Public Choice96: 210–214, 1998. 210c 1998Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Book review

Bernard Grofman,Legislative term limits: Public choice perspectives. Boston,MA: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1996. xxiv + 385 pages. $115.00 (cloth).

Edmund Burke, in rejecting the idea that a member of Parliament shouldallow “instructions” from his constituents to dictate his decisions, observedthat “government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment. Whatsort of reason is that in which the determination preceded the discussion?” Itis the sort of reason (or lack thereof) that lies behind the decisions of nearlyhalf the states that have imposed limitations on the terms of their state leg-islators. In virtually all these cases, term limits were imposed through theinstruments of direct democracy, and, during the campaigns, opponents andproponents relied primarily on rhetoric and very general assertions of thelikely effects of the reform. We are only beginning to generate and analyzeempirical data about the effects of term limits on legislator behavior, the con-tent of legislation, and the relationship among the branches of government.The results of these studies can serve as the foundation for the deliberationabout the wisdom of this political reform, deliberation that will, unfortunate-ly, follow the decision to implement term limits in many states.

The twenty essays collected inLegislative term limits: Public choice per-spectives, edited by Bernard Grofman, will frame this debate. Professor Grof-man lays out the primary objective of this excellent book in his preface: “Ihave looked for material that can be used as the basis for explicit and testablehypotheses/models about the expected consequences of term limits This vol-ume contains the best efforts of political scientists and economists to predictthe consequences of legislative term limits. I hope that it inspires a next gen-eration of scholars to test its predictions as data become available” (p. xxi).The essays that he presents, most of which are original to this book, fulfill thisgoal admirably. Moreover, they represent a number of public choice perspec-tives, including game theory, formal modeling, and hypotheses based on theresults of surveys and field work. From Bruce Cain’s the varying impact oflegislative term limits, which collects and organizes virtually all the hypothe-ses about the effect of term limits on legislators and clearly sets out whatempirical data are required to prove or disprove them, to the final essays pre-

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senting a variety of comparative perspectives, Grofman’s emphasis remainson setting out comprehensively the best of the theoretical literature so thatthe direction of further studies can be clearer and more focused.

After introducing the essays with a discussion appropriately entitled Hypothe-ses in search of data, Professor Grofman divides this book into four parts: I)predictions of the impact of term limits on legislator behavior and electoralresponsiveness; II) predictions of the impact on legislative turnover and par-ty balance; III) discussions of voter attitudes and the motivations behind thecontemporary movement to impose legislative term limits; and IV) histori-cal and comparative studies of term limits. A full discussion of the insightfulessays in each section is impossible in this short space; accordingly, I willfocus on only a few of the contributions, most of which are original to thiscollection. In doing so, I do not mean to overlook the important work that isreprinted (sometimes in shorter or updated form); for example, Linda Cohenand Matt Spitzer’s essay Term limits and representation uses the basic pris-oners’ dilemma game to suggest that term limits will reduce or eliminate theincentives to cooperate, thereby decreasing legislative responsiveness to con-stituents and increasing attention to self-interest. This piece was originallypublished in a law review and may be new to those whose reading concen-trates on economic or political science journals.

Perhaps the strongest section is the first which focuses on the effect of termlimits on legislative behavior and the level of responsiveness to constituents.These essays are sophisticated contributions that seek to identify the dynamicchanges that one would expect to result from the imposition of such a signif-icant political reform. The authors also identify likely changes in politicalinstitutions that might either negate or reduce some of the effects of limitedterms that have been predicted in the popular press. This endeavor is vitallyimportant and may lead to a rejection of many conclusions that were formu-lated in the absence of rigorous scrutiny and empirical testing. As ProfessorGrofman observes in his introductory essay, the complex analysis offered inthis volume “give[s] us reason to be skeptical about term limits as a dramaticforce for change and urge[s] caution in making predictions about the effectsof term limits” (p. 13).

This part ofLegislative term limitsincludes the essay by Bruce Cain, whichsets out most of the important arguments regarding legislator behavior andterm limits and provides a framework in which to assess them on both nor-mative and empirical grounds. Such an approach is particularly helpful in theterm limits debate, which is remarkable in part because “almost every pre-diction in one direction is matched with an equally confident prediction inthe opposite direction” (p. 22). For example, Cain notes that any analysis ofthe effect of term limits on interest group activity must differentiate among

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those that lobby almost exclusively through long-standing relationships withelected officials, those whose power comes from the ability to give large cam-paign contributions, and those that produce credible and helpful informationfor policymakers. Each group is apt to be affected by term limits in differ-ent ways, yet much of the analysis has focused on interest groups as thoughthey are monolithic. In part, it is Elizabeth Capell’s failure to make such dis-tinctions in her essay The impact of term limits on the California legislature:An interest group perspective, as well as her failure to consider how insti-tutions like political parties and legislative committees might restructure tocompensate for the first-order effects of term limits, that casts doubt on herpredictions about the response of interest groups to term limits.

In another challenging essay in this first section, Term limits, Responsive-ness and the failures of increased competition, Elisabeth Gerber and ArthurLupia suggest that competition itself may not increase legislator responsive-ness; rather, any improvement in responsiveness depends on the kind of com-petitor that an incumbent faces. An incumbent who must run against a cred-ible challenger will actually be more concerned with the challenger’s policypreferences, rather than the constituents’, because the challenger will decidewhether or not to run based on her satisfaction with the incumbent’s perfor-mance. Thus, it is the degree of similarity between the policies preferred bythe challenger and those preferred by constituents that matters for responsive-ness. If the preferences are sufficiently distinct, “then an increase in compe-tition can actually lead to less responsive outcomes.: : : An increase in com-petition is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for greater respon-siveness” (p. 96). One is impressed at the subtlety of these contributions andthe consistent ability of the authors to transcend the easy answer for the morenuanced, and often initially counterintuitive, insight.

