (Lott, 1986: 89). But this is not the
case. As a result, for a challenger to effectively compete for the seat, either
the incumbent must exhibit high CI (be a poor producer of G) or Cc must be
sufficiently lower than CI to offset the barrier B. Lott demonstrates that this
is unlikely because C, declines with incumbent tenure while B increases with
tenure. Therefore, Lott's main point is that least cost producers (in terms of
C's) are not elected to office, and this is (politically) inefficient.19
Lott (1987b, 1989) shows this empirically by comparing incumbents' past
investment in brand name with challengers' subsequent investment. If the
incumbent's brand name does cause TCc to be greater than TCI by B, then
higher levels of B decrease the challenger's return to expenditures and should
reduce them. He finds significant evidence, for House elections during the
1970s, that incumbents' current expenditures tend to increase challengers
spending, which is consistent with common results in the campaign finance
literature. However, current challenger spending is negatively related to past
incumbent spending. In addition, controlling for incumbents' time in office
indicates that more tenure decreases current challenger spending (at an in-
creasing rate). Lott is hesitant to interpret the tenure coefficient as a barrier
because time in office may simply reflect a low TCI. But time in office can
cause an incumbent's TCI to fall over time with committee seats, logrolling
relationships, etc., which are opportunities denied to challengers.
The broader literature is generally consistent with this entry barriers
theme. Bernhardt and Ingberman (1985), for example, show that voters may
be biased toward incumbency even though it is costly. They model voters
as uncertain whether candidates will actually fulfill the promises made in
their election platforms. They show that it is costly for an incumbent to:
a) campaign for re-election on a platform significantly different from his
reputation; or b) take actions after re-election that diverge from his reputation
established in prior terms. As a result, voters perceive less risk in consistent
incumbents than in challengers. Even if the challenger's platform is closer
than the incumbent's to the median voter, the incumbent may be re-elected
if his platform is consistent with his reputation and not so distant from the
median that it overwhelms the value of the economized risk. Thus, constitu-
ents may stick with an incumbent, even an inefficient one, because he is a
safe bet. Another cost of incumbency is the potential for rent-extraction (see
McChesney, 1991). As Buchanan and Congleton (1994: 49) write:
Buchanan and Congleton abstract in their model from many actual institu-
tions through which legislators would extract rents. For instance, Weingast
and Marshall (1988) stress the importance of long-term durability to wealth-
transferring contracts. Logrolling and the committee system are especially
noteworthy as examples of such durability-creating institutions. But each of
these, in turn, depends on individual members being in office for a long
time.20 Hence, we come back to the centrality of tenure to these many
inefficiencies. Since term limits would reduce tenure, they would reduce
political entry barriers, and reduce or eliminate the many associated political
inefficiencies.
I now consider effects on economic and political data when term limitation is
moved to the right hand side of the equation. As Bernard Grofman (1996a)
noted in the important collection of term limits papers that he edited, this is
not a simple question. One is confronted less by answers than by "hypotheses
in search of data" (Grofman, 1996b). Legislative term limits were enacted
only recently, and in some of the most interesting cases (e.g., California), the
laws were significantly scaled back or changed. So data on their effects are
not especially prevalent. As a result, some of the evidence considered here
draws from calibrated simulations. In other cases, though - usually regarding
executive term limits - hypotheses have found their data and the literature
stands on actual empirical observations. I will emphasize the consequences
of term limits vis-h-vis the causes outlined earlier in the paper, but additional
effects that are separate from (or at least not strictly bounded by) the causes
will also be explained.
In tracing the consequences of term limits, I will take the view that term
limits represent an institutional change (Landes and Posner, 1975). Unlike
policy changes, that alter the incentive structures of economic agents in the
polity, an institutional change such as term limits alters the incentive struc-
ture faced by policy makers themselves. In other words, we can expect term
limits to impact pre-policy data such as the demographic, partisan, and ten-
ure/turnover characteristics of the legislature, the balance of powers among
the branches and levels of government, and the competitiveness of the elec-
tion market. In turn, these changes shift the policymaking landscape, so that
we can expect to see subsequent changes in the policy data such as tax laws
and spending programs. Following this cascade of effects, the consequences
of term limits can be compared to the causes developed earlier in the pa-
per, providing a basis for a positive evaluation of the net benefits of term
limitation.
