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This dissertation seeks to answer two questions. First, how do national-level conditions associated with the president's party, the presidential election cycle, and presidential approval influence state legislative and gubernatorial elections? Second, how does variation in state government power mediate how state elections are influenced by those national factors? I approach the first question by testing existing theories that help to explain how party voting is affected by the presidential election cycle. Specifically, I examine the effect of presidential coattails, surge and decline theory, national referendum voting theory and vertical policy balancing theory. Surge and decline and referendum theories have been applied to state elections; however, vertical policy balancing has not. In order to assess the independent effects of each of these theories, I include variables for all theories in comprehensive statistical models. These models cover gubernatorial elections from 1948-2010 and state legislative elections from 1968-2010. Using these models, I deconstruct how each of these three theories contributes to the phenomenon of midterm loss in state elections. I find evidence for surge and decline, referendum voting, and electoral balancing in both gubernatorial and state legislative elections. Having established the effects of theories of midterm loss in state elections, I then turn to the question of whether variation in state government power mediates midterm loss. I find that formal institutional power and the size of state government do not systematically affect midterm loss. However, I show that there are important differences between states with and without the direct initiative. I show that coattail effects and referendum voting are lessened in states with the direct initiative and that presidential punishment is increased. These results, along with the findings associated with theories of midterm decline, add to our understanding of elections in the American states as well as the American electoral process in general. / Political Science

This paper measures the party incumbency advantage for the Democratic Party in state legislatures nationwide. To do so, this paper employs regression discontinuity design (RDD), following the structure laid out in Lee (2008). The results show a stronger incumbency advantage in state legislatures than the 8% figure found for U.S. House of Representative elections by Lee (2008), with a finding of a 14% advantage for lower houses nationwide and a 12% advantage for upper houses nationwide. Furthermore, this paper finds a strengthened incumbency advantage in states that hold their elections in off-years (34% in lower houses and 21% in upper houses). The paper concludes by suggesting that the boosted incumbency advantage for off-year states is a consequence of depressed voter turnout, testing this hypothesis using the Virginian lower house as a case study. Analysis suggests that the incumbency advantage drops substantially to 8% during years with a gubernatorial race and high voter turnout, and jumps substantially to 25% during years without a gubernatorial race and low voter turnout. However, large errors prevent these results from being statistically significant.

How do legislatures develop or institutionalize? Our knowledge about legislative development is mostly based on studies of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. state legislatures. However, we know next to nothing about legislative development in the emerging democracies of Latin America. Given the need to develop effective democratic institutions in that region, it is critical to understand how institutions change and how legislatures in particular develop. In this study, I develop a model of legislative development that complements rational choice and path dependent explanations of change. In particular, this model provides an answer to the question: how does a legislative organization change into a legislative institution?In particular, I hypothesize that legislative development varies depending on the extent to which electoral and constitutional reforms balance executive-legislative power asymmetries. To test this hypothesis, I compare legislative development in Nicaragua (1979-2005) and Costa Rica (1871-2005). Central to the process of legislative development are: (1) power asymmetries between presidents and assemblies, (2) the rules and organizations that are established to balance these asymmetries, (3) how rules and organizations affect the development of the legislatures from simple, subordinate organizations into complex and autonomous institutions, and (4) how the broader social, political, and economic environment contributes to legislative development.I find that political actors do not act or function within an historical or contextual vacuum, nor does history and context alone determine political choices and outcomes. Instead, political actors function within rational, institutional, and historical boundaries, so an approach that incorporates aspects of both rational choice and path dependent explanations is preferable to existing models of legislative change. Therefore, part of my contribution is (1) to clarify the conceptual confusion surrounding institutions, organizations, and rules, and reduce ambiguity relating to their incorrect use in current scholarship; (2) to conceptualize legislative development as a process - not an outcome - that unfolds in a causally related sequence; and (3) to develop a Bounded Rationality Model that complements rational choice with path dependent explanations of legislative development to explain how organizations become institutions.

Many scholars believe in order to have democratic legitimacy, females should be represented in governing bodies at all levels. Significant literature on female descriptive representation in the U.S. for women’s policy responsiveness confirms the importance between the percentage of females in the legislature and public policy that represents women’s interests. At the same time, there is research suggesting female representatives do not always represent women’s interests. This study examined female descriptive representation and incorporation and its effect on substantive representation of female group salient issues and answered the following research question: Does an increase in female descriptive representation, institutional mechanisms of influence, or other political conditional factors lead to better substantive representation of female group salient issues? This research project replicated Robert Preuhs’ 2006 work by studying the conditional effects of female descriptive representation in the state legislature from 1983-2002. The study is important because it turns to state level data and accounts for all mechanisms of influence, as well as conditional effects of a liberal governing coalition, to determine whether female descriptive representation exerts policy influence. Five theoretical models were presented and tested in this work: The Presence Model, the Simple Incorporation Model, the Specific Institutional Incorporation Model, The Broad Institutional Incorporation Model, and The Party as a Substantive Representative Model. The dependent variables selected were per pupil educational expenditures, percentage of children without health insurance, welfare benefits, and percentage of child support collected. An OLS model with a lagged dependent variable and panel correlated standard errors was used to estimate the coefficients for each dependent variable. Female descriptive representation and incorporation did have some influence on substantive representation with welfare benefits and percentage of child support collected. The female influence is important and increasing the number of females in the legislature will result in more policy and benefits for issues important to women in society. However, examining the issues in a different way or with different dependent variables may provide better results indicating the importance of female descriptive representation on substantive representation of female group salient issues.

This dissertation creates a typology of conflict of interest laws, rules and policies implemented and practiced in all 50 state legislatures. The research identifies characteristics of conflict of interest regimes and suggests relationships between these characteristics and public corruption. If finds that the political culture of a state, and the professionalism of the legislature, influence the definition of what constitutes a legislative conflict of interest, thereby sanctioning some conflict of interest regimes to engage in greater self profit of its members than other regimes.