Bureaucracies and Budgets: Government Growth and Professionalism in U.S. State Legislatures

This paper analyzes the determinants of professionalization in American state legislatures since the 1960s. I develop four hypotheses relating changes in professionalism to changes in two measures of government growth: bureaucracy size and expenditure levels. A panel analysis of state-level data reveals two major trends that occurred during the 1970s. First, increases in professionalism are inversely related to bureaucratic growth since agency expansion is most likely to occur in states where the legislature is unable to provide effective oversight. Second, professionalization is directly related to increases in social services spending since legislators need to devote more time to their jobs as their facilitation duties expand.