Before proceeding further, I must make note of two caveats. First, the ef-
fects of term limits depend on the institutional setting and on the design of the
particular restriction (Cain, 1996). In reading the legislative history of term
limits in Congress,21 I found that the most important features of design are:
a) length of term; b) number of terms limited; c) grandfather specification;
and d) whether the limits were lifetime or allowed "reentry".22 To illustrate
this caveat, suppose reelection is a function of reputational capital, which is
in turn a function of tenure. Then the effects of term limits will depend on
the extant tenure profile and the functional relationship between reputational
capital and tenure. Paraphrasing Cain (1996: 27), if average tenure is high
and brand name capital depends strongly on tenure, then term limits should
increase electoral competitiveness. But if the proposed term limit is high
relative to average tenure, then the chain is broken. The House simulations
by Reed and Schansberg (1994, 1995), which I discuss in detail presently,
reinforce this point. Their results produce greatly different effects on tenure
profile when the number of terms limited is changed or when grandfathering
is removed. The net benefits of term limitation vis-a-vis the status quo and
other reforms may depend mostly on the form that the restriction takes.
Simulation models to predict the effects of term limits introduces the
second caveat, the "Lucas critique" (Lucas, 1976). Simulation models cal-
ibrate past continuation rates, then forecast future tenure profiles given these
same rates and a term limit. But term limits may incite changes to the under-
lying structural parameters that determine continuation rates. To the extent
of such an effect, these types of simulations may generate erroneous fore-
casts. Without exception, authors of these simulated studies acknowledge
this problem, as does Grofman (1996b: 7) in the introduction to his edited
volume. It is, of course, trivial to model the effects of structural changes once
they are known: simply update the forecasts with the altered continuation
rates. But the essence of Lucas' critique is that structural changes are partly
determined by the manner in which expectations are formed, in addition to
preferences and certain political institutions. Applying Lucas' argument in
this case, expectations depend partly on the absence of term limits, and are
therefore likely to change systematically following their enactment. In brief,
simulated forecasts of the effects of term limits using extant continuation rates
should be interpreted carefully because there is good reason to expect the
continuation rates to change systematically after term limits.
The notion that one can understand policy tradeoffs only after years
in political office seems especially misplaced ... For starters, a pool of
academics study how policy is made and works; they could step into
legislative work with much background knowledge. Many people outside
academia have advanced training in public policy and public adminis-
tration programs. Similarly, many lawyers are trained in the writing and
implementation of legislation, and deal with policy questions day in and
day out in their work ... [M]any persons are qualified candidates for
legislative positions (Glazer and Wattenberg, 1996: 44-45).
Finally, it is conceivable that term limits would not decrease, and perhaps
even increase, average tenure. The logic here is that term limits cause poten-
tial challengers to postpone running until the seat is opened by mandatory
rotation. Grofman and Sutherland (1996) present a stylized model that pro-
duces this outcome. In their model, the probability of a challenger defeating
an incumbent is lower than the probability of winning an open-seat election.
The key feature of their model is that once a candidate is defeated (whether
running against an incumbent or not), the candidate's party finds another
(stronger) candidate for all subsequent election bids. If you lose once, you
cannot run again. Since strong candidates will then defer until term limits
create an open seat, then incumbents are re-elected with certainty at their
discretion. If the conditions of their model hold, and voluntary quits are low,
and the term limit does not "bind", then a term limits law could conceivably
increase average tenure. Such conditions are unlikely, however. As discussed,
evidence in Lott (1989) suggests that challengers use current campaigns to
invest in reputation for later campaigns, and the work by Francis and Kenny
(1997) and Francis et al. (2000) suggests a term limit does not have to "bind"
to affect rotation patterns.
is both
So Rt =parties
(1-qr)(R:)+(1-qd)(D ). Similarly,
are running new faces DNby
in seats vacated = their
(1-qd)(D:)+(1-qr)(R:).
own and the
other party - the basic nature of open-seat elections. If we know the rate of
open-seat victory by party, vr and vd, then we can calculate the number of
republicans and democrats during any tth Congress:
Table 3. Predicted Democrat-to-Republican seats; steady state with and without term limits;
results from Gilmour and Rothstein (1996).
It is true that each party is more likely to lose its seat in each race where its
incumbent cannot run. However, the increase in the likelihood of losing
these seats is not in general the same for both parties. This indicates
the logical possibility that the party that retires fewer incumbents may
suffer a net loss of seats if it also suffers a substantially greater increase
in the likelihood of losing each race ... (Gilmour and Rothstein, 1994:
771-772).
