Abstract
Popular rhetoric claims that the main purpose of term limits is to make legislators more responsive to their constituents. Our analysis does not support this claim. We argue that term limits are a means of redistributing political power. Term limits enable voters in one legislative district to influence the outcome in other legislative districts. Ultimately, term limits on the legislature redistributes power from constituencies with long-run incumbents to constituencies with short-run incumbents, from the legislative to the executive branch, and from one political party to the other. Rational voters who benefit from the redistribution in political power will vote in favor of term limits; those who are hurt will vote against.
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© 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Friedman, D., Wittman, D. (1996). Term Limits as Political Redistribution. 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_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7307-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-1812-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive