Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 1999.

2:163–88
Copyright Ó 1999 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

TERM LIMITS
Bruce E. Cain and Marc A. Levin
Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley,
California 94720; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
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KEY WORDS: legislators, progressivism, populism, republicanism, libertarianism

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ABSTRACT
The literature on term limits has burgeoned in recent years. This paper looks
at both the empirical and normative studies, exploring how the term-limit de-
bate is confounded by both fact and value disagreements. We identify four
schools of thought with respect to the desirability of term limits and conclude
that, because people start from different normative perspectives, findings
about term-limit effects can be interpreted in very different ways. Reviewing
the literature on electoral impacts, we discovered that term limits have in-
creased turnover most noticeably in the more professionalized legislatures.
The length of term limitations and the types of legislatures that adopt them
are critical explanatory variables. The implications for the internal workings
of legislatures and the balance of power are less well documented by schol-
ars, but there is a great deal of testimony from legislators and lobbyists that
term limits have changed their operations in important ways.

INTRODUCTION
When the legislative term-limit debate began in the early 1990s, political sci-
entists were asked to predict what would happen if the term-limit measures un-
der consideration in the various states passed and to offer opinions on whether
term limits were a good or bad idea. At that time, there was very little serious
research on legislative term limits from which to draw. Those who entered the
fray had to rely largely on their own judgment and intuition, informed by a
small literature on executive term limits and related work on incumbency, sen-
iority, voting behavior, and the like.
Almost a decade later, the work specifically on legislative term limits has
burgeoned. We now know more about the effects of term limits than we did

163
1094-2939/99/0616-0163$08.00
 164 CAIN & LEVIN

before. But having a more solid factual basis has not changed a lot of minds
about the pros and cons of term limits. For the most part, in both academia and
politics, positions have hardened in the intervening years. The only exception
seems to be certain Republican members of Congress who, to the dismay of
their followers, have abandoned their pledge to apply term limits to Congress
(and, by implication, themselves). It is unlikely, however, that political scien-
tists or their research had much to do with those conversions. On the whole, ex-
perience and self-interest are more persuasive teachers for elected officials
than are the best-crafted academic studies.
Our influence on politicians aside, the idea of term limits, whether good or
bad, has presented a wonderful research opportunity. Term limits are to politi-
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cal science what war injuries were for medical science in an earlier period.
When bombs ripped open the bodies of combatants or caused unusual neuro-
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logical damage, physicians were able to learn things that would otherwise have
required unimaginably unethical experiments. Similarly, the drastic changes
that term limits have inflicted on the body politic—especially on incumbency
and the seniority system—provide a valuable opportunity to understand more
about how legislatures operate and adjust to radical change. Although many
political scientists do not share Petracca and Kristol’s enthusiasm for the term-
limitation movement (e.g. Petracca 1992, 1996; Kristol 1993), they have none-
theless profited professionally and intellectually from the fascinating experi-
ment that it has created in numerous state and local governments.
Although our overall knowledge is better today than it was 10 years ago, as
we shall see shortly, progress in this area has not been even. Because most
term-limit legislation was written so that the tenure clocks for returning and
new members were set identically at the time of enactment, the effects of term
limits have been delayed by the time it has taken to rotate old members out and
bring new ones in. As a consequence, we tend to know more about the charac-
teristics of pre- and post–term-limitation candidates than we do about the im-
pact of term limits on legislative competence or the balance of power between
the governmental branches. Even in the latter category, however, evidence is
beginning to emerge as some of the first states with the shortest limits (e.g.
California) have finally “termed out” their original members.
The purpose of this essay is not only to summarize the state of knowledge
about term limits to date but also to make some points about the big picture.
Many predictions were offered in the early days of the term-limit debate. As
was pointed out some years back, every term-limit prediction in one direction
was matched by a prediction with equal confidence in the counter direction
(Cain 1996b).
Some of the things that happened subsequently were as predicted (e.g. turn-
over rates increased). Some things occurred that, in retrospect, should have
been predicted but were not (e.g. the increasing number of special elections as
 TERM LIMITS 165

members left their offices early to run for other offices or take private-sector
opportunities). Some effects, however, were unforeseen simply because they
were harder to anticipate, such as the redistribution of power between lower
and upper houses and the equilibrium adjustments that legislatures have
made to compensate for the changes inflicted by term limits. This serves to
remind us about an essential characteristic of our fortuitous political science
experiment: It is not completely controlled in the way that pure science de-
mands. Neither, of course, were the injury experiments that advanced medical
science, which gives us hope that we will learn much despite the limitations of
our design.
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THE PASSAGE OF TERM LIMITS

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As institutional innovations go, term-limit laws have spread quite rapidly,

especially considering that they were put in place by the separate actions of
state and local jurisdictions and were not centrally imposed by the federal
government. As of May 1998, 21 states have adopted state legislative term
limits, which remain in effect in 18 of those states and have been thrown out
by the courts of the other 3. Congressional limits have also passed in many
states but have so far been deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court
(US Term Limits vs Thornton, 115 S. Ct. 1842, 1995). A study in the early
1990s estimated that 32% of all cities with populations above 250,000 also
adopted term limits, as did many county boards (Petracca & Jump 1992). In
this essay, we focus mainly on state legislative and proposed congressional
term limits because that is where the bulk of political science research has con-
centrated.
Although we refer to term limitation as a general category, it in fact encom-
passes a wide diversity of measures. Term limits vary in features that may have
causal significance. Most important, there are variations in the length of the
limits imposed, ranging from 6 to 12 years. Shorter terms, it would seem,
should have more pronounced effects than longer ones, but so far there has not
been enough direct attention to this (Cain 1996b). Twelve states limit by con-
secutive years of service, whereas the others do not. Some states, like Califor-
nia, include a lifetime ban, but others merely require that the office holder ro-
tate out for a period of time. In most states, limits apply to service in a given
chamber of the legislature, but in Oklahoma, limits apply to legislative service
in either or both chambers. To date, there is no research that tells us which of
these differences matter and why.
As the Council of State Governments points out (Chi & Leatherby 1998),
the regional distribution of term limits is skewed heavily to the West. Only one
western state, Washington, failed to pass legislative term limits by 1998. By
contrast, Maine is the only state in the East with term limits in place after the
 166 CAIN & LEVIN