Republicans wanted term limits not because they were the minority party with
lower tenure, but because they lose reelection more often and were beginning
to win open seats more often. It has been observed that Congressional Re-
publicans lost a great deal of interest in term limits after they had gained the
majority in Congress. This analysis suggests the reason is not that they gained
the majority, but that they have been doing better in their open seat elections
relative to the Democrats.
risk in pursuing a Senate seat. This implies that the reduced expected tenure
outweighs the quicker path to leadership, such that the net value of holding
the House office has declined after term limitation - at least relative to a seat
in the relevant Senate.27
A lower return to holding office would imply that the legislators of highest
marginal productivity leave. Similarly, a marginally less productive set of in-
dividuals is attracted to run for office. Whether term limits will cause a more
The costs of term limits associated with tenure depend firstly on the
relationship between tenure and legislator productivity. It is highly implaus-
ible that this function is monotonic. Low and increasing tenure imparts
parliamentary rights (representative capital) that make the legislator more
productive and increase net transfers. On the other hand, high and increasing
tenure erects barriers to entry that worsen the effects of Downsian ignor-
ance and could lead to increased shirking. By historical standards, at least,
Section 3 has shown that tenure is high and increasing. Therefore, the costs
of high and increasing tenure are avoided with term limits, and one would
predict term limits to reduce legislator shirking. As I discussed in Section
2.1 above, Reed et al. use a panel-data regression approach to investigating
shirking behavior. They use regressions on panel data to try to relate shirking
to tenure, if shirking increases with tenure, and term limits reduce tenure,
then term limits should reduce shirking. They find no support for even the
first relationship, and conclude that term limits would not have an effect
on shirking. An important problem with this approach is finding adequate
proxies for the legislator's shirking preference and especially the amount
of shirking chosen. These problems cause biased estimates that mask true
shirking behavior (Bender and Lott, 1996). So this should not be considered
a conclusive result.
Yet another avenue is for term limits to affect shirking through the returns
to holding office. Term limits might reduce the reelection motive, but they
increase the election to higher office motive. Because success in seeking
higher office depends in part on owning a reputation as being productive, this
increases the cost of being known as a shirker (Glazer and Wattenberg, 1996).
Moreover, because the value of the lower office has declined, this could attract
legislators with a stronger or weaker preference for shirking.
Amid this muddled picture, Bender, Haas, and Kim (2000) offer some
potentially cogent answers (though their results are preliminary at the time
of this writing). They develop an estimable stochastic model of congress
based on the microeconomic behavior of individual members. Each member
chooses an optimal degree of shirking in a constrained dynamic maximiz-
ation of expected discounted lifetime utility. Voters, of course, provide the
constraint by punishing shirking with reduced reelection probability. Should
an incumbent be defeated or retire, he is replaced with a challenger whose
age and shirking preferences are randomly chosen from distributions for
each variable. Parameters for voter sorting, incumbent retirement, and the
distribution of both incumbents' and challengers' shirking preferences are
estimated from twelve terms of data using a minimum chi-square method-
ology and simulation. Specifically, an initial congress is constructed based
on a given set of parameter values, and the incumbents go through eleven
consecutive simulated elections. Parameter values are then perturbed and ini-
tial congress and simulated elections are performed until the chi-square value
used is minimized. These twelve simulated congresses closely fit the actual
data.33 The resulting parameter values are then used to simulate fifty addi-
tional congresses with and without term limits and observe optimal shirking
behavior. The term limits used are twelve- and six-year, fully grandfathered,
lifetime limits (where applicable, term limits are imposed starting with the
13th congress). Their results are threefold. First, they find effects on mean
tenure that are highly consistent with the findings of Reed and Schansberg
and Gilmour and Rothstein discussed above. Second, they find no change
in the preferences for shirking under term limits; the restriction does not
draw systematically better nor worse candidates - at least where shirking is
concerned.34 Third, they find that the optimal choice of shirking increases by
80% under a 12-year limit, and by 160% under a six-year limit.35 The major
advantages of this empirical approach are that there is no assumption that all
legislators have a positive demand for shirking and that there is no use of an
empirical proxy for (the not directly measurable) shirking.
The logic of this result is, by comparison to the empirical methodology,
quite simple. Term limits relax the reelection constraint built into the model.
