Strategic Political Support for Term Limits

Authors

  • James Coleman Battista

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.2004.25.0.119-136

Abstract

I create a simple formal model of support for term limits which predicts that respondents in districts represented by the other party should more strongly favor term limits. An additional layer of theory predicts that weak Democrats and strong Republicans should be most responsive to the incentives illustrated in the formal model. Using the 1992, 1994, and 1998 National Election Studies, I find support for both of these hypotheses.

References

Boeckelman, Keith, and Gina Corell. 1996. An Analysis of Term Limitation Elections. In Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives, ed. Bernard Grofman. Boston: Kluwer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_12

Burns, John. 1971. The Sometime Governments. New York: Bantam.

Carey, John M., Richard G. Niemi, and Lynda W. Powell. 1998. The Effects of Term Limits on State Legislatures. Legislative Studies Quarterly 23:271-300. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/440283

Carey, John M., Richard G. Niemi, and Lynda W. Powell. 2000. Term Limits in the State Legislatures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10855

Citizenís Conference on State Legislatures. 1971. State Legislatures: An Evaluation of Their Effectiveness. New York: Praeger.

Donovan, Todd, and Joseph R. Snipp. 1994. Support for Legislative Term Limitations in California: Group Representation, Partisanship, and Campaign Information. Journal of Politics 56:492-501. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2132150

Gilmour, John B., and Paul Rothstein. 1996. Term Limitation in a Dynamic Model of Partisan Balance. In Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives, ed. Bernard Grofman. Norwell, MA: Kluwer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_10

Grofman, Bernard. 1996. Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives. Boston: Kluwer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2

Karp, Jeffrey A. 1995. Explaining Public Support for Legislative Term Limits. Public Opinion Quarterly 59:373-391. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/269482

Keith, Bruce E., David Magleby, Candice J. Nelson, Elizabeth A. Orr, Mark C. Westlye, and Raymond E. Wolfinger. 1992. The Myth of the Independent Voter. Berkeley: University of California.

Moncrief, Gary F., Joel A. Thompson, Michael Haddon, and Robert Hoyer. 1996. For Whom the Bell Tolls: Term Limits and State Legislatures. In Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives, ed. Bernard Grofman. Boston: Kluwer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_8

Nagler, Jonathan. 1994. Scobit: An Alternative Estimator to Logit and Probit. American Journal of Political Science 38:230-255. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111343

Rausch, Jr., John David, and Gary W. Copeland. 1996. Term Limits in Oklahoma, California, and Colorado in 1990. In Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives, ed. Bernard Grofman. Boston: Kluwer.

Reed, W. Robert, and D. Eric Schansberg. 1996. An Analysis of the Impact of Congressional Term Limits on Turnover and Party Balance. In Legislative Term Limits: Public Choice Perspectives, ed. Bernard Grofman. Norwell, MA: Kluwer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1812-2_9

Sapiro, Virginia, Steven J. Rosenstone, and the National Election Studies. 2002. "1948-2002 Cumulative Data File [dataset]." Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies [producer and distributor].

Stein, Robert M., Martin Johnson, and Stephanie Shirley Post. 2002. Public Support for Term Limits: Another Look at Conventional Thinking. Legislative Studies Quarterly 27:459-480. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3598573 http://dx.doi.org/10.3162/036298002X200684

Thompson, Joel A., and Gary F. Moncrief. 1993. The Implications of Term Limits for Women and Minorities: Some Evidence from the States. Social Science Quarterly 74:300-309.

Will, George F. 1992. Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy. New York: Free Press.

Downloads

Published

2004-07-01

Issue

Vol. 25: Summer 2004

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with American Review of Politics agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.

  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.

  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:

    1. Attribution: other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;

    2. Non-Commercial: the materials may not be used for commercial purposes;

    3. Share Alike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.

  1. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

  2. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.

  3. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.

  1. The Author represents and warrants that:

    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;

    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;

    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;

    4. the Work has not previously been published;

    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and

    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.

  2. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.