Massachusetts Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Massachusetts term limits

in 1997 (Chi & Leatherby 1998). What should we make of this? Above all, this
is probably an artifact of the initiative process. In all cases but one, term limits
were passed through the initiative process, the only exception being Utah in
1994. Given term limits’ unpopularity with sitting members and the high level
of general public dissatisfaction with politics, it is not surprising that this
reform has a better chance in states where voters get to decide directly than in
states where the decisions rest with the office holders themselves.
Although the debate over congressional term limits still rages, most of the
ferment in the states occurred between 1992 and 1994. After winning in Okla-
homa, Colorado, and California in 1990, term limits quickly spread to other
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states, with 17 measures passing in a span of 3 years. Even though, as we shall

discuss shortly, a majority of political scientists are skeptical about the wisdom
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of term limits, the public’s enthusiasm is indisputable. Quite possibly, if all the
states had had the initiative option, term limits would have passed everywhere.
Aside from perhaps campaign finance reform, no other reform has produced as
wide a discrepancy between public and professional political science opinion
as has term limits.
What do we know about the bases of public support for term limits? Most of
the political science work in this area has focused on micro-level explanations,
using survey data. The results vary somewhat by state, but there is a general
consensus that partisanship, cynicism, and underrepresentation have had the
strongest effects. Party affiliation seems to have mattered most (i.e. there were
higher levels of support among Republicans than among Democrats) in Cali-
fornia’s Proposition 140 vote (Donovan & Snipp 1994), but it was also meas-
urably significant in a National Election Studies (NES) survey asking about
support for congressional term limits (Karp 1995, Southwell 1995) and in an
aggregate analysis of 13 states that considered term-limitation proposals in
1992 (Boeckelman & Corell 1996). However, partisanship seems not to have
been a factor in Wyoming (King 1993) or Florida (Karp 1995).
The evidence that cynicism and alienation influence the term-limit vote is
somewhat more consistent. Donovan & Snipp find greater support among
young and female voters in California, suggesting that underrepresentation
may be the common factor. Southwell (1995) and Karp (1995) find that those
who score highly on a political cynicism scale (measuring people’s dissatisfac-
tion with the process and outcomes of government) are more likely to vote for
term-limit measures. Surprisingly, Karp finds that term-limit support is not
related to dissatisfaction with the performance of the legislature specifically or
of particular incumbents. Rather, he argues, it is generic distrust of the political
system that matters.
Finally, although term limits per se passed in a variety of states with differ-
ent levels of professionalism and various types of partisanship, there is some
 TERM LIMITS 167

evidence that the harshness of the limits varied with the turnover rate in the
state legislature (Chadha & Bernstein 1996). States that had experienced lower
rates of turnover in the years preceding the passage of term limits tended to
pass measures that were more restrictive by an index that included both the
length of the term and the permanence of the ban. Even so, this accounts for
only a small portion of the variance: mostly these laws seem to be motivated by
a generic concern and dissatisfaction with the political system.
The finding that term limits are most popular with those who were most dis-
illusioned with and cynical about the political system agrees with journalistic
accounts of these measures and ties in with the normative perspective that
proponents have taken (see below). Supporters promoted term limitation as the
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quick and easy solution to a multitude of contemporary political problems,

from incumbency advantage to the stifling effects of the seniority system.
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Term limits became the catch basin for the flow of public discontent unleashed
in the post-Watergate period and fed by frustration in the 1980s over divided
government.

THE COMPLEX INTERPLAY OF NORMATIVE AND

EMPIRICAL ISSUES
The debate over the desirability of term limits has both an empirical and a
normative dimension. Empirically, there are questions about how term limits
affect the incentives of legislators, the pool of likely candidates, turnover, re-
election rates, and the like. Agreeing about likely effects is hard enough, but
people often do not agree on the many values and goals implicit in the de-
bate—e.g. what representatives should do in office, how expert they need to
be about policies, and the role of new faces in the legislature. Hence, even
when proponents and opponents agree on what the facts are, they do not al-
ways agree on what the facts mean, or even on whether they are good or
bad. To someone who thinks that less government is better governance, di-
minished legislative expertise (if that is the effect of term limits) may be a
good fact. For those who favor executive-led government over a strict divi-
sion of power, a well-staffed, knowledgeable legislature is a bad fact—and
so on. Discussion about term limits becomes complex because proving a fact
cannot convince an opponent whose values fundamentally differ, and assert-
ing a value does not always succeed if people perceive the likely effects to be
different.

Four Normative Perspectives

This normative-empirical confusion and its importance to the debate have not
escaped the notice of political scientists. Somewhat ambitiously, Kurfirst
 168 CAIN & LEVIN

(1996) has tried to categorize the different normative perspectives of term-

limit proponents into four types.

TERM-LIMIT PROGRESSIVISM Kurfirst’s first type of normative perspective

on term limits, term-limit progressivism, upholds the progressive movement’s
ideal of an expert professional legislature but maintains that it has been cor-
rupted by representatives who put their own reelection and the interests of their
campaign donors above the public good. Term limitation is a means to an end,
namely restoring good government through systematic rotation within the
framework of a still professionalized legislature. Kurfirst classifies Petracca as
a term-limit progressive.
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Kurfirst thought of his scheme as applying to proponents, but we can use it

to talk about the critics as well. As Petracca himself has acknowledged, most
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political scientists are at least skeptical of, if not outright opposed to, term
limits. Petracca speculates that this is because political scientists have long
been advocates of professionalism and see term limits as a threat to “their self-
proclaimed status as professionals; i.e. that the rejection of their advice is taken
as a rejection of their professional expertise” (Petracca 1992). He also specu-
lates that party politics and an unwarranted skepticism about the competence
of voters play a role. Using the Kurfirst typology, we can locate the term-limit
critics—Polsby (1991), Mann (1992), Ornstein (1990), etc—in this first cate-
gory of legislative progressives. They believe that a strong, competent legisla-
ture is an important check on executive power and that, deprived of indefinite
terms of office, the legislature will lack the expertise to be an effective player.
Disagreements about term limits among those who share this normative
framework are primarily factual. What is disputed is whether term limits de-
tract from legislative professionalism, not whether the detraction from profes-
sionalism is desirable. Of course, political actors and scholars do not always
remain neatly within the confines of conceptual categories such as these. At
times, for instance, Petracca seems to be arguing that the factual fears of politi-
cal scientists (e.g. that term limits will weaken the committee system and inter-
nal leadership) are baseless, and that legislatures will not be greatly weakened.
On other occasions, he seems to favor a more amateur legislature (which
would put him in a different normative category). Slippage between normative
paradigms complicates the debate further.
Term-limitation proponents who share the progressive perspective view
term limits as a means of getting back to the professional ideal. Things have
gotten out of balance, and term limits are simply a necessary means of restor-
ing what was lost.