As such, the expected costs of shirking are reduced, and the quantity of shirk-
ing increases. Shirking increases more for a six-year limit because there is
even less time for voters to punish shirking - that is, for sorting to occur -
and also because members have a shorter time horizon and therefore greater
incentive to shirk. This is only one result - and again, a preliminary one - but
it appears to be somewhat compelling. It would support the last term effect
not being the vehicle for increasing shirking, and suggest that the pursuit of
higher office is overwhelmed by the relaxation of the reelection constraint,
such that the overall effect of term limits is to increase shirking. This is so
even under the assumption that term limits do not attract candidates with
stronger shirking preferences. It is important to keep in mind, however, that
the Bender/Hass/Kim model is institutionless in the Cohen/Spitzer sense, and
so it does not address the impact of term limits on agency slack.
Much of the economics literature dealing with term limits treats them as a
regressor in various types of models aimed at explaining their effects on
economic variables such as state spending, taxes, public capital, etc. This
empirical literature focuses primarily on executive rather than congressional
or legislative term limits. Crain and Tollison (1993), for example, use a
time-inconsistency model to show that gubernatorial term limits foster more
frequent and more certain changes in regime, which helps to induce more use
of strategic fiscal policy (i.e., more variability in fiscal discretion variables).
The result is diminished fiscal stability and, ultimately, worse economic per-
formance. Similarly, Crain and Oakley (1995) use a strategic fiscal policy
model to reveal a larger per-capita stock of public capital in states with
gubernatorial term limits. Besley and Case (1995) present a thorough analysis
in which term limits are the primary regressor on taxes, expenditures, state
minimum wages, and workers' compensation. Their findings suggest that
term limits reduce the incentive for politicians to maintain political reputa-
tion (i.e., to work hard). Gubernatorial term limits, therefore, help to increase
sales taxes, income taxes and per-capita state expenditures, while they tend to
decrease the state minimum wage. In a preliminary paper, Crain and Johnson
(2001) echo these results for chief executives of OECD countries. Unlike Be-
sley and Case, however, they find that the effects on fiscal performance differ
systematically under a single-term versus a two-term limit. In countries with
a one-term presidential limit, government growth is higher than in countries
without, though fiscal volatility is dampened. A two-term limit significantly
increases fiscal volatility, and retards economic growth as in Besley and Case.
In both studies, the reduced incentive to establish and maintain a sound polit-
ical reputation drives the results in the presence of term limits. Increased fiscal
volatility has been demonstrated more generally to retard economic growth
The first part of this paper has been directed at an apparent paradox: why con-
stituents would support incumbency and term limitation. The second part of
this paper is directed at answering two related questions. First, will congres-
sional term limits reduce federal spending and therefore enhance economic
efficiency? Second, will term limits reduce barriers to entry by effective chal-
lengers and therefore enhance political efficiency? In this section, I evaluate
these two questions based on the findings as laid out thus far in the paper. The
literature speaks reasonably clearly in answering the first question, but less so
on the second.
The scale advantage which acts as a barrier to entry is the majority vot-
ing rule (if another voting rule is actually used, then analogous problems
arise) which provides that the 'entrepreneurial group' which obtains half
the customers can drive the other entrepreneurial group or groups out of
the market.
ing and recover economic losses. If so, a more general restriction - perhaps
appropriately designed campaign finance reform - is required to do so.
7. Conclusion
This paper has surveyed the causes and consequences of term limits an
tegrated the analysis into the broader economics literature in order to sp
the lessons offered from term limits research. The modern interest in term
limits has been based on high and increasing tenure in Congress. Tenure
was stable and low until the middle 19th century, but accelerated in the late
1890s because of increased political ambition, and again in the mid 1950s
and early 1970s because of increasing incumbent advantages. Term limits
advocates have proposed that tenure profiles in the modem congressional era
introduce inefficiencies of two sorts. First, the size of government (spending)
increases with tenure, creating additional deadweight losses in the economy.