The second part of the book, dealing with the effect of term limits onlegislative turnover and party balance, contains, for the most part, previous-ly published work, but all are important studies. For example, the work ofRobert Reed and Eric Schansberg on the effect of term limits on turnoverrates in the House of Representatives is the best of the public choice studiesin this area. Among the influential hypotheses they offer is that, under termlimits, the reduction in the time required before representatives would be eli-gible for leadership positions in Congress might increase the attractivenessof political office, or at least compensate for any reduction in that attractive-ness caused by the shorter lengths of stay. Again, obvious and often-repeatedconclusions regarding the effect of term limits on the nature of elected officeare called into question by the careful scholarship contained in this book.

The work in the third part ofLegislative term limitsbegins to answer thequestion why term limits were adopted by so many states. Although, like

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the other essays, these contributions will frame the ongoing debate aboutterm limits, their relevance is broader because they also suggest ways tounderstand the popular support for a number of political reforms and pro-vide insight into campaigns surrounding direct democracy in the states. Thelatter contribution is increasingly important as ballot questions proliferateand as the initiative and referendum become more frequent mechanisms forenacting constitutional and legal change. For example, Keith Boeckelmanand Gina Correll analyze the patterns of support for term limits in eighteenpopular elections, held between 1990 and 1992, to determine the relationshipbetween support for legislative term limits and a number of variables, suchas economic conditions, partisanship, race, and voter alienation. Their con-clusion that the political force behind terms limits exists outside the typicalparty categories and is related to the appeal of Ross Perot’s “presidential cru-sade” links term limits to other protest movements that tapped into a reservoirof public dissatisfaction with government, such as those championed duringthe Progressive era at the beginning of the century and state tax revolts thatreached their height twenty years ago.

The careful analysis of the term limits campaigns in Oklahoma, Califor-nia and Colorado offered by John David Rausch, Jr., and Gary W. Copelandis instructive as case studies of the organization and other characteristicsof groups that seek to enact legislation through popular means, rather thanthrough state or federal legislatures. Not surprisingly, just as representativedemocracy, direct democracy is nurtured by money and the resources ofwealthy and organized groups. In Oklahoma, a wealthy Tulsa businessmanbankrolled the successful drive to enact term limits by popular election, aidedby the vocal support of the state’s most influential newspaper. In Colorado,the major force behind the term limits movement was once again one person,but this time his financial backing came from a powerful interest group, theNational Federation of Independent Business. California’s experience, whileunique for a number of reasons, including vocal and high-profile opponentsand a tradition of numerous ballot initiatives as part of each state-wide elec-tion, underscores the importance of organized groups and resources to thesuccess of a “popular” movement. Here, in a finding that supports the con-clusions of Boeckelman and Correll, the authors note that success was alsoinfluenced by the fact that the term limits provision was part of a comprehen-sive package of legislative and campaign changes that appealed to disaffectedvoters of all ideologies and both parties.

The final part of the book begins the empirical testing of the plethora ofhypotheses offered in the previous selections, although none of these essaysdoes so in the context of state legislatures in the United States. Elegantlyintroduced by Mark Petracca’s historical perspective on the notion of “rota-

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tion in office,” these studies test the effects of term limits on governors (BernardGrofman and Neil Sutherland); on local governments in California (an essayby Petracca and Kareen Moore O’Brien and one by Bruce Cain), and finallyon legislators in Costa Rica’s national assembly (John Carey). The dissimilar-ities between legislative term limits in the United States and each of the othercontexts are substantial and reduce the ability to apply the conclusions to thelegislative environment here. For example, political parties in Costa Rica arevery different from those in the United States, and the power of a city coun-cil member over policy, particularly in cities with strong city managers, isin no way comparable to the power of a state or federal legislator. Nonethe-less, these studies serve the objective of this book: to suggest the questionsthat further research should seek to answer – questions concerning the bal-ance of power between the executive and the legislative branches; questionsconcerning the influence of staff and lobbyists; questions concerning the roleof political parties and other institutions with indefinite time horizons thatcould begin to fill very different roles in a system characterized by shorterlegislative terms.

For those who have studied term limits, this book is an excellent tool tosuggest the most productive avenues for further discussion and empiricalstudy of this political reform. For those who are beginning their analysis ofthe subject, these essays are invaluable because they provide a comprehen-sive view of the state of the current public choice literature and suggest thedirection of future work. The collection’s influence on the public deliberationof the wisdom of term limits, a discussion that, contrary to Burke’s admoni-tion, is occurring in many instances only after the adoption of the reform,is less certain. As Professors Grofman and Sutherland note in their study ofgubernatorial limits, “once instituted, term limits are rarely removed. Thus,we hypothesize that term limits exhibit a ‘ratchet effect’ in which movementtends to be in only one direction” (p. 280). Depending on the outcome ofthe empirical studies that will build on the foundation laid by this importantbook, that one-way tendency may be an unfortunate one.

ELIZABETH GARRETT, The Law School, University of Chicago, Chicago,IL 60637-2786, U.S.A.