TERM-LIMIT POPULISM Term-limit populism, Kurfirst argues (1996), rejects

the professional legislative ideal in favor of amateurism. The ultimate goal is
 TERM LIMITS 169

to end political elitism and encourage more citizen participation. At times

Petracca belongs in the term-limit populist category, as do Strubble & Jahre
(1991). Kurfirst suggests that those who hold this position tend also to believe
that representatives should be delegates and not trustees. They may even think
that the legislature should not be coequal with the executive branch.
The empirical theory behind the populist position is that term limits open up
office-holding opportunities that would otherwise be closed by the incum-
bency advantage. This in turn brings in new faces and fresh perspectives,
which serve to make the legislature more representative of the people. The
greater participation by the citizenry in office holding is a good in itself, which
more than offsets whatever loss of expertise and institutional memory might
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occur. One of the reasons, Petracca claims, that political scientists tend to op-
pose term limits is that they prefer stability and efficiency to participation, and
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he links this preference to the low regard that political scientists have for the
average citizen’s abilities and knowledge.
Holding the populist as opposed to the progressive perspective can matter a
great deal when judging whether an empirical claim is good or bad, independ-
ent of whether it is true or false. For the populists, rotation is important per se,
because it indicates that more citizens are being drawn into the process. The
higher the turnover, the healthier the system and the more likely it is to respond
accurately to the needs of the populace (Petracca & Smith 1990). From the pro-
fessionalist perspective, an overemphasis on rotation misses an important
point about elections, namely that they screen out the more competent candi-
dates from the less competent (Mondak 1995a,b). If the screening mechanism
is working properly, more qualified candidates and more competent incum-
bents will be reelected at higher rates than others in any given election. If so,
the cumulative effect of sequential elections is to weed out the less able, i.e. a
survival-of-the-politically-fittest effect. Mondak argues that empirical evi-
dence supports this claim. Under term limitation, therefore, an unrestricted
repetitive-screening system that on average rewards the ablest with reelection
is replaced by a restricted repetitive-screening system that cannot filter out the
weak and incompetent as adequately because it has fewer screens. Hence,
Mondak predicts that term limits will produce a decline in the quality of
congressional representatives.
There are two major components to this argument. The first is the greater
weight that populists give to rotation in itself versus the greater importance
that Mondak implicitly assigns to competence. The other is Mondak’s empiri-
cal assertion that reelection is positively correlated with legislative compe-
tence. Obviously, if that is not true, then his argument loses validity. Factual
disagreements can be verified and resolved, but value differences are harder to
resolve. The preference for higher participation over competence or stability is
the kind of value judgment that underlies stable, ongoing political disagree-
 170 CAIN & LEVIN

ments. Facts will not change people’s value judgments. Hence, even if the
populists could be persuaded that elections act as competence filters, it might
not be enough to offset the participatory value of rotation in their minds.

TERM-LIMIT REPUBLICANISM The third perspective is term-limit republican-

ism (Kurfirst 1996), best exemplified by George Will (1992). In contrast to the
populists, Will deplores political professionalism for destroying the distance
between representatives and their followers that is necessary for truly delibera-
tive decisions. Whereas the populists want their representatives to be accurate
reflections of public sentiment, term-limit republicans want representatives to
be more like trustees, acting on behalf of their constituents’ best interests
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rather than slavishly following public whims. Decisions should be based on

merits, not on career considerations and electoral pressures. The purpose of
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term-limit reform is to promote reason and deliberation by freeing representa-

tives of career considerations and the oppressive need to win reelection—in
effect, to insulate representatives to a greater degree from electoral pressures.
Two observations spring immediately to mind. First, one has to marvel that
the same reform can arise from two such disparate justifications as populism
and republicanism. The populists believe that term limits bring the legislature
closer to the people and make it more reflective of the electorate. The term-
limit republicans believe that limited tenure frees the representative from
constituency pressures. Clearly, what unites these two positions in support of
term limits is a fundamental disagreement over the facts—were they to agree
on the empirical implications of term limits, they would not be in the same
camp. Only their empirical disagreement binds them. This may not be unique
in politics, but it is certainly unusual in analytic discourse.
The second observation is that, even granting the republican premise that
limited tenure frees the representative from electoral pressures, that does not
guarantee that representatives will make better, wiser, more deliberative deci-
sions. Game theorists, for instance, remind us that, in cooperative situations,
the incentives of the end game (e.g. the lame-duck term) can be disruptive.
Consider the argument of Cohen & Spitzer (1996). If we conceive the relation
between voters and their representative to be like a Prisoner’s Dilemma, in
which constituents cooperate by giving their votes in exchange for legislative
assistance in the form of serving the constituent interests, then a legislator in
the final period has a strong incentive to defect—i.e. to shirk—since it does not
matter what will happen in the next election. Even more ominously, if term
limitation flattens the reward structure (i.e. by allowing new members to rise to
leadership positions much sooner), it will remove a critical institutional incen-
tive for cooperation within the legislature, namely, the reward of leadership
posts in exchange for years of loyalty. With the weakened internal reward
structure will come a weakening of cooperative norms and behavior.
 TERM LIMITS 171

Whether the claim is empirically true or not, it serves to make a valuable

point: Will’s argument hinges crucially on an empirical prediction that might
not be right. Polsby (1993a,b) points out that Will mostly “delves only anecdo-
tally into individual actions, some horrible, some trivial, invariably assigning
base motives” and ignores the fact that “Congress as an organizational entity
does its work by deliberating” (1993a:1518–19). Limited tenure might not
promote deliberation and concern for the public good, and, if it does not, term
limits will fail to achieve Will’s republican goals.

TERM-LIMIT LIBERTARIANISM The last of the four perspectives is that of the

term-limit libertarians (Kurfirst 1996). Their position is similar to the popu-
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lists’ in its opposition to a professionalized, strong legislature. However, there

is an important difference between their reasons for opposing professionalism;
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whereas the populists value participation and closeness to the people, the liber-
tarians want the legislature to be less effective in order to preserve a minimalist
government. A number of the conservative polemical studies illustrate this
point (Bandow 1996, Crane 1991, Fund 1990), using the following argument.
There is broad electoral support for a conservative agenda that would reduce
the size of government. The translation of that broad support into political vic-
tories (particularly before 1994) has been slowed by the incumbency advan-
tage. Moreover, the careerism of contemporary legislative politics attracts
those who are predisposed to solve problems through government and distorts
the perspectives of those who get elected to office. Careerists are less likely to
have life experiences and thus are less competent to run a fiscally solvent state.
If representatives are doing their job properly, they do not need a great deal of
technical policy or parliamentary expertise. They need mainly to be able to
grasp the big picture. By limiting terms, one eliminates career incentives and
changes the mix of people who run for office. The end result will be people in
office who run government more efficiently.
Libertarians oppose the professional legislative model because they assume
that there is an empirical connection between tenure and a preference for larger
government (Payne 1991). Amateurism is valued not so much for its own sake
as for the types of policies it is likely to produce. As noted earlier, professional-
ists and populists disagree about the comparative value of participation versus
competence, but both, unlike the libertarians, are neutral regarding the types of
policies they want to see a legislature pass. By contrast, libertarians explicitly
base their institutional preferences on their policy preferences and on their
assumptions about the connection between the two. Like Will’s term-limit
republican position, the libertarian position rests on disputable facts. Is it true
that tenure in office biases lawmakers towards proactive government?
Some recent work in political science suggests maybe not (Stein & Bickers
1994, Alvarez & Saving 1997, Moore & Hibbing 1996). All three studies find
 172 CAIN & LEVIN