Second, higher tenure enables incumbents to further insulate themselves from
competition by able challengers. As in economic markets, these barriers to
entry create associated political inefficiencies. Term limits would, by these
twin arguments, recover both economic and political efficiencies. Partly based
on these arguments, there was widespread popular support for term limits
during the 1990s, subsequent enactment in roughly half the state legislatures,
and enactment by 23 states on their congressional delegations. This support
and enactment was sometimes seemingly irrational, as when individual states
unilaterally restricted their own members, or when voters supported term
limits and simultaneously reelected their own members. In response came
several theories of term limits, typically with game theoretic underpinnings,
assigning rationality to certain forms of support for term limits. If rational,
then the consequences of term limits might be expected to be efficiency en-
hancing. This paper has identified these consequences: Term limits always
favor republicans because they lose reelection and win opens seats more often
than democrats do. Term limits also can be expected to increase the volatility
of fiscal policy and increase legislative shirking - not because term limit-
ation worsens a lame duck effect, but because it weakens electoral sorting
mechanisms. Term limits will almost certainly reduce average congressional
tenure, even before the term limit "binds". In this survey, however, I found
that in no way does this suggest that spending will also decline. Thus, the first
efficiency argument is not upheld. I found also that term limits will reduce the
value of the politician holding office, but the value of that office to outsiders,
namely special interests, is ambiguous. Insofar as term limits can reduce entry
barriers by reducing incumbent relative to challenger campaign spending, it
is a redundancy over properly designed campaign finance reform. Thus, I
have found no clear evidence supporting the second efficiency argument for
term limits either. To the extent that these inefficiencies are real, it remains a
problem for public choice research as to what kind of policies might enhance
efficiency. Properly designed campaign finance policy may be a solution, and
this suggests further study of the effects of alternative restrictions on electoral
outcomes.
Notes
1. For these claims see Jacob (1996), Bandow (1995, 1996), Ferry (1994a), Armor (1994)
and Coyne and Fund (1992). Garrett (1996) critiques the claims of creating a citizen
legislature.
2. Some 3,000 municipal offices are term limited, many since the original founding of their
jurisdictions. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1951, limits presid-
ential terms. Nearly three quarters of the states have had gubernatorial term limits laws
at various times, with one fourth of these enacting stricter limits in the 1992 and 1994
elections.
3. The seminal contributions are Olson (1965), Tullock (1967), and Stigler (1971). Sub-
sequent formal models were presented by Peltzman (1976), McCormick and Tollison
(1981), Becker (1983) and Denzau and Munger (1986). Implications and empirical re-
search within the model are discussed in Tollison (1981, 1988). Shughart (1990: Ch.
2) provides a succinct summary. Discussions of the interest group theory can be found
in prominent textbooks in public choice (Mueller, 1989), public finance (Rosen, 1998),
industrial organization (Carlton and Perloff, 1994), and principles (Ekelund and Tollison,
1998; Gwartney and Stroup, 1997).
4. It can take the form of social insurance (e.g., Feldstein, 1998), industry regulation (e.g.,
Stigler, 1971), antitrust (McChesney and Shughart, 1994), environmental protection (e.g.,
Buchanan and Tullock, 1975; Pashigan, 1985), the tax code (Yagi and Tachibinaki, 1998),
formulation of budget rules (Garrett, 1998), et cetera. Other forms of redistribution
through legislatures are discussed in Tollison (1988).
5. By contrast, office holders in other branches of their government such as the courts, the
assembly, and the treasury, were hardly ever held to a specific number of terms, and were
sometimes explicitly allowed unlimited terms.
6. The interested reader can trace the intellectual heritage of the American founding,
including the concept of rotation in office, in Bailyn (1967). See also Richard (1994).
7. The framers' original intent on term limits has been subject of a prolific debate among
legal scholars surrounding the 1995 Supreme Court decision in U.S. Term Limits v.
Thorton. The ruling struck down states' term limits laws as unconstitutional additional
requirements for holding office. As a result, this body of work focuses the question of ori-
ginal intent on the Qualifications Clauses, and offers little on what the founders expected
term limits to accomplish, much less why the framers excluded term limits from the final
document. (Price, 1996). It remains a very interesting and unanswered question.
8. McGuire and Ohsfeldt (1984, 1986, 1989) present econometric studies of delegate voting
and ratification of the constitution. Their thesis and methodology provide a model for
a rational choice approach to the issue of term limits. Londregan (1999) empirically
examines strategic voting at the federal convention of 1787.
9. The incumbent reelection rate has exceeded 90% in all elections since 1990. Opinion polls
indicate super-majority support for term limits among voters (Moore, Saad, McAnemy
and Newport, 1994). And term limits initiatives/referenda passed 22 of 23 times in the
1990s, typically by margins of 2-to-i and as high as 3-to-i (Ferry, 1994b).
