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Do State Legislative Staffer Networks Influence Roll-call Voting? Evidence from Shared Personal Staffers in Arizona, Indiana, and New Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2024

Michelangelo Landgrave Open the ORCID record for Michelangelo Landgrave [Opens in a new window]
Michelangelo Landgrave*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Legislative staffers are an invisible force in legislative bodies that provide every imaginable service. It is doubtful that modern legislatures could operate without them. Prior studies of Congressional staffers have found evidence that staffers not only aid but also exert an independent influence on the policy-making process through network effects. In this article, I test if this extends to state legislative staffers using novel data from shared staffer networks in Arizona, Indiana, and New Mexico. I argue that, compared to their Congressional counterparts, state legislative staffers are more akin to ‘clerks’ than ‘political professionals’ and this limits their ability to independently influence policymaking at the state level.

Keywords

legislative staffersstate politicspolitical networkslegislative professionalismstate legislatures
Type
Original Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 2024 , pp. 287 - 299
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the State Politics and Policy Section of The American Political Science Association

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