that there is no relation between a district representative’s tenure in office and

the district’s level of federal spending. On the other hand, mean tenure of the
state’s federal delegation may affect a state’s share of federal money. Noting
that there was press speculation that Washington State voters rejected congres-
sional term limits for fear that their state would be punished by having a less
experienced delegation, Moore & Hibbing (1996) find evidence in the House
of Representatives that the mean tenure of the state’s House delegation (but
not its Senators) is related to the state’s per capita federal outlays. So the
factual hypothesis on which the libertarian position rests is not clearly proven
or unproven at the moment.
There is, then, a complicated overlay of empirical fact and value underlying
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the position for and against term limits. It is helpful to separate these out in
order to ascertain the fundamental sources of conflict. The intricacy of fact
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and value relations also implies that, even if political scientists were to learn all
that they could about term limits and their effects on the political system,
they would not necessarily close the gap between the different sides of the
term-limit question. Indeed, some factual findings could actually exacerbate
differences because the same finding could be read in different ways; proof
that term limits weaken legislative competence would strengthen opposition
among the professionalists (and possibly even the deliberationists), but the
same evidence would strengthen support for term limits among populists and
libertarians. In short, knowing more in this case might sharpen and not lessen
disagreements.

THE ELECTORAL EFFECTS ASSESSED

A number of the predictions made about term limits had to do with their poten-
tial for affecting the electoral system. Term-limit professionalists (i.e. those
who wanted to save the modern, professional legislature from the corrupting
effects of electoral insulation) predicted that term limits would increase turn-
over and competitiveness, thereby weakening the incumbency effect and off-
setting the influence of special interests and money.
Term-limit populists went one step further, arguing that term limits would
change the incentives of those who might consider running for office, creating
new opportunities for non-careerists, previously underrepresented in legisla-
tures. Leaving aside the normative issues about whether these would be good
or bad effects, the empirical question is whether these predictions are correct.
Seemingly, the most straightforward prediction would be that limiting
terms should increase the rate of legislative turnover. In the simplest sense of
eliminating incumbents who stay on past a certain number of years, this is
true by definition. But in the sense of altering the mean tenure of representa-
tives, the matter is not so straightforward. Whether the limit imposed by law
 TERM LIMITS 173

changes average tenure rates will depend on such factors as the length of the
term, the rate of turnover in the legislative body before term limits, and the op-
portunities for advancement perceived by incumbents. Depending on these
characteristics, term limits can have either a dramatic or null impact on aver-
age turnover.
Trying to get an early handle on the impact that term limits would have on
state legislatures and Congress, a few political scientists looked at the experi-
ence local governments had with term limits (Cain 1996a, Fay & Christman
1994). Because many of the local jurisdictions adopted 12-year limits and the
rate of turnover in these bodies was high to begin with, it should come as no
surprise that term limits did not affect mean turnover at the local level very
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much. The Cain study found that the mean time in office in a sample of Califor-
nia cities and counties that adopted term limits was already less than the legal
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limit the law imposed. The main target of these measures seemed to be the
career politicians who remain in office for decades and seemingly could be
removed only by means of term limits.
Fay & Christman (1994) also conclude that local government limits, “un-
like limits on congress and state legislators, will have little effect; the turnover
rates already are high” (Fay & Christman 1994). They found that only 2.3% of
2177 elected city officials in California and 2% of the 296 California county
supervisors that they studied remained in office 20 years after they were first
elected. Only 14.6% of the city officials and 27% of the county officials were
still in office after 10 years. Revealingly, supervisors elected in the most popu-
lous counties had a measurable tendency to stay in office longer.
As we move from local governments to state legislatures, it is important to
note differences in the types of state legislatures and how these affect turnover
rates. Professional legislatures (full-time with a large staff) tend to have lower
pre–term-limit turnover than do citizen legislatures (part-time, small staff).
One study found that in professional legislatures, the percentage of members
remaining in lower chambers after 6 years was 63% and after 12 years was
40%, but the numbers for citizen legislatures were 48% and 19%, respectively
(Moncrief et al 1992). In upper chambers, the figures were 69.5% and 40% for
professional legislatures and 54% and 26% for citizen bodies. The authors
predicted, quite reasonably, that term limits would affect professionalized leg-
islatures more.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Proposition 140 (the California initiative that
imposed six- and eight-year limits on the State’s Assembly and Senate Repre-
sentatives) has had a dramatic impact on legislative turnover in California. Pe-
tracca (1996) reports that, between 1972 and 1992, the average turnover (i.e.
the percentage of new members entering the legislature) was 20% in the As-
sembly and 12% in the State Senate. Since the passage of Proposition 140, the
corresponding figures for the Assembly and State Senate are 36% and 17%, re-
 174 CAIN & LEVIN

spectively (Petracca 1996). Another study of the California legislature also re-
ports a 20% increase in the number of incumbents seeking voluntary retire-
ment and an increase in the number of special elections from an average of 1
per year between 1980 and 1989 to 10 per year between 1990 and 1993, includ-
ing 16 in 1993 alone (Caress 1996).
Projecting the turnover effects of term limits onto Congress is a trickier en-
terprise for all the obvious reasons. Any such counterfactual prediction would
depend heavily on its assumptions. Nonetheless, the exercise is revealing,
even if the final numbers should be taken lightly. Reed & Schansberg (1995)
looked at historical turnover rates for congressional cohorts at points subse-
quent to their initial election. Applying 6- and 12-year limits, they project that
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the average length of stay among representatives would decrease from 13 to