10. The seniority allocation of committee assignments has ebbed and flowed into and out
of prominence. In general, see Polsby, Gallaher, and Rundquist (1969). Early congresses
had only the Committee of the Whole. With the emergence first of the Ways and Means
committee and then others, the Speaker typically exercised complete discretion. As early
as the 1860s this discretion began to wane as seniority determined increasingly greater
numbers of posts. Kernell (1977) argues ideological differences arising within political
parties at the turn of the century left party leadership an ineffective means of allocation.
After the 1910 revolt against Speaker Cannon, seniority was the exclusive medium of al-
locating chairmanships (Polsby, 1968: 161), which extended to committee assignments in
general and persisted until 1974. Modem political science and economics has researched
the committee assignment process in detail. For contrasting views, see Grier and Mun-
ger (1991), Cox and McCubbins (1993), Krehbiel (1992), Coker and Crain (1994), and
Leighton and L6pez (2002).
11. The other statistics include longer stays prior to accession to Speaker of the House, less
horizontal movement into leadership positions, and fewer mean years between retirement
from the speakership and death, all at the end of the 19th century.
12. Three months after the signing of the Sherman Act, its chief proponent introduced tariff
legislation popularly known as "The Campaign Contributor's Tariff Bill". For a discus-
sion of antitrust and protectionism as substitute policies, see DiLorenzo (1985). See
Shughart, Silverman, and Tollison (1995) for regression analysis providing evidence of
a complementary relationship.
13. Kemell's discussion of rotation (1977: 675-679) is engaging. For example: "[R]otation
was not always based on geography. In some districts rotation appears simply as a con-
venient way of allowing aspiring politicians to gain experience and exposure for future
elections to state offices. In a few areas the rotation period was a strict "one term and
out. Oregon followed this prescription without exception until the twentieth century, and
Lincoln's career, as well as the nation's history, may have looked far different had local
rules not forced him out of the House after his first term". Space requirements disallow
recounting such interesting details, but Kemell's article is highly recommended to the
interested reader.
14. This is my own simplified interpretation of the model. I also use my own variable names
for consistency with later parts of this paper.
15. This is taken from Reed and Schansberg (1992), Equation 2.
16. This is a reproduction of Reed and Schansberg (1992) Table 2. For fuller explanation of
these values, see particularly the discussion surrounding their Equation 4 and their Table
3.
17. This constitutes a social loss only if those districts experiencing losses outweigh those
districts that experience gains.
18. Though Wittman (1989) makes a counter claim.
19. Note again the proximity of this idea to political shirking. Lott's model, which builds
on Peltzman's (1976) theory, is more involved than this simple abstract, particularly in
understanding the incumbent's return to holding office. But I cannot explain the details
of the model without going on for some length. The essential point made in the text is
adequate for current purposes.
20. Though see Landes and Posner (1975) for an exception to this, saying the independent
judiciary establishes durability to wealth-transferring contracts even in the presence of a
Congress whose membership turns over.
21. For House legislative history see H.J.Res.2, H.J.Res.73, H.Rept. 104-67, H.Rept. 104-82,
104Cong.Rec. H3553 ff., H3885 ff., H.Rept. 105-2, H.Rept. 105-4, 105Cong.Rec.E69 ff.
For Senate legislative history, see S.J.Res.21, S.Rept. 104-158, 104Cong.Rec. S3769-86,
S3805-17, S3864-80.
22. "Full grandfathering" completely exempts extant members; they can serve as many terms
as they and their voters like. "Limited grandfathering" does not count the terms already
served by extant members toward the term limit. "No grandfathering" applies the terms
served toward the limit, so, for example, upon enactment of a six term limit, all members
with tenure greater than six terms would immediately be forced out of office. See Schans-
berg (1991) for a good discussion. On reentry, see Reed and Schansberg (1994: 81, fn.
6).
23. Compare Schansberg's (1994) work on the U.S. House to Francis and Baker (1986),
who offer more specific explanations for voluntary quits from state legislatures: ambition
for higher office, increasing career and familial opportunity costs, dissatisfaction, and
health/age.
24. Kenny and Rush (1990) find similar partisan bias on a similar vote when democrats
supported the 17th Amendment far more than republicans.
25. This is a simplified version of the model in Gilmour and Rothstein (1994). I have changed
their notation to be consistent with mine.
26. On these calculations, Reed and Schansberg conservatively assume leaders spend only
one term in a leadership position. In a comment on this paper, Jacobson (1995) notes that
this assumption means 70% of the congress will never reach a leadership position.
