The State Legislative Institution

State Legislative Support for Parks

BACKGROUND Parks are important venues that can encourage population-level physical activity, and policy legislation can facilitate or discourage physical activity and other park uses, depending on the type and level of support. This study aims to summarize the status and content of state-level park-related legislation. METHODS We searched for eligible legislation from 2001-2007 in two data so...

New Global Governance and the Future of the State Institution in the Middle East

Changes in the international system, along with crises in the Middle East and the emergence of inefficient states coexisting with religious and racial groups in the region, make one wonder about the nature of the state in today’s systematic world, in general, and the nature of the state in the Middle East, in particular. The present study provides a theoretical framework based on quantum mechan...

Gubernatorial Coattail Effects in State Legislative Elections

“Hearing from All Sides” How Legislative Testimony Influences State Level Policy-Makers in the United States

Background This paper investigates whether state legislators find testimony influential, to what extent testimony influences policy-makers’ decisions, and defines the features of testimony important in affecting policy-makers’ decisions.   Methods We used a mixed method approach to analyze responses from 862 state-level legislators in the United States (U.S.). Data were collected via a phone su...

Legislative term limits and state spending

Supporters of legislative term limits often claim that they will lower state spending levels. Using fiscal data from 48 states from 1977 to 2001, this paper finds little support for this assertion. Instead, this analysis finds that states with term limits have higher spending levels than states without term limits. These results suggest that term limits give legislators greater incentives to de...