3.8 years for the 6-year limit and to 6.1 years for the 12-year limit. Even more
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important, they warn of the problem of freshman superclasses, created by the

lumpiness of cohorts turning over at the end of their terms. This means that
there would be periods when the House would be particularly inexperienced.
This problem has led one scholar to propose a staggering of terms in order to
spread out the superclasses and facilitate intercohort learning (Cohen 1995,
Cohen & Spitzer 1996). Reed & Schansberg (1994) also claim that if a three-
term limit were imposed on Congress, Republicans would receive a slight
boost—between 5 and 14 seats. Gilmour & Rothstein (1994) also project
modest gains for the Republicans, especially under a three-term limit.
As various critics of these analyses have pointed out, it could well be that
these mathematical models underestimate the true turnover rate, given their
somewhat restrictive assumptions. In particular, there could be secondary ef-
fects that increase the turnover rate, such as the higher value of other opportu-
nities or the diminished value of holding office in the House without career
expectations. Francis & Kenny (1997) make this point in their study of state
legislatures; they find that the direct effects of eight-year term limits lead to an
expected turnover rate of 36%, but when the indirect effects are added, the
number increases to over 50%. In addition, term limits at the lower levels
(local governments and state legislatures) will likely increase the pool of po-
tential congressional challengers, which could affect congressional turnover
rates further (Fett & Ponder 1993).
Apart from turnover, many term-limit proponents also predicted that there
would be more competitive races in a term-limited world than in one without
term limits for at least two reasons: first, there would be more open seats; sec-
ond, incumbency advantages could be cumulative (e.g. if name recognition
grows with years of service). The growth of the incumbency advantage in Con-
gress is well documented [see the seminal studies of Erikson (1971) and May-
hew (1974)]. Cox & Morgenstern (1993) argue that the same trend appears in
the state legislatures, a phenomenon they linked statistically to the size of a
 TERM LIMITS 175

legislature’s operating budget—which is likely to be another measure of legis-

lative professionalism.
There is some evidence now that term limits have increased the competi-
tiveness of races. Once again, the best work on this point has been done in
California. Daniel & Lott (1997) use a multivariate model to test whether term
limits (controlling for other effects, such as redistricting, running in a presi-
dential election year, the tenure of the incumbent, etc) affected various meas-
ures of competitiveness, including whether the incumbent was defeated, the
number of candidates running, the absolute margin between the two top candi-
dates, and the number of unopposed races. In all cases, the term-limit effect
was statistically significant, indicating that there was a change in these indica-
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tors toward more competitiveness after the passage of Proposition 140. They
conclude, “By any measure, term limits have coincided with large changes in
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the level of political competition, and these changes occurred even before term
limits have even forcibly removed one politician from office” (Daniel & Lott
1997:182).
As mentioned above, term-limit populists and libertarians predicted that, in
addition to increased turnover and more new faces in the legislature, there
would be new types of people elected to office. Groups that had been histori-
cally underrepresented, for instance, would be able to take advantage of the
new openings, resulting in a more representative legislature. Moncrief &
Thompson (1992), however, concluded that the effects on women and minori-
ties are likely to be more mixed. Despite more opportunities for women and
minorities to be elected in greater numbers, there is an offsetting negative ef-
fect, namely that some women and minorities have had to give up newly ac-
quired positions of power sooner than they would have otherwise. For in-
stance, they found that women who stayed in office longer than 12 years had a
54% chance of being in the leadership of lower houses of state legislatures and
a 71% chance of attaining leadership in the upper houses. Petracca (1996), pre-
dictably, focuses more on the first effect than the second. He finds that the per-
centage of women elected to the California Assembly rose from 18% to 25% as
a result of term limits. On the other hand, he finds little change in the number of
women elected to the State Senate after the passage of Proposition 140.
Petracca (1996) also examines the legislators’ occupational backgrounds
before and after term limitation and notes that there have been some changes.
His data show a dramatic decrease in the number of legislators who call them-
selves full-time legislators, from 36% in 1986 to 3.4% in 1995. On the other
hand, he finds an increase in the number of local government officials holding
legislative office. So although fewer are willing to call themselves full-time
legislators, there are still many who are following a traditional political career
path up the ladder. There also seems to be a significant increase in the number
of legislators who call themselves business owners, but it is hard to tell
 176 CAIN & LEVIN

whether that is a fashionable listing in an antipolitics era or a trend that reveals

something about the opportunities and incentives of serving in a term-limited
world.
The increased number of local elected officials in the California legislature
brings to mind a very important point. A number of the predictive term-limit
analyses assumed a static model of ambition—that people built up human
capital that allowed them to get reelected to the same office continuously over
time. If the possibility of continuous reelection is removed, these analyses rea-
soned, static ambition would be thwarted, and the door would be opened for
nonprofessionals. But if the ambition is not static but progressive, then career-
ists will still see running for a term-limited office as desirable, both because it
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gives them a step up the ladder and because skills acquired in one office are
transferable to other offices (Garrett 1996).
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A political career can still be pursued in a term-limited world if one is will-

ing to seize opportunities to move to different offices when they become open.
The problems with the amateurization hypothesis are that it assumes a wrong
theory of ambition and underestimates other forces in the political system that
favor those with political experience and connections. The local government
official will have an advantage over the mere citizen in terms of name recogni-
tion, fund-raising connections, familiarity with the law-making process, and
knowledge of how to run a campaign (Weintraub 1997). It is clear that term
limits will produce more rotation in professionalized legislatures. However,
term limits will not deprofessionalize politics in those states nor open up an era
of amateurization.
The experience of California is illustrative. The lower house has more peo-
ple who are learning on the job, but the leadership positions are going to those
with prior governmental experience. Moreover, many are leaving the lower
house to run for State Senate seats, Congress, and constitutional offices when
the opportunity arises—hence the big rise in the number of special elections.
There may be more inexperienced legislators in the Assembly, but are they
inexperienced would-be professionals who are looking to move up, or are they
a new breed of amateurs who are ready to get off the political track as soon as
their terms are up? Recent experience suggests the former. Clearly, the next
round of research needs to address this issue in more detail.
Effects on the Operation of the Legislature
A great deal of the term-limit controversy hinges on whether term limitation
weakens or enhances legislative competence. Except for the libertarians, who
view effective government as the enemy, most proponents believe that term
limits will at least preserve and even possibly improve legislative effective-
ness. The critical concept at the core of this debate is expertise. Term-limit crit-
ics argue that expertise is central to the effectiveness of a strong legislature;
 TERM LIMITS 177

without experienced members who have expertise in policy areas, the legis-
lature cannot hope to compete effectively with the executive branch. Also, ex-
perience fosters familiarity between the members, encouraging norms of
collegiality and reciprocity. Some term-limit proponents do not acknowledge
a connection between experience, expertise, and effectiveness, believing that
the legislature’s internal norms only interfere with the legitimate ties between
members and their constituents. Others, as we have said, concede the causal
relationship but want it severed in order to limit the total amount of govern-
mental activity.
Another way to think of legislative competence is in terms of a learning
curve about legislative procedures, political skills, and policy knowledge. We
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could, of course, separate these three dimensions, expecting to find some