27. The tradeoff requires their be a sufficient ratio of higher to lower offices. The effect can be
reasonably expected in state houses because movement to state senates has many oppor-
tunities. Likewise, movement to the U.S. House, and further to the U.S. Senate has many
opportunities. But once in the U.S. Senate, for example, there are not so many higher
offices to pursue. These indirect effects probably would not obtain.
28. First among these normative views is the ideal of the "citizen legislator", in which Con-
gress is forced by term limitation to return to its pre-professional era and work toward
the public interest. Congress would be populated not with political careerists but with
ordinary citizens in the mold of Cincinnatus, answering the call to public duty, serving
a short period of time, and then returning to their private sector lives (Petracca, 1991;
Bandow, 1995; Coyne and Fund, 1992). A citizen legislature would engender policies
closer to ordinary citizens' interests and restore Congress to its founding role as the body
of deliberative governance (Will, 1992). Second, one can argue without eschewing polit-
ical ambition that term limits give politicians the incentive to work in the public interest.
Glazer and Wattenberg (1996) use a conventional Olson/Stigler model of representation
to show that without term limits the frequency of legislators proposing general interest
legislation is approximately one-third the social optimum. But with term limits, a member
must pursue higher office to remain in politics. He therefore must, while in current office,
work to establish a broader constituency, and will favor general rather than parochial
policies on the margin. Third - a variant of Payne's "culture of spending" argument -
high tenure in office creates "legislative contamination", which leaves politicians jaded
and apathetic to seeing bad policies passed (Cain, 1996: 25-26).
29. Although Garrett (1995) counters the citizen legislature point by arguing that initial in-
vestment in political capital so increases the value of remaining in public office, and,
indeed, that the only way to receive the return on such investment is to remain in public
life.
30. This argument is laid out in the context of the California legislature; I take full liberty
in extending the argument to Congress. Cain (1996: 29) argues that the effect depends
on whether the contributor is a moneyed interest group or a public sector/public interest
lobby group or policy institute.
31. Their measure is defined as: "total expenditures by all candidates in either the general or
primary elections" (Daniel and Lott, 1997: 174).
32. For a survey of the shirking literature see Bender and Lott (1996).
33. The authors compare these simulated congresses to actual data, and fail to reject that there
is no statistical difference "In order to give an idea of how the model in general performed,
the mean probability of continuing in office is 0.844 for the twelve simulated congresses,
which compares favorably to the mean probability of 0.839 for the twelve congresses that
comprise our data sample". (Bender, Haas, and Kim, 2000: 31).
34. The mean incumbent taste for shirking is .21, while the mean for challengers is .26. Over
time, because the limit is lifetime and/or because of sorting, the congress' mean taste for
shirking will be upper-bounded by the mean of the challenger distribution. Therefore, the
estimated value for shirking taste does increase over time. It just does not increase more
or less under term limits.
35. When the simulations are run again assuming uniform distribution of challengers' pref-
erences for shirking, the effects are: tastes for shirking increase by 115 and 100%, and
shirking increases by 440 and 640%, respectively under 3- and 6-term limits. Both of
these changes are results of an earlier assumption about the challengers' shirking pref-
erences. By construction of the model, the distribution of preferences for shirking in the
challenger population is not affected by term limits. This is a strong assumption because
term limits will reduce the returns to challengers with low taste for shirking relative to
challengers with high taste for shirking. It is this very assumption that biases downward
their calculated degree of shirking under term limits, and what makes the increase in
shirking under term limits such a strong result.
36. Their measure for "professionalism" is a continuous { 0,1 } index based on legislative
compensation, expenditures on staff, and length of legislative session, relative to the U.S.
Congress. Full explanation can be found in their paper.
37. While revising this paper I received a preliminary draft of a study that examines the effects
of PAC contribution limits on electoral competitiveness across the state legislatures and
over time. The early results indicate that the presence of PAC limit lowers incumbent vote
share and margin of victory in state legislature races (Stratmann and Aparicio-Castillo,
2001).
38. It is easier and more important to evaluate one's own basket of goods and alternative
suppliers than the array of political goods, of which one consumes only a fraction, as-
sembled in party platforms. Additional uncertainty arises because economic bundles are
typically evaluated retrospectively (the goods have already been produced), whereas party
platforms must be evaluated prospectively (promises about future policies).
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