27 Oct Interest groups and lobbyists serve increasingly influential roles in the state legislative process

As noted in Chapter 6, interest groups and lobbyists serve increasingly influential roles in the state legislative process. Given the rise of professionalized legislatures, what role do you foresee for lobbyists? Will legislative power decline as external actors become more influential due to a lack of legislative coordination? Do you think that legislative term limits wiil prevent legislators from acquiring the policy expertise necessary for successful legislative action? 3. What are some of the indirect effects of term limits on the behavior of individual state legislators? Given the lack of political incentive for legislators to engage in coalition building, have term limits promoted legislative individualism? Are legislators pursuing individual policy agendas rather than following party leadership? What are the potential positive and negative effects of term limits over time? 4. What are some of the effects of more professionalized state legislatures on the behavior of individual state legislators? Since professionalization results in an increase in legislative staff, salary, and resources to be used at the discretion of the individual legislator, are legislators likely to become more focused on winning office as opposed to responding to constituent interests? Are legislators becoming more focused on campaigning as opposed to providing quality representation? Will this lead to increased or decreased partisanship among party members? 5. State governments are increasingly working together on a number of issues. Given this, should there be a uniform structure for state legislatures? Should all state legislatures have the same leadership structure, the same committees, and so on? Should all state legislatures strive to become "professionalized"? Should all state legislatures meet year-round? Would the effectiveness of state legislatures improve if all legislatures were highly professionalized? 6. The public tends to have less knowledge of state legislatures than of the U.S. Congress. Yet state legislatures are more likely to affect the day—to—day activities of citizens. Is this a problem for the political system? What can be done to increase knowledge and attention of state legislative activities?