variance across them and among new members. A former county supervisor
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who gets elected to the state legislature is likely to have fairly well-developed
political skills and a head start in terms of familiarity with certain issue areas
(local taxes, schools, etc) compared with a local businessman who has never
held office before. Even regarding legislative procedures, the local official
will see more parallels between the processes used in the county board and the
new processes to be learned in the legislature than will the businessman or
housewife with no prior elected-office experience. So, in one sense, the in-
creasing numbers of local government officials who have chosen to run for
legislative seats are an equilibrating adjustment that recaptures some of the
lost experience caused by senior members terming out.
Given the knowledge with which individual representatives start, the sec-
ond consideration is how quickly new members get up to speed in these three
areas: legislative procedures, political skills, and policy knowledge. Those
who acquire the relevant skills and knowledge rapidly are said to have steep
learning curves, and those who acquire these things more slowly have flatter
ones. Another way of framing the debate between term-limit proponents and
opponents who believe in effective legislatures is as a dispute over the likely
shapes of representatives’ learning curves. If the learning curves are steep, or
can be made steeper by throwing members into positions of greater responsi-
bility sooner, then term limits might not weaken legislative competence—in-
deed, they might even strengthen it, as George Will predicts, by giving mem-
bers the incentive to learn faster. If there are real constraints on how quickly
people can get up to speed in a legislative environment, then term limits could
be enormously detrimental to legislative effectiveness. As with the electoral
effects, much will depend on the exact features of the limits adopted and of the
political culture on which the limits are imposed; shorter terms require steeper
learning curves, and professional legislatures in larger states require longer
learning curves than do small state legislatures, comprised of citizen legisla-
tors, or local city councils.
 178 CAIN & LEVIN

One reason many political scientists were skeptical about the claim that
term limits would give us greater electoral responsiveness with little loss of
legislative competence is the strong evidence that learning the ropes in a
professionalized legislature takes time and effort. The best example of this is
Hibbing’s (1991) study of congressional careers. Hibbing found that legisla-
tive involvement (measured by a variety of indices) seemed to be correlated
with tenure in office and “that there is now even more variation in legislative
involvement from early-career stages to late than there was thirty years ago.”
This was particularly true of the measures of legislative specialization and effi-
ciency, even though the norm of apprenticeship had waned considerably in
Congress and opportunities to hold leadership positions were given to mem-
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bers earlier in their careers. Hibbing concluded that, if term limits were im-
posed on Congress, it would result in “a devastating loss of legislative acumen,
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expertise and activity.” Moreover, he believed his evidence showed that

“simply doling out formal positions to the junior members who remain after
the senior members have been exiled will in no way take up the slack created
by these legislative departures” (Hibbing 1991:180).
As before, congressional scholars are constrained to speculate about the ef-
fects that term limits would have, because they have not yet been and may
never be imposed on Congress. Hence, we must look where the light already
shines to discover more about the impact of term limits on legislative compe-
tence. We must look at those state legislatures that now have had several years
of experience with term limits. To date, little formal political science research
has been done on this subject. With the exception of a recent dissertation
(Noah 1998), no one has yet systematically studied the effects of term limits on
legislative learning curves. There is, however, a growing body of testimony
from the legislators and their professional organizations that political scien-
tists can use as a point of departure. We review some of this work to point out
some possible hypotheses that are worth exploring. The point of this exercise
is not to argue that the testimony of state legislators and staff is unbiased but
rather that it constitutes a body of information for political scientists, who can
then try to develop more impartial tests of the theses offered.
It is fair to say that most veteran state legislators and leaders give a gloomy
analysis of the effect of term limits on their work environments. Leaving aside
for the moment the strong possibility that this assessment is at least partly the
resentment of those who feel cast aside, it is incumbent upon our profession to
check out the validity of these claims. Hansen (1997a:50) summarizes their
views as follows:
Legislative leaders in states with term limits give a sobering view of what
term limits may mean to legislatures: no institutional memory in elected offi-
cials; discord among legislators who try to maneuver for leadership posi-
tions; disrupted balance of power in which the executive branch becomes, by
 TERM LIMITS 179

default, stronger; state agencies where career officials need merely out-wait
lawmakers with whom they disagree; special interest lobbies more capable
of wielding influence over inexperienced lawmakers; a loss of rural and mi-
nority influence.

But legislators also reveal another side to this story; namely, that adjust-
ments have been made to cope with the changes term limits have brought upon
them. For the moment, however, we examine each of these claims more
closely.
TERM LIMITS HAVE DESTROYED INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY AND EXPERTISE
A number of legislators complain that the terming out of experienced, senior
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members has severely diminished institutional memory and policy expertise.

Only senior staff, to the extent that they remain, can draw from the experiences
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of previous legislative sessions. Massachusetts Representative John McDon-

ough said, “I think institutional memory is very important, to have people who
remember as far back as possible to avoid mistakes and to have people who
were witnesses to what has happened before” (Hansen 1997b). Schrag (1996),
in his assessment of term limits in California, suggests that there has been a de-
cline not only in legislators’ knowledge about policy but in the quality of the
information available to them. “Previously, committee bill analyses were, for
the most part, objective statements that laid out the arguments on a bill.... Now
they tend increasingly to be taken verbatim from the lobbyists pushing or
opposing the measure, or simply from fantasy” (Schrag 1996:28).
To the populists and libertarians, these developments, if true, are not nor-
matively problematic. Populists would say that being responsive to what the
people want is more important than recalling what was done in the past, and
libertarians would say that the less legislators know about the past, the better.
This trend—less institutional memory and expertise—is a problem only for
deliberationists and professionalists, who want the legislature to be transfor-
mative, to borrow Polsby’s term (Polsby 1975). It is conceivable that institu-
tional memory could be measured by member surveys. Ideally, the design
would be dynamic, so that we could track the acquisition of institutional
memory, since it is possible that new members now start with less but acquire
it more rapidly. The latter is plausible because two of the adjustments that
state legislatures have made to term limitation are to expand training and
new-member orientation for freshman legislators and to give them committee
assignments that groom them for leadership earlier than in the past. Arkansas,
Michigan, and Colorado have expanded their training, bringing in former rep-
resentatives and policy experts from the state to offer orientation talks (Hansen
1997b).
The National Conference of State Legislatures has developed recommenda-
tions that exemplify how legislatures can adjust by speeding up the learning
 180 CAIN & LEVIN

process. They suggest (a) reorganizations that encourage earlier specialization

and modernization of facilities that provide information; (b) more up-front
training of members and more demands on staff to develop the institutional
memory and policy expertise that is lacking; (c) stable, routinized paths to
leadership that give new members apprenticeship roles; and (d) upgrading
staff capabilities. Any future studies by political scientists need to examine not
only the disruptions caused by term limits but also the efficacy of the adjust-
ments that legislatures make to maintain effectiveness.

