A causal model depicting personal, environmental, and institutional pathways to legislative success is developed and tested with data drawn from the 1987-88 Missouri House of Representatives. With legislative success conceptualized as a multistep process ending in bill passage, direct paths to success include political party, seniority, formal office, age, race, and educational level. Institutional variables have the strongest impact on legislative success and environmental factors the weakest. Age, urbanism, seniority, and political party affect legislative success indirectly through their effect on formal office, an intervening variable. The results of the path analysis provide strong support for the proposed model, with over 50% of the variance in legislative success explained by antecedent variables.
The Legislative Studies Quarterly is an international journal devoted to the publication of research on representative assemblies. Its purpose is to disseminate scholarly work on parliaments and legislatures, their relations to other political institutions, their functions in the political system, and the activities of their members both within the institution and outside. Contributions are invited from scholars in all countries. The pages of the Quarterly are open to all research approaches consistent with the normal canons of scholarship, and to work on representative assemblies in all settings and all time periods. The aim of the journal is to contribute to the formulation and verification of general theories about legislative systems, processes, and behavior. The editors encourage contributors to emphasize the cross-national implications of their findings, even if these findings are based on research within a single country. The Legislative Studies Quarterly is the official journal of the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association.
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Legislative Studies Quarterly
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