Abstract
With the passage since 1990 of initiatives to limit legislative terms of service in over twenty states as of December 1994,1 beginning with the passage of initiatives in California, Colorado and Oklahoma in 1990,2 term limitation has become the focus of considerable journalistic and scholarly attention (e.g., Becker, 1990; Petracca, 1991b; Polsby, 1991a, b; Payne, 1991; Cohen and Spitzer, 1992; Coyne and Fund, 1992; Will, 1992); and there have been two national conferences on the topic, one at the University of California, Irvine in June 1991—most of the papers from which are collected in this volume—and one at the State University of New York at Albany, in October 1991—the papers from which are collected in Benjamin and Malbin (1992). While limits on term of service of state executives are quite common (e.g., twenty-nine states imposed some form of term limit on their governors as of 1988: see Beyle, 1992; Sutherland and Grofman, this volume) and usage in most of these states dates to their first constitutions, the legislative term limits that passed in 1990 were the first to apply to state legislators in the United States since the late 18th century.3
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Endnotes
See Rausch and Copeland (this volume).
Pennsylvania was the only state to have a limit on legislative terms, but that term limit applied to its upper chamber at a time when the chief executive of the state was chosen by that branch of the legislature from among its members. When Pennsylvania shifted to a popularly elected executive in 1790, following the model of the national government, its term limits on legislative service were abolished (see Lutz, 1980; Thorpe, 1909). We should also note that in the federal Congress elected under the Articles of Confederation legislators were eligible to serve no more than three years in six. (We are indebted to Calvin Jillson, personal communication, May 1991, for calling this point to our attention.)
U.S. Term Limits v. Hill, No. 93–1240 (Ark., March 7,1994); Stumpf v. Lau, 839 P. 2d 120 (Nevada, September 1992). In the Nevada case the congressional term limits initiative was denied a place on the ballot because of the finding that such a provision, if passed, would “palpably violate the paramount law and would inevitably be futile and nugatory and incapable of being made operative under any conditions or circumstances.” (For discussion of the Nevada case see Bowers, 1992.)
Thorsted v. Grégoire, Colony v. Munro. No. C92–1763WD (D. Wash., February 10,1994).
For a useful discussion of responsiveness in the context of term limits see Boeckelman (1993).
Will (1992:177) goes on to assert: “Critics who say that term limitation will make Congress a bewildered and deferential handmaiden of the presidency are missing a point. A Congress whose members are cured of careerism will be less risk-averse and more vigorous. Such a Congress will not only leave courts less latitude to act as legislatures, it will more readily risk challenging the president, whoever he is, as the definer of the nation’s agenda.”
An earlier and less complete inventory of propositions about term limits is found in American Enterprise Institute (1979).
A useful comparison of the perspectives of “professional” versus “citizen” legislators is Opheim (1990).
Similar arguments are made by Brady and Rivers (1991). A discussion of the views of Brady and Rivers is found in Cain (this volume. Section I).
An important earlier work that makes similar points in terms of a model of the politico-business cycle is Chappel and Keech (1983).
In addition to the time-perspective argument, political science opponents of term limits also argue, i.a., that they needlessly eliminate experienced public servants and reduce legislative professionalism, deny voters their right to elect candidates of choice, create lame-duck politicians, and strengthen the power of interest groups (see, e.g., Polsby, 1991a, b; Copeland, 1992).
However, as is evident from other essays in this volume, such as that of Glazer and Wattenberg, Public Choice scholars come down on both sides of the term limits debate.
For important related discussion that take a somewhat different perspective, the reader should consult Alexander and Bhojwani, 1991; Clucas, 1993.
Similarly, Gary Copeland (personal communication, 1991) has observed that term limits can be thought of a cheap and easy substitute for campaign finance reform as a way to get more competition.
None of the chapters in this volume deal to any extent with the likely impact of term limits on racial or gender representation. For a specific discussion of those issues see Thompson and Moncrief (1993). I would note though that, because minority seats are disproportionately safe, the operation of seniority has given minority legislators elected in the last decade the opportunity for considerable power in state legislatures and Congress, and that term limits would cut into that advantage (Bositis, 1992; cf. Richardson, 1993). Minority legislative and congressional gains in the South came about largely as a result of the Voting Rights Act (Handley and Grofman, 1994; Handley, Grofman and Arden, 1995 forthcoming). It has been suggested that term limits might constitute a violation of the Voting Rights Act (or of the U.S. Constitution directly) if their differential impact on the opportunities for legislative advancement of minority legislators could be shown to be severe (Gay, 1993), but my own reading of very recent Supreme Court decisions on the scope of the VRA suggest that this would be held to be an unrealistic stretching of the domain of the Act and of the 14th and 15th Amendments.
Other important relevant works are Mondak (1993) and Francis and Kenny (n.d.). See also Opheim (1994). For a general discussion of congressional tenure and the congressional career cycle see Hibbing (1991).
This point is reinforced when we consider that, even before term limits have actually guillotined legislative careers, in anticipation of their effects, many legislators have already bailed out of the legislature. In California, where the Assembly has 80 members; more than a quarter (22) retired in 1994. However, 18 of the 22 retirees filed for other offices (Gillam, 1994).
See, e.g., Clymer (1992).
Of the 7,396 state legislators holding office in 1991 who had run as party designees, 60.4 percent were Democrats. Similarly, Democrats have almost always controlled both branches of Congress since 1932, and the total number of Democratic members of Congress (combining House and Senate) has exceeded the number of Republican members in every year since 1954 until the “Homicide on the Hill” of 1994.
As noted earlier, in general, the current proponents of term limitations do not all agree as to what are the specific evils that this reform is intended to ameliorate. However, it is well known that the successful movement to limit presidential terms to two that culminated in the passage of the 22nd Amendment in 1951 was sparked in good part by Republican unhappiness with the era of Democratic dominance under Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Stein, 1972).
For other informative discussions of the differences between Republican and Democratic voters with respect to support for term limits in these and other states, and consideration of the partisan (and other) roots of the term limits initiative movement in the various states, see Rausch, 1993; Lunch, 1993; Donovan, 1993; Donovan and Snipp, 1994; Jewell, 1993; Titus, n.d.; Friedman and Wittman, forthcoming; and various of the essays in Benjamin and Malbin, 1992.
The sole loss of a statewide term limits initiative, that in Washington in 1991, has been blamed on the fact that it would have been retroactive (Coyne and Fund, 1992:10).
See also Cain (this volume, Section IV).
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Grofman, B. (1996). Introduction to the Term Limits Debate: Hypotheses in Search of Data. In: Grofman, B. (eds) Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives. Studies in Public Choice, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_1
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