TERM LIMITS HAVE CAUSED A DECLINE IN COLLEGIALITY AND COOPERATION

A second concern expressed by legislators and journalists is the apparent
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decline in collegiality and norms of cooperation. Normatively, this is less

controversial than the previous point. Except perhaps for the most radical lib-
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ertarians, few if any would wish bickering and bitter partisan struggles on a
legislative body. The questions, then, are whether collegiality and cooperation
have been undermined by term limits, and if so, why?
Logically, the connection could go either way, i.e. toward greater or less
collegiality. The argument for the former is that new legislators who come to
office are blank slates, without the grudges and legacies of past disputes. The
argument for less collegiality is that people who interact with one another over
time are more likely to develop understandings about reciprocity, civility, and
cooperation. Game theorists remind us that the incentives for cooperation in
repeat game situations are stronger than in single-play games or terminal pe-
riods (Cohen & Spitzer 1992, 1996). The testimony of state legislators and
journalists is strongly on the side of declining collegiality.
The California Assembly is a paradigmatic case. Schrag (1996:26) de-
scribes the post–term-limit 1995 session in the Assembly as “the most mean-
spirited and unproductive in memory, a unique combination of instability, bad
behavior, political frenzy and legislative paralysis.” In one year, California
had three Assembly speakers, two Republican Assembly leaders, two Republi-
can Senate leaders, and three recalls. Schrag reports a higher level of partisan-
ship, exacerbated by the attitude of new members that people in government
have “screwed it all up; I’m going to fix it” (1996:27). Another veteran reporter
blames the growing divisiveness on the poisonous mixture of term limits and
district nesting; term limits create the incentive to find new offices to run for,
and nesting (the alignment of two Assembly districts with each Senate district)
directly pits colleagues against one another for those positions (Block 1993).
However, California is by no means the only state that reports a decline in
collegiality. Former Michigan House Speaker Paul Hillegonds has said,
“There is much more jockeying for leadership and much less collegiality....
This has an impact on the leader’s ability to hold his caucus together and work
on consensus building” (Hansen 1997a:50). Arizona’s minority leader Art
 TERM LIMITS 181

Hamilton reports that, in his state, “there is a clear loss of collegiality and much
more contentiousness between the House and Senate” (Hansen 1997a:50).
Similar observations have been made about the Michigan and Maine legisla-
tures (Bell 1998, Brunelle 1997).
This, then, is another area that cries out for systematic research. The
increasing-partisanship hypothesis can be tested by examining party-line votes
before and after term limitations. Collegiality, for instance, might be measured
in terms of rates of cosponsorship of bills. But regardless of whether these are
the best indicators and tests, our point is simply that it is, in principle, possible
to measure term-limit–induced changes in collegiality and cooperation.
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TERM LIMITS HAVE CAUSED CHANGES IN CAREER INCENTIVES AND POLICY

HORIZONS Deliberationists and libertarians had high hopes that term limits
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would change legislative incentives for the better. Freed from the need to pur-
sue a political career and the attendant obsession with reelection, proponents
(e.g. Will) hoped that legislators would spend less time on casework, pork bar-
reling, and credit claiming and more time deliberating in the public interest or
thinking of ways to keep government small. The key consideration is the in-
centives of a limited versus a potentially unlimited stay in office. Critics argue
that term limitation proliferates the number of lame ducks, who then make
lame policies. Proponents argue that limited tenure liberates the legislator
from the necessity of pleasing voters when it is not in the public interest.
Once again, the verdict from state legislators is negative. Most believe that
career and policy incentives have taken a turn for the worse. Gurwitt (1996)
reports that legislators in the six-year tenure go through a predictable career
cycle, “learning their way around in the first term; concentrating on legislating
in their second; and shifting their attention to whatever job they hope to hold
next in their third.” Being a lame duck not only diverts the representative’s at-
tention, some claim, but it also makes it harder to get the attention of other
representatives; in the words of Arkansas Speaker Bobby Hogue, “You take a
freshman coming into this arena, and the first year, he’s got to find out what’s
going on, the second, he might have a little influence over the bureaucracy, the
third year he’s a lame duck so why should the bureaucrats listen to him any-
way” (Hansen 1997a:53). Knowing this tends to compress the legislator’s time
horizons. Says one Nebraska Senator, “if you’ve only got so many years, then
you can’t take on some projects that will be long term” (Hansen 1997a:53).
Measuring oversight capability and the time horizons of policy making are
not simple tasks, and perhaps this is why there are no recorded attempts by po-
litical scientists to do so. In theory, the casework literature in the 1980s pro-
vides some guidance about oversight. It turns out that a good deal of oversight
is informational, and its success in influencing the bureaucratic decisions as
opposed to winning political credit is questionable (Cain et al 1987). Nonethe-
 182 CAIN & LEVIN

less, the ability to ask questions about a bureaucracy is important. The problem
with the time-horizon hypothesis is that it rests on the static ambition theory—
i.e. that people are not acting to maximize their political chances for other of-
fices. Those doing future work in this area may want to consider whether the
prospects of a career in another office counteract lame-duck incentives to some
degree.

TERM LIMITS CAUSE POWER SHIFTS Two types of power shifts are reported by
legislators. The first is from one house to the other or from one branch to an-
other. As we noted earlier, certain populists tend to prefer executive-led gov-
ernment to a division of power. At first glance, it would seem that libertarians
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should prefer coequal branches as the best means of preserving checks and
balances and guaranteeing minimal government. In reality, they tend to see the
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legislature as the culprit in big government, relying heavily on the postwar ex-
perience with divided government (i.e. Democratic legislatures and Republi-
can executives). In theory, however, weakening the division of power and
placing more power in the hands of the executive branch could be an even
more potent recipe for expanded government than the current system.
The shifting of power from lower to upper houses is one of the surprising
effects of term limits. In the words of one California legislator, “it’s hard to
quantify it, but lobbyists are clearly going to the Senate for their serious con-
versations. You have to conclude that the psychological center of the legisla-
ture has shifted” (Gurwitt 1996:16). In the golden era of the California legisla-
ture, the Assembly was the incubator of policy innovation and the springboard
for ambitious lawmakers (Muir 1983). The State Senate was the sleepy back-
water for the less ambitious. Term limits have changed all that. The standard
career path now flows from the Assembly to the Senate: the lower house is
where lawmakers learn their craft, and the upper house is where they practice
it.
In a sense, this is another example of legislative resiliency. Term limits
have given new meaning to bicameralism. In an era of unlimited terms, bicam-
eralism seemed an outmoded institutional vestige. Given the Court’s “one per-
son, one vote” decisions in the 1960s, one could no longer justify having two
houses by the need to represent different constituencies, since both now have
to be based on the equal-population principle. After the enaction of term limits,
a state with two houses—one with a 6-year and the other an 8-year limit—of-
fers a combined 14-year track. The combined tenure of a two-house career
track more than accommodates the span of the average legislative learning
curve.
The other important shift that might have been caused by term limits is from
legislators to interest groups (Polsby 1991). We have already cited several leg-
islators and journalists who believe that lobbyists and interest groups have
 TERM LIMITS 183

been empowered by term limits, either in the sense that their expertise is more
heavily relied on or because new legislators lack the institutional knowledge
and expertise to counteract them. However, lobbyists themselves find the new
environment somewhat unsettling because they do not always know who their
friends and enemies are with so many new faces (Capell 1996).
There needs to be a more refined discrimination between types of interest
groups. Groups that rely heavily on stable relationships, trust, and the ex-
change of information are weakened by term limits, whereas those that rely on
campaign contributions are in no worse a position, and possibly even a better
one, to influence legislative decision making. Common Cause concluded re-
cently, “Proposition 140 promised a new breed of citizen legislators, inde-
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pendent of special interests and accountable to constituents. The reality is far

different. Freshman are raising record amounts of money because they will be
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in positions of power the longest” (Hansen 1997a:55). Future work needs to

differentiate between types of special interest more closely.

TERM LIMITS HAVE UNDERCUT LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP In one sense, this

is a corollary of the earlier principle about expertise and institutional knowl-
edge and thus does not deserve extensive separate treatment. However, finding
and training leaders is particularly critical in a system that relies on the decen-
tralization of power into committees and subcommittees. It demands a deep
bench, so to speak, in order to have enough individuals to take on the many
leadership assignments in an elaborated committee structure and strong in-
centives at the disposal of those at the top to pull together diverse coalitions in
order to get action. As noted above, the loss of experienced leadership is pri-
marily the concern of the professionalists, who want the legislature to be trans-
formative. Legislatures tend to draw their leaders from the most experienced
and senior members; in 1993, the average length of service was 12 years for
lower houses and 11 years for state senates, and only two states, Arizona and
Maine, had leaders with less than 6 years. Clearly, 8- and 6-year term limits
would drastically change the experience profile of legislative leaders.
One of the important tasks for political scientists is to examine more closely
the strategies that legislatures adopt to compensate for the loss of the pool of
experienced legislators. In some cases, particularly citizen legislatures in
small states, the system may operate adequately without experienced and
strong leadership. This is unlikely to be the case in larger states that have a his-
tory of strong, centralized leadership. There the challenge is to find a system
that grooms leaders more rapidly. A couple of states, Wyoming and Florida,
have for some years used an apprenticeship system that culminates in a one-
term speakership. Such an apprenticeship would include giving members
significant posts in their early terms so that they are ready when their time
comes (Hodson et al 1995).
 184 CAIN & LEVIN

It may also include a designated-heir system. In the Wyoming Senate, for

instance, future leaders move from vice president to majority floor leader to
president. In the Florida system, candidates declare themselves candidates for
the speakership for the succeeding biennium two weeks after the November
election and are chosen a year and a half before they actually are sworn in. Will
such systems prove to be effective ways of countering term limits? Will they
work in the seven lower houses that have six-year terms? These are questions
that political scientists should address in the future.

CONCLUSION
Political scientists have good reason to be suspicious about term limits. In both
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the normative and empirical assumptions that proponents make, there is much
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to quarrel with. However, the public verdict is in, and wherever the initiative
process allowed these measures to be placed on the ballot, they have passed.
Term limits are a fact of life at the state and local levels. The battle over Con-
gress may go on for some time (although it is settled for now by US Term Lim-
its vs Thornton, 115 S. Ct. 1842, 1995), but one cannot rule out the possibility
of a constitutional amendment succeeding in the future. In the meantime, it is
important for our profession to switch gears and learn what we can from this
fortuitous natural experiment. Legislatures will probably prove resilient in the
face of problems presented by term limits. Their coping strategies should be.
The concept of a strong, transformative legislature is not necessarily dead if
the proper coping strategies are implemented and if the features of term limits
are reasonably crafted.

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 Annual Review of Political Science
Volume 2, 1999

CONTENTS
STUDYING THE PRESIDENCY, Nigel Bowles 1
DETERRENCE AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT: Empirical
Findings and Theoretical Debates, Paul K. Huth 25
ENDING REVOLUTIONS AND BUILDING NEW
GOVERNMENTS, Arthur L. Stinchcombe 49
HAROLD D. LASSWELL'S LEGACY TO MAINSTREAM
POLITICAL SCIENCE: A Neglected Agenda, Heinz Eulau, Susan
Zlomke 75
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE,
Helen V. Milner 91
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT DEMOCRATIZATION AFTER
TWENTY YEARS, Barbara Geddes 115
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 1999.2:163-188. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org

ELECTORAL RULES AND ELECTORAL COORDINATION, G.

Cox 145
Access provided by 173.173.16.43 on 12/12/22. For personal use only.

TERM LIMITS, Bruce E. Cain, Marc A. Levin 163

MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT PERCEPTUAL BIAS, Alan Gerber,
Donald Green 189
CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS, Peter D. Feaver 211
POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY, S. C. Stokes 243
THE ROCHESTER SCHOOL: The Origins of Positive Political
Theory, S. M. Amadae, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita 269
BOUNDED RATIONALITY, Bryan D. Jones 297
THE DECAY AND BREAKDOWN OF COMMUNIST ONE-PARTY
SYSTEMS, Stathis N. Kalyvas 323
ISAIAH BERLIN: Political Theory and Liberal Culture, Alan Ryan 345
ISAIAH BERLIN (1909–1997), Noel Annan 363
HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALISM IN COMPARATIVE
POLITICS, Kathleen Thelen 369
EFFECTS OF INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS ON
POLITICAL STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA, Subrata Kumar Mitra 405
INSTITUTIONALISM AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: Beyond
International Relations and Comparative Politics, J. Jupille, J. A.
Caporaso 429
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, Byron E. Shafer 445
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY FROM A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE,
Sergio Fabbrini 465

COPING WITH TRAGEDIES OF THE COMMONS, Elinor Ostrom 493

DEMOCRACY AND DICHOTOMIES: A Pragmatic Approach to
Choices about Concepts, David Collier, Robert Adcock 537